-== 'PULP FICTION' IS OUT OF CONTROL ==-

by Lea Saslav

Yes, it's violent. As titillating as a roller coaster ride out of control. But Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, with its (now) legendary superpower cast (John Travolta, Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Keitel), keeps gaining kudos from critics as far-reaching as Cannes, where it won the Palm D'or best film award, and at the New York Film Festival, where it jolted audiences upright.

The film opens in Houston and across the nation on Friday. Out of Tarantino's mind has come a pair of thick-witted hit men (Travolta and Jackson), a double-crossing prizefighter on the run (Willis), the addled wife of a drug kingpin (Thurman) and a cast of lowlife characters that cross their paths.

Pulp Fiction isn't really about violence, it's about how far violence can go: violence with a smile. And whether or not you saw Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino's last directing job) or True Romance (Tarantino's script directed by Tony Scott), it's a must see.

Giving interviews recently in a Manhattan hotel, the 31-year-old Tarantino radiates something that only success in Hollywood can bring; he's the standout man in the crowd, the tall (6-foot-plus) guy that everyone wants to be around. He's wearing a shocking maize-colored blazer and black turtleneck, setting him apart from the cool Armani-draped crowd around him. And he talks like, well, a roller coaster out of control.

''What happened was, ah, ah, I had the idea for Pulp Fiction, back before I had done, Reservoir Dogs,'' says Tarantino. ''I was like (filmmaker) Ed Wood - I was going to try to scam together a movie. I didn't know what I was going to do.'' ''And then I remembered this idea of not just doing a crime anthology, but the idea of these interwoven characters coming together.'' He sees a lot of his work on screen as the novelist's approach to fiction. '' ... I'm trying to bring the freedom that novelists have kicking and screaming into the cinema. I love the fact that Larry McMurtry, for example, is writing novels in this universe - and a character who's the star in this book can be a supporting character in this book down the line ... John Ford would do that.'' He's also bringing back, kicking and screaming, John Travolta's career, dragging the Blow Out, Saturday Night Fever and Urban Cowboy star back into the Hollywood limelight. ''A comeback? Can we call it something else, please, just for fun?'' says Travolta. His character, Vincent Vega, sports a long black mane of hair, and even gets to do a bit of dancing, a la Saturday Night Fever.

Tarantino actually put his job - and the movie - on the line to cast Travolta in the lead role. ''When I was a kid, John was the biggest movie star in the world. No competition. And I think John has - and this is so overused, I almost stop short of saying it - John has this Montgomery Clift way about him,'' Tarantino says. ''It wasn't like (the studios) had an objection to me,'' says Travolta. ''They were like, 'We like John, he's a good actor, blah, blah ... But if you only knew the actors that were trying for this part!' '' It took awhile for Travolta - married now with a son, Jett, 2 - to decide on the part of the mobster-for-hire Vincent Vega. ''At the time (Quentin) was fighting to get me the job, I was fighting in a moral dilemma to ascertain whether I should take the job,'' he says. ''I wasn't exactly at a point in my career where I could make that kind of a decision, but I do have a bottom line - a personal moral code. None of it was inspirational, to murder or do drugs.'' Travolta says his Dad gives the movie a thumbs-up. ''My Dad is 82, and he was hysterical over us being preoccupied with the mess (a pivotal Pulp scene), rather than with us shooting a guy. My Dad was the kind of guy who probably saw Public Enemy open in New York in 1931. If he could take this - it means he's risen to another kind of understanding.'' With Pulp Fiction coming in at a (relatively) cheap $ 8.2 million, Die Hard star Bruce Willis had to take a big salary cut to play the double-crossing boxer (his paycheck is up to $ 15 million now). ''It was like high school, yet it was the closest to the perfect creative experience I've ever had,'' says the actor, looking cool and pumped up from his current filming schedule of Die Hard III in New York.

''That's Quentin's genius. What made it to the screen was exactly what Quentin wrote over a year and a half ago. ''It's like Charles Dickens, the way all the story lines weave together."