Sally Menke - Editor Research

Sally Menke - Editor Research

Editor Research Report – Sally Menke

If there was one woman in the whole world who could understands Quentin Tarantino more than anyone, that was Sally Menke, whose recent death shocked us all in our heart, she was one that working with Quentin from the very first beginning with Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill to recently released Inglourious Basterds. In the journey with Tarantino, she was nominated for Oscar twice with Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds and won a Sierra Award for her work on Kill Bill: Vol.1.
Of the many scenes from the Pulp Fiction, I’ve chosen the ‘Overdose scene’ which can be called one of the iconic scenes from the film.
Vincent (John Travolta) is a hitman who was ordered to take care of his boss’ wife, Mia (Uma Thurman) out for the weekend. After having dinner and participating in a twist contest at 50’s style restaurant, Vincent and Mia return to the Wallace (the boss) house with the trophy that they won from the contest. While Vincent is in the bathroom holding his sexual urge against boss’ wife, Mia finds his stash of heroin in his coat pocket. Mistaking it for cocaine, she snorts it and overdoses.
Above scene was edited using parallel action which we learned from module that Edwin S. Porter first established in The Great Train Robbery. Like in the Porter’s movie, Sally Menke cut the scene so effectively showing Mia and Vincent are at the different location (living room and bathroom) at the same time, thinking opposite idea about how they are going to do about each other. And audience can easily guess that both of the action is happening at the same time because there’s same music going on (which Mia turned on) where cross cut is happening back and forth without any song break.
Vincent finds out this incident a while later, freaked out, called Lance (the drug dealer, played by Eric Stoltz) whom he got the drug from on the cell phone and rushed into his house for help. After arriving at Lance’s house, Vincent and...

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