There's over 6 hours of special features on the new Blu-ray edition of Quentin Tarantino's seminal movie Pulp Fiction, but by far the most beguiling is the retrospective interview with John Travolta.
I'm a massive fan of Travolta and have even interviewed him a couple of times, when I found him to be a lovely bloke. However, watching him refer to himself (from what I gathered anyway) as a "unique talent" and an "icon" made for odd viewing.
Inevitably, the director-sanctioned release of Quentin's classic led to all kinds of ring-kissing on the extras. And that's fair enough, it's a great movie that has been remastered here in high definition under the great man's supervision.
But for a cynic like me, it's the little things we don't hear that fascinate, ditto the moments when Tarantino is not painted as the all-conquering hero. The latter happens much to everyone else's surprise in a critics' debate about the filmmaker's impact when a female reviewer admits to not liking Pulp Fiction all that much. The look of disbelief on the moderator's face as he realises his colleague has, like, criticised the person they're supposed to be effusing about is priceless.
Similarly intriguing - though unsurprising - is the excision of Roger Avary's contribution to the film. Avary won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay alongside his former buddy, but his input into the finished film is brushed over here (and for why Avary's currently Tweeting from prison, just type his name into Google).
Nevertheless, the unabashed joy of the participants in the documentaries is infectious and it's clear that Pulp Fiction is the work of a man utterly in command of his vision.
I love the film, though I agree with the lady critic that it can be cold and a bit smirky. Like, say, Wes Anderson - another idiosyncratic director with his own cinematic language forged out of the ashes of others - with a Tarantino flick you're either in or you're out.
I'm in. And though I haven't seen the film much since wearing out the VHS as a student, listening back now to the sparkling dialogue and marvelling at how cool Travolta looks doing the twist, it's not hard to see why the Uma-bearing poster adorned so many walls and why the movie remains high on people's Top 10 lists.
Pulp Fiction is out now on Blu-ray, as is Jackie Brown, which has a bunch more special features and is similarly remastered.