Weinstein also zeroed in on key American critics at Cannes, including Janet Maslin, of The New York Times. “Harvey was targeting her as the one most likely to write the right rave review, and he set it up so she would have a connection with Quentin beforehand. He had done his homework,” says Mike Simpson. “He knew who everybody on the jury was, and he knew which hotel they were in and what their room number was. Anyway, it’s a rave review, and Harvey makes copies, and before the jury members see the movie, he slips a copy of the review under their doors.”

On the night of the awards, the festival’s president, Gilles Jacob, urged Weinstein to be sure that he and the cast attend the ceremony. Tarantino had reportedly told Weinstein that he would skip the event if Pulp Fiction was going to be shut out. And it didn’t win anything until the very last award, the Palme d’Or, for the best of the 22 feature-film entries. When that year’s jury president, Clint Eastwood, announced that the winner, by what turned out to be a unanimous vote, was Pulp Fiction, the audience went wild. After Tarantino and the cast rushed onstage, one woman screamed, “Pulp Fiction is shit!” Tarantino shot her the finger and then said why the prize was unexpected: “I don’t make movies that bring people together. I make movies that split people apart.”

The film wasn’t seen again until September—a month before its wide release—at the New York Film Festival. Tarantino sat with Stoltz, who recalls, “We were sitting on one of those Juliet balconies, where you can look down on the audience. Just as the needle scene was happening, they brought the lights up. There was shouting: ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’ People ran down the aisle and carried this fellow, who had fainted, out. I started to feel bad. This is not what you want as an actor: to endanger people’s lives. And Quentin said, ‘This is exactly what you want, for people to get so consumed that they faint.’ ” The movie was stopped for nine minutes. “I was sure people would think I planned it,” Harvey Weinstein said at the time. “Just another Miramax publicity device.”

When it came to the 1995 Academy Awards, the Weinsteins planned everything. Bob says that he and his brother had ensured that the movie went “wide from the get-go” and rose to be No. 1 in America. Winning big at the Oscars would give the film a second life at the box office and in the home-video market. Pulp Fiction was nominated not only for best picture but also for six other awards, including best actor in a leading role (Travolta), best supporting actor (Jackson), best actress in a supporting role (Thurman), and best director (Tarantino).

For best picture, Pulp Fiction had to compete with a formidable feel-good movie that was its very antithesis: Forrest Gump. According to Jami Bernard’s biography of Tarantino, Miramax had spent $300,000 to $400,000 on the Oscar campaign, only about half what Paramount perhaps spent on Forrest Gump. Weinstein used his money wisely. “He was like a forensic scientist and had done demographic analysis as to who are the likely voters,” says Mike Simpson. “Meryl Poster [now president of television at the Weinstein Company] was sort of Harvey’s main lieutenant in terms of garnering Academy votes. She would go out to the motion-picture home in the Valley, a retirement community for those in the business. It’s like everybody there is an Academy member. You’ve got like 400 votes right there. She would go out and have lunch with little old ladies and make a personal connection with each one of them, saying, ‘Watch the movie and vote for our film.’ ”

At the Oscars, on March 27, 1995, the award for best original screenplay was announced early in the evening. When the presenter, Anthony Hopkins, said the winners were Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary, television screens went black for a moment, which Avary says was payback for pranks Tarantino had played on him in the past. “I paid off a cameraman 500 bucks to have the camera turned off on Quentin when they announced the award,” claims Avary. “So if you watch it online, you’ll see it cuts to black briefly, and then they cut to me. Gotcha.” The two former video clerks hugged onstage as *Pulp Fiction’*s opening-credit music boomed through the Shrine Auditorium. Avary thanked his wife and then told the audience, “I really have to take a pee right now, so I’m going to go.” Tarantino said, “I think this is probably the only award I am going to win here tonight.”

He was right. The night belonged to Forrest Gump.

But the future was Quentin Tarantino’s.