OT: QT's Once Upon a Time In Hollywood (MAJOR SPOILERS THREAD -- SPOILERS WELCOME) - Psycho (1960) Discussion

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

On another detail in OATIH -- the QT/Hitchcock connection (one of them):

In 1966, famous movie director Alfred Hitchcock was finishing up his new spy thriller, Torn Curtain, starring Paul Newman and Julie Andrews.

Signed to do the musical score was famous musical composer Bernard Herrmann, who had provided the historic scores for Psycho(with the screeching violins) , Vertigo, North by Northwest, and five other Hitchcock films.

...and Hitchcock fired Bernard Herrmann off of Torn Curtain. Hitchcock was scared that Herrmann's music was "too old fashioned." It was cowardly behavior on Hitch's part -- but he feared being old in Hollywood himself. Just like Rick Dalton.

One of the pieces of music that Herrmann had written for "Torn Curtain" was violent, wrenching music for a scene called "The Death of Gromek" in which Paul Newman had to slowly kill an East German agent named Gromek in a farmhouse kitchen...using a knife, a shovel, bare hands...very violent sequence.

But in the movie, "The Death of Gromek" has no music.

In 1991, director Martin Scorsese made a remake of a 1962 thriller called Cape Fear, which also had music by Bernard Herrmann. Scorsese not only had Herrmann's score reorchestrated for Cape Fear -- he put in the unused "Death of Gromek" music for the hurricane finale. Thus --the late Herrmann's great unused Death of Gromek music FINALLY ended up in a movie, and by a great director)Scorsese.)

Now, in 2019, Quentin Tarantino has brought back, yet again, Herrmann's "Death of Gromek" music for two very important scenes in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood:

It is the music for the "Nazi BBQ flame thrower" clip in "Once Upon a Time In Hollywood"(at the beginning) and for Leo using the same flame thrower to roast a Manson follower at the end.

And so, music written for Alfred Hitchcock in 1966 has now been used by Martin Scorsese in 1991, and by Quentin Tarantino in 2019.

Nice work, Bernard Herrmann!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

On Leo DiCaprio's performance in OATIH:

You ever notice how, in a couple of his best movies of the 2010s, Leo DiCaprio got big scripted opportunites to ...YELL AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS?

He's quite good at it. As with the Jack Nicholson and Al Pacino before him, Leo really loves to wind up a big speech and scream it out until he's exhausted. And it got him at least one Oscar nom.

In QT's Django Unchained, its when Leo yells at dinner guests Jamie Foxx and Chris Waltz, slamming his hand down on the table and drawing blood from it(in real life, I've read.)

In Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, its when Leo calls all his crooked brokers into a group meeting to resign, and then starts yelling crazily about how, no, he's thought it over and he WON'T resign.

Its almost a "Leo DiCaprio" trademark now, how well that guy can yell, and it looks like QT wrote it into the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood script once he had Leo on board.

Mainly I noticed it when Leo is yelling at the Manson hippies in his drive-way, at the climax. But its also there when he goes berserk in his trailer after blowing his lines on "Lancer."

This is called "servicing your star." Leo gets to yell.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

On Brad Pitt's performance in OAITH:

QT has let on that "everybody wanted to play Cliff" -- Pitt's role. And its clear to see why. While Leo is giving us the teary-eyed neurotic ego bust-out that is Rick Dalton...Cliff the Stunt Man is a macho hero role of epic proportions.

It is as if all that the festering monster that was the Manson Family had ever REALLY needed was a tough macho guy to go up against them, ignore all of their BS...and physically beat bloody hell out of them on the slightest confrontation(vs men OR women, but these Manson women were killers, too.)

Just as Leo plays up his star strengths(yelling loud at stress points, brooding) as Rick, Brad Pitt here plays up his.

I found Pitt's performance to be a mix of two of his greatest earlier ones:

Aldo Raines, the Tenneesee twanged "good guy psychopath" of QT's "Inglorious Basterds." Here, Cliff doesn't seem to be from the Deep South, but he has a bit of a twang and Pitt reads some of Cliff's reaction lines just like Aldo's. Compare: "You kill somebody in any fight, you go to jail. Its called manslaughter" with "There's a buncha problems fightin' in a basement. The biggest one is your fightin' in a basement." Yes, Cliff is sort of Aldo's country cousin.

Moneyball. Pitt played baseball team manager Billy Beane with an Oscar-nominated "cool meanness mixed with compassion." Billy's always thinking, always quietly smiling..but always holding his ground against all comers. I felt some of Billy Beane (particularly in the scene at Spahn Ranch) here MIXED with the more comical and violent Aldo Raine send-up.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

What's "new" about Cliff is the man's capacity for very sudden, very merciless violence. Cliff's an OK guy around Rick, who is his friend AND his employer(not necessarily in that order.) But we see him "trigger" when pushed by Bruce Lee; when taunted by his now-dead wife(in a flashback, DID he kill her? We don't know) and when the stupidest looking male Manson member refuses to repair the tire that he just stabbed with a knife. Cliff with great lingering care punches the idiot in the face -- once, twice, THRICE for good measure.

Cliff is established as a war hero and a tough guy and one of the pleasures of OAITH is to know that his capacity for sudden ultra-violence WILL be given its ultimate outlet when the twist ending finale arrives.

But in the meantime, Brad Pitt plays it as cool as only Brad Pitt can.

I hear Tom Cruise was interested in this role. I think Pitt is a better fit.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Well, OK, after some preliminaries "up thread," I've come here to "talk about the ending." That's already happening on the internet, and it does seem that the ending has enraged more critics than it has charmed. Which means you gotta give points to QT right up front: he went and done did it -- he wrote a movie that could enrage people, while satisfying others, and...keeps him quite relevant.

The foundation for the ending of QATIH indeed is the ending of Inglorious Basterds. In Basterds, the team machine-gunned Hitler to death in a Paris movie theater and blew up his key advisers(Goebbels, Himmler) at the same time. That's not how Hitler REALLY died, and that's not WHEN the other Nazi top brass died.

Also relevant: the ending of Django Unchained. We know that it took a Civil War to end slavery in America, but Django shows us at least one former slave getting to kill all his Southern white tormentors and blowing up their plantation. If we are going to equate the evil of the Nazis to the evil of white slaveowners (the brutality they inflicted on innocents) in QT's two movies, "revenge is taken and revenge is sweet."

And so: to OATIH. In real life, three Manson Family followers(one man and two women) invaded the home rented by Roman Polanski(who was in Europe at the time) and brutally murdered five people: his wife, actress Sharon Tate, her ex-boyfriend and pal hair stylist Jay Sebring; two houseguests who were a couple(Folger's coffee heiress Abagail Folger and her boyfriend Voytek Frykowski); and...a total "wrong place, wrong time" victim: a young man who had arrived to buy some record albums from the caretaker of the house. (The caretaker slept through the entire massacre in his house, woke up to the slaughter and his brief arrest.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

OATIH in its last half hour moves inexorably to those Manson murders, with narrator Kurt Russell (in narration that sounds a LOT like QT's self-spoken narration for The Hateful Eight) counting down the hours from sundown(with a glorious montage of lights going on from Taco Bell to the Cinerama Dome to Der Wienerschitzel) to night, to late night ...almost TOO fast, as if Sharon Tate is going to lose her LIFE too fast...its coming now, we can't stop it. (The last thing we see Tate and her three houseguests doing for the evening is going out to Mexican dinner; the pregnant Tate can't hardly take the heat.)

I'd say that I certainly felt the harsh horrible reality of the real-life murder of Sharon Tate in those harrowing last "countdown minutes" in OAITH. You could stop the movie right there and feel all the horror of the Manson murders,and all the evil of the "family" that committed them. Its powerful stuff...and its real.

..but the movie goes in another direction. We've had hints for over a year now. It wasn't what I expected but it was as deeply satisfying to me as it seems to be hated by others.

Simply put: Sharon Tate is not killed. Nor are her three houseguests. (The "wrong time, wrong place" victim isn't in the story at all.)

Instead, the three killers , confronted in the drive-way by a drunken , raging Rick Dalton ("Get out of here, ya f'in HIPPIES!) decide to go into HIS house, and kill him instead. But Rick's back floating on a chair in his pool. Who the Manson killers find in the house is..Brad Pitt's tough, dangerous stuntman Cliff Booth. And Cliff is not only drunk like Rick -- he's just smoked an acid-tipped cigarette(ironically given to him BY a Manson girl earlier in the film), and he has his trained killer Pit Bull dog, Brandy, with him.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Consequently, Cliff(mainly), his Pit Bull, and Rick(outside with a final coup de grace) proceed to beat, stomp , stab and , ultimately , flame-thrower-attack the three Manson killers into bloody, fried pulp. All the Manson killers are killed. (En route to all this, the Pit Bull takes a nice, long hard endless chomp on the privates of real life Manson Killer Tex Watson.)

The outraged critics use Inglorious Basterds for their outrage. Yes, Hitler got machine-gunned in IB, but he lost and died in real life, too, and the Allies DID win the war. So changing history THERE is no big deal. But to let Sharon Tate live is to change history beyond all meaning of what really happened, and to besmirch the memory of a woman who was really, horribly killed.

I feel like delivering a Brad Pitt type line from Inglorious Basterds, here: "Yeah, I'll probably get chewed out. But I been chewed out before."

For in my personal case, I've read a LOT about the Manson Family murders, all the way back to when they occurred. All the way back to when -- for a few months -- nobody knew who the Manson Family WAS, the killers of Sharon Tate (and of a totally innocent married couple, the LaBiancas the next night) were at large.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I know that Manson and his killers first got the death penalty, but it was revoked(for a few years) in California so they all switched to life in prison and became celebrities. Charlie especially. Tex Watson got married and had conjugal kids. Their lives went on, albeit in prison. And some of them are alive today.

So the idea -- just the IDEA -- of instead seeing Tex Watson get his privates chewed up by a dog before being brutally beaten to death -- is NICE. The IDEA of one of the women who, in real life, ignored the eight-month pregnant Sharon Tate's plea to spare her baby if not herself -- and who then stabbed Sharon AND her baby 16 times -- the IDEA of THAT woman having Brad Pitt slam her face into a variety of hard and sharp obejcts until it collapses in bloody goo..is NICE. As is the flame-thrower end for the other female killer, who also stabbed innocent victims and was pretty damn unrepentant through trial and incarceration.

There are "layers" to this "what if?" finale, by the way, things that QT chooses NOT to do:

For instance, we don't have Brad and Leo going up to Sharon Tate's house and saving her. The killers instead "switch" to Leo's house, and Brad is put in that position of being "home invaded" -- but his reaction is boredom, contempt for these greasy hippie punks in his best friends house.

We have Leo raging at the Manson killers earlier, seeing them as "f'in hippies" who an old school tough guy Western actor like Rick Dalton WOULD despise, just on general principles. Its almost as if, when Rick and Cliff finally DO kill these Manson killers...its because they are hippies, period.

We have the Manson killers' Susan Atkins RECOGNIZE Rick Dalton -- "He's that TV Western star" -- and the killers discuss this in usual QT detail. Then they decide to "kill the people who taught us how to kill" on TV.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

QT elects to put one more potential victim in the house with Rick and Cliff -- Rick's newly minted "bombshell Italian movie star" WIFE. And she runs into the living room and -- unlike the real-life "sitting duck" female victims, proceeds to tempestuously help punch out the Manson killers, too.

A key element of this "tables turned" climax is how contemptuous of the Manson killers everybody is -- they don't take them seriously, they call them idiots. Until one of them buries a knife blade deep into Cliff's hip...and THEN the gore seriously begins.

With the Manson killers all dead, dark irony arrives: Jay Sebring comes down from the Polanski/Tate house to ask "what's all the commotion?" and suddenly Sharon Tate(now a friendly voice on the intercom) and Jay Sebring and the other house guests are what they always were: just people, maybe a little on the shallow side, but nobody who would BE connected to any horror under any other circumstances.

They are also on the rich side, and with Sharon Tate inviting Rick Dalton up for a drink...he's made his Hollywood connection and a happy ending gets happier...

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Its funny about OAITH. Two hours of movie about all sorts of OTHER things(Hollywood things, movie things, TV things) and this ending seems "tacked on and wrong." Its rather like The Sopranos ending in demonstrating that "the ending is the most important part of the movie." It doesn't MATTER how great(and "normal") the first two hours of OAITH are...the movie is heading towards THIS ending, and QT has given it to us, and we can debate it for years.

I liked it. I liked seeing Manson Family killers, however fictionalized, get theirs. I liked the idea not only of Sharon Tate surviving, but of having no idea she was in any danger.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

There's a link between Psycho and these Tate/LaBianca murders --- the victims were "regular ordinary people" who had no connection to the killers who randomly killed them. By sparing Tate and her houseguests, QT returns them to banality and normalcy; when Tate invites Rick Dalton up for a drink...everything is normal as can be. Again.

But you see, I think that OATIH DOES have it both ways. We can accept the "happy ending" drawn up for us by QT(in his usual bloody fashion) or we can "play out the horror" in our minds of the movie up to that point it 'makes the switch." I felt the horrific, tragic, impending death of Sharon Tate with every minute of the film counting down. I thought about the REAL tragedy. And coming out of the theater, i still do.

You can figure that QT has "gone looking" for the most inhuman and sadistic humans in history to avenge: first , Nazis(with their camps.) Then, white slave owners(with their whips and chains and castrations.) Now, the Manson Family (with their delight in butchering pregnant women and other innocents with knives -- and a big fork into the belly of a man) Exactly WHY QT has taken up this cause is...interesting? And I wonder what other awful killers he might like to take on next. (How about the 9/11 plane hijackers?)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Pacino's big early scene in OAITH, and how it works as QT:

An issue with QATIH over the course of the film -- and before it gets to that crazed twist ending --is: "Does this really look and/or sound like a classic QT film?"

On balance, the answer is : no. The long dialogue between Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta(about Quarter Pounders in Amsterdam, TV pilots, foot massages, and Rocky Horror Picture Show man) is not matched here. Nor are the long speeches that puncutate Reservoir Dogs(like about how Mr. Pink never tips servers, as a matter of principle.)

But we get SOME of the old QT, and I think you can sense it when agent Pacino first chats up Rick Dalton in Musso and Frank's.

Pacino's agent, Schwartz, is supportive and effusive and all the things a good agent should be to his (current? hoped-for?) client. He's looked at some of Rick's B movies. And then he starts asking Rick "what are you doing in TV these days?"

It turns out that what Rick is doing is playing...guest villains on TV shows. And, as a guest villain, he will always LOSE to the hero, get beat up by the hero, get killed by the hero.

It is here where one senses "QT's POV" to enter in to the dialogue. Pacino moves quickly to point out to Rick that he is being "handled" by TV Hollywood...to build up their NEW TV heroes, the NEW TV heroes will slowly, and weekly, destroy the OLD TV heroes. Rick Dalton will be beaten up again, and again, and again, by "the new folks."

Pacino starts naming names. "Who's gonna beat you up, next, Bob Conrad in the tight pants?"(I'll bet Pacino didn't even know he was talking about Robert Conrad, the too-fit star of The Wild Wild West.) "Who's gonna beat you up...The Man From UNCLE? The GIRL From UNCLE?" Batman and Robin? KAPOW?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Perhaps the "TV trivia" check-list in Pacino's speech is too "easy" and too focused on folks of my age, but it is there...and it is used by QT to make a particular character point: Pacino is telling Rick that to keep taking these guest villain jobs is...career suicide, a joke at his expense by others.

And hence Pacino has softened up Rick Dalton to push him to Italy and Italian Westerns.

Personally, I don't know how many American actors REALLY survived in such Westerns. Eastwood famously became a star out of them(but needed Dirty Harry to become a superstar.) Charles Bronson made a big one that Clint turned down(Once Upon a Time in the West.) Lee Van Cleef perhaps lasted the longest with the least level of stardom. I think James Garner made ONE. ("Sledge.")

Anyway, in the universe of OATIH, Pacino(Italian-American himself) points Rick Dalton at th salvation of spaghetti Westerns, and the speech he uses to do it is: good QT, but not great QT.

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[–] jay440 (107) 5 years ago

[deleted]

[–] yatzo376 (7717) 5 years ago

I think Susan “Sadie” Atkins got the flamethrower.
Always enjoy yr ruminations ecarle!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I think you are right, and thank you!

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[–] jay440 (107) 5 years ago

QT, it seems, has taken to "Alternate History" or "Parallel Universe" stories, subgenres of speculative fiction. One such book has the Confederate Army getting a hold of AK-47 rifles and winning the Civil War. Stephen King wrote one about a time-traveler who tries to prevent JFK's assasination. And there have been many "What if the Nazis won" novels.

If we accept Bounty Law and Rick and Cliff as being real in 1969 Hollywood, we can accept this different ending in QT's alternate universe.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

If we accept Bounty Law and Rick and Cliff as being real in 1969 Hollywood, we can accept this different ending in QT's alternate universe.

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Seems fair enough. I personally felt that the events built to TWO FEELINGS AT ONCE: feeling very bad about what really happened, or pretty good about this alternate version.

What seems VERY fitting is the restoration of Sharon Tate as a human being. She was pretty and privileged and a possible star(or not)...but she was a person. And this movie makes sure we know that.

I also like that the movie barely brings Charlie Manson on screen at all. That guy LOVED publicity and fame. He'd be pissed off how little he is in this movie. Good.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

If we accept Bounty Law...

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I'm intrigued that QT has told us that he has written a few actual "Bounty Law" episodes...and might be willing to direct them, possibly for a streaming service. I doubt that Leo DiCaprio would play Cahill...but somebody good would, I'm sure.

This would allow QT to still "only direct one more movie" and yet still work on something else at the same time.

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[–] SavageBeauty (61) 5 years ago

Thanks for all your detailed info ecarle. I had a feeling he would do the alternate history thing again.

I don't know if I want to see it now.

Are you familiar with the conspiracy theory that Sharon didn't really die?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Welcome to the MAJOR SPOILERS thread, SavageBeauty. I suppose "knowing the ending" can maybe drive your ticket buying decision. I can't say it was hidden very well over the year of production. Nobody felt that Tarantino wanted to show the real murders given the stars of the movie and the other part of the story.

I'm not familiar with that conspiracy theory.

I will say this: practically everything I write about the horrors of the crimes is based on Helter Skelter, including "family member testimony" (the killers SAYING what the victims said, and the victims couldn't testify) and crime scene photos.

And I KNOW this: I read all the articles about the Tate/LaBianca murders in the first days after they happened (long before Manson was found)and...boy, were they WRONG. Articles suggesting Satantic rituals and orgies and Polanski's involvement; the wrong grisly details about dismemberment. Talk about "fake news."

But we'll never REALLY know, will we?

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[–] SavageBeauty (61) 5 years ago

Rewriting history can be touchy for some people. I think (for my self) the concept would have worked much better if it was a fictional character that was supposed to be *like* the real Sharon but not exactly. If her destiny is different her name should have been different too. He could have done something similar with Hitler dying in the theater too (make it a German Chancellor *like* Hitler). This silly stuff sours otherwise brilliant films. It's fiction, so pick a lane. I love Tarantino movies, and my favorite ones have none of that stuff.

I read Peter Levenda's 'Sinister Forces' trilogy and both Sharon and Manson's life are peppered throughout those works. Major factors in their lives have been left out of the "official" race war silly Bugliosi narrative and motives that make no sense (which I've read, of course). Levenda's books are not actually conspiracy books at all, just about the nature of evil forces and evil places. I'll see if I can find some interesting quotes for you out of there...

Another book I highly suggested for you last year was Dave McGowan's 'Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream' which has a intersection point with Manson and all those bands of the era. You might want to give that one a chance. Dave is great because he only give facts.

The conspiracy theory that Sharon never really died comes from Miles W. Mathis. You can read his paper here http://mileswmathis.com/tate.pdf
NOTE: I strongly disagree with his final conclusion... however, he does point out some very strange anomalies with the crime scene photos, autopsy photos, trial, and so much more. He also points out that Sharon was having an affair with Christopher Jones while she was pregnant. Also all the ties Manson had to the victims before the murders (not just thinking Melcher lived there).

But in the end, I have the same "we'll never really know" like you said.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Rewriting history can be touchy for some people.

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Yes it can. And the debate on the new QT centers on the fact that given Sharon Tate a happy ending is somehow "worse" than giving Hitler a different unhappy ending than the one he got.

I dunno. We are all at the mercy of QT doing what HE wants to do. There's no clue in the "cool crime stories" of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown for his recent penchant for "alternate history/punishing the miscreants OF history." Its how his mind works, and Hollywood studios FIGHT for the right to get his next movie, and the biggest stars(Pitt, Leo, Margot) sign right up to be in them. QT has some mystical power -- he makes others indulge his fantasies.

Of course, we the moviegoers have the ultimate power -- we can go to his QT's movies, or not. He's still got me, even though I have been scratching my head on a lot of his recent choices. We can never know what ultra-wealth and ultra-fame can do to someone like Tarantino. In his "five years off" between Jackie Brown and Kill Bill, QT hung with younger people like Eli Roth -- young goremeisters. There were rumors of drugs. SOMETHING changed within him.

But he can still write damn good dialogue and deliver damn good shots(the Drive-In sequence in OAITH is now a favorite of mine.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I think (for my self) the concept would have worked much better if it was a fictional character that was supposed to be *like* the real Sharon but not exactly. If her destiny is different her name should have been different too.

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Interesting idea. I think many fictional works of art have been about "fictional versions of real people." There have been a few movies about Marilyn Monroe, for instance, without calling her Marilyn Monroe.

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He could have done something similar with Hitler dying in the theater too (make it a German Chancellor *like* Hitler).

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Suddenly I flash on the old Star Trek TV show dealing with an "alternative universe Hitler." Different name.

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This silly stuff sours otherwise brilliant films. It's fiction, so pick a lane.

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Pick a lane! I like that. And honestly and again, I can't explain why he does what he does. I suppose we can say this: ONLY Inglorious Basterds and this new one go the "alternate history" route. Even Django Unchained is about a particular fictional slave killing a group of fictional slavers. That leaves six other QT films(including the last one, Hateful Eight) that did NOT go down this alternate path.

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I love Tarantino movies, and my favorite ones have none of that stuff.

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I have to say, my favorites are elsewhere -- but I do like a lot of how the new one plays. Its interesting: its as if the entire first two hours are trumped by the crazed finale. Endings are VERY important. Still, I like this movie...and I'll see it again.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I read Peter Levenda's 'Sinister Forces' trilogy and both Sharon and Manson's life are peppered throughout those works.

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The "real" Sharon and Manson...or fictionalized versions?

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Major factors in their lives have been left out of the "official" race war silly Bugliosi narrative and motives that make no sense (which I've read, of course).

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On the OAITH board, there's a link to a friend of Jay Sebring's in which he, too, debunks the race war idea ...and elects to go with a "drug deal gone bad"theory which certainly tracks with Hollywood and movies and music...

Bugliosi always intrigued me. He proved to have a giant ego and a LOT of weird theories about different things. But I recall thinking at the time: you HAD to have a guy with that kind of ego to go up against the very scary Manson Family, because so many Manson Family members were NOT in jail or in court...they were roaming freely and just might have tried to kill "the Bug." Its the old joke..he was an a-hole, but he was the a-hole needed to take on the Mansons.

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Levenda's books are not actually conspiracy books at all, just about the nature of evil forces and evil places. I'll see if I can find some interesting quotes for you out of there...

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Sure.

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Another book I highly suggested for you last year was Dave McGowan's 'Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream' which has a intersection point with Manson and all those bands of the era. You might want to give that one a chance. Dave is great because he only give facts.

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Sorry if I forgot about that one. I must say that this movie has stimulated me to maybe go back and "check the details."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Of course, the very sad PS to all of this was the totally random killing of the LaBianca's. THAT couldn't tie into a drug deal gone bad...it seems to have been part of a "cover up" that could be the race war, could be something else. But tragic...and horrible. And "could have happened to anyone."

At the heart of the mystery of the Manson Family to me is: how DID Charlie form them? What brought them to the Spahn ranch? I'm also intrigued that while Charlie mainly seemed to lure in "wayward girls," he was commanding enough and confident enought to bring in some young men who could do the "muscle work" for him. And then the ultimate question: how does one man compel others to kill for him?(Of course, I suppose that's where Hitler enters in.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The conspiracy theory that Sharon never really died comes from Miles W. Mathis. You can read his paper here http://mileswmathis.com/tate.pdf
NOTE: I strongly disagree with his final conclusion...

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Its always hard to go with "BLANK is still alive" theories. We have to imagine famous individuals(Elvis, John Lennon,Sharon Tate) somehow living entire lives as not themselves. Life lasts a long time...if you aren't murdered.

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however, he does point out some very strange anomalies with the crime scene photos, autopsy photos, trial, and so much more.

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I think this is always the case with ANY crime. Recall that there was so much misreportage of the Tate/LaBianca murders BEFORE the Mansons were caught, and then a lot of crazy stories AFTER they were caught. (I have only this week read that a stuntman named Shorty who was killed by the Mansons was NOT decapitated as thought -- his corpse had the head on.)

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He also points out that Sharon was having an affair with Christopher Jones while she was pregnant.

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Possible. We are given the "perfect version" of the Polanski/Tate marriage, but this was HOLLYWOOD. And international Hollywood to boot. In the free love late 60's.

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Also all the ties Manson had to the victims before the murders (not just thinking Melcher lived there).

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That's interesting. I take it he had no links to the LaBiancas? Again, I see them as "arbitrary set-up murders." And horrible ones.

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But in the end, I have the same "we'll never really know" like you said.

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I think this is true for just about everything in this life. When you think about it THAT way -- maybe QT's version just gets thrown in there with everything else...

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[–] SavageBeauty (61) 5 years ago

The Peter Levenda 'Sinister Forces' books are non fiction. So is the Dave McGowan book. These are based on verifiable public facts you can confirm (not opinion or theory).

https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Sinister-Forces-Political-Witchcraft/dp/098418581X/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3NH6UA8HNP1BL&keywords=sinister+forces+levenda&qid=1564595707&s=gateway&sprefix=sinister+force%2Caps%2C371&sr=8-2

https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel/dp/1909394122/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2NEP5JWJWVBK8&keywords=weird+scenes+inside+the+canyon&qid=1564595844&s=gateway&sprefix=weird+scenes%2Caps%2C172&sr=8-1

Much of the Miles Mathis paper is also filled verifiable facts that you have never heard of before... and you have the link already if you have the desire to read it and decide for yourself. Again, I disagree with his conclusion and his opinions are off in many places. But he makes some great points, mainly the fake or tampered crime scene and autopsy photos and how the victims intersected with the perpetrators. A quote:
"While we are looking at Manson, we should remember that Manson was tied to the victims before the murders. This evidence is usually suppressed, and the standard story is that Manson thought Terry Melcher lived at 10050 Cielo Drive. The murders are therefore sold to us as random. However, there was testimony from Layne Wooten to seeing Manson in a red Ferrari with a woman in a scarf in Topanga Canyon in July 1969. Manson was a bum without a job: how could he be driving a Ferrari? Turns out Sharon Tate owned a red Ferrari at that time. The story has been planted that the red Ferrari was Beach Boy Dennis Wilson's, but that has never been confirmed. What has been confirmed is that Sharon Tate owned one. It was found in a body shop shortly after the murders. And it was probably Abigail Folger in the car with Manson. Manson and Folger were linked through Esalen as well, since both had been there in the past few months...."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The Peter Levenda 'Sinister Forces' books are non fiction. So is the Dave McGowan book. These are based on verifiable public facts you can confirm (not opinion or theory).

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I definitely like facts. On a skim of your material, it seems to be that a strong case could be made that Manson had contacts with several of the players OTHER than Terry Melcher(Tate, Folger, Sebring) and this turns into a story of "playing with fire" -- nobody who knew Manson at the time seemed to know of his capacity for using murder as a revenge weapon. Had he used murder BEFORE 1969? Or perhaps Hollywood drove him mad with failure to get his song deal...

This is interesting to me: the LaBiancas were killed within a few nights(two? one?) of the Tate group. LA was now fully in terror -- "these killers could kill ANYONE."

And then the murders stopped. Perhaps Manson figured the terror had been established; his work was done. Also, people were now armed and ready for intruders, police were on the prowl. Much more risk trying home invasions.

Anyway, what a lot of "new material" to consider with regard to Manson and his murders. Most stories have more than one "truth."

I'm also reading that Bugliosi may have NEEDED his "race war" theory so as to have a plausible prosecution theory to get Manson on conspiracy. A "legal angle."

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[–] SavageBeauty (61) 5 years ago

From everything I have read, it is implied the Labianca's murder to be a contract killing, but I have no idea. The more I read the more questions I have.

There was also another murder of a woman named Marina Habe around the same time in 1968, possibly slain by the Manson family according to the official sources. Habe was a daughter of an intelligence officer, just like Sharon.

Manson's uncle Darwin Scott was killed around the same time 1968 in Ashland Kentucky (where Manson was born). It's UNSOLVED still to this day. It's a mysterious intricate web of connections and coincidences.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

From everything I have read, it is implied the Labianca's murder to be a contract killing,

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Whoa. Bit of a coincidence to have it done so close to the Tate murders. Also: it was a helluva messy two murders. I would think a contract killing would be more "clean."

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but I have no idea. The more I read the more questions I have.

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Me, too.

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There was also another murder of a woman named Marina Habe around the same time in 1968, possibly slain by the Manson family according to the official sources. Habe was a daughter of an intelligence officer, just like Sharon.

Manson's uncle Darwin Scott was killed around the same time 1968 in Ashland Kentucky (where Manson was born). It's UNSOLVED still to this day. It's a mysterious intricate web of connections and coincidences.

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Well, I suppose we have the "facts" of dead people and a whole lot of guessing as to where Manson and his followers were in relationship to these deaths.

"Taking it back" we have the Terror that Started It All: Sharon Tate and her guests, followed by the LaBiancas. This blew up the "peace and love" essence of 1969 and posited that gruesome death could come to the famous and non-famous alike..whatever the motive.

I remember that time well...

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[–] SavageBeauty (61) 5 years ago

A quote from Levenda's Sinister Forces:
"Somehow, the search for the story behind the murder of young Marina Habe in Hollywood in 1968 led to her father, an important figure in World War II literature, to the OSS, psychological warfare operations, the Congo, Vietnam and beyond. Marina was believed to be an associate of the Manson “family,” and it is alleged that Charles Manson himself stabbed her to death. Was she selected for a particular reason, or
was it just an evil coincidence? There is some evidence to show that the Manson “family” murder of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca the day after the Tate murders was a contract killing. Indeed, much of the violence perpetrated by Manson and his followers had a basis in other criminal activity. They were purposeful. Manson does not fit the profile of a serial killer, and indeed his crimes do not fit that pattern at all. A serial killer would not have missed the slaughter at the Tate household, for instance, which Manson had done, sending his followers inside to commit the hideous knife attacks on the five unfortunate victims. If he was somehow responsible for the murder of his uncle, Darwin Scott, that can be laid to a family grudge going back to Manson’s childhood in Ashland, Kentucky.... continues in next post

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[–] SavageBeauty (61) 5 years ago

continued Levenda quote
"Why, then, was Marina killed? A lust killing, pure and simple? Manson getting off on savagely murdering a college coed? His schedule for the day of the kidnap of Marina Habe and her subsequent murder argues against this; he left Death Valley for one day and returned the next. That implies he went to Los Angeles with a specific purpose in mind, a task to accomplish, and returned when the deed was done.
Marina’s mother—Eloise Hardt—had looked out her window that night at 3:30 A.M. and saw a black sedan next to her daughter’s smaller, foreign car and two men, one who looked young, about twenty years old. The sedan peeled out, and when Mrs. Hardt went to investigate, her daughter was nowhere to be found. Manson had been driving a black sedan that day, and had been visiting John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas at a New Year’s Eve party."

Say what now? Manson was at a New Years party with Papa John Philips??? Same circles.

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[–] SavageBeauty (61) 5 years ago

More from Levenda about Darwin Scott murder
"It was a cheap apartment in a small Appalachian town, and the sitting room was full of blood. The body had been savagely attacked, and bore nineteen separate stab wounds. The attack was so passionate, so bestial, that the murder weapon—a kitchen knife—was still in the body, pinning it to the floor.
It might have been a love affair gone terribly wrong. People from Ashland, Kentucky have been known to get emotional, even irrational, over love and the promises of love and the mistaken assumptions of love and its follies, like a town out of a country and western song. Or it might have been something else. Something more sinister. A warning, borne of a hatred so deep and a malevolence so strong that slain flesh and spilled blood were only symbols—mere tokens—of its power.
The victim was a nobody. An ex-con, once convicted of writing bad checks. A man down on his luck, working for a trucking company.
He had been stabbed in a fury of nineteen slashing, slivering strokes strokes—in a wood frame house in the middle of the night or the early hours of the morning on a side street in a small country town—and no one heard a thing... continued in next post

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[–] SavageBeauty (61) 5 years ago

continued quote
"The perpetrator left no clues, no identifiable fingerprints, nothing. The body might have lain there for days, except that the victim’s co-worker stopped by to see why he hadn’t shown up for work that morning.
The body was found. The police were called.
The officer who responded to that call and who was the first policeman at the scene is today the Chief of Police of Ashland, Kentucky. The murder took place in 1969. He told me it remains unsolved—and the murder open on the books—to this day. The victim’s name was Darwin Scott. He was the brother of one Colonel Scott. Colonel Scott had been sued—successfully—for paternity of a boy, one “No Name Maddox,” by a girlfriend and sometime prostitute, Kathleen Maddox. No Name Maddox would soon be known by another name. Charles Manson.
Darwin Scott was Charles Manson’s uncle."

Oddly similar crime scenes, huh?

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[–] SavageBeauty (61) 5 years ago

Levenda also goes into Manson's early life. But, his books are about evil.
I'll try to find those quotes too, as you were asking above if Manson was a killer before the Tate Labianca murders. He was severely abused as a young child, I remember reading that. He was a criminal, in trouble his entire life. And Manson was also a theta clear high level Scientologist (which is just another mind control program to make people act against their own free will). Which would explain the devotion of his mind controlled "family".

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[–] SavageBeauty (61) 5 years ago

A quote about Christopher Jones from that Mathis paper "In 2007, Jones, then 66, gave an explosive interview to the DailyMail (London), claiming to have been in an ongoing affair with Sharon Tate in 1969, while she was pregnant. Not only that, but he claimed they were in love. It wasn't just an affair, he says. That is all strange enough, but it gets stranger. After Jones wrapped Ryan's Daughter in 1970, he quit acting for good and moved to. . . wait for it. . . 10050 Cielo Drive. Sharon Tate's house. That doesn't come from the Bulletin, it comes from mainstream sources, including Wikipedia, which admit it. We are told he stayed in the caretaker's house behind the main house, but that may be even weirder. In any case, he was on the property. "

Here is the article https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-478867/The-final-affair-Roman-Polanskis-murdered-wife-Sharon-Tate.html

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[–] jay440 (107) 5 years ago

I think this McQueen commercial can be seen on YouTube, maybe?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcFV1h8F5d0
Found it, and it looks like the Red Apple ad is a direct parody of this spot. McQueen is touting Viceroy's "deep-cured blend...deep-weave filter...smooth taste." Those Mad Men era copywriters could make smoking sound sooo delicious.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcFV1h8F5d0
Found it, and it looks like the Red Apple ad is a direct parody of this spot.

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Excellent! There you go. When I saw the Red Apple one, I immediately thought of this one -- I can't remember when I first saw it, but I remember thinking: "Steve McQueen didn't have much power yet on that TV show -- he had to film a cigarette commercial?"(On the other hand, being an "eager beaver" on stuff like this maybe gave McQueen more juice with the boss.)

Indeed it is interesting how much QT seems to want Rick Dalton to be a "mirror image Steve McQueen" in this movie -- putting him in a show "Bounty Law" which is a clear match for "Wanted Dead or Alive"; showing that great "fantasy clip" (via CGI) of Rick Dalton in a long dialogue scene with 1963 actors in The Great Escape (he's imagining if he got the role) and then bringing the REAL Steve McQueen into the film for a scene.

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McQueen is touting Viceroy's "deep-cured blend...deep-weave filter...smooth taste." Those Mad Men era copywriters could make smoking sound sooo delicious.

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Oh, yeah..smoking commercials seemed to create a mix of tastiness, sexiness, and coolness. They were great commercials -- and they got banned from TV in 1971. Which is why you will sometimes find a 20-page cigarette ad in a magazine, to this day!

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[–] jay440 (107) 5 years ago

Damien Lewis has been a favorite actor of mine since his military-hero-turned-jihadist portrayal on Homeland and now his Wall Street tycoon on Billions, but I didn't quite get the necessary Steve McQueen vibe from his performance. Pitt could've played this if he wasn't co-starring. Lewis did score a laugh in the scene at the party where he's watching Sharon Tate dance with Jay Sebring, and McQueen's friend tells him Tate's type is "short cute guys with lots of talent", and McQueen says "I never had a chance."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Elsewhere on this board, I did an OP on the imminent demise of Mad magazine.

I didn't get much traction with this thread(that's OK, I just toss 'em out and see what happens), but I was pleased to see that the new Quentin Tarantino movie makes heavy mention of Mad magazine...principally showing how Mad magazine once put TV hero Jake Cahill(Rick Dalton, aka Leo DiCaprio) on its cover, and how a TV Guide cover drawn by Mad's Jack Davis, uses a cartoon version of Rick Dalton.

Leo's Rick Dalton has framed copies of both the Mad magazine cover and the "Mad"-like TV Guide cover framed on his wall...a TV star would be proud to be deemed important enough to be spoofed by Mad circa 1958-1962.

And turnabout is fair play...I was in the supermarket a day or two ago and on the magazine rack was a NEW Mad Magazine...with the Rick Dalton cover. I guess before it closes down completely, Mad is going out with a bang, courtesy of Quentin Tarantino.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Damien Lewis has been a favorite actor of mine since his military-hero-turned-jihadist portrayal on Homeland and now his Wall Street tycoon on Billions,

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I've seen him in Billions, read about him on Homeland, he has a distinctive face for starters...

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but I didn't quite get the necessary Steve McQueen vibe from his performance.

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Its an old rule: no actor can REALLY capture the unique face of a true movie star. And the risk for Lewis is in having his own stardom (lower) compared to McQueen's (highest) by playing the role. But he accepted it, and here we are.

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Pitt could've played this if he wasn't co-starring.

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That's a nifty idea but still...the facial resemblance isn't there.

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Lewis did score a laugh in the scene at the party where he's watching Sharon Tate dance with Jay Sebring, and McQueen's friend tells him Tate's type is "short cute guys with lots of talent", and McQueen says "I never had a chance."

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Yes, that was a funny pay-off line. I'm wondering if, in real life, McQueen DID have a chance with Sharon Tate. He was edging Paul Newman as the most major "young"(40s) movie star on the planet.

Again, I think that QT wanted Steve McQueen to be a doppelganger presence to Rick Dalton in this film, and it is documented that the Tate murders really freaked McQueen out in 1969.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

MAJOR SPOILERS

Consequently, Cliff(mainly), his Pit Bull, and Rick(outside with a final coup de grace) proceed to beat, stomp , stab and , ultimately , flame-thrower-attack the three Manson killers into bloody, fried pulp. All the Manson killers are killed. (En route to all this, the Pit Bull takes a nice, long hard endless chomp on the privates of real life Manson Killer Tex Watson.)

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I return to this MAJOR SPOILERS post in a MAJOR SPOILERS thread to offer MORE major spoilers, and a concern:

It occurs to me that when I see OATIH again(and I will) part of what I will do is to watch this finale fight sequence again to "get the lay of the land." LA Times film critic Charles Champlin wrote "you only see a movie once" -- which is to say , there is only one time you see a movie(the first) when everything is new and surprises you. At the same time, it is often necessary to see a movie MORE than once to really understand what you have seen.

And thus: I write above that Brad Pitt and company, among other things "stab" one or more of the Manson killers. Now, I'm not sure if Pitt stabbed anybody (to do it, he'd have to wrest a knife away from a Mansonite and stab them.)

I left out that Pitt uses one of his dog's full dog food cans - a perfect cylinder with heavy weight -- and flings the projectile so hard that it buries itself in the face of one of the Manson girls...but doesn't kill her. Suggested here is that the already-strong Pitt, now in a full-on Acid Trip, has the superstrength to hurl that can like a cannon shell right into the Manson girl's face. It is a gross out and a comedy bit, at the same time. And "the Manson girl with the dog food can in her face," goes on outside to stumble into Leo's pool and a final confrontation with HIM. Involving a flame thrower(damn, Leo kept that dangerous prop around his house?) In a POOL?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Meanwhile, Tex Watson. After the dog finally lets go of the killer's privates, I can't quite recall how Pitt finishes ol' Tex off...or if it could be seen that clearly(a fair amount of this scene is in semi-darkness.)

I'm thinking...I'm trying make a mental picturization of it...I think that Pitt throws Tex to the curb and stomps on his head. Until death. I think.

I'll just have to see this one again and get it "learned."

Macabre but...there it is.

Indeed, that is an issue with OAITH. For two hours of its running time -- with one specific exception -- this film has no off-putting violence at all. But then QT brings it in -- full-on, full-gore and full funny -- at the end.

The one specific earlier exception is when Pitt brutally and bloodily punches the face of a male Manson follower at the Spahn ranch. Its as if Cliff Booth KNOWS he must rain down physical pain on these Manson folk.

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[–] jay440 (107) 5 years ago

A younger Daniel Craig would have been a closer match to McQueen, he's got the stardom, the cool and the big baby blue eyes.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A younger Daniel Craig would have been a closer match to McQueen, he's got the stardom, the cool and the big baby blue eyes.

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Very true. As I recall, to get audiences to adjust to a "new kind" of James Bond, both Steve McQueen and, to a lesser extent, Charles Bronson were summoned up as comparisions to Craig.

Its possible that QT approached Craig to play McQueen, and therefore possible that Craig said no -- but he would have been a great choice!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I have now seen "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" for a second time. I went with a group of male friends who gave it the overall review of "overlong, but pays off at the end." I can't say they were thrilled with it, and I found some of the lassitude of the film in the middle to be ....not a good thing. QT's first three movies took their time but had much more "grip" in the dialogue. This new one is not as good as Reservoir Dogs(however cheap that was); Pulp Fiction, or Jackie Brown.

Note in passing: Reservoir Dogs was violent, yes, but it also had its criminal characters talking in graphic terms about racial and homosexual matters -- and not in good way. I realized that OAITH is almost entirely missive such ugliness...aside from Leo and Brad(er. Rick and Cliff) making a few off comments about Hispanics and "f'in hippies." And I don't believe the "n" word is said once. QT has mellowed quite a lot.

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Of his films from Kill Bill on, this new one ranks higher to me than most of them -- even though I'd say that Inglorious Basterds and Django both have longer stretches with more memorable dialogue than this "hang out" movie can produce.

But this: on general principles, and despite its OWN ugliness(Samuel Jackson's visualized speech about what happened to Bruce Dern's son; the ultimate fate of Jennifer Jason Leigh) I liked "The Hateful Eight" better than this. "The Hateful Eight" was more of a gripping experience with a golden sheen and some epic feel.

THAT said, I could still get into the "hang out" feeling of OAITH, one feels the friendship of Rick and Cliff and how Hollywood is buffeting both of them. They are likeable guys..."despite" their flaws.

I got the structure of the film much better this time around

If the film is "three acts"(and I think it is), it is really (1) one very short opening act and (2) one garguantuan, goes-in-all-directions second act and (3) one suspenseful, doom-laden third act.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The very short opening act is essentially Al Pacino spelling out to Leo his career difficulties as a TV bad guy, followed by some chit-chat to establish the Leo-Brad relationship, with the Manson girls brought in early, seductive , waif-like(they sing a song that has the rhythm of "Nickety Nackety" in The Birds.) This first act ends with Brad dropping Leo off at his home near Tate/Polanski, and then driving home to his own ramshackle trailer behind the Van Nuys Drive-In(still one of my favorite sequences in the film.)

Act Two will be "anchored" by the splitting up of the three main actors: (1) Leo to the "Lancer" set for a hard day's work as a TV villain; (2) Margot to the Bruin theater to watch herself(the REAL Sharon Tate) in The Wrecking Crew and (3) Brad, after an interlude fixing the antenna on Leo's house(with his flashback to Bruce Lee, and a flashback WITHIN the Bruce Lee segment) -- off to the The Spahn Ranch and danger.

What's pretty clear about this second act is that Brad Pitt has all the best stuff --- going shirtless to repair the TV antenna and seeing Charlie Manson below him; the (hilarious) Bruce Lee flashback; the intriguing "did he kill his wife at sea?" flashback(never proved; and hey, the wife's name is "Natalie" like Natalie Wood) and then the combination suspense movie/Western/action movie when Brad heroically takes on the Mansons and sees his buddy George Spahn (Bruce Dern.)

Here's the thing: I guess you can pick and choose, but Brad Pitt's part of the second act is pretty clearly the "exciting part." Leo gets a lot of acting to do(certainly with the young girl actress) but...its not really written at top flight QT level.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And much as the critics may like Sharon Tate watching herself in her movie, there's NO QT dialogue(except for some chit-chat with the movie manager and ticket taker) and while its all very nice..its not very memorable. (I expect this is why QT throws in a trailer for the cheesy Joe Namath-Ann Margret movie to "prove his QT bona fides" during the sequence.)

In short, rather like "The Dark Knight" only comes to life when Heath Ledger is on screen as the Joker, or "Frenzy" only comes to life when Barry Foster's mad killer Bob Rusk is on screen; "OAITH" only REALLY comes to life when Brad Pitt is on screen... and he's gone for awhile while Leo and Margot are given their scenes.

Others may disagree. I realize that the "Sharon watches herself on screen " scene is a sad paeon to the loss of the real Sharon Tate; and there is real detail (and good acting) in how Leo fights his way to triumph on the Lancer set. But for me...its Pitt's movie.

Another note in passing: Luke Perry's brief appearance -- in character as actor Wayne Maunder enacting a "Lancer" scene opposite Leo -- is a rather spectral, sad one. The character walks on a cane, with a limp, and Perry projects the look and sound of a frail man not fully "connecting" with the scene. We know that he died of a stroke not long after filming this scene; he almost seems ghostly IN the scene -- like he's not really there. Weird.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

My second viewing of OAITH cemented my regard for the film -- I feel warm towards it. (And the ending is even better the second time around, when you know what's coming.)

It also revealed differences from the usual QT which I suppose we should accept as "good with the bad." It IS a mellow movie, practically violence-free til the end(less Brad's beat-up of a Manson guy at the Spahn Ranch.) But there ISN'T the same quantity and quality of QT dialogue (nor any of his famous "Chapter One" type stops.) Its a new kind of QT. I like it...but I like some of his other movies better: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown(especially), The Hateful Eight.

I'm figuring(for me) OAITH ranks above Basterds, Django, both Kill Bills and Death Proof. Right now at least.

Maybe a third viewing will cement my position.

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[–] hurricane (1959) 5 years ago

Why is this on the Psycho board, and not one the Once Upon A Time In Hollywood board?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Because it is OT...and meant for an older audience of posters here at this board, than on the other board, which skews young and angry.

We don't hurt nobody....

Also there is PLENTY to connect Psycho to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood...starting with psychopathic knife murders and killers made famous(Norman Bates, Charlie Manson.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I think it is interesting that QT has now made three movies with a Western-era bounty hunter at the center of the story, in a row. But different each time. And each one is sort of a sequel to the one before it.

NUMBER ONE: "Django Unchained." (2012) Christoph Waltz plays Dr. Schultz, an experienced white bounty hunter who teaches the black Django "the tools of the trade," and by film's end, Django is an experienced bounty hunter himself -- both fast with a gun AND fast with words as Dr. Schultz had been(watch Django talk the Austalian mining company baddies into giving him a gun.)

NUMBER TWO: "The Hateful Eight" -- Samuel L. Jackson IS an experienced black bounty hunter. You could almost call this a direct sequel to Django. Django takes place before the Civil War; this takes place after. Perhaps Django changed his name and joined the Union Army?

But what's important here is the OTHER bounty hunter -- Kurt Russell's John Ruth, "the hangman" who makes a point of bringing in his prisoners alive...which puts his life in danger as long as other outlaws want to make a rescue or the prisoner wants to make an escape. "Nobody said bounty hunting was that easy," says Russell. "Nobody said it had to be that hard," answers Jackson.

NUMBER THREE: Leo DiCaprio's fading TV star Rick Dalton starred from 1958-1962 in the fictional NBC bounty hunter show "Bounty Law" . We see Dalton as Jake Cahill deliver this line: "Now some bounty hunters bring their men in alive...which is a great way to get yourself killed. I prefer 'em dead." (And we see Leo/Rick/Jake shoot down his prey.)

So...an interesting progression....a white bounty hunter trains a black bounty hunter...a black bounty hunter mocks a white bounty hunter who doesn't kill his prey...a white bounty hunter swears he ALWAYS kills his prey.

Each movie feeds into the next and comments on the last.

You might call it a theme...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Amidst all the controversy about the Bruce Lee scene in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," it might do you well to order up clips of the REAL Bruce Lee's two scenes in "Marlowe," a Philip Marlowe LA private eye movie starring James Garner made in the "OAITH" year of ...1969.

Critics weren't too kind to the laid-back Garner in a hippie-fied version of Raymond Chandler's famous forties private eye Phillip Marlowe(who would famously be played by Humphrey Bogart before Garner and by Elliott Gould after.)

The budget wasn't too good for "Marlowe" MGM was a studio that WAS dying in 1969, and the hippie aspects are dated. But its still a pretty good mystery tale and Garner is always watchable.

Anyway -- and kind of famously -- Bruce Lee appears in two scenes in "Marlowe." This was after his work on the TV show The Green Hornet but before he went back to China to make it big in martial arts and then return to US backing in "Enter the Dragon.

In short, Lee wasn't a very big star when he did "Marlowe." So his character -- a mobster's hitman/henchman -- isn't going to win against James Garner anymore than he'll win against Brad Pitt here.

In his first scene, Bruce Lee is very impressive -- destroying Marlowe's office and desk and ceiling lamp with an array of hand chops and one great high kick.

In his second scene (SPOILERS) Bruce Lee is kind of a dork -- he threatens Garner high atop a skyscraper rooftop and -- when Garner makes a 1969 snide comment("A little light on your feet -- are you gay?") Bruce flings himself at Garner with a flying drop kick and goes right over the side of the building to his death.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I say: Bruce Lee's acting in this 1969 American studio movie -- and his verbal acting, and his fate -- might just be what Tarantino watched to create his fictional version of Lee for the OAITH.

Maybe. Maybe not.

PS. Marlowe also has Carroll O'Connor as a cop and Oscar winner Rita Moreno doing a really sexy near-nude strip tease. With these elements and Bruce Lee's two ridiculous scenes, plus Garner's great "Garner performance," Marlowe is worth a watch.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

There's that great scene in OATIH in which Rick Dalton(Leo DiCaprio) talks to James Stacy(Timothy Olyphant) about how he was "kinda sorta" under consideration for the Steve McQueen role in "The Great Escape." Rick is honest and forceful in saying he doesn't think he was ever REALLY under consideration(he didn't audition, he wasn't asked) but that he thinks he was "on the short list for the role."

Then comes the great part: we are shown a few moments from a scene in the 1963 movie in which McQueen is talking to his Nazi POW camp bosses -- and McQueen has been removed(via CGI) and replaced with...Leo as Rick Dalton(via CGI.)

Its pretty cool...Leo DiCaprio acting opposite actors IN 1963.

But here is the "danger to Leo": Leo is relatively good in this "Great Escape" scene, and even somewhat cool...but he's not "Steve McQueen cool."

We can say: "well, Leo is playing a not great actor, Rick Dalton, trying to fill McQueen's shoes, so he can AFFORD to be less cool than McQueen.

Still, the question is begged: "Is Leo DiCaprio in The Great Escape as cool as Steve McQueen in The Great Escape?"

It doesn't look like it.

But, truth be told, Leo created his star career following a different path -- in a different era -- than McQueen.

They wouldn't make The Great Escape today...

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[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

OK, I've seen OUATIH now... Bottom line: it didn't do much for me, and I can't imagine watching it through again (I'll watch the third act again sometime just to get its action sequences straight, but that can definitely wait). Deep down the 3 main characters just weren't especially interesting or fun (I found them, for example, less interesting or incisive or real than the main characters in Day of the Locust or Shampoo or The Player - 3 films that it's natural to compare OUATIH to). Cliff Booth was more so than the other two but the seams of how QT tried to make *him* interesting showed & were borderline offensive (he killed his wife, Natalie - all that's disputed is whether it was accidental as the police allowed right? - and it happened on a boat, so we're thinking 'Natalie Wood'...what?). Obviously the characters and their backstories embody period-specific trends - less charitably they're series of answers to QT '60s film Trivial Pursuit questions - but I'd rather just cut out the character middlemen and have QT commentate directly on original movies and trends... QT & Kim Morgan's commentating on a range of '60s movies on cable was more fun for me than endless fake movies and tv shows simulated amid endless needledrops & radio-blasts.

There's no plot or mystery to OUATIH other than how everyone's going to intersect fatally with the Manson crowd. Perhaps I'm not invested enough in the fatal intersections to feel like they're by themselves a movie... I don't quite believe that if the Manson murders had never happened that much would have been different overall in the world (maybe it would have just allowed more attention to fall on the Zodiac killer or Ed Kemper or Kent State the following year or any number of crazy cult or terrorist actions of the time). The chaotic '70s world was coming Manson or no Manson.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Random further thoughts:

1. It was news to me that Jay Sebring was short and even a twin for Polanski. Since Shampoo he's always been a leonine Warren Beatty to me!
2. OUATIH's Polanski isn't nearly rat-faced enough.
3. Someone keeps a fully juiced up flame-thrower around? (Keeping the prop without gas etc. is a lot more likely.)
4. OUATIH just doesn't have any of the poetry or real energy of Sunset Blvd or Mullholland Dr or Boogie Nights or The Player or The Bad & The Beautiful or The Stuntman or Contempt. I think it asks to be compared to the great movies about movies and is found wanting.
5. I'd never quite got the layout of Cielho Dr - the *sort* of Hollywood Hills side-street it is - before this film. In my head, I now realize, I'd always had the Tate murders occurring up on Mullholland.
6. The main trailer at my screening was for the Downton Abbey movie, which would drive QT up the wall!
7. Expecting an audience to stick around to the end of the credits after a 165 min film that's full of extraneous material is cruel and unusual punishment. Only a handful of patrons at my screening stuck around.
8. Tim Roth got a credit qualified by '(cut)'. Never seen that before.
9. Stunt casting of QT regulars from Michael Madsen to Zoe Bell to Kurt Russell (when it makes no sense that his character is also the narrator) took me out of the movie.
10. The lost Herrmann cue from Torn Curtain soundtracking flame-throws is pretty amazing. It doesn't, however, seem to be on the official movie soundtrack/playlist. A good version is here tho': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9OE7fSYaqE
11. Reading around I gather that Bruce Lee really did train Tate & others for The Wrecking Crew. I'd originally assumed it was fantasy, a la Rick Dalton being inserted into The Great Escape. I don't think the film itself gives us any way to distinguish these cases. Some other solution to the problem of 'how to tie Lee back into the story' needed to be found. (Maybe just omit Dalton's Great Escape fantasy too.)
12. I may have over-prepared for OUATIH.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Bump.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

OK, I've seen OUATIH now...

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A moment of dread...and anticipation...

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Bottom line: it didn't do much for me, and I can't imagine watching it through again

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Oh, well. "But seriously," on this unique little board(where, yes, Psycho DOES rule -- and certainly has its connection points to this film), you and I are often politely talking about the same subject but from entirely different perspectives.

Part of my confrontation with OATIH is that it reflects the fact that I am very LITTLE connected to "where movies are today" and , given that I'm really much more connected to the movies of the past(as the current CNN series "The Movies" has proven to me)...what meager attempts I can make to connect with films today is centered on, pretty much, a small band of filmmakers who OCCASIONALLY connect to what excited me about (wait for it)....Hitchcock. In general. And Psycho. In particular.

For OAITH was given the kind of "gotta see it mystery launch" back in early 2018 that Psycho got in 1959 and 1960. "QT is back" (and he rarely comes out to play.) And he's got Leo and Brad TOGETHER for the first time(after having them each separately). And he's got AL PACINO for the first time. And he's got Margot Robbie(for the first time, but also a female star.) And he's got Charlie Manson.

This was enough to create "gotta see it" desire on my part that, frankly, I can't much explain. I had it with Topaz(the first REAL first run Hitchcock film I could wait for.) I had it with Frenzy(those comeback reviews.) I had it with Airport(I loved the novel as a kid; found the movie to be very "hip to be square." I had it with The Godfather. And Jaws. ....And The Untouchables. And Batman.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I honestly don't know how/why this impulse strikes .. but QT has earned it on ever-more wobbly ground: the one-two-three of Reservoir Dogs/Pulp Fiction/Jackie Brown. And remember -- he went away for SIX YEARS. Creating more mystique, more cult power. He came back "weird": Kill Bill(in two parts.) Death Proof(in one half.)

It took on to 2009 for QT to find a rhythm. He said "I have to start to make movies more regularly." And so it came to pass: Inglorious Basterds. Three years later, Django. Three years later, The Hateful Eight . Three-plus years later: OAITH.

And I was hooked and waiting each time. And a bit disappointed each time, even as I liked most of the films, most of the time. Inglorious Basterds PROMISED to be a new "Dirty Dozen" but proved much different(a "ferign filum" with European actors ignoring Brad Pitt a lot of the time.) Django went for the savage and brutal too often to fully enjoy. The Hateful Eight, ditto. But it gripped me as no other QT film since his 90's trilogy. (This is true -- compulsive re-viewings have proved this to me.)

And so I showed up for OAITH in roughly the same shape as before -- high anticipation and excitement -- and I've come away the same way as too often with QT: no, his wavelength isn't always where mine is. He's not quite telling the story I wanted to see, after all.

And yet, I liked a LOT of it. And yet I'm all excited about his "tenth and final film." Though he might be a devil and make us wait 6 years for it...it has before.

So that's me. Back to the swanstep version...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

(I'll watch the third act again sometime just to get its action sequences straight, but that can definitely wait).

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I've made this decision: the third act is my favorite. I like the "acceleration" of it -- the countdown to Sharon Tate's death on a hot August night(as all the signs light up not to THAT song, but to "Baby You're Out of Time) that creates a sense of "real tragedy" that has me feeling the REAL pain of the Tate murders -- and then that giddy veer into a happy ending.

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Deep down the 3 main characters just weren't especially interesting or fun

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Its a real issue, coming especially(says I) after the rather gripping group of actors selected for The Hateful Eight. In fact, there is this: none of those eight was a particularly MAJOR star, so they could all be great actors. With Leo and Brad...they pretty much HAVE to take over the movie(and yes, Margot doesn't get much screen time, but let's face it: Sharon Tate isn't/wasn't that interesting.)

And this: Bruce Dern got a lengthy , powerful role to play in The Hateful Eight, but is here reduced to a funny, strange cameo in which I for one, "wanted more Dern" than the movie was going to give me(it might have been even more of a problem had Burt Reynolds lived to play it.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

(I found them, for example, less interesting or incisive or real than the main characters in Day of the Locust or Shampoo or The Player - 3 films that it's natural to compare OUATIH to).

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As the Psycho psychiatrist says, "yes...and no." I sometimes equate QT to Hitchcock in this way, using Hitchcock: occasionally Hitchcock made a great classic to be compared to the greats of all time(Rear Window, Vertigo, NXNW, Psycho) but a lot of time Hitchcock made movies that WEREN'T great classics but were great anyway BECAUSE Hitchcock made them(Lifeboat, To Catch a Thief, The Wrong Man, Frenzy.) In other words, I not that sure that OAITH had to go up against the LA/Hollywood classics you mention. It only really had to go up against QT (who certainly lacks the literary qualities of Nathaniel West.) And -- because of the QT cult -- OAITH looks to earn more than Day of the Locust or The Player(Shampoo...not so much.)

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Cliff Booth was more so than the other two

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I've had a few "real life" conversations with some "real life" people out here about the movie and my question is: "So did you like Leo's character and his part of the story?" I've been surprised by the "yeses" I get because for me-- it was pretty heavy going. (Leo's a lot more fun in Wolf of Wall Street, for instance.) Anyway, for all the "Pitt love" being given to this film(including by me) I guess SOMEBODY liked Leo's part.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Cliff Booth was more so than the other two but the seams of how QT tried to make *him* interesting showed & were borderline offensive (he killed his wife, Natalie - all that's disputed is whether it was accidental as the police allowed right? - and it happened on a boat, so we're thinking 'Natalie Wood'...what?).

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You know, one way in which OAITH has "earned its keep" right now is that you can find about four internet articles a day on it. Its like the only half-way interesting mainstream movie out there -- "click bait deluxe."

And one of the articles is : "Brad Pitt knows the answer to the biggest mystery in OAITH...and he's not telling." That mystery is: did Cliff kill his wife or not? And I feel its like the infamous awful end of the Sopranos: does Tony get killed or not? We don't know. We aren't given that information. Same here...though the "Natalie" bit ("My sister said, Natalie, why are you with that creep?") is certainly heavy handed for the clickbait generation.

But this: this angle keeps Cliff from being the TOTAL hero we want him to be. He's got a "bad vibe," and Hollywood women especially hate him(Kurt Russell's stunt coordinator wife Zoe Bell especially.)

We see enough of Cliff's capacity for ultra-violence to BELIEVE he could kill on instinct(and he's a war hero, we hear THAT, and give his age in 1969, it could just be WWII -- the Big One.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Obviously the characters and their backstories embody period-specific trends - less charitably they're series of answers to QT '60s film Trivial Pursuit questions -

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Yes, I guess..but without really FITTING the questions. The big surprise to me is that I just couldn't believe Leo DiCaprio -- with his aged baby face and slightly distorted features -- as the star of even a 1958 era TV Western. Steve McQueen, yes(he was.) Richard Boone , yes(he was.) Hugh O'Brien, yes(he was.) But Leo on "Bounty Law" doesn't look right. BRAD PITT would have looked right.

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but I'd rather just cut out the character middlemen and have QT commentate directly on original movies and trends... QT & Kim Morgan's commentating on a range of '60s movies on cable was more fun for me than endless fake movies and tv shows simulated amid endless needledrops & radio-blasts.

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Ha...yes, the "real stuff" sent out is probably more meaningful that what OAITH gives us.

Here is the weirdest thing to me about OAITH: Its about 2 hours, forty minutes...but I felt the whole story was incredibly QUICK in the telling and slight overall. When it all ends, its like "that's it"?

Something about the structure. Day One is very quick(ending with the great scene near the Van Nuys drive-in.) Day Two meanders all over the place, but you just kind of want two stories(Rick's and Sharon's) to END. And then they do(as does the compelling Cliff Meets the Manson's story ) and BOOM we're into that superfast Day Three and finale.

The Hateful Eight was long, too, but felt like a close-scale epic. So do Basterds and Django. This long movie felt too quick and slight, to me.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

There's no plot or mystery to OUATIH

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Which, we are told, makes OAITH a great "hang out movie" ala QT favorite Rio Bravo or his OWN great hang out movie(Jackie Brown)...but in this one , the hanging out gets to be a bit boring indeed.

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other than how everyone's going to intersect fatally with the Manson crowd.

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Well, a lot of movies have been made in which we wait for victims to eventually come into contact with villains(or earthquakes, or tidal waves.) I give OAITH points for bringing the Mansons in early enough to "haunt" the movie until the big confrontation. But they never really feel like ENOUGH of a threat. QT seems to purposely treat them as a bunch of dummies.

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Perhaps I'm not invested enough in the fatal intersections to feel like they're by themselves a movie... I don't quite believe that if the Manson murders had never happened that much would have been different overall in the world (maybe it would have just allowed more attention to fall on the Zodiac killer or Ed Kemper or Kent State the following year or any number of crazy cult or terrorist actions of the time). The chaotic '70s world was coming Manson or no Manson.

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I tend to agree with all of that, but Manson had the "hook" of doing that scary face for LIFE(and boy does he look like a fake actor doing it) and the slaughter-murder(hello, Psycho) of a famous enough star married to a famous enough director.

Kemper evidently didn't have the great press agent; Kent State was the Establishment as Scared Villain; the Zodiac was never found to make a face on LIFE magazine.

And there was this: if the Mansons had not killed that totally "regular people" couple, there WAS a weird sense of "payback against rich Hollywood" in the first murders. We weren't WITH the Mansons, but how nice they forced Steve McQueen to carry a gun and everybody to hire security.
t

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Random further thoughts:

1. It was news to me that Jay Sebring was short and even a twin for Polanski. Since Shampoo he's always been a leonine Warren Beatty to me!

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Hmm...well, time for research. If he was more Warren Beatty, that whole scene with Steve McQueen describing him as the other is...a bust.

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2. OUATIH's Polanski isn't nearly rat-faced enough.

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Ha. And his Manson was too cute, too. (I hear that same actor plays an older, incarcerated Manson on Mindhunters...which I WILL be watching soon.)

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3. Someone keeps a fully juiced up flame-thrower around? (Keeping the prop without gas etc. is a lot more likely.)

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Too broad a gag, to be sure...though the idea that Rick keeps that thing around loaded seems to reflect his dim-wittedness.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

4. OUATIH just doesn't have any of the poetry or real energy of Sunset Blvd or Mullholland Dr or Boogie Nights or The Player or The Bad & The Beautiful or The Stuntman or Contempt. I think it asks to be compared to the great movies about movies and is found wanting.

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Here I return to my comment about whether or not OAITH HAS to be compared to those great movies. Maybe its about Trouble With Harry level Hitchcock...not to mention, the director of Sunset Boulevard also made The Front Page and Buddy Buddy...

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5. I'd never quite got the layout of Cielho Dr - the *sort* of Hollywood Hills side-street it is - before this film. In my head, I now realize, I'd always had the Tate murders occurring up on Mullholland.

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Someone has written that the Melcher/Tate house didn't have a neighbor that close as in the movie...the closest house was 100 yards away. Living in it was a "Mrs. Kott" who heard a brief female scream that night, nothing more.

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6. The main trailer at my screening was for the Downton Abbey movie, which would drive QT up the wall!

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Oh, yeah. I think we have to remember that , for better AND for worse, QT movies come all out of HIS head(except Jackie Brown, from Elmore Leonard, which I consider his best so...) His head ain't got no room for Downton Abbey.

I saw OAITH with a trailer for Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers. THAT was a contrast.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

7. Expecting an audience to stick around to the end of the credits after a 165 min film that's full of extraneous material

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And yet, to me -- only? -- super-quick in the playout

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is cruel and unusual punishment. Only a handful of patrons at my screening stuck around.

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Ha. The second time I saw the film was with some old male friends who literally go back to high school. The film ended and I said "wait, there's some stuff during the credits.' One guy said "I don't care" but I convinced them that at least the QT end credits would be much shorter than a Marvel movie(and this is true). For the record, I liked the "Red Apple" commercial for the ties to the QT universe but also felt...its a little strained now, isn't it? Just referencing "Red Apple" cigarettes does not make your movie Pulp Fiction again. The other "Easter Egg" was an Adam West/ Burt Ward KHJ Batman prize promotion. Nostalgic for me ...alone(the record shows it was a real promotion, and some guy really won the tour of the Batcave.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

8. Tim Roth got a credit qualified by '(cut)'. Never seen that before.

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Yep. QT explained who Roth played. Somebody kinda famous, I think. Oh, well. Deleted scene on the DVD?

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9. Stunt casting of QT regulars from Michael Madsen to Zoe Bell to Kurt Russell (when it makes no sense that his character is also the narrator) took me out of the movie.

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Here we differ. Those actors are of more resonance than "Red Apple cigarettes" to me. Russell(Used Cars...I fear to ask you) and me go way back. He didn't have much of a role, so I liked hearing his crisp, lightly pissed-off, voice narrating. Samuel Jackson could have done it but...this was a movie about two middle-aged white guys. Like Kurt Russell(past middle age, but not really.)

I'm always happy to see/hear Michael Madsen.

And I thought the ricochet of Zoe Bell going off on her husband(Russell) and him going off on Pitt was...priceless..big laugh in my theater, both times.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

10. The lost Herrmann cue from Torn Curtain soundtracking flame-throws is pretty amazing.

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It is. Here is a great, gripping piece of music from 1966 that has been used in movies in 1991 and 2019...and is STILL great.

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It doesn't, however, seem to be on the official movie soundtrack/playlist. A good version is here tho': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9OE7fSYaqE

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I expect the availability of this track on youtube keeps it off albums. Also on youtube: the rejected Henry Mancini overture to Frenzy -- which I think is MUCH better than Ron Goodwin's music in the film. I now imagine Frenzy opening to the Mancini music, not the Goodwin music.

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11. Reading around I gather that Bruce Lee really did train Tate & others for The Wrecking Crew.

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Yes. Before Lee became a superstar (by returning to China and THEN doing Enter the Dragon) he was around the rather dying Hollywood scene in a fairly pedestrian way. Elsewhere, I reference his scenes in "Marlowe." In addition to The Green Hornet, he was on a James Franciscus series called "Longstreet"(blind private eye; kung fu assistant.)

And this: maybe he trained Sharon Tate martial arts, but she DID them horribly in The Wrecking Crew. Her fight scene with Nancy Kwan is not believable. That's OK, neither are Dino's fight scenes in the movie. Its as if the stunt men were told "don't even touch Dino." (A save: Dino and his stuntman actually have a pretty long and believable fight with another actor and HIS stuntman in, like, the Matt Helm movie BEFORE this one.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I'd originally assumed it was fantasy, a la Rick Dalton being inserted into The Great Escape. I don't think the film itself gives us any way to distinguish these cases. Some other solution to the problem of 'how to tie Lee back into the story' needed to be found. (Maybe just omit Dalton's Great Escape fantasy too.)

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QT's mind drifts these days. Nobody tells him "no." I liked the Great Escape scene just for the "dream-like" follow of it (no, that's STEVE MCQUEEN'S scene) and for the risk Leo took in not being nearly good enough in it.

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12. I may have over-prepared for OUATIH.

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Partially my fault. I"ve spent a year here on the Psycho page building up to it. But I was hardly alone...QT gets paid the big bucks because the Hollywood press knows they can exploit him.

It was the same for Hitchcock, btw. He got MASSIVE press for Topaz, Frenzy and Family Plot because...he was Hitchcock. He had a past, a track record, and a loyal cult.

Same thing for QT. Even if he'll only make 25% of the number of movies Hitch did.

Now...watch the build up for the "final Tarantino film."

I'll be part of it....I think...

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[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

QT's mind drifts these days. Nobody tells him "no." I liked the Great Escape scene just for the "dream-like" follow of it (no, that's STEVE MCQUEEN'S scene) and for the risk Leo took in not being nearly good enough in it.

I really dislike the feeling I often had when watching OUATIH that a sequence was in there *just because QT wanted it* rather than because it made the film better. We get a 35mm Projector montage just because QT wants it; Sharon Tate takes off her lovely white boots in the cinema because QT wants her bare feet up on screen; and so on. Leo/Rick inserted into The Great Escape fell flat for me, whereas I found The Last Movie Star's insertion of Old Burt alongside Young Burt (esp. in Smokey & The Bandit) both thrilling & deeply moving. TLMS's insert moments felt really well conceived, QT's insert not so much.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Ha. And his Manson was too cute, too. (I hear that same actor plays an older, incarcerated Manson on Mindhunters...which I WILL be watching soon.)

He's a lot less cute and seems a lot smaller too in the (rather excellent) Mindhunter ep. S02E05. He's scary too because seems well aware that he's a charlatan & that his real talent is for finding the easily led and coaching their character weaknesses into an explosion (and we get the sense that he can read even the FBI's guys weaknesses & how *their* violence could be brought out). In the context of the show it's like Mason is only half a serial killer whereas Tex Winter and the rest are the other half. And after the event all are sure that they're not really responsible for evil. Not 'everyone goes a little mad sometimes' but 'a lot of people are incomplete in some way and with the wrong crowd around them they could be part of some larger madness but also duck individual responsibility'. Frightening.

The Manson ep. of Mindhunter was nearly 1 hr 20m and as the mid-point of the season had a lot of moving parts. Quite well-directed by Andrew Dominik of Assassination of Jesse James & Killing Me Softly semi-fame. Eps this season are divided between Fincher, Dominik, and Carl Franklin of One False Move & Devil In A Blue Dress renown (at least on this board).

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[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Just a brief note now I've finished Mindhunter S02. I didn't find it as gripping as S01, but in some ways it was a more well-rounded, normal TV show this time around. The central real world case (new to me - although I must have read about it in Douglas's book, it just hadn't stuck in my memory) this time was 'The Atlanta Child Murders' in the late '70s, early '80s. The series showed both how the FBI serial killer unit was unprepared for a crime wave of that scale in a setting as complex jurisdictionally and culturally & politically as Atlanta *and* that simple, individualistic theories of serial-killer-dom inevitably don't scale or translate well to all the cases out there particularly cases where there are large social forces in play. So it's a downbeat second season about failure on the public side (despite some nominal success). On the private side, S02 costs the other two main investigators their marriages & relationships so all three are now pained, frazzled loners. Good but muted & realistic & doubly downbeat.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I have found Mindhunter on Netflix and chosen to approach it(for now) in a very fragmented way. Simply put, I'm reading all the episode summaries(both seasons) and jumping around to see all the "special guest serial killers" in their individual episodes: Charles Manson, Richard Speck, Son of Sam. Ed Kemper seems to have gotten almost a season and a half as a continuing psycho. The distastefully self named "BTK Killer"(bind, torture, kill) keeps popping up, as well.

The template seems to be "Silence of the Lambs" in which psycho Hannibal Lecter was consulted to help catch another psycho. That seems to be the "hook" for the interviews with Speck , Son of Sam(a remarkable resemblance to the original guy), etc.

Even fictionalized, these guys are creepy people. I'm reminded that Hitchcock really "romanticized" his psychos like Uncle Charlie, Bruno Anthony , Norman Bates, and even Bob Rusk. The real guys are just sickening; its amazing to realize our society of multi-millions in America can spawn men as twisted as these.

The two FBI guys who do the interviewing are an interesting "team of contrasts": a big ,burly linebacker type(with a crewcut, natch) and a spindly little angelic guy. I tend to favor the linebacker as a "visual character" with a macho sensibility(its leftover John Wayne syndrome, I guess), but the angelic guy asked a sexually charged question of Richard Speck(complete with misogynistic cuss word) that took the linebacker aback...and me.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The actor who played Charles Manson certainly got a lot more dialogue than he did in OAITH, and playing Manson older and incarcerated, he looked more like the Manson of photographs, had some real edge. I've read/seen some Manson interviews, and the writers and the actor got Manson down pretty well in an interview session: he talks in circling "peace and love" gibberish that makes it impossible to get him to confess to his crimes; and he flat out blames the killers for the killings, saying he had nothing to do with directing them to do anything.

Indeed, this Manson scene was a reminder that for investigators trying to interview psychopaths for "insights," its a loser's game: the psychos either don't have coherent minds or they are lying to themselves and the investigators.

In real life, I recall the Mindhunter author and others going on TV in the early 2000's to opine on the "DC sniper" who was shooting people all over the Washington DC area. The opinions were uniformly: "This is a middle-aged white male loner who has problems relating to women." Well it turned out to be a middle-aged black ex-con and his young black accomplice. And yet, that original analysis proves to be the right one usually. I guess I'm saying "one size fits all" in psycho profiling...until it doesn't.

Which is, I guess, the point of the Atlanta child murders storyline(which I haven't tuned into yet.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Some "Hitchcock musings" on Mindhunter:

The show really "sources" from Silence of the Lambs and Se7en and other more "modern" psycho movies(which are now over 20 years old, those two!), but Hitchcock paved the way much earlier in the 20th Century.

Uncle Charlie and the Rope killers demonstrated a sense of "false superiority" that marks certain grandiose psycho killers today. Norman Bates had some of the DNA of Ed Gein in him. And Bob Rusk was a classic "sex killer" -- impotence and failed rape was part of his killing drive(he got sexual satisfaction IN killing.)

But "Mindhunter" also sounds in what happens AFTER the killers are captured. In many ways, "Mindhunter" is all about the infamous Psycho psychiatrist scene, which is so hated in some quarters and yet in its own way provided the template for every serial killer TV show and movie to follow: "What makes this killer TICK? What family raised him?" Inquiring FBI profiler/shrink minds want to know.

Personally, I've always wondered what police psychiatrist interviews with Bob Rusk would have revealed. In Frenzy, Rusk spends half his time just being a friendly , witty guy -- but when we see him in "sex killer mode," his humanity just falls away and we see the madman. On "Mindhunter," we never see the incarcerated psychos DO their kills, we just hear about them. In Frenzy, its the reverse: we SEE Rusk rape and kill, but by the time the movie is over, Rusk has told no one anything about why he is the way he is(in his own mind.) I'd have been interested to see Rusk interviewed. On the other hand, perhaps it would be the peak of banality(abused by his father maybe; seduced by his mother?)

And what about the psychiatrist interviews over the years with Norman Bates? He finishes Psycho 1960 believing that he IS Mrs. Bates; Norman is gone. How many years of talking to Mrs. Bates did it take to coax Norman back to the surface(just in time for Psycho II?)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I think with "Mindhunter," once I finish the "special guest psycho killer" episodes, I'll start from the beginning and get the flow of the two seasons and their main stories(it looks like Ed Kemper in Season One; the Atlanta child murders in Season Two, with the truly reprehensible BTK killer as connective tissue.)

I'm a little unsure about the dramatics of the FBI profiler characters. In the bits and pieces I'm getting of them so far, they seem a bit too predictable. Though I can certainly understand how they would lose marriages and loved ones, given their work. Its a tough job, as many a serial killer movie has shown us.

Speaking of serial killer movies, in 1995, the famous "Se7en" came out, with its equally famous climactic final 20 minutes. A fine actor gave us a good deep look at how the psychopathic mind works.

But also in 1995, there was ANOTHER serial killer movie, called "Copycat," that I personally found more disturbing than Se7en. Despite starring Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter(A-listers), it was of lesser quality than "Se7en" and the plot was pretty sick: a psycho was killing victims all over San Francisco using the techniques of famous serial killers like Son of Sam and Jeffrey Dahmer(that killing in particular was hard to watch.) Somehow "Mindhunter" is reminding me more of "Copycat" than "Se7en" -- even if "Mindhunter" is (often?) directed by the director of Se7en, David Fincher.

And speaking of David Fincher -- how much more satisfying Mindhunter is than his film Zodiac -- at least on Mindhunter, most of the psychos get IDed and caught!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

More on the Manson episode:

The investigators(well, one of them) follows up the Manson interview by interviewing Tex Watson and ends up talking with a guy who is almost as evasive as Manson as to motive and "who made me do it"(the charismatic Charlie), but who testifies in great detail as to the murders he committed ("Its hard stabbing someone to death...you hit bone a lot") and...who wants to be known for them "These were the Tex Watson murders!"

Indeed, Manson and Tex et al are "two halves of a compleat killer" and The Manson Family as a cult killer mechanism will always be interesting, accordingly.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Obviously the characters and their backstories embody period-specific trends - less charitably they're series of answers to QT '60s film Trivial Pursuit questions -
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Yes, I guess..but without really FITTING the questions. The big surprise to me is that I just couldn't believe Leo DiCaprio -- with his aged baby face and slightly distorted features -- as the star of even a 1958 era TV Western. Steve McQueen, yes(he was.) Richard Boone , yes(he was.) Hugh O'Brien, yes(he was.) But Leo on "Bounty Law" doesn't look right. BRAD PITT would have looked right.

Ha, poor Leo! We don't often get to say that.

I wondered too about some aspects of the dialogue QT wrote for Rick Dalton. Dalton seemed inordinately down on shooting westerns in Europe and on spaghetti westerns more generally. Eastwood must be a peer of his & at the very least by the late '60s *everybody* respected The Good, The Bad & The Ugly & Morricone's scores. Hell, after Once Upon A Time In the West spaghetti westerns were good enough for Henry Fonda!

Somehow, too, it felt that Rick wasn't connected enough to the big uptick for westerns in 1969 (True Grit, Wild Bunch, Butch&Sundance). Shouldn't Rick be excited about this or possibly fretting about missing this latest round of opportunities? (Maybe this is nitpicky but it feels to me like the sort of close attention that QT has invited.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

But Leo on "Bounty Law" doesn't look right. BRAD PITT would have looked right.

Ha, poor Leo! We don't often get to say that.

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Yes...and I know he "proved his rugged bona fides" with The Revenant. But he just doesn't look like a standard issue 50's/60's TV Western star to me.

I understand that Leo right now may be "the biggest movie star in the world" -- most able to open movies (with or without Brad), numerous hits in a row(but rarely Marvel level hits...OAITH is about $200 million worldwide right now). But the fact remains that the "beautiful boy" of Titanic aged into a rather different looking fellow -- he has to be rather carefully cast to "fit."

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I wondered too about some aspects of the dialogue QT wrote for Rick Dalton. Dalton seemed inordinately down on shooting westerns in Europe and on spaghetti westerns more generally. Eastwood must be a peer of his & at the very least by the late '60s *everybody* respected The Good, The Bad & The Ugly & Morricone's scores. Hell, after Once Upon A Time In the West spaghetti westerns were good enough for Henry Fonda!

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Well, by the time of this tale in 1969, GBU was certainly out, and I think Once Upon a Time in the West was maybe in US release...but perhaps Rick knew that those were Sergio Leone and his was being recommended to Sergio Carbucci...

Rick likely distrusted what I distrust about the spaghetti Westerns, they were usually(invariably?) released dubbed...not with subtitles. They "played false" I think this movie gets into that once Rick DOES go to Italy.

Truth be told, did not spaghetti Westerns, Blaxploitation , and Kung Fu movies pretty much die with the 70's? Rick's "save" would not have been long lasting.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Somehow, too, it felt that Rick wasn't connected enough to the big uptick for westerns in 1969 (True Grit, Wild Bunch, Butch&Sundance). Shouldn't Rick be excited about this or possibly fretting about missing this latest round of opportunities?

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Yeah, come to think of it , 1969 WAS a huge "swan song year" for Westerns. At the movies, those Big Three dominated a lot of talk during the year.

But it doesn't seem like Rick Dalton was "plugged in" to getting cast in those. Certainly not in the top roles(meant for men older than him or starrier than him), and maybe he wouldn't accept "too low."

QT makes the rather unique case that as long as Rick Dalton played heavies and let other good guys beat him up, he was sunk. But that's an odd formula to me. As I recall, a LOT of TV actors were saved by "The Movie of the Week" and guest shots into the seventies.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

That said, a bunch of Western TV stars sure sank like a stone: Ty Hardin(Bronco), Will Hutchins(Tenderfoot), Jack Kelly(Maverick, though his co-stars Garner and Moore prospered), John Russell(Lawman). Clint WALKER(not Eastwood) continued on in guest parts, as I recall.

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(Maybe this is nitpicky but it feels to me like the sort of close attention that QT has invited.)

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Well, I think the issue here is that QT is rather selective about what he likes and remembers from his "video store clerk" days. Its why he likes Psycho II better than Psycho. He gravitates to the "creatively second rate," the "good schlock."

And of course, this movie DOES speak to the "international film" of 1969.

I think I've mentioned this before:

I waited a long year for Alfred Hitchcock's' Topaz to come out in 1969 -- with dreams of "North by Northwest"(if not Psycho) in my head. It was a LONG wait. And when the day came to see it in a first-run movie theater, my father elected to go for the second feature FIRST. So even in those last HOURS before seeing Topaz...there was minute-by-minute suffering.

The "second feature we had to watch first" was called "The Last Adventure" when I saw it, but it was of European making and I think it has a European name. I don't remember a thing about it except it was the last thing(other than one more intermission) between me and my "first" Hitchcock movie to see in first run.

You can imagine how i felt AFTER I saw Topaz that day....though yeah, I do like a lot of Topaz, though yeah, it sure ain't NXNW...

Oh, my point: in 1969 US movie screens saw a LOT of foreign-made product being given first run showings.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Butch&Sundance).

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Evidently this was the biggest hit of 1969(though as with the 1960 challenges to Psycho, I've also read The Love Bug and Easy Rider to have this honor.)

Paul Newman was always set for it(though he had his sights set on Sundance in the beginning), but "the other guy" kept changing as big stars passed(usually over billing.) Steve McQueen(how great that would have been.) Warren Beatty. Marlon Brando. (Marlon Brando?)

En route to going with the little known actor(of TEN YEARS) Robert Redford, the producers evidently gave consideration to Paul Newman's pal Robert Wagner, who had appeared with Newman in support in Harper and Winning. But alas, Wagner was seen as a "TV star"(It Takes a Thief) and didn't make it. Ala Rick Dalton NOT getting The Great Escape.

Given that Wagner has fought rumors of killing his wife Natalie Wood on their boat, Mr. Wagner connects to Brad Pitt in OAITH , too.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

In other words, I not that sure that OAITH had to go up against the LA/Hollywood classics you mention. It only really had to go up against QT

Fair enough, and in the real world OUATIH is competing against and is the alternative to, principally, films for kids. Currently OUATIH is the #14 box office movie this year in the US, where 11 of the 13 films above it are animated or involve superheroes &, again, 11 of the 13 are either sequels or remakes. The only original, non-kid film above it (so far) is Jordan Peele's Us, which is in my view, the same sort of partial success that OUATIH is. On one level, then, it's silly for me to moan about Us or OUATIH: I'm glad that they both exist, that I got to see them both. They're both at least *trying* to do something unobvious & interesting & adult which is more than their real world competition ever does.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Fair enough, and in the real world OUATIH is competing against and is the alternative to, principally, films for kids. Currently OUATIH is the #14 box office movie this year in the US, where 11 of the 13 films above it are animated or involve superheroes &, again, 11 of the 13 are either sequels or remakes.

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This is part of QT's success at this time in movie history: his movies are (short of Jackie Brown) originals, and targeted to adults (including, I would say, OLDER adults who actually remember 1969.)

And despite his big stars and huge earnings, QT is still an "indie guy" at heart. He's making movies that lack the "gravitas" of stuff that Spielberg makes(hiring top writers to adapt major books)...he's "making this stuff up out of his head." Which leaves his movies feeling, sometimes, like a very precocious 14-year old wrote them.

I will note again that QT's threat/promise to quit after 10 movies makes more sense than it would have for Hitchcock. Because QT WRITES his own movies, and it is writing (dialogue) that is hardest to keep fresh over the decades. Billy Wilder's borsht-belt naughtiness was just right for Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, but to continue such gags into the 70's and early eighties...all of a sudden sharp Billy was OLD.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The only original, non-kid film above it (so far) is Jordan Peele's Us, which is in my view, the same sort of partial success that OUATIH is.

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And Jordan Peele is going to get -- for awhile at least -- the same kind of heat that QT got in the beginning, and I hope that it lasts. Does Peele write his own films?

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On one level, then, it's silly for me to moan about Us or OUATIH: I'm glad that they both exist, that I got to see them both. They're both at least *trying* to do something unobvious & interesting & adult which is more than their real world competition ever does.

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This is certainly why I've stuck by QT, and I can't say he has ever totally let me down. Death Proof came close in the dialogue for the women, but Kurt Russell's dialogue and the final balls-out Old School car chase saved it.

That said, I gotta go with my gut on any movie I see. I KNOW the ones that wowed me from the first viewing(The Untouchables, Batman, Silence of the Lambs, Fargo, LA Confidential -- Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and, in a later viewing, Reservoir Dogs.) I KNOW the ones that don't quite hit me that way.

OAITH hits me that other way.

I'm reminded of my dislike of parts of Inglorious Basterds and how EXACTLY the two parts I didn't like much(Waltz's opening interrogtation of the dairy farmer; the card games in the German basement café) were LOVED by the critics. (I thought, in both cases, the scenes went on far too long, starting well and ending well, but losing traction in between.)

Well, its happening again with OAITH. The critics LOVE that scene with Sharon Tate in the movie theater watching "herself"(the real one) and about all I can do is salute it for its whimsical poignance and yet say...its not what I come to a QT movie for. And other critics seem to be digging on the entirety of Leo's adventure on the "Lancer" set but again, it just doesn't make that much impact on me.

Maybe its me.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Let me go to this place if I may:

Jackie Brown. Pretty much my favorite QT, even if I recognize Pulp Fiction as the bigger deal, the more quotable classic, the movie that set the 90's etc.

Jackie Brown is a "hang out" movie(ala Rio Bravo as the best, and OAITH as a wannabe) and here are my favorite talky hangout scenes in the movie:

Jackson shows a deadpan, dumb-ish DeNiro his video of bikini women shooting machine guns. "When you absolutely, positively have to kill every MF in the room..."

Jackson meets with low key bail bondsman Robert Forster(perfect, for all time) and the two go through the entire interview necessary to secure a bond on a prisoner. DeNiro goes out to listen to Jackson's radio("Don't mess with the bass...you can turn up the volume.")

Jackson -- in a dazzling one-take, lotsa dialogue scene -- convinces Chris Tucker to leave his apartment(where Tony Curtis is on a talk show saying "I can't date a woman my own age...has to be younger), get in a car trunk("You catch a n-word off guard with this sht") and get killed. I like Jackson saying "I'm always keeping your ass out of jail, and I don't mind telling you...its a full time job."

Jackson's attempt to do to Jackie Brown(Pam Grier) what he did to Chris Tucker...and his utter failure as Jackie hits back with a gun and a lot of attitude.

Jackie's sweet wry conversations with Robert Forster -- two middle-aged good people slowly connecting.

Later in the film, Jackson querying the dumb DeNiro about the latter having killed someone. "(Are they) dead?" "Yeah, pretty much...yeah."

And on and on. Scene by hang out scene, I was riveted the first night I saw Jackie Brown and I can put the DVD in any time and get that feeling again.

I WANTED to get that feeling as Leo and Brad(and sometimes Al) talked, but it just wasn't there. (Is the difference Elmore Leonard? Are those scenes above from Leonard? I guess I gotta buy his book.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I'm finding OAITH to be equating with Inglorious Basterds, another movie that only intermittently caught that QT dialogue high, and was rather high falutin and dull the rest of the time.

Loved David Bowie's song on the soundtrack; hated the "Frenzy" strangulation of a sympathetic female character.

Loved every scene with Brad Pitt; liked every scene with Chris Waltz, but didn't love them, and the first scene was too long; LOVED the scene with Brad Pitt AND Chris Waltz. Hated all the scenes where the German war hero tried to romance the French Jewish survivor...

I watch Inglorious Basterds with one thumb on the DVD "scene fast forward" -- and I think I'll be doing the same with OAITH.

OAITH: The entire third act is great, and needs more viewings. All of Brad Pitt's scenes are great. Leo's scenes apart from Brad, less so. (I did like how the hoary old Quinn Martin TV series The FBI turned out to be important to George Spahn AND Leo.) Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate is sweet..and symbolic, but in real life she was always going to be limited, and she still is on screen in the Robbie incarnation.

But in my book(and remember, Stuntman Mike in Death Proof shows us that he actually HAS a book, when he says "in my book")...OAITH doesn't reach the heights of the big ones: Reservoir Dogs...Pulp Fiction...Jackie Brown and..yes...The Hateful Eight(the opening shot of Jesus and the music turn out to be something really big that QT simply couldn't match this time.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Also not as good as the scene in Kill Bill 2 where strip club bouncer Michael Madsen gets his days cut by his mean boss for being late:

Madsen: I'm a bouncer....and there's no one here...to....bounce.
Mean Boss: So that should matter? OK, let's get out the calendar. "Its calendar time for Buddy!"

(And the boss proceeds to mark off calendar dates and takes AWAY work days from Madsen.)

Mean boss: And I hate that f'in cowboy hat you wear.
Madsen: The customers wear cowboy hats.
Mean boss: I'm not the boss of the customers. I'm the boss of YOU. And I hate that f'n hat.

I single out that Kill Bill 2 scene because I love it, and its the kind of "cooking with gas" dialogue scene that QT once gave us dependably.

I missed something like thati in OAITH.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

The critics LOVE that scene with Sharon Tate in the movie theater watching "herself"(the real one) and about all I can do is salute it for its whimsical poignance and yet say...its not what I come to a QT movie for. And other critics seem to be digging on the entirety of Leo's adventure on the "Lancer" set but again, it just doesn't make that much impact on me.

Agreed. Both scenes/sequences are just OK in my view.... and (here's where I get myself into trouble comparing OUATIH to all-time-greats rather with its Fast & Furious & Avengers competition!) if you're a film-nerd the gap between them and related great scenes from the past is *enormous*. Tate's scene reminds us of the famous scene from the end of Sullivan's Travels where Sullivan sees the impact of Mickey Mouse on a down-trodden audience. And Dalton's Lancer reminds us of Betty's audition in Mulholland Dr, the stuntman finally nailing his stunt at the bridge in The Stuntman, Kirk Douglas fighting his way through to a Cat People break-through in Bad&the Beautiful, or even Betty Schaeffer getting Joe writing again in Sunset Blvd. QT's scenes are *much longer* but also much less impactful than their mighty predecessors I'm afraid, and in the Lancer case, it wasn't clear to me that all the scene's potential was used. The great praise Dalton finally receives for his performance didn't seem quite real to me - too much tell - and I expected we'd have the rug pulled from under us eventually, a la Mull Dr, but that shoe never dropped.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The critics LOVE that scene with Sharon Tate in the movie theater watching "herself"(the real one) and about all I can do is salute it for its whimsical poignance and yet say...its not what I come to a QT movie for. And other critics seem to be digging on the entirety of Leo's adventure on the "Lancer" set but again, it just doesn't make that much impact on me.

Agreed. Both scenes/sequences are just OK in my view.... and (here's where I get myself into trouble comparing OUATIH to all-time-greats rather with its Fast & Furious & Avengers competition!)

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You gotta do what you gotta do...

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f you're a film-nerd the gap between them and related great scenes from the past is *enormous*.

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Maybe. But I'll allow for the "test of time" here (rather in reverse.) I've found that some scenes of little impact to me on first viewing GROW over time and with re-visits. Has QT created such scenes here? We won't know til we put some distance between here and there. Doubtful but...possible.

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Tate's scene reminds us of the famous scene from the end of Sullivan's Travels where Sullivan sees the impact of Mickey Mouse on a down-trodden audience.

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Yes, but that's a very climactic scene that the entire movie has built to...its MEANT to have maximum impact and meaning.

And decades after that -- and two decades ago -- "The Green Mile" had a similar scene in which a wrong man convict headed for the electric chair gets to see his first movie -- on the prision premises -- before being executed.

Again, powerful scene, the whole movie's leading to it, he's a condemned man who DIDN'T do the murders but will be executed anyway. And...he asks to see a movie.

Come to think of it, Sharon Tate is a condemned woman. She sees "The Wrecking Crew" in February and will be dead by August, though in terms of OAITH, she will be dead in about 45 more minutes of screen time...unless fate intervenes.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And Dalton's Lancer reminds us of Betty's audition in Mulholland Dr, the stuntman finally nailing his stunt at the bridge in The Stuntman, Kirk Douglas fighting his way through to a Cat People break-through in Bad&the Beautiful, or even Betty Schaeffer getting Joe writing again in Sunset Blvd.

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Good scenes all...I suppose one difference here is that Rick's working in series television...its a small scale enterprise. I DID like how Rick keeps wandering around the empty-ish backlot looking for first his make-up trailer and then the place where he'll film his scene and is always told something desultory "Go down there, take a left, take a right..." Its a just a day of rather thankless work in a "glamour" industry (In "real life," I've watched both TV episodes being filmed and movies being filmed and the TV work was ALWAYS more "dinky.")

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

in the Lancer case, it wasn't clear to me that all the scene's potential was used. The great praise Dalton finally receives for his performance didn't seem quite real to me - too much tell - and I expected we'd have the rug pulled from under us eventually, a la Mull Dr, but that shoe never dropped.

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I"ve seen this scene twice, now, and I still sort of feel that there may be a "there there" that some of us are missing. Again, most of the reviews have praised ALL the scenes in OAITH, its on track for a "Best Original Screenplay" nomination (Inglorious Basterds got one, Hateful Eight didn't and Django WON that Oscar), is there something we are missing, something worth studying? (Of course, Best Original Screenplay category is far less filled with potential nominees than Best Adapted screenplay.)

The super-serious Method Actress girl is part of this; the actress has been praised, might get one of those Oscar nominations that remind us "an 8-year old can do this job." She seems to be positioned to gently advise AND harshly humiliate Rick into doing a better job, and her praise "That's the best acting I've seen in my entire life" is an immediate joke(entire 8 years? Of which maybe only 4 have been cognizant?)

This sequence divides into "parts": Rick in the make-up room with his fatuous director(meant to be Sam Wanamaker, a real actor who looked more distinguished than the guy in THIS movie; he played villains in everything from The Wild Wild West to a Chicago mob boss versus Arnold in Raw Deal of 1986.) Rick with "Lancer" star James Stacy(allowing QT to bring in his second "Justified" star in as many movies -- Walton Goggins was in Hateful Eight; Timothy Olyphant here) -- the new star uncomfortably talking with the old star. The Great Escape bit.

And then on to "the meat": Rick's inability to say his lines right; the drunken self-laceration in his dressing room -- the triumphant return.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

But wait...before Rick doesn't say his lines right, he DOES say his lines right, in the opening scene(all fully filmed and edited for us) in which Olyphant's Stacy shoots down a foe and Rick says a few pithy villain things while stylishly eating a chicken leg.

I thought this was funny: Rick complained to the director about "putting all this stuff on me" so people couldn't tell who he was, but Rick/Leo in Wild Bill Hickock hair and Fu Manchu moustache and leather trim jacket and stylish hat...looks pretty cool. ACTS pretty cool. You can see Rick Dalton "had it" sometimes.

Jeez, I'm starting to act like I liked this scene more than I did. I'd put it this way: the elements I DID like(Leo's look; Olyphant, yeah I guess maybe the little girl) kept fighting the elements I didn't like(it just lacked the QT dialogue I really savor; it didn't much pay off.)

I will again cite the spectral and frail presence of Luke Perry as Wayne Maunder(a second Lancer star.) Perry died soon after filming, looks ill here, and sadly contributes to the feeling that this scene isn't "hitting on all cylinders."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A little personal trivia(expanded) on the theater where Sharon Tate(Margot Robbie) sees "The Wrecking Crew."

Its in Los Angeles, but miles away from the Hollywood Boulevard stretch of theaters that is famous for Graumann's Chinese, The Egyptian(where NXNW debuted in 1959) , the Pantages(which became a live venue; right next to the Frolic Room bar of LA Confidential fame and a cameo in OAITH.) And the Warner, Cinerama home to The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm and How the West Was Won.

Those Hollywood Boulevard theaters yielded to "Westwood Village" in the 70's...Hollywood had gotten "Times Square dirty" and the studios liked to premiere their movies In Westwood because it was more clean and upscale -- UCLA was right next to it and Beverly Hills/Bel Air wealth surrounded it.

Tate's Robbie goes into The Bruin theater to see The Wrecking Crew(UCLA's mascot is The Bruin...a variation on the Cal Bears of Berkeley up north.) Behind Robbie is The Village, a bigger, fake tower theater which is where all the movie premieres were held. (In OAITH, that theater is playing "George Peppard in Pendulum.")

From my personal dossier: when Barbra Streisand premiered A Star is Born at the Village, I stood and watched from two blocks away and found myself next to her ex-husband, Elliott Gould(now a fairly big star but already on the fade) and his friend. Yes, Elliott Gould and I watched his ex-wife's premiere. His friend said to Gould, "I'm sure she'd let you go in with her," and Gould declined.

When the Robert Redford-starring "Three Days of the Condor" premiered at the Village, Redford didn't attend and walk the red carpet -- but Jane Fonda did -- to big cheers. College town. Beloved.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

As a starving student, I couldn't always afford the Village or the Bruin first run movies, but I came up with the cash a few times: Three Days of the Condor(not at the premiere) and Marathon Man a year later. Woody Allen's Sleeper. Clint Eastwood in The Eiger Sanction. Mostly, I just "cruised the outside" to look at movie posters and all the big promotional material the studios shipped to Westwood Village.

As OAITH points out, back then, Westwood Village had a lot of book stores for browsing and buying. Sharon Tate buys Tess of the D'Urbanelles (sp?) for Roman there -- from grand old TV actor Clu Gulager.

Today, Westwood isn't very hot anymore. They still do movie premieres at the Village theater(I can tell from photos taken at them) but the book stores and college ambiance are gone. Its corporate. And in the 80's, a gang misfire killed a regular Westwood visitor and chilled the place forever as a "gathering place."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Two final Westwood Village stories(because when else, given that OAITH has immortalized it?)

1989: Burton's Batman played at The Village theater. I didn't go in -- the lines were too long, but I gazed at all the Batman paraphanalia outside the theater.

1978: I went to The Village theater to see Brian DePalma's The Fury with a sneak preview attached: Peter Hyams' Capricorn One. Each film came equipped with an exciting, Herrmanesque opening overture -- The Fury got John Williams, Cap One got Jerry Goldsmith.

I liked The Fury...but I LOVED Capricorn One. I realized later that the sneak preview crowd was filled with studio shills who laughed at every funny line and cheered every twist. But my friends and I didn't need studio shills to cheer the exciting climactic moment when stranded fugitive astronaut James Brolin sprints the 100 yards to a waiting crop duster piloted by Telly Savalas, with reporter Elliott Gould's hands outstretched to pull Brolin onto the wing of the plane. Cheers everywhere -- followed by a great aerial chopper vs crop duster chase and a most satisfying final scene(starring two Mr. Barbra Streisands -- Brolin and Gould.)

Funny that I saw Elliott Gould in a movie at The Village Theater a year or so after standing with Gould OUTSIDE the Village Theater.

I salute Capricorn One for its intended non-gory "NXNW"ish sense of fun, but the plot holes get to me these days; I've replaced it as my favorite of 1978 with ...National Lampoon's Animal House.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Given all of the above about Westwood Village, I suppose you can say that QT at least got my PERSONAL nostalgia going over his so-so scene with Sharon Tate there.

A so-so scene that the critics are telling us is a classic for all time.

Pay your money, take your choice.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I really dislike the feeling I often had when watching OUATIH that a sequence was in there *just because QT wanted it* rather than because it made the film better.

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I believe that this is called "self-indulgence," but QT has been allowed self-indulgence for quite some time now. Consider the fact that he has now made THREE movies in a row that concern themselves with bounty hunters who differ as to whether or not they kill their prey or put themselves in danger by keeping their prisoners alive. Its quite an issue to QT...but not a major issue of the day.

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We get a 35mm Projector montage just because QT wants it;

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Well, this is a love letter to QT's Hollywood...
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Sharon Tate takes off her lovely white boots in the cinema because QT wants her bare feet up on screen;

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I think so many critics spotted QT's foot fetish when it was 'hidden" that he now overdoes the bare feet almost to mock those critics. There are OTHER bare female feet in OAITH, too.

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Leo/Rick inserted into The Great Escape fell flat for me, whereas I found The Last Movie Star's insertion of Old Burt alongside Young Burt (esp. in Smokey & The Bandit) both thrilling & deeply moving. TLMS's insert moments felt really well conceived, QT's insert not so much.

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I agree with all of that. Seeing Old Burt and Young Burt juxtaposed was a sad reminder that we all get old...but its worse for movie stars. Powerful stuff. This Great Escape bit...rather escapes me. It reminded me of a beer commercial from some years ago where John Wayne in an old clip was inserted into a modern day military scene. Cute but..meaning what?

The MAIN thing I got from that Great Escape clip is that Rick Dalton NEVER had what it takes to be a major movie star. And again, I think Leo took some risk in playing that scene -- of course, HE knows he IS a major movie star.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The critics LOVE that scene with Sharon Tate in the movie theater watching "herself"(the real one) and about all I can do is salute it for its whimsical poignance and yet say...its not what I come to a QT movie for. And other critics seem to be digging on the entirety of Leo's adventure on the "Lancer" set but again, it just doesn't make that much impact on me.

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Agreed. Both scenes/sequences are just OK in my view....

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Since we are rather rarely on the same side of a cinematic argument swanstep(but always graciously so when we are not), I re-checked a crop of reviews of OAITH, and, while it has gotten a few pans(mainly about the "history change" at the end)...it sure has gotten a lot of raves, including "his best since Pulp Fiction" and "his best in years" and (tellingly) a "different kind of Tarantino movie...more mellow."

So you and I are on the same side here(partially) but sort of on the wrong side given all these raves.

Things like this are always for me to ponder. WHY are the critics so "ga-ga" over that "Sharon goes to the movies" scene? HOW is the extended "Rick Dalton on the Lancer set" really GOOD?(That child actress seems to be the key; kids get a free pass.)

Personally, I flashed on this:

Until it reaches its bloody finale, OAITH is certainly the least violent and nicest QT movie ever made. (LESS the scene where Brad Pitt punches out a Manson guy's face a few times and that IS violent.)

Its also the "nicest" film in terms of skipping the racial stuff.

There is not an "n-word" in the movie.

Cliff has one or two insulting lines about "the Mexicans," but they rather fit the character and the era.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I flashed all the way back to "Reservoir Dogs," which established QT's penchant for ultra-violence but also for offensive dialogue.

In "Reservoir Dogs," two white criminals -- Chris Penn and Michael Madsen -- greet each other with a series of racist and homophobic insults(Madsen is just out of prison and served time with blacks.) The dialogue is very offensive, and I have a feeling that QT simply wouldn't write it today. Moreover, some modern day critics who are offended by some of the un-PC lines in OAITH would have strokes if they heard this Reservoir Dogs dialogue.

But this: those two crooks who trade racist and homophobic remarks in Reservoir Dogs are both sociopaths - - they kill innocent bystanders and policemen, and one of them likes to torture people. How ELSE are they gonna talk?

Well, that was QT back then -- making a name for himself with a crime thriller with whacked-out dialogue passages of comedy. All these years later, QT can afford to be mellow....

...and get nice reviews over a nice scene where a nice Sharon Tate goes to the movies.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

OUATIH is being re-released this weekend to 1000 screens with 10 more minutes including (according to Sony) 4 completely new scenes. I'd advise waiting for reviews.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

...and I just might see it.

In the olden days, before VHS/DVD, my rule was to see any favorite movie three times in the theater...and that was it(even if it went away "forever.") I recall seeing Jaws the first time on opening day in June(people screaming massively at the big shocks) to Jaws the third time(in October, 1/4 full theater, no screams.) Three was enough for that one.

Anyway, I've seen OUITAH twice so...third time's an old-fashioned charm?

And note: The Hateful Eight's been playing with extended footage(in chapters) on Netflix, and I just can't commit to the viewing and seeking the scenes. I have to be in a theater, I think, to concentrate.

Here's hoping one of the new scenes in OUATIH is the one with James Marsden as Young Burt Reynolds.

And perhaps Tim Roth will no longer be billed as "cut."

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[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

According to the Guardian:

"The new footage isn’t added scene work. It’s two gags, a throwaway moment that gets a little stretched out and one thing that’s pretty cool but completely unnecessary. Moreover, they bookend the movie – two bits before the studio logo and two bits after all the closing credits have run."

This link has the details:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/26/quentin-tarantino-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I clicked on the link, realized that to read it was to read about the scenes -- thus, possible spoilers within and decided "ah, what the hell?" -- and read it.

It looks like one of my wishes is satisfied in the new scenes; the others sound interesting.

Also interesting: these four scenes are "before the studio logo" and "after the closing credits have run." Thus the movie as released last July is fully intact as we saw it then.

For now.

I may yet go for that "one more time' on the big screen, and I will most certainly buy the DVD -- will QT release it for the Xmas market?

Its funny...I can't say I was disappointed in OAITH -- Acts One and Three were great --- but Act Two was slow going in parts. And yet, a few months later I feel NOSTALGIC about the movie...its already doing that "fade into memory" that can take away the flaws and maintain only the best parts in memory.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Well, "bad news" /"good news" for me.

I had the afternoon free so I figured I go check out the four scenes/ten minutes.

Bought my ticket, headed in, watched the entire movie....no new scenes.

I sensed I was in trouble when the movie started with the Columbia lady logo...hey, no "commericals" ahead of it?

So I figured I had read the review wrong. Stuck the movie out all the way to the end and lights coming up on a blank screen. Nothing new.

I strolled out to have a little chat with the manager, informing him that his print of OAITH was the same print I saw in July...he could watch the next showing and see for himself. I told him I wasn't angry -- he said HE was angry -- with the studio for shipping the wrong print.

I got a refund. And I got to see OAITH one more time on the big screen ,pretty much for free.

Here is the "good news"(once again, for me, perhaps only.)

With this third viewing, I really liked the movie better than the first two times. Something about the passage of even three months gave the film a "classic in the rear view mirror" feeling. The details that I barely noticed the first time around came out full force -- like a shot of Leo's hands putting a fourth "Hopalong Cassidy" white coffee cup on the shelf next to three others..each of the four a different color on the white.

More of the 1969 bench posters and movie posters were legible to me: such LA staples as a female kids' show host called "Hobo Kelly," George Putnam on the news...and a poster for the 1968 movie "Candy" famous as an X rated movie with an A-list cast of male stars: Marlon Brando! Richard Burton! Walter Matthau!(in an X-rated movie? Yes...and he samples Candy offscreen during the movie, too), Ringo Starr! James Coburn!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The details were all great to see, but the entire film felt at once warmer, sadder, and more nostalgic this time. And I feel good ranking it highly among the QTs because -- even if the middle part sags a bit, its entirely watchable, which is not the case for me with everything from Kill Bill 1 and 2 through Django.

Andie McDowall's daughter -- the one who played Pussycat the Manson Girl -- shot off much more crazy vibes this time around, I "got" her performance. Pussycat is, in short, insane -- insane in her facial expressions , her quicksilver shift from sexy/available to raging/profane...its a very scary performance and a perfect encapsulation of the type of person who might BECOME a Manson girl.

Meanwhile, on first viewing. I was a bit put off by the "child prodigy" who plays the girl on "Lancer" with Leo, but this time I noticed how she has some of the best "official QT dialogue" in the movie, and how precise she is with her overall lack of emotion battling SOME emotion -- she cares a bit about Leo's feelings when he cries, but she is too much the pro to let it go to far ("Pumpkin Face is not usually the type of name I accept , but I will make an exception under these circumstances.) This little gal's performance is a reminder that good movie acting(good line reading, good timing, good facial expressions) can manifest at a very early age. No college necessary.

Pitt was STILL great. Leo -- better than in previous viewings, in certain ways(how often Rick Dalton CRIES is an interesting character trait, along with the stammering.)

QT's definitely on bare foot fetish overload with this one, I think he knows that's what he's known for, so he "rubs it in." Funny : one scene in the TV room at Spahnn ranch frames the TV through a roomful of bare feet -- all girls, except: one guy. And that one guy kills the sexual charge of the girls.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Anyway, OAITH comes out a stronger contender for ever for my favorite of 2019 and I've got a big decision to make: STILL seeing it with the extra ten minutes on the big screen (we can't be sure they will make the DVD.)

I'll probably see it again.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Here's a "Hitchcock connection" I caught this time more clearly, at least it is to me:

Early on, Brad and Leo in their car pause at a crosswalk and a small single file line of "Manson girls" walk by("Pussycat" catches Brad's eye.)

BEFORE that moment, DURING that moment, and AFTER that moment(as the girls keep walking on), they are all singing together -- in their high pitched girlish voices -- some sort of sing-song singalong song that always ends on the verse with:

"We are ONE...we are ONE...we are ONE.."

or maybe its'

"All are ONE...all are ONE...all are ONE."

I can't remember exactly.

But this: in cadence and irritation and suspense, this song very much reminds me of the infamous "Nickety Nackety" sing-a-long at the school in The Birds, that has driven people mad for almost 60 years now...

..and the "we/all are ONE": is a creepy indicator of cult behavior..

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I have now purchased the DVD of this film and watched the movie a couple of times.

It is growing on me.

I have now gone through the experience of anticipating the movie's release and enjoying the first time viewing(with reservations way up there in the thread.) I recall the tension building as the night of the Sharon Tate murders approached, minute by minute and my anxiety (and excitement) of wondering: "OK so just what is QT going to DO with that horrible night?"

As we know now, he converted it into a fantasy of triumph. Innocent lives were spared, evil lives were taken(with great joy and violence and laughter, all mixed together.) Some critic felt that while it was OK to kill Hitler differently in Inglorious Basterds(because he lost and killed himself in real life), it was "wrong" to save Sharon Tate and friends(because they DID die.) I think it is just the opposite -- Hitler dying in IG matched Hitler dying in real life -- "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" SAVES the life of Sharon Tate, and creates joy where once was despair.

Or something like that.

One thing I noticed this time around were the great little details all along the way:

When Brad Pitt agrees to fight Bruce Lee, he removes a "top wig" he is wearing as Leo's stunt double, and puts it on a wig stand.

When Sharon Tate agrees to pose for a photo next to the Matt Helm movie poster at the Bruin Theater, she hands her newly bought copy of "Tess of the D'Urbanelles" to the theater manager(who is played, I believe, by the Hispanic/Latino guy from "Napoleon Dynamite," all grown up.

When Brad Pitt goes home to his trailer to watch TV and feed his dog, there is a cut to a poster of a sexy blonde woman in a bikini. That's Anne Francis, and she had a "sexy female private eye show" called Honey West in 1965 or so. I loved that show. And so did Cliff Booth evidently. (Hey, maybe Cliff did stuntwork on that show and had a fling with the star?)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

There is plenty o' Bernard Herrmann on the soundtrack. The never-used "Death of Gromek" music from Torn Curtain in all scenes involving the flame thrower, And his Western music for an episode of Have Gun Will Travel(hey there, Richard Boone!) for the clip from Bounty Law where Leo exchanges spooky information about his latest kill with Michael Madsen; ("You killed Jody Jansen, the baby boy of Major General Marcus Jansen" "And just who is Major General Marcus Jansen?" "I'll be sure to introduce you when he gets here.")

On the "Extended Scenes" version of this clip, Leo's ride into town with a body slung over another horse(shades of Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight) before meeting Michael Madsen is much longer, and hence we get a heapin' helpin' of Herrmann. Sounds rather like his "Wrong Man" score.

I'll cover some of the other extended scenes later, but I have to linger on one great commercial for a fake product that Brad Pitt drinks all through the film: "Old Chattanooga" beer. The 1969-era fake commercial for this beer, narrated by a honey-voiced drawler of an old Southern Man(who calls it "Olllllllddd ChatanOOGA") , makes you CRAVE the rich foamy brew -- its like QT has another career waiting in commercials. In 1969.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

I'm glad you're digging OATIH on rewatches ecarle... maybe I'll give it another go soon. I was fundamentally bored by all the recreated backstory world-building first time through. QT's absolutely clear in interviews, e.g. here a couple of days ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEd7_7mhg2A
that that stuff is the plotless core of the film for him. So there just is an obstacle to be gotten over for people in the audience like me.

QT's also said a few things recently about his faves for 2019, in particular:
#3 Dr Sleep
#2 Crawl
#1 The Irishman

I'm surprised that Parasite isn't up there for him since QT was an early champion of Bong's, but maybe being blocked at Cannes by something limits one's ability to appreciate it!

I watched Crawl a few days ago in the light of QT's recommendation & it was a fairly competently-directed confined-with-critters-thriller, nothing special that I could see. Dr Sleep awaits I suppose...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I'm glad you're digging OATIH on rewatches ecarle... maybe I'll give it another go soon.

---

Oh, I'm not sure that your experience would particularly improve.

Something else is going on here, perhaps, with me.

"The micro" : I grew up in LA, the "93 KHJ" theme song was a big part of MY life too(though I wasn't driving then; it was on the radio in my room and in the backyards of many. Also, I realized this time, given that the "middle day" is February 9, 1969, that I had a close relative with a February 10 birthday, and the day after Brad Pitt watched Robert Goulet and Mannix in his tiny trailer -- I went with the family to see "2001" as a "birthday movie" for the other person, with the family. OK -- Brad's night was fictional, but my day was REAL -- and it is a memory I can summon up well enough. Leo and/or Brad also pass a poster for "Ice Station Zebra" and we saw that on MY birthday that year. (My getting a "birthday movie" was part of my upbringing -- the making of a mainstream movie man.)

"The macro": There is just still something about QT that put the hooks in me in a way that's pretty damn close to Hitchcock. For instance, I don't think QT has EVER made a movie in which violence and death is not a part of it(Hitchcock generally was the same way; even The Trouble with Harry had a death -- I suppose The Wrong Man is the least violent one, other than Waltzes from Vienna and other 30's stuff.) So -- unlike Scorsese or Spielberg -- QT is a genre director, like Hitchcock.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Haters may call us fanboys, but any of us who come to follow a particular filmmaker for both his/her "creative vision" AND his/her "showmanship" -- well, its our personal enjoyment to have. And QT has been pretty consistent since Inglorious Basterds in getting "prestige" Oscar love for SOMEBODY. Chris Walz: Oscars for IB and Django; QT Oscar (writing) for Django; QT Oscar(writing) for Pulp Fiction; Morricone Oscar for Hateful Eight. Nominations over the years for Jennifer Jason Leigh, Robert Forster, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson.

By the look of it, I'd say that OATIH is on track for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar(Pitt) and Best Original Screenplay(QT -- this category is always underpopulated.) With other nominations and hey -- maybe, just maybe, this could be QT's "The Departed" -- a Best Picture Oscar winner that's not quite as great as his earlier work. The stars are aligned this time.

My leisurely re-viewings of QAITH have revealed a whole lot more QT language rhythms, as when Leo talks of McQueen getting The Great Escape:

"Anyway, I didn't GET it; McQueen DID it...and I never had a chance."

Or the dialogue between Michael Madsen(always quirky and great) and Leo in that Bounty Law opening(and then the very stylish use of shadows for the opening shootout credit FOR Bounty Law; a reminder that QT is a great writer of dialogue AND a great visual stylist.)

And Al Pacino: one big scene, two little scenes and hey -- versus his old and boxy look in The Irishman, here Al is one stylish and cool old guy -- long hair, great goatee, great blue shirt and tie in one scene, great open white shirt in the other and ALWAYS -- that VOICE.

(Brenda Vacarro is barely on screen as Al's wife watching the Leo movie with him, but she's there.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And this:

There's a great interlude at the end of "Day Two" in which QT captures the day-into-dusk end of the day long BEFORE the August night of Sharon Tate's fate. Here, Jose Feliciano's soulful and rather sad version of "California Dreamin'" accompanies the various characters as they end their days: Sharon Tate emerges from the Bruin Theater with a small crowd; Pitt picks up Leo in front of Columbia Studios(posters for Funny Girl and McKenna's Gold are up on the outside wall) after Leo completes his day on "Lancer"; and James Stacy( Timothy Olyphant) gets on his motorcycle to leave HIS day's work on "Lancer." (If one is "in the know," one knows that eventually Stacy would lose an arm and a leg in a motorcycle accident.) But the feeling is mellow and "industry-wise": these folks are workers, too -- but in the making of movies and TV.

Bits and pieces standing out more in these re-viewings. And overall, a more successful sense of MOOD than I got the first time.

Another reason OATIH might grab the BP Oscar is that it is missing the kind of disgusting, "sick mind" sadistic scene that marred some of the QT's before it: Jackson's illustrated talk about what he did to Bruce Dern's son(Hateful Eight), the forced fight to the death of two black male slaves in a parlor (Django); the most vicious of the Bride's fights in "Kill Bill"(versus the psychotic Japanese schoolgirl.) Such offputting moments are not in OATIH; they are replaced with a kind of justified comic ultraviolence as Brad(in the main) and Leo dispatch some Manson Family members.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Anyway, I dunno, perhaps my "best films" of any given year start in a default position. If there is a QT movie out, its likely going to be my favorite going in.

Hitchcock was that way, particularly in the 50s. Here are my favorites of the years:

1950: Sunset Boulevard
1951: Strangers on a Train
1952: High Noon
1953: The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
1954: Rear Window
1955: To Catch a Thief (with some respect for the pathos, realism, and hope of Marty -- 1955's Bronx and its Saturday Night dance club for singles is an exotic world for me.)
1956: The Wrong Man(Fonda's only film for Hitch; a GREAT film.)
1957: 12 Angry Men(with Fonda again, a GREAT companion piece to The Wrong Man, and hey there, Martin Balsam -- your time is coming.)
1958: Damn Yankees
1959: North by Northwest(favorite film of the 50's)
1960: Psycho(favorite film of the 60s.)

That's pretty much it for my Hitchcock favorites(I can't really apply the rule to the forties; Frenzy and Family Plot are Number Twos behind The Godfather and The Shootist.) But its a lot of them, its the default position -- and that's where I am with QT today. Kinda fun how I ended up with one auteur in the first act of my life and another in the ...third?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Some more "touring" of the OAITH DVD:

I'm reminded of long-ago LA Times critic Charles Champlin's great statement: "You only see a movie once." In other words, there is only one viewing where things are a surprise. Such as the climax of OAITH, which draws a lot of its power from how the movie SEEMS to be heading for the REAL ending(Sharon Tate's horrible death) and then veers into comic joy(violent, yes, but comically so.)

But also in that first viewing, things tend to fly by in a jumble, such as:

Leo tells Pacino that "his car's in the shop" and narrator Kurt Russell zooms in to say : "That'a f'in' LIE" and we get one quick shot of Leo in a cop car having drunk-drive-wrecked his car for the last time." And what's GREAT about that shot of Leo in the cop car is the background: the neon sign of Hollywood Boulevard bar "The Frolic Room" -- made famous in "LA Confidential" and clearly selected here for that VERY reason. (BTW, I entered the REAL Frolic Room a few months after LA Confidential -- my favorite of the 90's -- came out, and there is still a bar in there, but boy is it a dive.)

---

Clips come jumbling by of a "Bounty Law" scene with Michael Madsen and then just a LITTLE of Rick Dalton singing "Behind the Green Door" on Hullabaloo(with three comely female dancers, more on them momentarily.)

In the movie proper, these clips come flying by as Pacino says that he has studied them(in full) to prepare for meeting Rick Dalton.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

On the DVD "extras," one can watch a much longer version of the Madsen "Bounty Law" scene -- and the ENTIRE "Behind the Green Door" Hullabaloo number. And THAT's a hoot.

First of all: "Behind the Green Door." That's a famous 70's "mainstream porn" movie title, yes? (I weirdly recall a college buddy telling me the whole story of it, start to finish, and I couldn't make heads or tails out of it.)

But "Behind the Green Door" is also a 1956 country-rock novelty number and, after first trying "Don't Fence Me In," QT and Leo decided to put THIS number in the movie.

"Hullabaloo" was a real show (with "Shindig" as its rival) that put TV stars into host roles with musical folks, and so here's Rick Dalton singing( a LITTLE off key, but not a lot) while smoking. Points to Leo for his many exaggerated facial expressions - other than line reading, a fine actor's facial expressions are part of the toolbox(think: Jack Nicholson) and Leo is downright hilarious here.

But and as well: those three dancers. Pretty, per usual. ALWAYS smiling, almost maniacally so.

But also choreographed -- by the famous Toni Basil("Oh Mikey you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind, Hey Mickey!") for a high-powered mix of athleticism(the dancing looks like its KILLING them, they are snapping their bones with every move), comedy(when Leo sings: "Midnight...one more night without sleeping" ...they all rest their heads on their hands) ,and ...oh yeah...sex appeal. A lot of that.

Its a fine sequence and I'm glad QT put it on the DVD start to finish.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A NOT so fine outtake on the DVD has Leo's Rick Dalton(in full facial hair Lancer bad guy mode) off-set talking to his director Sam Wanamaker(Nicholas Pryor.)

What threw me from the start when I first saw QAITH at the theater was Pryor's over-the-top, cheesy "fake auteur" TV director character, Sam Wanamaker. Because there was a REAL Sam Wanamaker and he mainly acted on movies and in TV, and he was a very handsome sober, serious, almost Presidential presence -- including a 1986 turn as a mob boss in the Schwarzenegger action pic, Raw Deal.

How did Sam Wanamaker turn into THIS guy?

Anyway, the Wanamaker character's no fun in the movie, and to see him jabbering on in improv dialogue with Leo is ...no fun either.

Except: in both the movie and in this outtake, I must say that the placement of Leo DiCaprio into long hair and goatee makes him look extremely handsome. Macho. And more stylishly macho than he looked in "The Revenant." Its almost as if, to compete with Brad Pitt's fine-aged natural handsomeness, Leo was given his "General Custer" look to improve HIS looks. And it worked.

And yet, this. Watching Leo and Brad together in QAITH, and KNOWING they are among our top-most stars of this era I had to say: they ain't Newman and Redford. THOSE two guys looked like movie stars back then. Leo is always struggling for such looks, and Brad is perhaps a bit below Redford.(Top movie stardom IS a face game, as well as a voice game.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

"Take a bite. Take a bite and feel all right."
"Take a bite of a red apple."

Kudos to this cool, snappy line, read on the DVD commercials by either QT himself or Kurt Russell. Something about the phrasing.

Oh, and also said one time -- on camera doing a "facial impression" -- by James Marsden as Burt Reynolds. He's OK.

And also said by the announcer of Bounty Law(I swear they found the guy who used to announce Quinn Martin shows like The FBI.)

"Bounty Law...brought to you by Red Apple cigarettes. Take a bite. take a bite and feel all right. Take a BITE...of a Red Apple."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Consider this:

OAITH might just win Best Picture(and Best Director)

..because QT swears that OATIH is his "second to last movie," it got a lot of good reviews, it stars three of the most major stars in Hollywood(Leo, Brad, and Al), plus a hot new star(Margot Robbie) and...

...if the final movie isn't as good as this one...the Academy will never get a chance to award QT a Best Picture, ever.

Also, like Scorsese's "The Departed", this would be a chance to give a "lesser" movie (than Taxi Driver or Raging Bull; than Pulp Fiction or Jackie Brown) by a famed director the Oscar anyway.

I wonder if Scorsese realizes this -- after all, he is now suggesting that maybe, The Irishman is HIS final film.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A note on the opening Columbia Lady logo that starts OAITH -- and the evocative sound effects under it.

In recent years, when Tarantino has made films in conjunction with established studios(OTHER than Miramax and The Weinstein Company) , he has taken care to use "old"(late 1960's style) studio logos. For "Inglorious Basterds"(2009), he used the late sixties "Universal" logo (still a pretty cool rendering of the earth floating in outer space). And for "Django Unchained" and now "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," QT has used the "Columbia Lady" as she looked around 1962 or so -- very formal and classic, not the "modernized" version of the 70's. Its very nostalgic.

But I noticed this when looking at the DVD of "Once Upon a Time In Hollywood"...the sounds that QT has chosen to put under the Columbia Lady logo: the swirling, chill and watery winds of...storm clouds gathering? The winds of time blowing us into the past? The ominous chill wind blowing Old Hollywood away? The storm that was the Manson Family upon Los Angeles culture?

I have no idea. All that I DO know is that those sounds are there, they create emotion(particularly in conjunction with the classic Columbia logo) and...

...its another reason OAITH has a certain "classic movie" feel.

PS. Hitchcock was famous in his later years for "messing" with the MGM logo for NXNW and the Paramount logo for Psycho. He then made six films at Universal and steadfastly refused to ever open those films with the Universal logo(he would simply have the first credit say : A Universal Picture.) Thus are QT and Hitchcock linked: the importance of the opening logo.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Dr Sleep awaits I suppose...

I have now seen Doctor Sleep... and it's OK in a King TV-miniseries sort of way. Nothing special on any level - not story-wise (the story preposterously jumps the action to Colorado and the Overlook Hotel for its fan-service climax; I guess you have to laugh), not scares-wise, not fun-wise, not performance-wise (except for a few female baddies), not dialogue-wise... If DS is seriously QT's 3rd fave film for 2019 then he has truly terrible taste.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I have now seen Doctor Sleep... and it's OK in a King TV-miniseries sort of way.

---

Given our recent discussions here of the Robert Bloch career as a horror novelist (pretty minor, really except for Psycho), Stephen King is rather what happens when "Robert Bloch becomes a superstar." There sure have been a lot of King movies and King TV mini-series, and there's plenty of dross to go along with the gold, in Stephen King land.

But what IS "the gold"? Well, the original Shining, certainly , because of Kubrick and Nicholson. (King hated it, but a TV version evidently was worse.) Carrie (a movie I find too shrill overall and too slow --its 90 minutes of build-up to a just-OK climax.) Misery (nothing supernatural and hence VERY scary -- the terror of being crippled and held prisoner by a hair-trigger psychopath.) And ironically: The Shawshank Remdemption --a prison movie tearjerker about the triumph of Hope.

"IT" is the biggest King hit yet, yes and yet -- nobody seems to be calling it a classic.

I hold the very emotional "Green Mile" as my wobbling favorite of 1999 -- I liked the horrific electric chair execution gone wrong scene and the tear-filled climax -- but it seems to have not held on as any sort of classic at all.

And then there's a bunch of junk from Stephen King.

But he's still THE name in modern horror, and Dr. Sleep -- which I have not seen -- certainly seems hellbent on bringing back that "Shining" feeling. Its Psycho II, isn't it?

Reviews suggested that "The Hat Lady" is a scary supernatural villainess but...a bit too out there for me.

---

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Nothing special on any level - not story-wise (the story preposterously jumps the action to Colorado and the Overlook Hotel for its fan-service climax; I guess you have to laugh),

---

There ya go -- all visible in the trailer -- "Shining II."

--

not scares-wise, not fun-wise, not performance-wise (except for a few female baddies),

--

The Hat Lady?

---

not dialogue-wise... If DS is seriously QT's 3rd fave film for 2019 then he has truly terrible taste.

---

Well, QT likes Psycho II better than Psycho. 'nuff said.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

At some point in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, we get a "morning moment" of hot young director Roman Polanski having a cup of morning coffee in his backyard -- a reminder that no matter how rich and famous you are...life is life. You have a cup of coffee in the backyard and start your day.

Polanski's dog runs up to him and Polanski shoos him away saying something like "Go away, Saperstein!"

Its a nice "in joke" from writer-director Tarantino.

Saperstein -- DR. Saperstein -- was the name of the villainous warlock pediatrician played by Ralph Bellamy in Polanski's 1968 hit "Rosemary's Baby."

So..Polanski WOULD go on and name his dog after a character in his biggest hit. (To date: Chinatown was coming...)

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