Quentin Tarantino's Manson murders movie

also i don't think that is inherently problematic for a film to reflect a director's sexuality, as such i'm pretty confused why he gets so much hate for this especially when it's always been such a minute FOOTnote in his films

i first noticed it in kill bill vol. 1, and despite what people on twitter think, it's not a very interesting thing to notice

xposts!

Morbs: yes, and outside

he has a foot thing.

that's nice, dear

it's for his own titillation.

a) when Tate puts her feet up in the theatre, it's an indicator of how she's dropping the presentation of her dressed-up day out. She wasn't recognised outside, though she really wanted to be; in the darkness afterward she relaxes into celebrating herself, shoes off and feet up as though she's at home.

Cliff is the most casual character in the film before Pussycat re-suceeds at hitching. Tate is making an image. Rick is starting to unravel because his image has collapsed and he doesn't know how to make a new one. Lee is hypersensitive to how hard he has to work be taken seriously at all, then again to be acknowledged on top of that. Janet is hypervigilant to keeping her set running smoothly and safely for hundreds of workers. Schwarz is constantly "on." Wanamaker wears a blowdried coif and a cape to go to work in dust. Throughout, Cliff projects an ease and a lack of face, from his carriage to his clothes to the carelessness with which he serves Brandy.
When Pussycat puts her feet on his dash, squishing the pads against the windscreen, he's reframed as an example of uptight society, not a barely-engaged outsider from it. His car is kinda shitty, maybe, but he has a car. His denim is weathered, but it's a style. The scene sets up the new protagonist-type role he's going to take in the following third of the film. Pussycat flexes her toes for sheer celebratory pleasure; Cliff has until now been the film's character most comfortable in his body, but now we see that by contrast he's wary, tense, and conscious.

Bridget Fonda wiggling her toes at DeNiro in Jackie Brown is sexual: this is not a flaw. Characters in film lean over to display cleavage, and they flex biceps and hold, and they touch each other's faces, and they let legs show through long slits in dresses or from behind curtains. Humans have bodies in real life too. DeNiro's character has not had female contact in years, and probably has no particular interest in feet. Fonda's character is able to spark his libido out in the open before Odell leaves, and in a way that puts him on the back foot, by flirting at him with her feet. If another director would have had her drop an ice cube down her bikini, or had Joe Mangianello bend at the waist to tie his shoe in a gas station, that doesn't make QT incorrect to have Fonda bend her tarsals.

b) stop the fucking presses, Quentin Tarantino puts his personal interests into his movies? holy shit what a revelation, let's go back and excise every one of his obsessions from every script he's ever written so that they immediately become 90% more interesting

To me, the foot thing is just a funny and peculiar maker's mark that we can have fun with too.

holy canoli I'm starting to think ilx has a foot fetish

I like Orson Welles' remarks about Luis Bunuel:

He's a rich feeding ground for that sort of critic, because it's all true about him. You can take off and say he likes feet and all that. Jesus, it's all true. He's that kind of intellectual, and that kind of Catholic. He is a deeply Christian man who hates God as only a Christian can, and, of course, he's very Spanish. I see him as the most supremely religious director in the history of the movies. A superb kind of person he must be. Everyone loves him.

Booming post sic

xp

please don't sully Bunuel by bringing him to a thread dedicated to an overindulged hollywood hack.

Complain all you want, Tarantino will not be defeated.

he still sez he's quitting after the next film

and the world / will be a better place

morbs you’re going to see to it though right

lol see it*

not even if it's a Star Trek

take 57 of the kill bill foot scene:

QT: i think we nearly got it that time

Going back to the Lee scene for a sec, I feel it serves dual purposes not yet discussed (or at least under-discussed).

A. It illustrates part of why Booth is seen as damaged goods and a troublemaker. While on the clock he literally gets into a fight with one of the stars of the show, which unto itself is/was a reason for getting fired and/or blacklisted. Booth pretty much only has a career afterwards because Dalton is still getting work and making it a package deal, but as we see, even that isn't a sure thing anymore.

B. It lets the audience in that Booth is the kind of guy who can and will go toe-to-toe with someone like Bruce Lee. Later on, in his encounters w/the tire slashing guy and ultimately the would-be killers, the audience's sense of suspense is slightly removed and replaced with anticipation of just how severely he's gonna fuck 'em up.

someone lmk when you all stop talking about feet

but also: great post, sic!!

Self-XP

I noticed on another forum someone alluding to a similar thing happening re: Dalton & the two flamethrower scenes early on, kind of a 'Chekov's Flamethrower' thing.

also, to your point about Cliff being the 'superhero' of the movie: the jump sound effects when he's fixing the TV antenna early on (which is also a callback to Kill Bill)

if we had a best original critical dialogue of the week feature, sic would have a strong contender with that post

agree with all, Pitt’s fictional character defeating fictionalized Bruce Lee isn’t an intentional slight on the real Lee, it’s a nod toward the audience that this is a character in a movie and that we’re to believe he’s going to do extraordinary things

Yeah, that scene was such a goof I don't see why anyone would take issue with it. Bruce Lee's reputation (like that of Muhammed Ali, for that matter) is downright legendary, so getting his ass kicked by a fictional stunt man? BFD.

Now, why anyone should care that Brad Pitt's character can do that and other things, I don't know, but he's pretty entertaining doing them.

Random thoughts:

- Loved the recreation of 1969 LA, as someone who spends a lot of time immersed in the era as a result of various interests and research projects. I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it as much had I not been able to geek out over the little details ("hey, there's that club I saw mentioned in the Free Press archives!")

- If you dug the bursts of KHJ, check out www.reelradio.com — hours of old airchecks from KHJ and other markets.

- I wouldn't have cared for the ending all that much either way, but the almost cartoon-like dispatching of the Family didn't sit that well after seeing Charlie Says. Obviously, they did a horrible crime, but considering the abuse the Manson women themselves suffered (both from Charlie and their backgrounds), it felt a bit gross, not much like the satisfaction of killing off a bunch of Nazis.

- I thought the use of a flamethrower was interesting, reminded me of a lot of Vietnam imagery. Considering Rick (and the film) represents the old generation that the counterculture displaces, perhaps no coincidence it's from one of his World World II movies — a clear "good guys vs bad guys" conflict, as opposed to the war those hippies types Rick hates are protesting.

Cliff doesn't even defeat Lee - Bruce takes one (1) fall in the sizing-up section of a constrained spar, before Lee is taking Cliff seriously.

(The moment felt unsatisfying to me because of the cheat of the off-screen throw, and cartoonish dent & foley, but the scene is showing there's much more to Cliff than his mien and ambition indicate. It's not saying that Lee was less than his demonstrated skill & incredible ability IRL.)

A little detail I liked about Cliff is all the scars you can see all over his body throughout the movie.

the thing people are complaining about is not so much that he beats bruce lee but that the film depicts bruce lee as an asshole

there's also the whole racial connotations which don't really need to be explained.

At least he didn't have Bruce Lee using the n word.

but that the film depicts bruce lee as an asshole

it does not do this in any way

Eh, sure it does. At least a little.

That's why Cliff picks a fight with him.

Cliff is the asshole in that exchange.

Sure. But it comes after Bruce Lee boasting about besting Cassius Clay, and his fists being lethal weapons and whatnot.

Sure. But it comes after Bruce Lee boasting about besting Cassius Clay, and his fists being lethal weapons and whatnot.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, July 30, 2019 4:18 PM (0 seconds ago)

bingo

Bruce is at work. He's writing "Bruce Lee."

Gonna need smelling salts to contemplate the unprecedented effrontery of some "bragging" taking place in a conversation about whether Cassius Clay might win a fight

Bruce single-handedly dispatching the entire Manson Family while the ghost of Ip-Man smiles from the heavens would have placated everyone.

enjoying sic's takes in this thread

same

what pct of the opening-weekend audience knows who Cassius Clay was?

btw I never heard of The Wrecking Crew til this thing came along

Same percentage that would buy Damian Lewis as Steve McQueen under that weird Sonny Corleone wig.

Yeah, wtf was going on there? I thought they mostly did a good job casting the celebrity roles, but that was just way off.

I saw it again tonight ( sung to the tune of the Mamas & the Papas lol)

I took sic’s take on the Cliff vs Bruce scene into consideration & it def plays better in that light.

ie that the purpose of the scene is showing more of what Cliff’s about than any kind of deliberate slight on Bruce. Cliff’s stuntman archetype in general always had something to prove even when there was nothing TO prove, like the only reason he even does it is the fact that a) there’s a crowd & b) they’re all awed by Bruce - oneupsmanship-as-performance is all those dudes knew how to do

Plus seriously, what kind of asshole ~other than Cliff~ would challenge Lee on the set of Lee’s own show? While working a job he’s barely holding onto to start with that he only got because Rick begged for Cliff to be hired. the ego required for that is staggering when you think about it.

I loled this time seeing that one of the cans of dog food was BIRD FLAVOR (i saw the rat and raccoon flavors before)

I thought this was a decent review, though some parts are a little off - https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/07/tarantino-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-revenge-fantasy-manson-family

And not to continually harp on the Manson aspect, but this was one of the few movies/depictions I've seen that comes close to getting the vibe of the Manson girls right. It's not just being free spirity hippy runaways. These are teen runaways who are eating acid for breakfast lunch and dinner and boning anyone who comes through the gate AND trying to survive AND impress Manson with who they can lure. That scene when Pussycat leans in through the window at Cliff and you can see right away that she's fried, flushed and twitchy, it's played so well because it's so squirmy and a little creepy and just kinda not quite right. That QT cast such young looking or irl young actresses really sets in the shock when you see them all standing together at the ranch. They're SO young. Manson was running those girls as a pimp to get over with people like Melcher, or the bikers, or whoever else he needed to get over with. And it doesn't need explaining -- you can see it plain as day as Cliff takes it all in.

catching up on some earlier thread:

I haven't seen either so have been debating which one to watch; I'll probably do the 4 parter.

yeah, do that: I haven't seen the standard version, but enjoyed the roadshow cut and liked the tweaks & format of the episodic edition. Most of the changes are just small indulgences due to the running time allowed by the episodes, or additional / overlapping dialogue that didn't reveal anything we weren't told about the characters elsewhere. But there's one substantial new scene which expands the audience's perspective on events and characters, and that scene benefits from its positioning relative to an episode break.

The best reason to watch it, though, is alleviation of longeurs, as noted. What was rich and immersive on 70mm, between velvet curtains, in a 700-seat 1935 art deco theatre, doesn't hold the focus as compellingly on a $20 tv off Craigslist. Watching 50 minutes a night worked well & left me keen to return at the start of each episode.

(Also, disregard Josh - the whole title sequence doesn't play each time. If you want to run straight through, Netflix gives you a basic end credit roll, enough to have a wee or put the kettle on, then picks up with the narrative again.)

Pitt's most amiable performance. Clemenza is otm about the ranch sequence: he can finally move in character.

Burn After Reading.

(although you might call that moving in caricature.)

He's better here.

I didn't think the credits of the extended Hateful 8 weren't skippable or something, my understanding was just that their combined runtime (rather than new or longer scenes) accounted for the biggest boost in the movie's total runtime. Or so I read multiple places, I haven't seen the extended cut myself.

I can't imagine anyone sticking around for The Hateful Eight credits without wanting to nuke the theater.

Didn't catch that Clu Gulager was the bookstore clerk when Robbie goes in and asks for Tess of the d'Urbervilles (People you thought were...)

Was Tess a reference to the Polanaki rape case?

Polanski directed the movie of Tess and supposedly he got the idea from Sharon Tate lending him the book

i believe the film is also dedicated to Sharon

hoping the Scorsese film will be a meal at Rao's after you've all gone to Chuck E Cheese with this one