Second Act "Three People - Three Stories" (SPOILERS)

"Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" is the first QT film in some time NOT to have "Chapters" written out.

But it still has a great sense of structure:

ACT ONE(A Saturday in February 1969) Establishes Leo and Brad(as a team), the state of Hollywood, the state of Leo's career(via Al Pacino's "tough love" straight talk), the presence of Polanski and Tate; and Brad's life in a trailer with his dog behind the Van Nuys Drive-In(a guy who looks like Brad Pitt spends Saturday night watching "Mannix" with his dog).

ACT TWO: (A second day in February 1969) QT deliberately "splits up" his three protagonists and gives us (1) Leo's hard day on the "Lancer" set; (2) Brad's suspenseful visit to the Spahn Ranch and (3) Sharon Tate's sweet visit to the theater to see herself in "The Wrecking Crew."

ACT THREE: (The hot August night that Sharon Tate was killed, August 8, 1969) Buildings light up all around Hollywood(the Cinerama Dome, Taco Bell, Der Weinerschitzel) and -- way too fast -- the hours pass until the Manson killers arrive at Cielo Drive.

The third act(night of the murders) has a certain too-fast pace to it(Sharon Tate's last night goes away too fast) and is thus scary and exciting. The first two acts take their time to meander around Hollywood -- with the spooky sidelight of the Manson Family's presence in Hollywood, too.)

Which brings me to this: in some ways, it feels like the "core" of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is, indeed, the second act/second day...in which QT lets us get "up close and personal" with Leo's Rick Dalton(falling and rising as a TV guest star AND an actor); Brad's Cliff Booth(coming upon the Spahn Ranch in the most suspenseful early scene of the picture, and demonstrating effortless heroism there, the kind that Rick can only PLAY) and Margot Robbie's Sharon Tate getting to taste the joys of movie stardom as paying customers laugh and applaud at her work.

The Sharon Tate sequence is perhaps as little "like Tarantino" as any scene he has directed. It has little in the way of peppy dialogue(though Tate's chit-chat with the theater ticket taker has some of that -- "You Patty Duke? You the girl from Peyton Place?" -- in regard to her Valley of the Dolls stardom). Its really about the nicest and sweetest sequence QT has ever written and directed, even if it isn't much sharp fun as we usually expect from QT.

Meanwhile, Leo in his sequence and Brad in his sequence here get to define their characters, and Leo (of the two of them) gets some of that spicy QT dialogue to deliver. Brad's sequenc is more quiet and measured in the dialogue. It sort of reminded me of Michael Madsen as a quiet strip club bouncer in "Kill Bill 2" quietly arguing with his boss -- "I'm a bouncer, but there's nobody out there ....to....bounce.")

Anyway, my takeaway is that the "three parallel scenes for three parallel characters" in the second act of OAITH is the "core" of the movie, what it is really about, in the end.

But the final act is built for satisfying fantasy thrills.