No one knew what Quentin Tarantino had in the duffle bag. He and many other A-listers were gathered recently at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles for its glitzy annual fundraising gala. Tarantino was among the honorees.
And as he approached the podium to make his speech, the bag did not go unnoticed. At the very least, it was unusual. Then he opened it up and presented its contents: It was his original handwritten script for “Pulp Fiction,” with mistakes, misspellings and all.
He was giving it to the museum. “The script is legendary,” said Matt Severson, the executive vice president of academy collection and preservation. “No one was expecting it.
This was not a coordinated effort on the part of the academy. This is Quentin thinking what can he do to make his stamp on the museum?” It’s one of many high-profile acquisitions to the Academy's vast film memorabilia collection that the organization announced, including original “Ponyo” art by Hayao Miyazaki, glasses worn by Mink Stole in “Pink Flamingos,” Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken costume from “John Carpenter’s Escape from L.A.
,” animator maquettes of Figaro and Geppetto from Disney’s “Pinocchio” and six storyboards from “The Silence of the Lambs.” The organization has also acquired personal collections of filmmakers Paul Verhoeven, Barbara Kopple, Nicole Holofcener, Oliver Stone and Curtis Hanson, as well as 70mm prints of Christopher Nolan’s best-picture winner“Oppenheimer,” and .