Revealed! What Was Inside The Pulp Fiction Briefcase

The glowing contents of Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase in ‘Pulp Fiction’, the item assassins Jules and Vincent were so keen to recover for their boss, has been revealed.

Well, sort of.

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It’s long been the subject of fan theories, from the tedious (Marcellus’s soul, hence the plaster on the back of his neck covering where it was taken) to the sublime (a gold lamé tracksuit belonging to Elvis), but until now they’ve been largely the preserve of film students and movie geeks who should have gone to bed hours ago.

Other theories have included a nuclear device and the Holy Grail… but if only someone who was there could shed a bit of light – so to speak – on the matter.

Step forward actor Phil LaMarr, who played the unfortunate Marvin, one of the hapless gang responsible for stealing the case and who ends up as matter being cleaned up by Jules and Vincent under the watchful eye of Harvey Keitel’s Winston Wolf.

Being interviewed on the 'I Was There Too’ podcast, he revealed what it was illuminating Travolta’s face during the 'Big Kahuna burger’ scene.

“A light. A low-wattage yellow bulb,” he said.

OK, OK, that much was perhaps obvious. But, sadly, the real answer is equally deflating.

LaMarr asked Tarantino outright on set, and was told 'It’s whatever you want it to be’.

“[But] is it what I want it to be or what whoever opens it wants it to be? There’s a difference,” LaMarr added, having thought about the answer over the years.

“If Vincent opens it and sees whatever he wants to see, then it’s a magical briefcase. But if the concept is that it’s just the most precious thing ever, than it’s whatever precious thing the audience wants it to be.”

As an answer, it will please precisely no one, but LaMarr did reveal that the gang, which comprised actors Frank Whaley, Burr Steers and Alexis Arquette, invented their own back story.

“We were basically these Long Beach college kids who thought we were gangsters,” he says.

“We thought it would be simple. And the idea was that Jules knew somebody who knew somebody who knew Marvin, and Marvin being dumb probably mentioned [the plan] to a buddy.

“So Jules got in touch with him and said ‘At 7:45, all you gotta do is unlock the door, and I’ll handle everything else.’”

A few other interesting titbits from the set emerged too.

Like why - if not the place where his soul was somehow stolen - the plaster on the back of Marcellus’s neck?

“Ving shaves his own head, and he showed up at rehearsal with a Band-Aid on the back of his head,” says LaMarr.

“That made Quentin go, ‘Ooo, that would be interesting visually! Why don’t I just not show your face?’ The Band-Aid is there because of Ving.”

Marvin’s death in the back of Jules and Vincent’s car was also rather different in the original screenplay too.

It was originally set to be a long, drawn out affair, with Marvin having been hit by a bullet in the throat, with Jules and Vincent eventually deciding to put him out of his misery.

It was Travolta who suggested the change to a quick, and darkly comic end to Marvin involving a loaded gun and a supposed pothole in the road.

“We had sort of forgotten how famous [John] was,” Lamarr says.

“He had a real sense of his persona, and he knew that accidentally killing a poor little innocent kid is one thing, but choosing to do it is another.”

Travolta using heroin intravenously was seemingly fine, however.

Image credits: Miramax/PA/Getty