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OT: QT's "Once Upon a Time In Hollywood" (NO SPOILERS THREAD)

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
44 replies | jump to latest

A proposition.

A thread that began with the pre-production announcements on Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time In Hollywood" has now grown to nearly 200 posts. The thread is called : "OT: QT's Manson Movie Gets Leo, Seeks Pacino." I am finding it very hard to negotiate; the thread posts get tinier and tinier and trying to connect to other posts is difficult.

With the release of "Once Upon a Time In Hollywood" today in the US, I am starting this "new" OT thread for it. I anticipate if there is some discussion about the film, this thread will not grow to so many posts as the other one did, and can "put the matter at rest" once some of us have seen the film and want to talk about it.

At some given point in time, I would also like to put up a thread that says "MAJOR SPOILERS" because as one critic has said "this movie will be discussed for years to come." I think folks may want to say something about exactly how the movie plays and works...WITH spoilers.

But not here.

Next:

Why do this on the "Psycho" board?

Because I believe that this board draws from an older generation and we are not so inclined to "rage and flame" over QT and other matters. This is sort of a place to "hide away" and look at newer films through an older perspective, I think.

But also:

I certainly think that QT in general, and Once Upon a Time In Hollywood in particular, have close ties to Hitchcock and to Psycho.

First, QT to Hitchcock: they seemed joined in at least two ways: (1) They are "brand name directors" -- stars to equal the movie stars they hire to work for them and (2) both men specialize/d in movies with violent death. For Hitchcock , that was thrillers. For QT , it has been crime movies, a kung fu/Samarai sword movie; a war movie, and two Westerns. Neither Spielberg nor Scorcese "matched" Hitchcock in choosing violent death as a subject; QT does (as well as Hitchcock copycat DePalma.)

Indeed, it is my feeling (unseen but read about) about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood(OATIH), that QT seems to have a movie that COULD have skipped the violent death part entirely(the Manson Family murders) and been a great "hang out movie" about Hollywood people in 1969. But I just don't think QT could bring himself to make even one movie without violent death.

Connection to Psycho:

Psycho famously "opened the sixties" (1960) with a fictional tale of a beautiful woman being stabbed to death, and a final image of the madman who killed her staring into our eyes. The Manson Murders famously "closed the sixties"(1969) with a REAL tale of a beautiful woman being stabbed to death, and a final image (in the newspapers) of the madman(?) who engineered that stabbing, staring into our eyes. Marion Crane/Sharon Tate; Norman Bates/Charles Manson. There WAS a connection, and it took the entire 60's to get from the "buttoned-down" version of this horror(Psycho, emerging from a tale of workaday realtors and hardware salesmen, with clean cut Norman Bates at the center) to the "hippie-counterculture" version of this horror(Manson, a greasy ex-con/pimp who managed to exploit the free love counterculture of music and movies with his gang of girls).

From the fictional Psycho to the real-life Manson murders is rather like "the journey of the sixties." Put another way: try to imagine Norman Bates dressed in the flower shirt and bell-bottoms of a hippie....nope...the sixties had to evolve, the hippies had to emerge, the culture had to change before a horror like Charles Manson could develop and thrive.

Word has it that "QATIH" will center on the movies -- both US studio(Rosemary's Baby) and international(spaghetti Westerns) -- of the 1969 time period. I doubt that Psycho will be mentioned in OATIH.

Having so explosively "opened and announced" the sixties with Psycho in 1960 -- by 1969 , Hitchcock was considered nearly out of the business(he rarely worked) and archaic(even though, in that same year that the fictional Brad and Leo are doing their Hollywood thing; Hitchcock WAS working on a movie, Topaz, in Europe on location, and at Universal studios soundstages in North Hollywood -- he was still around, he wasn't throwing in the towel yet.)

As happens with me, I've now read enough reviews of OATIH to have a sense of what I will be seeing, but that's OK, I haven't SEEN it, I haven't HEARD it(the musical soundtrack; the KHJ boss jocks AM radio patter), I haven't experienced it.

But I'm looking forward to it.

And I think this place will be just fine to discuss it.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

From the small flood of reviews of OATIH, and some articles "related" to the film, I found an interesting one this week, from a man named Peter Bart.

Peter Bart must be pretty old now, but he will always have a claim to fame: he was the "right-hand man" to Paramount Studio chief Robert Evans for a "Golden Era"(roughly 1968 through 1974) of Paramount movies. From "bottom of the barrel" status in 1967, Paramount went on to make: Rosemary's Baby, The Odd Couple, True Grit, Goodbye Columbus, Love Story, The Godfather, Chinatown and Godfather II. (I think that's the main group)

So Bart's contention in this article is that while QT has made a movie about the year in which QT was six years old(1969), Bart was much older, actually in Hollywood, actually involved WITH Polanski and Sharon Tate(having overseen Rosemary's Baby -- and, did Paramount pick up Polanski's vampire movie WITH Sharon Tate; I can't remember.)

For the most part, Bart seems OK with what QT has imagined. Bart in some way can only say "little things" -- like "Musso and Frank's was much darker and dirtier than it looks in the film"(and Bart name drops about witnessing Mick Jagger there in a food fight one night.) Bart notes that, "while Polanski was overjoyed in becoming a father," the director was still a very haunted man who felt that doom hung over him(he lost family members to the Holocaust) -- in short, Polanski lived in a certain un-anchored fear that found reality.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Bart mostly castigates QT for ignoring the politics of 1969 -- and how the Paramount movie "Medium Cool" covered the events of the 1968 Democratic Convention and the riots there, not to mention the assassinations, other riots and Vietnam-based angst of the year. I dunno, I would assume maybe QT will pick up SOME of that, but here's my take. I was alive in 1969, too -- older than QT, younger than Peter Bart -- and I recall movies and TV were, for the most part, designed to take your mind OFF of politics. Its why The Odd Couple was such a hit -- there's not a hint of Vietnam, riots, assassinations or "real life" in it -- beyond the real life of the suddenly divorced male.

Anyway, good for Peter Bart making himself available to comment about the movie world of 1969. He's certainly a "bingo" witness on Rosemary's Baby, Polanski and Sharon Tate as being a key part of his working life. But he's also probably got to take on the reality: QT has created a 1969 based on QT's "vision" of it -- probably the least of it being QT's actual memories as a six year old, but more from QT's research and examination of the movies and TV series of those times.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Which reminds me -- in a big leap: I'm intrigued that QT has centered his film on Rick Dalton(Leo DiCaprio) having been a big WESTERN star on TV around the 50's/60's cusp.

In MY research(I think on Hitchcock films of the years) I found a Time Magazine cover from 1959 about all the Westerns on TV at that time. I'll guess there were 50 or so of them: Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Have Gun Will Travel(making craggy Richard Boone a Top Three series star), Wanted Dead or Alive(Steve McQueen's show), Lawman, Bat Masterson(a first launch for Gene Barry), Wyatt Earp(Hugh O'Brien)...and the Warner Brothers group (Led by James Garner as Maverick, but also Cheyenne and Bronco and Tenderfoot). And two with Peckinpah involvement: The Rifleman(truly weird-faced Chuck Connors in the lead) and The Westerner(Brian Keith.)

For a few years there, every TV actor in Hollywood was in a Western -- it was a trend that dominated TV for five or so years...and then collapsed in a heap(along with the slow decline of the movie Western and the coming of the spaghetti Western.) Suddenly, indeed, a whole lotta macho Western TV actors were...finding it hard to get jobs. I recall many of them turning up in the TV movies of the 70's.

So this is yet another -- if rather niche/esoteric - subject of OIATH : the way that trends can make stars, and break stars. Then it was TV Westerns. Today, its comic book heroes, and they seem to be hanging on (at the movies, AND more and more in TV series.)

But you never know...

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

For a few years there, every TV actor in Hollywood was in a Western -- it was a trend that dominated TV for five or so years

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

If you'll permit a small correction, swanstep, Stanwyck's show was The Big Valley. Appropriate enough, as she was among the first of film notables in the '30s-'40s (the Gables, the Arnazes, Bob Hope, Jolson, Edward Everett Horton, Jack Oakie, for instance) to eschew the hills of Hollywood or Beverly, or other such tony enclaves, to (as the Bing Crosby song had it) make the San Fernando Valley her home.

What remains of her estate is now known as Oakridge. In 1936, it comprised 120 acres, adjoining property purchased concurrently by agent Zeppo Marx, with whom Stanwyck successfully partnered in breeding thoroughbred horses there under their joint banner: Marwyck Ranch.

Incidentally, The High Chaparral was Leif Erickson's show. It and other TV westerns did indeed hang on into the '70s, and one of the last to go had also been one of the first to arrive: Gunsmoke (one of the few of which I've never seen a single episode).

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

@Dog. Thanks for the correction. At any rate your post confirms that there was still enough of an ecosystem of Western TV in the early '70s that it was quite easy for young kids to be confused between them! High Chap & Big Valley both had as a central image: a matriarch at the threshhold of the ranchhouse looks out to a mountain-spangled horizon. Similarly, at least in my memory, Gunsmoke and Bonanza were somewhat twinned.

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

Seems fair to say they were a staple, pretty much from the dawn of television (Hopalong Cassidy and The Lone Ranger both date to '49) to well into the '70s.

They came in all sizes from half-hour to hour or even 90 minutes in a couple of cases, geared for adults or kids, serious or tongue-in-cheek or out-and-out comedy, period or modern, anthology, single setting or itinerant, with male stars or female stars, single stars or ensemble casts, they were southwestern, northwestern or even southern, there were gun-slingin' lawmen, guns-for-hire, dusty cowpokes, dressy dandies, rodeo riders, sharpshooters or bounty hunters; you name it.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Bart mostly castigates QT for ignoring the politics of 1969

I thought Bart's (potentially) best point against QT was that his film idealizes pre-Manson Hollywood as 'innocent' which Bart finds ludicrous. Rather Hollywood has always and at every level been a shark tank generating 50 or 500 losers for every winner (the odds of success in movies are about the same as the odds of success in professional sports). Hence Day of the Locust. And even the winners quickly fall out of fashion as they age and as technologies & marketplaces change & develop. Hence Sunset Blvd.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I thought Bart's (potentially) best point against QT was that his film idealizes pre-Manson Hollywood as 'innocent' which Bart finds ludicrous.

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Welcome to the new thread, swanstep! It should be easier to negotiate.

And well, yes....that IS a great point about the storyline of OATIH. I suppose the movie business will always have that element to it...

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Rather Hollywood has always and at every level been a shark tank generating 50 or 500 losers for every winner (the odds of success in movies are about the same as the odds of success in professional sports). Hence Day of the Locust. And even the winners quickly fall out of fashion as they age and as technologies & marketplaces change & develop. Hence Sunset Blvd.

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Two great points -- funny: whereas Sunset Boulevard became a classic movie, Day of the Locust became a movie but not a classic. Boulevard was an original screenplay, though, with director Billy Wilder co-writing it.

I "hung out" in Hollywood in that period of the 70's and to the extent I had a little bitty involvement in the town(a couple of scripts to sell and an agent), it always struck me as ...totally unstable. One would drive down Sunset Boulevard and see big billboards for big movies like "Marathon Man" and "King Kong" and yet somehow I knew(from the people in Hollywood I DID know)..most everybody in Hollywood was NOT getting work in big movies like that; they were making a living in TV, or just hanging on...or not making it at all.

Speaking of "Marathon Man," I recall Peter Bogdanovich in 1976 giving a quote to the LA Times that it had "the best movie poster I've seen in years." And I remember -- in 1976, AT that time, thinking -- "Peter Bogdanovich -- hasn't he lost it? His last few movies have been failures...is he still hot?" And no, he wasn't still hot. His NEXT movie(Nickelodeon) would be a failure too. His ability to TALK about Marathon Man as a movie made by his peers would soon be over...he would be dropped from that group OF peers.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I suppose it is what we read about plane crashes with a few survivors -- we identify with the survivors. Hitchcock was the ultimate survivor, really. Topaz, Frenzy and Family Plot may have been "small" but he got to make them, got to work until HE called it a day(in 1979, one year before his death in 1980.)

Today, the money is so big for the winners(Spielberg, Cameron, the commix folk) that they will never worry for money again. But there will still be all those losers.

I've been reading a book ("Wild and Crazy Guys") about the SNL-based group of comedy movie stars who came to be in the 80's. Its quite a read about how so much stardom hit so many guys(and it WAS guys) so fast: John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Dan Ackroyd, Steve Martin, John Candy and....the two big ones: Eddie Murphy and Bill Murray.

Murray's tale has been oft-told, but it is wonderfully "bracing" about how to survive in Hollywood. Simply put, after Ghostbusters made him superrich(and at the end of a run of hits from Meatballs to Caddyshack to Stripes to Tootsie)...Bill Murray simply quit Hollywood. Moved to Paris(for about a year), then moved back to upstate New York City for a few years of not working. Rejected (during Ghostbusters) an offer to appear on the cover of Time Magazine. Decided he didn't want to be famous anymore.

Funny: this only took Murray out of movies for a few years: 1985, 1986(but he cameo'ed in the movie Little Shop of Horrors); 1987(but he did a great SNL hosting job once); and most of 1988 (at the end of the year, he came back with "Scrooged," big budget/moderate hit.) From "Scrooged" on, Bill Murray worked steadily, but he voluntarily "took the Hollywood heat off his career." I see him right next to Cary Grant as the only star who really didn't NEED Hollywood after he succeeded there.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And yet, as Bill Murray succeeded, so the others did not. Belushi dead young from drugs; Chevy Chase's star career tanking(and Dan Ackroyd's too). Steve Martin had to reinvent himself as a "family guy" in medicore movies to survive(plus some good indies.)

Eddie Murphy was Bill Murray-esque, but different: he got the biggest money contract of them all(from Paramount in thanks to 48 HRS, Trading Places, and Beverly Hills Cop) but rather rapidly made a series of bad movies (over 20 YEARS) until finally retiring(he seemed to be allowed to keep making flop movies until nobody watched them at all.) Rumor: Eddie's "coming back" with a $70 million Netflix deal. NEVER a loser.

SNL AS SNL managed to generate a few movie stars in the years since the 80's: Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell. And(more in TV) Tina Fey, Amy Poehler...? But its not the starmaking machinery it once was.

Such a digression, and yet..not. I suppose one can use the 40-plus year run of SNL to make the case for "a few winners, a lot of losers." Many SNL cast people simply didn't catch on beyond some sitcoms; the original batch of superstars faded fast; the few who have survived are...the few who have survived.

To that extent, the "moral" of OATIH will match up to the "moral" of any number of other stories about Hollywood(on both coasts, when SNL enters in...except that New York show kept sending cast members TO Hollywood.) Hollywood as a hustle that produces a small group of rich superstar winners...and a whole buncha losers.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I think that TV Westerns were pretty popular even at the end of '60s. Certainly I remember Bonanza, High Chapperal (w/ Stanwyck!), and The Virginian (and maybe a few others I've forgotten) still being on in Prime Time in, say, 1971-73. Maybe TV westerns weren't *dominant* then, but they held their own against police procedurals and other key genres.

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And somewhere in there, "Lancer," which figures in OATIH. Note in passing about Lancer: its star, James Stacy(who was married for awhile to Kim "True Grit" Darby) was a hunky TV guy who had a horrible motorcycle accident that left him with one arm and one leg missing. I recall him appearing -- in that condition -- in the 1983 movie "Something Wicked This Way Comes." It was a tragic twist in a TV actor's life. Timothy Olyphant plays Stacy in OATIH.

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I agree that by, say, 1975 the tier of (big budget?) TV Westerns I've recalled was gone.

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Yes. I suppose the 50s/60s cusp was the dominant period, but Westerns remained a bread-and-butter genre for TV for 15 more years. "At the movies," 1969 was famously the year of four hit classic Westerns: Butch Cassidy(the biggest hit of the year, siring "Alias Smith and Jones" on TV); True Grit, Once Upon a Time in the West(hey, wait a minute) and...my fave...The Wild Bunch. That 1969 group of movies probably helped keep the Western alive on TV.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Alias Smith and Jones was *huge* on TV in New Zealand in the mid-'70s. It definitely felt generationally different from all the other TV Westerns I've mentioned. It was in some respects Western-adjacent in the same way that Kung Fu & Little House on the Prairie & The Waltons were.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Alias Smith and Jones was *huge* on TV in New Zealand in the mid-'70s.

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I always enjoy getting the perspective from so far away from the US, swanstep.

I will note that QT seems to have made a study of the tragic star of that program, Pete Deuel. He had a near-lookalike brother, and they spelled "Deuel" differently. I have only the vaguest recollection of the brother or where he worked on TV.

Pete Deuel was a suicide, and as I recall , Universal just found some other actor to replace him on Alias Smith and Jones -- it was too much of a hit to shut down.

What's different about the Pete Deuel story is that he took his own life while he was STILL a major TV star. I don't know the reasons, maybe I'll look them up.

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It definitely felt generationally different from all the other TV Westerns I've mentioned. It was in some respects Western-adjacent in the same way that Kung Fu & Little House on the Prairie & The Waltons were.

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Ah yes, the 70's Western/rural shows. I suppose this lays to rest the idea that the 50s/60s cusp was the ONLY repository of TV Westerns.

And this: a mid/late sixties TV show famously mixed the Western with James Bond: The Wild, Wild West with Robert Conrad. I liked that show as a kid in the 60's, and I recall feeling that "Kung Fu" had a little bit of that flavor in the 70s...."a Western, but different." And: Robert Conrad, The Wild Wild West star...DID manage to survive in Hollywood for about 20 more years as the lead in various short-lived TV series. He worked and worked...in TV. He is still alive today, and I hope all these shows have kept him with enough to have retired on, well.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

I will note that QT seems to have made a study of the tragic star of that program, Pete Deuel.

I've only just heard about the suicide & indeed QT's interest in it. At least in NZ it was 'the other guy', Jones?, played by Ben Murphy who was more popular (especially with the ladies!). Murphy endeared himself to NZ-ers by coming down to participate in our first telethon in 1975. He threw himself into it for almost the whole 24 hours, was a super good sport, very charming, etc.. Looking up the details now I see Alias Smith and Jones only ran for 3 seasons. I think that Murphy's personal popularity meant that in NZ it went into near-prime-time (5.30-6.30 pm), reruns almost immediately. As a kiwi kid, then, AS&J seemed to run for 5-6 years easy in the '70s.

Checking IMDb (and connecting with our other discussions!) I see Murphy's first big break was as a regular on The Name of the Game. But AS&J was his peak. He worked steadily in relatively undistinguished TV for the 30 years after that. I wonder how close Murphy came to getting a movie role that might have made a difference for him? Hard truth: for every appealing young dude who ends up with, say, Jeff Bridges' or Jeff Goldblum's quirky careers there are hundreds of pretty boys who just kind of fade away. We the audience only track the survivors, the against-the-odds successes.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I've only just heard about the suicide & indeed QT's interest in it.

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I suppose it is on the "dark side" for me to note Pete Deuel's suicide(which was very strange to read about at the time; he was in a HIT); and James Stacy's loss of arm and leg (which haunted his post "Lancer" career -- sometimes he wore artificial limbs, and sometimes he didn't.) But, literally...that's show biz. Its where the private tragedies that most people hide get "full press coverage." Live by your fame...die by your fame. Or lose your limbs by your fame...

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At least in NZ it was 'the other guy', Jones?, played by Ben Murphy who was more popular (especially with the ladies!).

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I think Murphy was meant to be more of a Paul Newman type, given that the template was "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," but neither Deuel nor his replacement(Roger Davis) had the Redford vibe.

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Murphy endeared himself to NZ-ers by coming down to participate in our first telethon in 1975. He threw himself into it for almost the whole 24 hours, was a super good sport, very charming, etc..

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That's great, and evidence that if an actor does "just one thing, one time" -- the fame can lead him/her anywhere. To New Zealand from North Hollywood.

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Looking up the details now I see Alias Smith and Jones only ran for 3 seasons. I think that Murphy's personal popularity meant that in NZ it went into near-prime-time (5.30-6.30 pm), reruns almost immediately. As a kiwi kid, then, AS&J seemed to run for 5-6 years easy in the '70s.

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That's interesting. I know that international TV series bookings can have their own following. Hitchcock's series, for instance, was huge in Japan for many years. But he was more famous than Ben Murphy. GOOD for Ben Murphy. I wonder if Ben Murphy made any films with New Zealand backing?

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Checking IMDb (and connecting with our other discussions!) I see Murphy's first big break was as a regular on The Name of the Game.

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I love these "lucky connections." I think I turned up The Name of the Game in a hunt after 1969 TV, given QT's new film.

As I understand it, Universal had its "established A list TV stars" fronting The Name of the Gamed(Stack, Barry, Franciosa) but used the series to try to launch the next generation of handsome guys, too. Plus: Susan Saint James. Can't forget her!

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But AS&J was his peak. He worked steadily in relatively undistinguished TV for the 30 years after that.

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I'm always weirdly glad to learn (usually through an imdb check) that someone I figured "disappeared for years" actually worked for years -- its just I never saw him again. Still, we can hope that the pay was enough to ...live comfortably?(Like others.)

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I wonder how close Murphy came to getting a movie role that might have made a difference for him?

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Its hard to say. I remember reading that MCA -Universal head Lew Wasserman's wife, Edie, really liked Doug McClure(The Virginian) so they put him in some movie leads. Problem: they were cheapjack UNIVERSAL B movie leads -- not A movies.

Related, with more fame: Robert Wagner(It Takes a Thief) was a friend of Paul Newman's and ended up co-starring in a few films with Newman: Harper, Winning, and The Towering Inferno. But in support. Evidently for a little while, Wagner said, he had a shot at playing the Sundance Kid opposite Newman once McQueen, Brando, and Beatty said no. But ultimately , the studio would rather go with a lesser known movie guy(Redford) than an established TV star(Wagner.) This has "Rick Dalton" all over it.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Hard truth: for every appealing young dude who ends up with, say, Jeff Bridges' or Jeff Goldblum's quirky careers there are hundreds of pretty boys who just kind of fade away. We the audience only track the survivors, the against-the-odds successes.

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Yep. It can be an interesting "game" but tough in the reality. On an "up note," I have read from time to time of top TV series actors who correctly "invested well"(LA real estate) and lived off their investments for the rest of their lives, not needing TV or movie roles to survive.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

A query mainly for ecarle: one of Andie MacDowell's daughters, Margaret Qualley, is nominally having a big year. She was Ann Reinking in Fosse/Verdon & now she's got a big 'prettiest Manson Girl' solo scene w/ Brad Pitt in OUTIH.

So....we know that Qualley didn't make much of an impact as Reinking but that didn't seem to be her fault, rather the whole show was deeply Team Verdon and *wrote* Rein. down as a simpering teen waif etc.. But what of her role in OUTIH? Does Qualley assert herself? Any star quality showing through? If not, is it again not her fault (maybe QT couldn't bring himself to write a truly tempting, attractive, magnetic Manson chick?)?

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

So....we know that Qualley didn't make much of an impact as Reinking

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Nope

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but that didn't seem to be her fault, rather the whole show was deeply Team Verdon and *wrote* Rein. down as a simpering teen waif etc..

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Its possible -- she mainly seemed miscast , if you know the real Reinking(who was rather brawny of body and hard of face) , but even if you don't, she seemed too "wimpy" for the competitive part.

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But what of her role in OUTIH? Does Qualley assert herself? Any star quality showing through? If not, is it again not her fault (maybe QT couldn't bring himself to write a truly tempting, attractive, magnetic Manson chick?)?

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Oh, QT wrote a reasonably tempting, attractive magnetic Manson chick for Qualley, and she "registers." Perhaps her best acting moment can be seen in the second trailer for OAITH, so you don't even have to go to the movie to see it. Its when she holds Pitt's hands in hers and says something like "Charlie's really gonna dig you." Her loose body language, the odd intensity of her voice...its all there in the trailer.

In short, Qually is more important to OAITH than to Fosse/Verdon. I GUESS she has a shot a stardom. Of course, the female actress getting the most ink out of OAITH is Julia Butters -- playing 8 years old in the film, maybe she's 11 in real life. She's living proof that very good acting can be done at a very good age. She plays the "Method" child actress who works with Rick Dalton on getting his "Lancer" scene right. ("Lancer" was a real Western TV series of 1969.)

I'm liking Qually better than her mom(sorry, Andie) but OAITH has a few more "nepotism castings." Rumer Willis(daughter of Bruce and Demi Moore) is Joanna Petit (an actress of the time see David Niven's Casino Royale), shown briefly with Tate(in real life, I guess they were friends.) And the daughter of Uma "Kill Bill" Thurman and Ethan Hawke is one of the Manson girls who are directed to do the Tate murder.

[–] jay440 (107) 5 years ago

"Red Apple cigarettes. Factory-rolled. Less burn on the throat. Take a bite. Tell'em Jake sent you."
Don't skip out before the end credits finish rolling, ecarle, like my entire theater did.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

"Red Apple cigarettes. Factory-rolled. Less burn on the throat. Take a bite. Tell'em Jake sent you."
Don't skip out before the end credits finish rolling, ecarle, like my entire theater did.

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Hi, jay440,

I saw the film , stuck around to the bitter end...I know what you are talking about!

I'm going to try something with this thread...keep it "NO SPOILERS" while starting a second "MAJOR SPOILERS" thread.

If it is ok, with you , I will move this to the "MAJOR SPOILERS" thread.

(This may work, but I'm really just on "the honors system" here -- if spoilers start to invade this thread, I guess we will just live with it. But I will put my spoilers on the MAJOR SPOILERS thread. Coming right up.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

NO SPOILERS THREAD continues:

Well, I have seen Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I'm so narrowcast in my breadth of CURRENT film auteurism(its like, QT's is all the art I can understand), that I can only say: I'm not sure exactly how I feel about the movie, quite yet. I certainly enjoyed it, and "just on general principles" it becomes my favorite film of 2019 because not only have I not SEEN something I liked better this year yet, the sheer excitement getting just to this point will likely be unmatched this year. In any given year, QT gets the win going in. No exception here. He got my "favorite of" vote for 2009(Inglorious Basterds), 2012(Django), 2015(The Hateful Eight) and now 2019(OATIAH.) Because I dig his films the most. (Which is why for 2014, with no QT film in release, I ended up with...John Wick.)

I can use the same "comparative apparatus" by which The Hateful Eight beat the four QT movies before it in my book; OATIH comes out better than those four as well, the same way. Better THAN Hateful Eight? Can't say so on first watch. Mainly because now I truly treasure the crystal clarity of Robert Richardson's images in Hateful Eight(with those high-falutin' Cinerama lenses.) I suppose on HD TV someday, OATIH will like just as crystal clear, but at the theater, the indoor shots seemed murky(hard to see) and the outdoor shots(on purpose) were smoggy and rough...like a sixties drive-in movie, like the sixties in LA. Richardson's on the camera again, so its on purpose this time, too: this is not meant to be "crystalline."

So, the new film can't beat the LOOK of Hateful Eight. I'm not sure that any other QT film can either(though I'll offer Kill Bill 1 as very close.)

Things shift to the story of OATIH, and here, I'm just thinking on it all. I'm thinking how many parts of it DIDN'T feel like a "regular" QT movie, how the QT dialogue is there, but perhaps a bit more muted and buried this time(Indeed, he may have shot off his most creative verbal fireworks in Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs and we don't get to go there again.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Still, I found Al Pacino's early dialogue with Leo DiCaprio to grow and grow and grow until I recognized it as "pure QT" -- the way his mind has always worked, the angle he has always found on things. Alongside a heapin' helpin'(in this first Pacino scene) of all the TV series trivia he dazzled us with way back when he had gangsters discuss "Get Christie Love."

This: it turns out that the Manson part of the story is very important to the "Rick and Cliff in Hollywood story" all the way through. Reality and fiction do intertwine nicely, and the gathering darkness of the real events makes this new take (to my mind) very suspenseful, and yes, profound.

So: OATIH is my favorite of 2019, until something beats it(doubtful.) It thus gets pitted against "The Wolf of Wall Street"(also starting Leo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie, from 2013) as my favorite movie of the 2010's. We'll see.

And I'm kinda aching to talk about just how detailed and obscure QT goes with some Hitchcock material here. (I'll spell it out: I caught one Hitchcock homage that was "provable" and two that are not; they need more research.)

Maybe QT reads this board about Hitchcock stuff? Oh, likely not.

I'll discuss that Hitchcock stuff over on the MAJOR SPOILERS thread. Later.

In any event, I did it. Saw QT's 9th. Now I gotta live to see QT's 10th...

[–] jay440 (107) 5 years ago

Pacino's Hollywood insider ("Don't call me Schwartz") reminded me of Pulp Fiction's Mr. Wolf, a tough-talking prole-in-a-suit who can quickly assess a situation and demand quick compliance or else face the consequences (prison for Jules and Vincent, career suicide for Rick).

And speaking of interesting casting, Tarantino cast Maya Ray Thurman Hawke as a flower child. Imdb says, unsurprisingly, that "she is the daughter of actors Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman". It looks like everyone has gotten over all the personal fallout from a few years back.

I couldn't catch ANY Hitchcock references, though I was looking and listening for them, so I'll be checking the SPOILERS thread to see what I might have missed.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Pacino's Hollywood insider ("Don't call me Schwartz") reminded me of Pulp Fiction's Mr. Wolf, a tough-talking prole-in-a-suit who can quickly assess a situation and demand quick compliance or else face the consequences (prison for Jules and Vincent, career suicide for Rick).

---

Nice comparison..and again a "learned elder in movies" takes the role.

---

And speaking of interesting casting, Tarantino cast Maya Ray Thurman Hawke as a flower child. Imdb says, unsurprisingly, that "she is the daughter of actors Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman". It looks like everyone has gotten over all the personal fallout from a few years back.

---

there you go...she's good, too.

---

I couldn't catch ANY Hitchcock references, though I was looking and listening for them, so I'll be checking the SPOILERS thread to see what I might have missed.

---

There is definitely one big one. There is maybe a second one.

And a third -- I have found out is definitely not.

Yep...there's stuff elsewhere on this...

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

OUATIH doesn't open near me for another couple of weeks. I've been reading around about it tho'. One line of objection I've read is a little puzzling from this distance. Some people think QT in OUTIH is *very* nostalgic for '60s film-making, masculinity, you name it, and that the Manson family and hippies generally end up unfairly representing all subsequent changes in film-making & culture generally. Hence QT gets labelled as 'regressive', e.g., by one of the snobbiest & most irritating critics out there, Richard Brody of The New Yorker:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/review-quentin-tarantinos-obscenely-regressive-vision-of-the-sixties-in-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood
From afar this criticism seems very odd since QT is for the most part a child of '70s genre & exploitation film-making. If QT were *really* taking the position Brody & others ascribe to him, he'd be taking sides against himself!

Another kind of objection I read faults the film for being 2 hours of plot-less hang-outtery, shaggy-dog-ness followed by the big showdown/bloodbath at the end, and this structure just dissatisfies lots of people. Comparisons to Death Proof, which I found tedious & have not rewatched (you'd have to pay me!) are fairly commonplace.

So, this criticism goes, OUTIH is no Boogie Nights, rather it's just Inherent Vice or Under the Silver Lake (maybe with less charm) plus the same QT history-rewrite-bloodbath-climax we've seen before in Django & IB.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

OUATIH doesn't open near me for another couple of weeks.

---

Well I've tried to keep the threads a little bereft of major spoilers, but to tell you the truth -- as with a lot of QT pictures -- so much of this is about dialogue and in-jokes and references and cast members -- I think you will see it without too much spoiling having been done.

---

I've been reading around about it tho'. One line of objection I've read is a little puzzling from this distance. Some people think QT in OUTIH is *very* nostalgic for '60s film-making, masculinity, you name it, and that the Manson family and hippies generally end up unfairly representing all subsequent changes in film-making & culture generally. Hence QT gets labelled as 'regressive', e.g., by one of the snobbiest & most irritating critics out there, Richard Brody of The New Yorker:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/review-quentin-tarantinos-obscenely-regressive-vision-of-the-sixties-in-once-upon-a-time-in-Hollywood

----

Yeah, read it, no he's wrong. Trust me on this one.

---
From afar this criticism seems very odd since QT is for the most part a child of '70s genre & exploitation film-making. If QT were *really* taking the position Brody & others ascribe to him, he'd be taking sides against himself!

---

I think he's taking sides against The Manson Family. One can see the clear connection from the Nazis (IB) to the white slave owners(Django) to the Mansons. They were/are all evil in QT's eyes: concentration camps; whips, chains and castration; the ability to stab 8-month pregnant women through the stomach. He's taking a little revenge, is all. (I'm not saying the climax does or does not match up to reality, but it has a tone TOWARDS it.)

I like the fact that the main tone taken by the main characters towards the Mansons is...contempt.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Another kind of objection I read faults the film for being 2 hours of plot-less hang-outtery, shaggy-dog-ness followed by the big showdown/bloodbath at the end, and this structure just dissatisfies lots of people.

---

Well, that's about the size of it. As one critic nicely put it, QT "painted himself into a corner" once he put the Manson Murders into the mix. A bloodbath/showdown is necessary...and folks just aren't going to agree on that ending, and I'm sure QT knew it. (Rather like Hitchcock knew how horrible his rape-murder in Frenzy would be even AS he was hitting new heights of stylistic return in that film -- take it or leave it, Hitch said. QT , here.)

---

Comparisons to Death Proof, which I found tedious & have not rewatched (you'd have to pay me!) are fairly commonplace.

---

I sing mixed praises of QT, my fandom is comprehensive. (I like every movie) but not fervent (Inglorious Basterds is about 2/3 great, and that's good enough for me.) QT is like a lot of filmmakers -- all he had to do was make three or so films to get my affection(Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown.) The 20 years since have been "afterglow."

I thought QT wrote the women all poorly in Death Proof (except for the one in the first story who has the weird story about a multi-name rock group that one of the Fleetwood Mac founders could have joined. You'd have to look it up.)

But...I thought every scene with Kurt Russell as the psychotic "Stuntman Mike" was dialogue gold, and the final car chase is a 70's full-throttle special. I watch Death Proof by skipping through the DVD stops.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

,
So, this criticism goes, OUTIH is no Boogie Nights, rather it's just Inherent Vice or Under the Silver Lake (maybe with less charm)---

---

Its not the classic that Boogie Nights was...but its a lot more fun. And its better than Inherent Vice. I haven't seen the other.

---

plus the same QT history-rewrite-bloodbath-climax we've seen before in Django & IB.

---

Yep, but again...a bloodbath aimed at pure evil. The REAL Mansons got their death sentences commuted , became TV stars, married people (while in prison) and sired kids. All thriving in prison after doing pure evil. They need to be confronted somewhere...and I like QT's bloodbaths.

---

swanstep, while I'm not 100% QT fanboy, he has my heart somehow. And I'd say that when each of his new pictures open, you and I can't help but diverge. "Is OK." My memory's good enough to recall that (I think) you hated The Hateful Eight and liked Django. And now I learn that you hated Death Trap.

Let's see where you land on this new one. I'll be intrigued. I don't know if I loved it...but I certainly LIKE it.

And hey, Sharon may not make it...

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

My memory's good enough to recall that (I think) you hated The Hateful Eight and liked Django. And now I learn that you hated Death Trap.

I wouldn't describe myself as hating any of QT's films, but the more I feel like I'm being given a tour of QT's influences and fetishes the more I check out.

As part of my prep. for OUATIH I watched both Cactus Flower (1969) & Model Shop (1969) over the last few days. I found them both seriously misconceived: I never believed for a minute that age 21 Goldie Hawn would be attracted to a grumpy, stick in the mud dentist 30 years her senior with a wife and 3 kids, or, in fact, that Matthau would be that interested in her. Ingrid Bergman had the best part and best lines because she was outside that foundational implausibility (Hawn's Oscar for her role is nuts!). And in Model Shop Gary Lockwood's character is such a jerk that it's hard to care about what he's up to, and all actors including Lockwood are so listless that it was hard to keep up one's concentration. Some nice shots of 1969 LA (which had yet to learn how to hide its oil-wells) are MS's saving grace, but unless you're an LA-on-film or Demy completeist (I'm the latter) then MS isn't really recommendable. Both films were, for me, chores to get through.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

My memory's good enough to recall that (I think) you hated The Hateful Eight and liked Django. And now I learn that you hated Death Trap.
I wouldn't describe myself as hating any of QT's films, but the more I feel like I'm being given a tour of QT's influences and fetishes the more I check out.

--
You know, the weird thing is that I'm roughly in the same place, as are the many folks who have followed along with him since 1992.

With Reservoir Dogs, QT announced himself as great with words...but copious with ultra-violence. Right out of the gate. In some ways, he was accepted as a descendant of Hitchcock, Peckinpah and DePalma. There was less gore in Pulp Fiction, but the needle in the Uma Thurman sequence and what happens to Ving Rhames in the Bruce Willis sequence again reminded us that this guy plays in rough territory.

Then came the disarmingly mature, middle-aged "hang out" movie, Jackie Brown, in which a lot of people died, but quick by gun. It seemed as if QT had shifted even more away from his violence and more towards the word(the GREAT word, as he wrote it and his great actors delivered it.)

Then there's a five year break and honestly, "something happened" to the guy, and we original fans had to choose to "stay or go." A number of critics -- "go-ed" -- deciding that QT had gone more violent, more nutty, more esoteric and...was starting to go fetish(the many girl-on-girl killings in Kill Bill were disturbing; the central swordfight had a lot of men die and was stylized but still..ultra violent.)

Death Proof showed some pretty girls get horribly killed by Kurt Russell...but then some pretty girls violently killed Kurt, to keep it all balanced.

Then came Inglorious Basterds and this sweve into using history itself as a weapon of fetish and cruelty.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I "re-checked" my defense of the fact that since QT believes the Nazis, Southern slavers, and The Manson Family are "the worst of the worst" humanity has to offer, why NOT slaughter them on screen in fantasy. Coming back to this today, I'm not sure why I am defending QT's decision to make these movies for these reasons. Something happened in his brain, in his mind, to compel these stories as "what he wants to tell." But they are a long way from the more entertaining crime stories of Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown.

Example: a scene I HATE in Django Unchained is the one where Leo's Calvin Candie leads a business discussion while, right in front of him, two strapping black men are forced to fight to the death using only their bare hands. "Mandingo." QT wants us to intake the horror of this "game" and the raw death(limbs breaking, eyes gouged), happening in a dainty room in front of uncaring prissy white monsters, but the effect of the scene(to me) was always: "this is a scene written by a sick man."

And yet I hang on. Why? Probably Hitchcock's old phrase "My love of cinema is greater than my love of morality"(which struck me as ol' Hitch trying to be more high falutin' in an interview that he could be.)

I hang on because: we don't have many/any popular, thriller/Western-based "auteurs" left OTHER than QT these days. This very summer proves it. The box office is sequels and comic books and Toy Story(however great) and a new Lion King and QT "wins" simply by showing up with another of his originals written for people above age 12 -- however twisted it may be, and BECAUSE the dialogue IS pretty damn good still, the actors are stars and there are numerous "non gory scenes."

And compared to you, swanstep, I hang on because I really can't get it going for the breadth of filmmakers you can. I sort of "cling to old favorites" Scorsese, Spielberg(only sometimes), Burton...QT. If I could find another pop auteur who brings it as well as QT brings it "in a star entertainment mode," I would.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And thus QT movies are my favorites of their years in the 2010's because...I don't much care about new movies and new moviemakers anymore.

Also, to find a few of my other "hidden favorites," I submit my now likely-completed list of favorite movies of the 2010s:

2010: True Grit (Coens)
2011: Moneyball(Pitt, Jonah Hill, script co-written by Aaron Sorkin)
2012: Django (QT, Leo, Waltz, Samuel L., Jonah Hill)
2013: The Wolf of Wall Street(Scorsese, Leo, Jonah Hill)
2014: John Wick("Keanu Comes Back")
2015: The Hateful Eight (QT, Kurt, Samuel L.)
2016: The Magnificent Seven(Denzel....Western)
2017: Molly's Game(directed and written by Aaron Sorkin)
2018: The Legend of Buster Scraggs(Coens)
2019: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (QT, Leo, Brad)

So basically that comes down to:

QT: 3 movies
Coens: 2 movies
Aaron Sorkin: 2 movies
Scorsese: 1 movie

Which is 8 "brand name movies" and the only 2 "outside the box" were John Wick and The Magnificent Seven. And hey: I liked a lot of Westerns, counting QT's two, the Coens two, and Mag 7.

Also interesting: the stars. I liked three movies in a row with Jonah Hill as my best of the year! I love Brad Pitt...have grown to like Leo. Jeff Bridges(True Grit) is a favorite; Denzel Washington(The Mag 7) is another. Samuel L. Jackson was the epitome of evil (with great lines) in Django; and a great flawed hero in Hateful Eight. We DO have stars with charisma today. (Chops also to Jessica Chastain of Molly's Game and to Margot Robbie in everything.)

Also interesting: QT has called Aaron Sorkin "the best screenwriter in Hollywood," which is a coy way of saying "other than me." But both guys sure know how to write great fun speeches for their actors. And both are nonetheless flawed writers in other ways(Aaron repeats old phrases and has characters state their resumes as exposition.)

The rest of the time, I'm not much crazy about new movies even though I go to them. I think I liked "The Nice Guys" for its 1977 setting and Crowe and Gosling as a team, that pops through my memory as one I really enjoyed this decade. I'm sure others will pop up. I DID like a few of the Marvels -- the first Captain America(a Raiders nostalgia to it), the second Captain America(Redford goes bad!), and RDJ usually intrigued me in his. I liked the first Kingsmen.

Eh...this is drifting. But the point is: QT wins by DEFAULT. And I honestly DO think he's got some sick thoughts in that head of his, and the real joke is that Hollywood gives him big budgets and big stars to express them...as long as he gives us enough of something ELSE(his great dialogue, his intriguing cinematic skills, Robert Richardson's cinemaphotography) with the sick.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

BTW, here is a shot/sound moment in QAITH that I really loved and that said to me "Yeah, I still love this guy, sometimes , for very specific reasons:

It is the end of a Saturday in February, 1969, the first of three days covered in the picture.

Brad Pitt has dropped off Leo at his expensive Hollywood Hills home. Since Leo can't drive, Brad gets to drive home for the night in Leo's car..and he roars. Out of the hills and OVER the hill to the "rough" part of LA that is the San Fernando Valley. "Downscale" but still brightly lit. Eventually, after passing through downscale Panorama City, Brad reaches the high "front" of the drive-in screen at the Van Nuys Drive-In. This is one of those classic LA Drive-In screens upon which on the "front" side of the screen facing the city, a painting of the Old California Mission and/or a cowboy was painted (I'd say LA had about ten of these screens all over both valleys, when I was a kid.)

On the marquee: FRANK SINATRA RACQUEL WELCH LADY IN CEMENT.
and PRETTY POISON

Raquel Welch's name is misspelled. Lady In Cement was a sequel to Frank's Miami private eye movie "Tony Rome" -- this was the kind of late 60's stuff that is NOT Golden Age, I think OATIH makes that point. Sinatra as an actor was a "fading star," not much committed to his movies, they were practically throwaway.

"Pretty Poison" was something else. It starred Anthony Perkins(surprise!) in what was considered his "comeback in American films" after a near-decade in European films after Psycho "marked him". It was a young writer-director's arty psycho thriller in which Tony was NOT the psycho(his girlfriend Tuesday Weld is) and...kudos to QT for honoring it.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

But now comes the great shot:

Brad drives his car AROUND the drive-in -- he doesn't go in, he's following a separate road that goes around the entire drive-in and leads to a trailer park. He's going home to his trailer.

And the camera rises up, up, UP -- high over the drive-in screen. Far below us, we can see the eerie bright blue light of the movie being projected, and we can HEAR QT's standard "Our Feature Presentation" jingle from Kill Bill and Death Proof. And now the camera floats over the drive-in patrons in their cars and drifts into the darkness beyond and the trailer park as Brad stops Leo's "expensive car" and comes to his real home: a trailer.

This shot is spectacular on its own, very "moody" about a drive-in as a "land of dreams;" self-referential to past QT films(The "Our Feature Attraction" jingle). In fact the way the camera drifts towards Brad parking the car is reminsiscent of yet ANOTHER QT film: Jackie Brown and the travelling crane shot over Sam Jackson driving a car around a corner and into a field so he can shoot his "trunk passenger"(Chris Tucker) to death, at a far distance from us.

Yeah, the brief but intricate "Brad goes home to the drive-in trailer park crane shot" is classic QT. Its stuff like THIS(for me) that "buys off" his more sick and fetishistic stuff.

I also like how when Brad goes into that dark, dingy trailer, he loyally feeds his pit bull and turns on "Mannix."

"Mannix" WAS on Saturday nights. And its kinda sad. A guy looks like Brad Pitt on a Saturday night is just going to sit in his trailer park trailer watching "Mannix"?

Well, he's loyal to his dog.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

I just watched Charlie Says (2019), the other main Manson-themed film this year... It pretty closely follows the 3 main Manson girls (focussing esp. on Leslie van Houten) both (in flashback) in the years leading up to the crimes & in prison afterwards as a therapist-type (whose writings were the basis for the film) tries to bring them back to reality/de-program them. Effectively it makes the obvious case of diminished responsibility: that the women were all very young and were so out of their minds that it took years to bring them back to earth.

The film muddles this message a bit by clearly indicating that van Houten was never as sucked in as the others. Her going along with the ultra-violence then becomes newly inexplicable. Some final story-telling choices with respect to her, esp. a final fantasy of her leaving the Spahn Ranch shortly before the crimes, are too pat & in dubious taste (your mileage may vary).

Above all, the film's got a very flat TV-movie-ish look & feel - it's as if director Harron decided that it would be in poor taste to give the story any visual poetry or ideas, and that pedestrian purity was the way to go. The upshot is that despite putting us in close company with the Manson girls for almost 2 hours, we never get to really *feel* what it's like to be a cult-member or *feel* how hard it is to leave or really escape from a cult. For that stick with Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene (2011) (which approaches the Mason case by analogy).

In sum, Charlie Says (2019) is, I gather, everything that OUATIH is not. It's dull, completely style-less, completely uninterested in the outside world, and absolutely thinks of the Mason killers as Charlie's first victims & in no equatable with Nazi SS officers or brutal slaveholders.

Probably a 5-6/10 from me (principally for the actors).

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Effectively it makes the obvious case of diminished responsibility: that the women were all very young and were so out of their minds that it took years to bring them back to earth.

---

I keep pondering how QT, in using the Manson Family as his "center" for this new movie, has rather opened the Pandora's Box of us ALL having to re-visit those people and that period. As so often in matters like this, the "end product" is quantifiable and atrocious: at least 7 people, horribly murdered, one of them pregnant. From those cold hard facts -- the whole "study" of how and why this came to be -- continues to fasincate and repel at the same time.

If we can figure that "all cults are alike" (sort of) and that a certain type of person is more likely to be "brain-washable" to join that cult...maybe this is all less mysterious than it seems. Manson, with a totally criminal/psychotic upbringing, had "cult leader skills"(and pimp skills) and found the right pack of wayward women(and some men) to bend to them.

The idea(posed, I guess, in Charlie Says), that Charlie could stay at the Spahn Ranch and send his killers miles away to kill on his orders, is the stuff of "brainwashing," cult behavior and..drugs(both as part of the brainwashing and as a means of being able to do all that stabbing.)

Also, I'm afraid, again given the end result(those stabbed, dead people), the idea of re-habilitating the women who committed the crimes(any more than rehabilitating Tex Watson) isn't in my area of desire. They did it. It was horrible. There are consequences.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

In sum, Charlie Says (2019) is, I gather, everything that OUATIH is not. It's dull, completely style-less, completely uninterested in the outside world,

---

Yes, likely. And its ONLY about the Manson Family.

It will take some time and effort for folks to "dig deep" on it, but there's this entire sequence involving Leo DiCaprio and an eight-year old child actress that has practically NOTHING to do with the Manson murders(no, not practically -- NOTHING to do with the Manson murders) and is worth pondering as "a tale that QT wanted to tell us." Its interesting and entertaining in its own right, and sometimes I feel that maybe QT felt he HAD to put the Manson murders into his overall story just to be able to tell this OTHER story about "Leo the fading TV star."

---

and absolutely thinks of the Mason killers as Charlie's first victims & in no equatable with Nazi SS officers or brutal slaveholders.

--

Well, I can only take my sympathy so far, given what they did(which I've detailed enough, now, I think.) Still, if there is a sad aspect of life to this very day, it is the capacity for "lost human souls" among us. By the thousands The homeless. Foster kids. X number survive the odds and make it; X number don't. And X number find their way to cults for survival.

Meanwhile, back at equating the Manson killers to Nazis to slaveholders: I still think this is QT's formula, thus far. He sits alone (well, now he's married but...) in his Hollywood mansion and ponders the stories forming in his head. And somehow -- once, twice, THREE times -- he settles on "who were the most evil people in history?" and "I think I shall kick their asses on screen." This is HIS muse. Certainly not mine. Nor Aaron Sorkins. Nor Scorsese's. Nor Spielberg's (of course, Marty and Spielberg go looking for stories, QT makes them up.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

This returns me to a thought I've always had about Frenzy. "Way back in the day" when I tried to peddle a few scripts, I tried writing stories with Hitchcockian thriller overtones...but more of an "action movie" bent. I was trying to write action entertainment. The scripts were probably in "PG to light R" range.

And I would NEVER think to go around town trying to sell a script about "a man who rapes women and then strangles them with neckties...with a major detailed scene showing it." I mean, I figure that me and my agent would get thrown out and blackballed.

But Hitchcock..having the power of BEING Hitchcock, and having Universal and Lew Wasserman at the ready to back him...COULD make that perverse movie. That was the perverse story he wanted to tell.

In this way, I think Hitchcock (then) and QT (now) have a lot in common. The use of clout and power to tell disturbing stories that otherwise never would have seen a green light.

[–] jay440 (107) 5 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The outdoor driving shots were pure money shots, with no CGI as far a I could tell (just rearscreen for in-car dialogue), shot on streets and highways full of vintage automobiles with Brad Pitt roaring along in his sporty convertible, top down, radio blaring in the city traffic.

--

LA was very much a "car town" and its fun to tool around the freeways and then up into the Hollywood hills. Sport cars, especially.

---

The climactic night-time home invasion had me squinting a bit to make out the action, intentionally perhaps, to mirror the characters' disorientation. Overall, I got a The Nice Guys feel from the cinematography
---

The Nice Guys is a recent favorite of mine(I think I ranked it second for 2016), and yeah, this has some of that, though the movies are set in 1969 and 1977 respectively.

---
(the daughter in that film plays the Manson girl that Brad Pitt picks up).

I knew I knew her from somewhere. Thanks. She has (in both features) an incredible capacity for mixing beauty with real..."hate-ability."

[–] MizhuB (165) 5 years ago

The ONLY QT movie I've liked is 'Jackie Brown'. I HATED Pulp Fiction.

And I've read so many pros and cons about this film (including a scathing review by Sandy Kenyon, EyeWitness news), I'm kind of conflicted.

I don't know whether I want to see it or not, and that's a rare occurrence. The story sounds interesting, but it seems the execution is severely lacking. And overlong.

And I'm not one who generally listens to critics.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Tarantino is definitely an acquired taste and, for most of his last ten years, has gotten as many bad reviews as good. I still get excited when he announces he's got a new movie to make because...well, they are almost all out of his imagination, which delivers great stuff and awful stuff almost simultaneously. But almost always -- great dialogue.

Jackie Brown is my favorite QT, but there can be no doubt that -- guided by a novel by the esteemed Elmore Leonard -- its a "one off" in the Tarantino canon, much more interested in character and plot than the others, and with much less violence(even as several people are violently killed!)

I think I'll go on record here: I recommend Quentin Tarantino movies to no one but myself! And even I don't always like my own recommendation!