Filming a TV Series ("Lancer") ...On a Sunday afternoon?
This is perhaps a minor point about this movie, but I noticed it:
The structure of the movie:
The first act of the movie takes place on a Saturday: Leo and Brad meet with agent Pacino during the daytime, Leo and Brad see "the Manson girls" in the late afternoon, Brad drops Leo off at home by nighttime(its February 8, the sun sets early).
Saturday night is given over to how to three people spend it (1) Brad, alone in his trailer with his paltry self-cooked food, his dog and "Mannix"; (2) Sharon Tate, at a big Playboy mansion party with movie stars and rock stars, and (3) Leo, ALSO alone, drinking hard, floating in his pool, and studying his lines for the next day's work on the "Lancer" TV pilot. (Interesting: on this Saturday night, the two handsome men are home alone; the pretty woman is out with her husband and near-boyfriend at once.)
Act Two is Sunday, February 9. And it strikes me now as very weird that Leo's Rick Dalton spends SUNDAY reporting to a dressing room(first) and then a soundstage to film a day's work on the "Lancer" pilot. I wonder why QT (as the film's writer) felt that this TV series would and could film on a Sunday. Maybe TV series DO sometimes film on Sunday , on tight schedules.
While Leo films his TV episode(with moving, dramatic results) on this Sunday, Brad spends the day repairing Leo's TV antenna, meeting Charles Manson(from a distance), reminiscing about the time he fought Bruce Lee and how/why he is suspected of the murder of his wife -- and then driving onto the Spahnn Ranch and a memorable confrontation with the Mansons.
On this same Sunday, Sharon Tate watches herself in a movie(a bad one, "The Wrecking Crew") and we get a taste of the sweet innocent she supposedly was in real life.
The sun sets on that Sunday with Leo done filming for the day; Sharon leaving the movie theater...and Brad likely barely missing death at the Manson family's hands(he drives away in time and picks up Leo from the studio.)
It is interesting to me that the first two acts of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood focus on a Saturday and a Sunday; that we see on a Saturday night that the two men live lonely, woman-less lives; and that a TV pilot called "Lancer" would make cast and crew work on a Sunday.
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The movie then leaps forward months to the Friday night-into-Saturday morning of August 8 and 9, 1969...and goes its own special way.