Current Works
Opening the Briefcase
Pulp Fiction is the film which, more than any other I know, reveals new aspects at every viewing. On this occasion, watching it for about the dozenth time, what hit me was how poignant that scene at the end is, where the gangsters stride confidently off into the Los Angeles sunshine, the viewer aware that Vincent will soon be shot dead. And this when there has just been all that business about the mysterious briefcase which Marsellus will soon be reunited with. And it seemed that maybe one might see a connection here – that there’s the hint of a suggestion that the contents of the briefcase could somehow come into play to save Vincent. And since we have seen Vincent being shot, that would seem to have to involve the briefcase containing either a resurrection kit or a time machine.
I had never been ambitious to solve the briefcase question. It seemed the sort of issue about which one could only have theories. But over the next week or so, without any active sleuthing, the backrooms of my mind tossed up several more clues, all pointing towards a time machine. And then, struck as if by Tony Rocky Horror crashing through the greenhouse roof, it occurred to me that a time machine hidden from viewers makes a most compelling parallel with Butch’s watch, hidden so craftily from the prison guards. To me this parallel reeked of intentionality and of a joke being played on the audience. Further ideas bolstering the time machine theory came to mind over the next few weeks. Especially there were two ‘continuity errors’ – Marvin’s head being shown after it was supposed to have been blasted to pieces, and Honey Bunny’s rant to patrons differing slightly in its opening scene and closing scene renditions – which worked beautifully as examples of divergent timelines.
I felt that I was staring at the solution to the greatest (with the possible exception of why Rose murders Jack at the end of Titanic) pop culture mystery of our times. It was my chance to become an immortal footnote and I set to work on the sonnet sequence Marsellus Wallace’s Dirty Laundry. With Mills Design and Your Books doing their customary excellent work, I self-published the sequence in July 2021 and sent copies to magazines both local and overseas.
However I anticipated a hard slog for the book. Pulp Fiction had debuted almost thirty years ago. Naturally any claim to have taken the scalp of its notorious riddle would be greeted with scepticism. I felt confident though about the argument I was advancing and that people would eventually be persuaded. What I foresaw as the real problem was that there would be understandable caution lest credit for the find go to the wrong party. Overseas the response would be to wait for the situation in New Zealand to clarify. In New Zealand the wait would be for overseas developments.
And so it seems to have transpired. In New Zealand the book has been (so far as I know) reviewed only once. This review, in Landfall Online, was by former poet laureate David Eggleton. Eggleton has written one of my favourite poems – ‘I Imagine Wellington as a Delicatessen’ – and I have often enjoyed reading his reviews. This one I wasn’t so sure about. He contrived to review the book without mentioning the argument at its heart. While though not making any direct accusation he let fall a comment about film noir in-jokes and one about found poetry. And he dismissed the book as old-fashioned – which it crossed my mind could be a reference to the wild, early days of postmodernism when writers would lift other writers’ work without acknowledgement and then chortle delightedly when they were found out.
From overseas there was nothing definite at all and I was reduced to clutching at straws. The least wispy of these perhaps being that six months after the book came out the film’s three main stars put on a briefcase skit at the Oscars. For could these Hollywood titans, with the hefty egos one supposes such folk possess, be imagined performing a briefcase skit unless they knew what the briefcase contained?
An advantage though to the book’s unobtrusive arrival on the scene was that it gave me time to refine its argument. And that led to L.A. Alchemy, self-published (again with Mills Design and Your Books) in August 2024. At forty sonnets rather than sixty the focus here was squarely on the points essential to proving a time machine. And this included some shiny new inferences to demolish the tenacious but daft theory which holds that the briefcase is a ‘MacGuffin’ – merely a plot device to move the action along and that its contents are irrelevant.
However that isn’t at all to walk away from the earlier book. In fact I would like to publish both books together, under the title City of Pilots. Since the sequences share the same first eleven and a bit sonnets this would implicate the poems themselves in the briefcase world’s divergent realities. I’m hoping that this website might eventually lead to City of Pilots finding a publisher. And in any event I hope that the website opens up the discussion about a film which, although hailed almost instantly as a masterpiece, is still greatly misunderstood in one key respect.
David Beach
April 2025
L.A. Alchemy
In Marsellus Wallace’s Dirty Laundry, his 2021 booklength sonnet sequence, David Beach blew the locks off cinema’s greatest mystery, demonstrating that the Pulp Fiction briefcase contains a time machine – and thereby revealed it as also cinema’s best joke (Butch’s watch hidden from the prison guards, the film concealing a timepiece from viewers). Now, in the spirit of the little differences in hamburger cuisine between the United States and Europe, he offers a variant interpretation, one where Marsellus turned the dial back to halfway through the twelfth sonnet. This version of the critique largely dispenses with thematic implications. It focuses instead on the intricate brilliance (watchmaker’s fantasy) of the logic by which the film establishes that the briefcase has to be, what at first seems so surprising, a laptop Tardis. Notably here the sequence demolishes the beguiling but fool’s gold theory that the briefcase is a ‘MacGuffin’, no more than a plot device and its contents irrelevant. And as well the sequence solves the film’s other great mystery, why Vincent is shown twice on the crapper.
Marsellus Wallace’s Dirty Laundry
One millennium has passed into another. 2020 has passed. The question remains …
What is in the Pulp Fiction briefcase? Of course people have had their theories. However none have borne scrutiny. Until now at last, inspired by that most briefcase-shaped of poetical forms, in his seventh book of sonnets the essay sequence Marsellus Wallace’s Dirty Laundry, David Beach can unlock the mystery.