Quentin Tarantino's Manson murders movie

Or Papa John Phillips, the Wolf King of LA.

eheh I have just realized Brad Pitt in this is basically... Jacques Dutronc (french singer for those who are not familiar) !

https://resize-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/culture/cinema/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-premiere-photo-de-dicaprio-et-brad-pitt-dans-le-nouveau-tarantino-1548710/25196318-1-fre-FR/Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood-premiere-photo-de-DiCaprio-et-Brad-Pitt-dans-le-nouveau-Tarantino.jpg

https://static1.puretrend.com/articles/1/11/29/21/@/1309118-jacques-dutronc-en-compagnie-de-la-580x0-2.jpg

I wonder if Tarantino has read this book, Creepy Crawling: Charles Manson and the Many Lives of America's Most Infamous Family

Jeffrey Melnick's book--read it over the summer.

What the heck is this movie even about? It looks fun, but I'm worried it will deal with the Manson story in a weird and superficial way.

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Thursday, March 21, 2019 4:55 AM (yesterday)

Can he actually do this story justice or is it going to just be a bunch of wish fulfillment nonsense?

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Thursday, March 21, 2019 5:00 AM (yesterday)

Are there any indications that this is "about" the Manson murders, rather than adjacent?

― change display name (Jordan), Thursday, March 21, 2019 5:17 AM (yesterday)

It seems to be less about Manson than I maybe thought. And I didn't get the final thing where the girl whispers to DiCaprio that he's a great actor, and DiCaprio starts crying. So it left me a little puzzled, and that's better than a trailer that spells out the film from start to finish.

― clemenza, Thursday, March 21, 2019 11:47 AM (yesterday)

Anyway, for all the Manson talks, I get the impression it's mostly a movie about... making movies ?

― AlXTC from Paris, Thursday, March 21, 2019 9:23 PM (yesterday)

Yeah, this seems to me to be less "a Manson Murders movie" and more "a Hollywood 1969 movie which happens to include the Family." I wonder if Tarantino has read this book, Creepy Crawling: Charles Manson and the Many Lives of America's Most Infamous Family -- it's a kind of anti-Joan Didion look at not just Manson, but out how the counterculture generally, and the Family specifically, easily insinuated itself into the movie and music industries in the late 60s, and how quickly everyone shut the gates and stopped "slumming" after the murders. (Terry Melcher, e.g., was a *lot* more involved with the Family then he let on later, and at one point was interested in having Sandra Good move into his house and act as an, um, "domestic servant" to him and Candace Bergen.)

― Plinka Trinka Banga Tink (Eliza D.), Thursday, March 21, 2019 11:16 PM (yesterday)

As far as I can tell, the entirety of Tarantino's public statements are:

in November 2017, on the then-untitled film: “It’s not Charles Manson, it’s 1969." cautioned Quentin Tarantino

February 2018 press release announcing title Once Upon A Time In Hollywood: Tarantino describes it as “a story that takes place in Los Angeles in 1969, at the height of hippy Hollywood. The two lead characters are Rick Dalton, former star of a western TV series, and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth. Both are struggling to make it in a Hollywood they don’t recognize anymore. But Rick has a very famous next-door neighbor…Sharon Tate.”

“I’ve been working on this script for five years, as well as living in Los Angeles County most of my life, including in 1969, when I was seven years old. I’m very excited to tell this story of an LA and a Hollywood that don’t exist anymore. And I couldn’t be happier about the dynamic teaming of DiCaprio & Pitt as Rick & Cliff.”

Tarantino in April 2018: the film is set in LA at the height of the counterculture revolution and of New Hollywood; there are two leads and everyone else are interweaving characters somewhat in the style of Pulp Fiction.

can we retire this "hmm how will he handle this deep biographical examination of the Manson Family??!" handwringing itt?

tbf this thread kicked off w/ an article titled "Quentin Tarantino Prepping New Movie Tackling Manson Murders" during a time QT was screening that Manson doc and peddling his weird conspiracy theories

not sure that QT can pull of a manson biopic

I'm guessing Tarantino has been quite content to let the Manson hand-wringing proceed a pace.

nah I think he can do it, Roman Polanski is gonna machine-gun Charlie to death and be carried shoulder-high down Hollywood Boulevard

i think it’ll be dope

cannot WAIT for Lena Dunham as a gypsy

I believe she is playing a Mansonite named Gypsy?

There wasn't even a "Hollywood" by 1969.

huh?

Hollywood in the '30s/'40s sense of the word--primarily the studio system--was gone almost two decades by 1969.

Isn’t that exactly what sic’s quotes are saying?

a story that takes place in Los Angeles in 1969, at the height of hippy Hollywood. The two lead characters are Rick Dalton, former star of a western TV series, and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth. Both are struggling to make it in a Hollywood they don’t recognize anymore.

More like HollyWEIRD, amirite?

Hollywood in the '30s/'40s sense of the word--primarily the studio system--was gone almost two decades by 1969.

― clemenza, Friday, March 22, 2019 6:52 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

strictly speaking there was never a singular "hollywood" identical to the motion picture industry, b/c studio facilities and offices were spread out across urban los angeles (as they are today). "hollywood" was always a casual bit of synecdoche.

in other words, 1969 is different to 1939, no doubt. 2019 is different to 1969, as well. and yet people have used the term "hollywood" as a synonym for the U.S. film (and, by the '50s at the latest, TV) industry since the 1910s and through to the present, with minimal misunderstanding. tarantino's movie takes place w/in the industry. so what exactly is the problem?

a burbank they don't recognize anymore

Keep Hollyweird weird

"once upon a time in century city"

Can’t wait for this. Damn, it’s even made me want to watch death proof for gosh sake

Death Proof is good if you like either car chases or Tarantino hang-out dialogue (nb: haven't seen the extended DVD version, saw Grindhouse in 2007 and 2017). better than Django, maybe better than Inglorious.

The sign said HOLLYWOODLAND until 1949, i'm not sure i realised it was so recently that they changed it.

The sign was at its most dilapidated in the late 70s;

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Hullywod-Sign.jpg

I'll watch a couple movies made in Hollyweird in 1969 while youse guys are at this

not a good year tbh.

they shoot horses, don't they?

In what universe is Death Proof better than IB or even Django ferchristsake?

I'll take Death Proof over Django any day

[23,200 posts on which is tarantino's worst movie]

Basterds, Django, and Eight all seem forced to me. excited for this one cause it seems more casual, shooting for a lower bar maybe

In what universe

I haven't rewatched Basterds, so I'm unsure of its specific placing among the lower ranks; Django is the only QT I think is bad.

Death Proof had a lot of weak spots but the car crash sequence that closes the first half is really close to peak Tarantino.

The creep if weak, overly indulgent Tarantino dialogue is all there in Death Proof but the car stuff is so good I can forgive it.

as my friend has observed:

"What kind of movies does Tarantino like?

CRAP.

And that's FINE.

But HOW LONG is the crap that he likes? 82 minutes."

Yeah I mean it’s not an uncommon opinion that things went downhill after his longtime editor passed away.

what crap movies does tarantino like? i mean, jack hill movies are rough around the edges, but i wouldn't say they were crap. and certainly the classic hollywood and asian action films he appreciates aren't crap. or pabst or, heck, doesn't he pretty much like everything? (except john ford, i suppose.) i remember ray carney publishing some idiotic thing in the baffler a million years ago about how tarantino represented a debased culture since he was basing his aesthetic on trash and it was a tiresome argument then. that doesn't mean everything t touches turns to gold, not hardly.

Finding gold in trash is... his thing. He’s not oblivious to or unappreciative of the classics either, obviously. The marriage of high/low is the appeal. I don’t know why this needs to be talked about in 2019 but hey Morbs.

I just want to say that John Ford was an excellent filmmaker

yeah, he wrote a thing for his rep theater's site about how great Ulzana's Raid is (true!) but bashing Ford's Fort Apache.

it's incredible to me how many typos and grammar mistakes are in anything tarantino writes. i guess this has been known for a while. is he dyslexic?

yes

I don't love Tarantino, but I don't completely hate him, either. To me, his films are a bit thin on heavy ideas, and they throw a lot of style at you. But on second thought, I'll bet that like me he's read a lot of the Manson material and felt there was a mystique there, or a lot of nagging questions, when you read all that stuff, you feel unsatisfied (they're all about the gore and the beautiful people who died), and maybe, like the Aquarius thing, getting into the milieu around Manson might give you a more complete sense of what was going on in LA back then. Maybe that's more of what I'm looking for, so I'll def watch it.

The thing I hate about Manson movies is that the dudes never look like Manson, but this one does, and I always find that distracting. The other movies make Manson too Jesus-like.

But HOW LONG is the crap that he likes? 82 minutes.

nah, I saw The Hallelujah Trail at the New Bev

obv I am talkin the AIP drive-in crap

Death Proof deserves some wry admiration I think for being a movie that just consists of QT’s kinks onscreen for the length of a feature.

Would be cool if some characters show up from Pychon’s Inherent Vice

Mary Harron--first I've heard of this:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1759744/

Wouldn't be shocked if it turns out to be the better film.

Dr. Who (Matt Smith) as Manson!?!?

So we have The Haunting of Sharon Tate, Charlie Says and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Apparently, there is also a forthcoming Sharon Tate biopic from Kate Bosworth, though she's indicated it won't be Manson-centric.

50th anniversary etc.

Has there been a young Charles Manson movie yet? There should be. We have to get to the bottom of how Charles Manson became Charles Manson!