For young actors in the early 1990s, such as Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, being exposed to Pulp Fiction was more than just an exciting cinematic event. When Quentin Tarantino announced his indelible voice on the big screen, nothing was ever the same for those budding artists aspiring to tell an idiosyncratic story to a wide audience. Pulp Fiction showed audiences that movies didn’t need to abide by any unwritten rules of storytelling and formalism.

Upon release, no film since the dawn of the French New Wave had been made with this level of artistic iconoclasm and radiant passion for filmmaking as a personality and aesthetic. To this day, everyone has been trying to make their own Pulp Fiction, and that can even be seen in the accomplished careers of Damon and Affleck as solo artists and collaborators. For Damon, seeing the film at its premiere was unequivocally life-changing.

Matt Damon Seeing ‘Pulp Fiction’ for the First Time Was a “Highlight” of His Moviegoing Life

By 1994, Matt Damon had been in a handful of studio films, including a cameo appearance and starring role with his lifelong friend and fellow Bostonian Ben Affleck in Field of Dreams and School Ties, respectively. Just a few years later, they will be accepting statuettes at the Academy Awards for writing Good Will Hunting, but at this point, there’s a chance that these dreams of stardom fade away into the ether, as they often do with budding actors. However, one moviegoing experience at the renowned Chinese Mann Theater in Hollywood would leave a permanent imprint on Damon’s mind and undoubtedly push him to pursue his ambitious dreams even further.

In 2023, at the premiere of Air, Damon performed a rite of passage for many actors, directors, or writers: revealing his top four favorite films to Letterboxd. Technically, Damon cheated during this exercise, as he counted The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II as one, and chose Midnight Run as his second. With his second pick, he went with Quentin Tarantino’s breakthrough and most iconic film starring John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, and Uma Thurman. “I was at Mann’s Chinese Theater opening night of Pulp Fiction in 1994,” Damon recounted, who saw the film with Ben Affleck. He equated the sensational magic the film provides to “being at a rock and roll concert,” as well as a “highlight in my moviegoing life.” This revelatory experience changed everything for the two, as the film “got us so fired up about what movies can do.”

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You don’t need to be an aspiring actor or artist to be utterly transfixed by Pulp Fiction, but it’s the kind of film that inspires everyone to be a creative person in their own right, as its formalist-breaking style invites people into the open world of filmmaking. With its onslaught of well-known and obscure pop culture references, Tarantino invites audiences into his unique closet of antiques, with references ranging from ’50s television to contemporary underground music. Tarantino, the video store clerk and movie obsessive who not only got his vision realized but also vaulted to mainstream adoration, became a North Star for so many budding artists who thought they could never break into the industry, especially not without selling out.

Matt Damon and Quentin Tarantino Represented the Best of Cinema in the 1990s

Not long after his indelible first viewing of Pulp Fiction in Los Angeles, Matt Damon would become peers with the director he once idolized. ’90s American cinema was defined by the indie film boom thanks to the rise of the Sundance Film Festival and Miramax, which maintained the arthouse roots of auteur-driven, personal films while giving them a commercial sheen. The two directorial faces of this movement, particularly from Miramax’s end, were Tarantino and Kevin Smith, another unlikely success story of a young artist who just went out and made his movie without asking for permission.

Although Damon still hasn’t directed a feature film, he’s synonymous with a high standard of cinematic excellence. Anytime he stars in a film as a lead, supporting player, or even a surprise cameo, Damon’s name lends an air of credibility and importance. With Good Will Hunting, Damon and Affleck’s breakthrough as actors and writers, you can sense that they are pouring all their interests and personal experiences into this one script, which is filled with lines that feel like inside jokes and references to other movies (“How do you like them apples?” is so iconic that no one remembers that it came from Chinatown).

In all of Matt Damon’s writing credits, including Promised Land and The Last Duel, the Quentin Tarantino seeds are present, as these films seamlessly infuse various genres and tonal elements while blending classic and postmodern cinematic sensibilities. Damon, a traditionally handsome leading man with the nuance and versatility of a present-day character actor, is also an amalgamation of artistic ideas. Pulp Fiction was a projection of Tarantino’s unique persona, but it speaks to everyone who watches it, as it gets your creative juices flowing more so than any film in its wake.

Pulp Fiction

Release Date

October 14, 1994

Runtime

154 minutes