Building an Iconic Fictional Eatery
From "Pulp Fiction" to "The Office," here are the stories behind some of your favorite pop culture hangouts.
Have you ever wanted to have a beer at Poor Richard’s with the Dunder Mifflin gang? A milkshake a Jack Rabbit Slim’s? A greasy bite at MacLaren’s Pub? I spoke to the production and set designers behind beloved fictional eateries to find out how they brought these deliciously memorable worlds to life.
This piece originally appeared in The Messenger.
Jack Rabbit Slim's (Pulp Fiction)
The iconic retro diner from Pulp Fiction is known for a few things: those car-shaped restaurant booths, the stage where Uma Thurman and John Travolta do the twist and ridiculously overpriced milkshakes.
When director Quentin Tarantino first sat down with production designer David Wasco and set decorator Sandy Reynolds-Wasco, he pointed them in the direction of the 1968 Elvis Presley movie Speedway, which featured a club with cars cut in half and re-fashioned into booths, for inspiration.
"He wanted something eye-popping and extravagant in the middle of the movie," Wasco recounted. "He wanted us to be pretty conservative; he was always concerned about being frugal with the sets, but he wanted this one to be pretty outlandish."
The husband-and-wife team honed in on the Googie aesthetic, a retro-futuristic staple of Southern California featuring off-kilter, swooping structures as their reference point. Tiny Naylor's, a drive-in restaurant from the '40s on Sunset Boulevard, also served as inspiration. The crew built a facade outside a shuttered bowling alley, and the interior scenes were shot on a warehouse set.
Here’s a teaser of what you’ll learn after the paywall:
More insights into eye-popping decor in Pulp Fiction’s retro diner
The real-life inspirations for the hangouts in How I Met Your Mother and One Tree Hill
The surprising location of The Office gang’s favorite watering hole