Crown Pawn Shop

Crown Pawn Shop is a pawn shop at 20933 Roscoe Boulevard in Canoga Park, a neighbourhood in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, California. The business occupies a modest commercial building with a parking area in front and an alley running along its western side. Its interior contains the usual assortment of second-hand merchandise, jewellery, musical instruments and other valuables, displayed behind glass counters and on shelves throughout the shop. The building has become particularly well known through its appearance in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994), which used both the exterior and the main sales area for one of the film’s most notorious sequences. The shop retained much of its original appearance following the production, including the familiar counters, shelving and illuminated signage. Although the film also features a basement beneath the business, no such room exists in the actual building. Those scenes were filmed on a specially constructed studio set.

Crown Pawn Shop appears in Pulp Fiction (1994), where it represents the fictional Mason-Dixon Pawn Shop operated by Maynard. The location is used during the confrontation between boxer Butch Coolidge and crime boss Marsellus Wallace, whose pursuit of one another through Los Angeles ends with both men becoming prisoners of the shop’s sadistic owner. The exterior, adjoining alley and ground-floor interior were filmed at the actual business, while the basement scenes were recreated at a studio.

In Pulp Fiction (1994), the crime film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, Crown Pawn Shop appears during the chapter «The Gold Watch», starring Bruce Willis as boxer Butch Coolidge and Ving Rhames as crime boss Marsellus Wallace. Butch has double-crossed Marsellus by winning a boxing match he was paid to lose, and the two unexpectedly encounter each other when Butch strikes Marsellus with his car. After recovering from the collision, Marsellus chases Butch through the streets, firing at him with a handgun. The pursuit eventually reaches the alley beside Crown Pawn Shop, where Butch takes cover as Marsellus fires in his direction. Butch escapes into the shop, but Marsellus follows him inside, and the two resume their fight among the merchandise. Their struggle is interrupted by Maynard, played by Duane Whitaker, who emerges from behind the counter with a shotgun and orders them to stop. Rather than contact the police, Maynard takes both men prisoner, binding and gagging them before bringing them into a basement. He then telephones his associate Zed, played by Peter Greene, who arrives wearing a security guard’s uniform. The two men select Marsellus as their first victim and take him into an adjoining room, leaving Butch under the supervision of a leather-clad captive known as the Gimp. Butch manages to escape his restraints, knocks out the Gimp and makes his way upstairs. Although he initially heads for the exit, he stops and considers leaving Marsellus behind. Instead, he looks around the shop for a weapon, examining a hammer, a baseball bat and a chainsaw before noticing a Japanese katana displayed above the counter. Armed with the sword, he returns to the basement, where he discovers Maynard and Zed sexually assaulting Marsellus. Butch kills Maynard with the katana, allowing Marsellus to overpower Zed and shoot him in the groin with the shotgun. Marsellus then tells Butch that their differences are settled, provided he never tells anyone what happened and leaves Los Angeles permanently. Butch agrees and departs on Zed’s motorcycle. The original Crown Pawn Shop was used for the street-level scenes, including Maynard’s intervention and Butch’s memorable search for a weapon. The basement, where the captivity and rescue take place, was constructed separately for filming. The sequence remains one of the most disturbing passages in Pulp Fiction, with the ordinary surroundings of a working pawn shop providing the setting for an unexpected and particularly violent turn in the story.

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