Pitt's Close Shave at the Spahn Ranch

One of the better scenes in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" has to do with the arrival of Cliff Booth(Brad Pitt) at the Spahn Ranch.

Its the "Brad Pitt companion piece scene" to the "Leo DiCaprio scene" in which Leo has a dramatic day FAKING being a Western villain (on the Lancer set), while Brad actually IS a Western hero(at the Ranch). Pitt slowly surmises that something is wrong about this grop of hippies having taken over the ranch of a friend from long ago, (Bruce Dern's George Spahn) and proceeds to confront the lying, ever-menacing hippie girls and boys with his demands to see for himself if Spahn is OK.

Having found out that Spahn IS OK (well, sort of, as Pitt tells the psycho flower girl who brought him here), Spahnn confronts the grimy male doofus who put a knife in the tire of his employer's car. There is some "Western hero satisfaction" in seeing Pitt pummel the hippie creep -- along with a peek at war hero Cliff Booth's capacity for merciless physical violence.

But for all the satisfying heroism of Pitt's beatdown of the creepy hippie, there comes a moment when one of the hippie girls goes off to get "Tex" Watson, warns him of Cliff's beatdown. Tex rides his horse at top speed gallop to get to Cliff -- and just barely misses getting there.

QT gives us a long shot of Cliff's car in the long distance, turning a corner as "93 KHJ" dj comes on to announce the end of a long day.

I see that shot of Cliff's car turning the corner as a subtle statement: Pitt just missed getting killed.

Yes he's a tough guy and yes he can punch people out, and yes he takes on Tex and Company at the end of the movie.

But figure here: Tex was coming with a gun. To shoot Cliff. Possibly with the help of the other crazy hippies all around.

Seems that way to me, at least. The shot of Cliff's distant car turning the corner feels like "a barely clean getaway."

In real life, the Manson Family killed at least one REAL stunt man at the Spahn ranch.