Quentin Tarantino's Manson murders movie

excellent Monkees imitations wherein the creators may or may not be oblivious to the irony of imitating the Monkees

At least in the Raiders' case, they were probably oblivious because they thought they were ripping "19th Nervous Breakdown"--era Stones (more obvious on their prior single "Ups & Downs"), but instead landed on Monkee Island. Used alot of the same session players too.

So this week my 13-y.o. daughter and her two friends were away for several days at a friend's family's beach house, and on Thursday the dad decided to take them to see a movie. He read "Brad Pitt," "Leonardio Decaprio," "Once Upon a Time"—noted that it was rated R, but they had seen R movies before—and decided that would work, dropped them off at the theater.

The ticket person refused to sell them tickets, because they are 13. So they bought tickets to some kids movie just to get in. My daughter has no idea about the Manson family, none of the historical context. Her takeaway: 1) it seemed like just a nice movie almost all the way through; 2) right at the end it got suddenly super violent without much warning, and for reasons that weren't clear; and 3) the crowd full of "old people" seemed not to react at all to this terrible violence, and this seeming indifference struck them as completely absurd and made them laugh, though really they were laughing nervously and were considerably dismayed.

I was preparing to send an email to this guy, like, do your due diligence wtf, but he preempted with a thoughtful apology of his own, said he had no idea it was Tarantino or what the movie was about : /

and now I guess I'm going to have to subject myself to it as well just to understand what she saw

also she said "but daddy I don't understand what the function of this movie was, or what the fillmaker's purpose is, it seems like mere culture fetishization, a pastiche of empty period references pretending to describe the american experience ironically by foregrounding its hollowness and superficiality, but inadvertently exposing the his own vapidity, revealing the extent to which his own, poor sense of self is contingent on arbitrary pop signifiers"

(I really didn't come in here to throw bombs, sorry I can't help it! I will tell her that Reservoir Dogs is p tight and to check that out in a few years)

idk 13 is like prime Tarantino years

also she said "but daddy I don't understand what the function of this movie was, or what the fillmaker's purpose is, it seems like mere culture fetishization, a pastiche of empty period references pretending to describe the american experience ironically by foregrounding its hollowness and superficiality, but inadvertently exposing the his own vapidity, revealing the extent to which his own, poor sense of self is contingent on arbitrary pop signifiers"

flappy xp I think you are right, shld be his wheelhouse demographic

Saw this twice. Enjoyed, feels somewhat slight. Agree with Alfred that Spahn Ranch is best orchestrated scene.

Seeing Luke Perry made me sad.

Mike Moh really had Lee's voice down, except for the fighting wails. Too loud and exaggerated rather than the menacing, constricted ones Lee was famous for.

the guy's face gets bashed in at the ranch, that's pretty violent, maybe not compared to the end.

I thought this Sam Adams piece was good: https://slate.com/culture/2019/08/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-ending-tarantino-violence.html

This was my favourite tarantino of the kill bill and after era. I thought there were lots of missteps, probably half the movie is close ups of people driving, and honestly I just don't really connect with the whole alternative reality,but the soundtrack is great,the pastiches are great, the look of 60s LA is pretty good (not as good as inherent vice in conjuring the lost LA of the past imo), pitt and DiCaprio's relationship is the film and they're good together. A plus dog acting also

It felt so much less baggy the second time. The hour where "nothing happens" is the heart of the film and has the most moving sequence of QT's whole career with Sharon Tate going to the Bruin.

Have we talked about how this movie is bookended by "glamorous couple returns to L.A. from overseas" montages?

I hated the depiction of Bruce Lee (who is definitely losing the fight when it's broken up) and the whole "cliff murdered his wife and got away with it, (she was mouthy and he had a harpoon gun so who can blame him?) isnt that funny?" thing felt off to me.

All the stuff on the set of Lancer was enjoyable to me.

the Cliff maybe possibly probably murdered his wife thing isn’t meant to be funny, it’s another indication of how you should be wary bcz he is capable of horrible violence, not settling for being charmed by his smile

haven't seen this yet but expect I will like the nothing happens part

Found most of the Leo on set stuff really dull tbh. Though enjoyed his flubbing/trailer freakout/redemption.

Pitt really carries this imo.

The Bruce and Sharon flashback during the Wrecking Crew scene is so poignant and makes me want to defend this movie like I never have w/ QT’s work tbh.

the Cliff maybe possibly probably murdered his wife thing isn’t meant to be funny, it’s another indication of how you should be wary bcz he is capable of horrible violence, not settling for being charmed by his smile

― quelle sprocket damage (sic), Saturday, August 3, 2019 5:52 PM (forty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's definitely meant to be funny. The scene on the boat is clearly a darkly comic scene. The references to it by other characters such as Bruce Lee are meant to be funny ("oh, that guy?", and "your creepy wife-murdering ass" are both meant to be funny lines). Theres no dubiety

dubiety is a word I never knew before, thank you

the scene on the boat is played such as to try and catch people out laughing complicity, yeah - but the complicity is the point. The actual fact that he may have murdered his wife isn’t the joke.

I’m not entirely sure how the wife murdering detail really serves the character. Seems like a cheap, unnecessary way to show he’s capable of violence? We know he is without it.

it speaks to why he’s at this situation in his career - he can’t get work without Rick’s largesse. and it’s up in the air as to whether Rick is the only person who definitely believes Cliff isn’t a wife-murderer

and we don’t know he’s capable of violence at all before the boat scene iirc? probably gonna go again this week

they're amalgams of several different contemporary male actors. Robert Wagner was on tv around this time and Cliff's wife is named Natalie. I think the movie knows it is being dismissive of this aspect of Cliff's personality & past - it mimics the blasé attitude of everyone around him.

along with the other corroborating moments, it establishes him as being a) capable and b) quick to, extreme violence - and the suggestion of being no stranger to violence against a woman sets up the ending imo

I live in the rabbithole now and found out some additional trivia re the use of Dee Clark’s 1959 Hey Little Girl

the aircheck you hear the KHJ jingle “🎶KHJ🎶 and then they sing 🎶GOLDEN🎶 - that was the signature for when they would play older hits from the past 10 years or so. They had others little signatures too, but it was all part of “Boss” radio giving djs more freedom to mix up the records

and apparently QT liked the song because of fond memories as a kid from seeing it sung in American Hot Wax (Clark Otis is meant to be Dee Clark) when he watched it with his upstairs neighbor Floyd - he said a lot of Sam Jackson’s roles are variations on Floyd.

link us up VG, curious about this Floyd

http://giphygifs.s3.amazonaws.com/media/10uG4cPTeBehXi/giphy.gif

this is a good thread, more helpful in unpacking my reactions to the film than most of the reviews I've read

I enjoyed the picture, over-long though it is, but the ending didn't work for me; as noted upthread, QT is recycling the wish-fulfillment of the IB ending in a much more trivial way ... the ending is so disconnected from the stories of Rick and Cliff that it doesn't add to our understanding of their friendship or their possible futures; in its aftermath, neither seems to have been seriously affected by it ... if the movie is the story of Rick and Cliff, what is this ending for? idgi

Tarantino has always been a violent director, but he's not really good at scenes that make us feel the human consequences of violence; Jackie Brown is sort of an exception, but that's because of its fidelity to the source novel ... his ott cartoon violence works best in the Kill Bills and maybe Death Proof, where the goals of genre homage circumscribe everything else, but it doesn't mix well in stories where we're intended to think of the characters as having inner lives and pasts and futures that extend beyond the events of the film

Agree with all of that.

Also I think the complaints about Bruce Lee’s depiction in the film are totally grounded. Makes him look like an arrogant clown and definitely aims for yucks from the audience at his expense.

the Bruce Lee scene wasn't quite as dreadful as I expected, but I agree with Shannon Lee that it perpetuates the racism her father struggled against in Hollywood

Lee is the only speaking character in the film whose hairstyle and wardrobe aren't painstakingly accurate to the period; that's not an accident

Matthew Polly's 2008 biography of Lee is a good read and a useful corrective to the nonsense that surrounds his acting and martial arts careers; all the research was already there if QT had wanted to make Lee more than a caricature

I was preparing to send an email to this guy, like, do your due diligence wtf, but he preempted with a thoughtful apology of his own, said he had no idea it was Tarantino or what the movie was about : /

― The Ravishing of ROFL Stein (Hadrian VIII), Saturday, August 3, 2019 2:12 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

When I was a teenager I sent my parents off on a date night with a recommendation of Pulp Fiction because I had overheard some classmates talking about how great it was that day in school, never having heard of Quentin Tarantino before in my life. I still remember my mom asking me "what the hell, peace man" at the breakfast table the next day.

The framing around the Bruce Lee flashback was kind of ambiguous, or maybe I had just gotten back from the restroom. I kind of wonder if, in the world of the film, if even happened. Or if Cliff likes to remember that incident as “I got kicked off the set for throwing around Bruce Lee”

I didn't realize it was a flashback when watching it

I didn’t either, seemed kinda purposeful.

Also there was that whole conversation between Leo and Kurt Russell’s character in the trailer that Cliff wasn’t even privy to, so I don’t think it’s supposed to be a “how Cliff imagined it” scenario.

The flashback is set off by his running Leo saying Randy doesn't want you on set through his mine while on the roof repairing the antenna. Initially expected to be angry with Leo/think it's bs. After the flashback he's like, well, yeah...

I really liked the camera following Cliff hopping back and forth to scale the roof in that scene

that's a good moment, it shows both Cliff's athleticism and his lack of fucks given

all the leads are great ... Pitt and Robbie are mesmerizing, while DeCaprio has to work a lot harder to sell us a not-very-good actor worrying about his acting, acting badly, acting better, and not acting; it's a fidgety performance, but he's ridiculous, pathetic, and sympathetic in just the right proportions

I feel like his role was written more for Robert Downey Jr.
I buy Leo more as a pompous manchild slaveowner.

Cliff can super Mario up rooftops, fine, but effortlessly parrying Bruce’s strikes without giving any indication of also being a martial artist is kind of nutballs.

Tarantino has always been a violent director, but he's not really good at scenes that make us feel the human consequences of violence

I gotta disagree, I think this is the first time he's ever used violence in a meaningful, poignant way (except the ending of IB perhaps). the ending is for the audience as much as the movie theater sequence is.

agree that criticism of the Bruce Lee scene is grounded, he's the only character in the movie who is fictionalized and made into an asshole. wasn't trying to justify it via its function, QT obviously could've come up with something else to demonstrate cliff's superhero strength.

Frankly I've been getting overwhelmed thinking about this movie and specifically its depiction of Sharon Tate. I can't get over how beautiful and full of grace Robbie's performance is, how QT handled this subject better than I ever imagined. Tate is Dorothy Stratten, Robert Walker, Natalie Wood, even Carole Lombard and River Phoenix: actors that died young or so early in their career that they're either remembered for their sudden deaths or not remembered at all. I feel this extends to any overwhelming and crushing trauma or loss - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a fairy tale about a fairy tale machine. I think there's a lot going on here and every day that goes by it opens up more and more for me.

I enjoyed the picture, over-long though it is, but the ending didn't work for me; as noted upthread, QT is recycling the wish-fulfillment of the IB ending in a much more trivial way

Why I preferred it to IB.

I don't know that much about Bruce Lee, did he compete in martial arts? Just imagining there's a difference between movie martial arts and what I imagine is a less aesthetically pleasing competition version

(Don't really know what the competition scene was like pre MMA which is a different beast)

Tarantino has Lee lead off the fight with ... a flying side kick, wow! And then, when urged by Cliff, he does another flying side kick so the white non-martial-artist can toss him onto a car ... fun!

maybe this was QT's subtle callback to Winslow Wong being a little light on his feet in Marlowe, but it had about as much to do with Bruce Lee as the Crazy 88s

martial arts in movies, martial arts as competitive sports, and traditional martial arts are three different things ... notoriously, Lee criticized the "classical mess" of traditional arts, including the Wing Chun he learned from Ip Man, but his approach to training was more traditional than he acknowledged ... he seems to have gotten in a lot of fights, especially before his parents made him move to the states, but he never competed in martial arts tournaments

Really liked all the driving scenes
Also those big floaty blue dad recliners for pools with built in cup holders

XP He would appear and do demonstrations at tournaments, which was how he hooked up with producer William Dozier and eventually be cast on The Green Hornet.

Would have liked to have seen Big T pitching the ending to his producers

Cliff is a stunt guy and war hero who can take a lot of punishment so why not write the scene to capitalize on that? It seemed a bit clunky more from a basic writing perspective rather than from a "let's just use Bruce purely as comic relief" POV, especially if he's going to the lengths of including the detail of him training Sharon Tate.

Also he didn't do very much to differentiate Cliff from Pitt's Basterd role, character or demeanor-wise. Even the accent come to think of it. Maybe that's more on Pitt, though.

DiCap’s best scene was the monologue about quitting drink