Quentin Tarantino's Manson murders movie

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

I enjoyed evil Hamlet

I think the sensitivity of the presentation of Sharon Tate is one reason I'm annoyed by the insensitivity toward Bruce Lee, who also died young ... seeing Tate and Lee working together on The Wrecking Crew evokes that parallel directly

it would have been funnier and more resonant with Rick's problems to spend a minute or two on Lee as a hustler smooth enough to develop a side gig as personal trainer to the stars when his TV show got cancelled ... Tarantino may have thought about going there, since he shows Lee giving Sebring a lesson

In a weird way I think he meant for Bruce Lee to hover as a presence as a counterpoint to Manson -- he's enmeshed as a kind of guru to all these Hollywood types -- Pitt is literally playing Kato to Leo's character, but...?

Also those big floaty blue dad recliners for pools with built in cup holders

Almost forgot: as it was happening, I thought there was going to be some electrocution in the backyard pool, what with the radio as part of the setup.

Thread title notably prescient as it turns out

Felt like Pitt’s CPU was throttled to 80% of normal operating speed. Worked fine though

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.

this is killing me btw

I don't think I ever recommended a movie to my parents that they actually saw, but once when I was a kid my parents took me and my brother to a drive-in to watch a double feature of Reefer Madness and Up In Smoke.

Part of the point of the finale vis a vis Cliff & Rick is practical rather than meaningful. it plays out like their entire working relationship, ie Cliff “carrying Rick’s load”. Cliff does most of the work putting hands & dispensing with the three villains, while Rick does the showier “cleanup” of the already mostly bludgeoned Sofie.

There’s also the feeling that this will probably be the last time that Rick really “needs” Cliff in any meaningful fashion, now that he’s married and possibly sailing into a career upswing through his new connex w his famous neighbors.

life of the stuntman: physical toil vs emotional
the life of the actor: emotional toil rather than physical.

the stuntman= lonely but emotionally unburdened; the actor = never lonely but deeply burdened with self doubt

i don’t know that it’s meant to ~mean anything~ exactly but to rather contrast the kind of “work” that goes into their character and maybe how the physical toil of Cliff is far more depleting over time than Rick who rides fortune’s wheel at less cost, somehow?

i dunno where i’m going with this but i had time to kill & it was rolling around in my head

VG otm throughout this thread

I saw it a second time on Friday and have been thinking more and more about it.

Cliff and Rick are some lonely, lonely guys - each is the other's best friend. Cliff's life is super basic for obvious reasons; Rick's is too, in a different way, and some of the most powerful images in Once Upon... are him floating in his pool running lines or jamming tunes while drinking. Just this decadence, this peak reached to an extent - a pool, in the Hollywood hills! - all alone or almost, shutting out the rest of the world.

I cant remember if I said this already, but it occurred to me the second time I watched this - it feels somewhat inevitable that Rick & his wife maybe end up with Brandy? Which makes me kinda sad. Like, shes already sleeping w Francesca & they’re on edge after the attack & Brandy’s such a good guard dog & boy Francesca really loves having her around...

From the dog's POV that's a happy ending -- No more rat-flavored dog food!

Or bird. Or raccoon. lol!

Another thing i think about with Rick and Cliff, and the movie in general is that we think of Hollywood being synonymous with success, but this Hollywood, and these two guys, are the living breathing part of Hollywood which is: never quite getting There but trying. failing. stringing two projects together in the hope that the third goes. The sausage-making “work” of being in Hollwood and the costs of that.
And how maybe Rick doesnt make it without Cliff being there in the car in the morning and night. Maybe Cliff is Rick’s lighthouse.
And maybe Cliff doesnt want what Rick has per se but maybe he enjoys being adjacent to it.

And maybe the two of them *dont* get as far now that they are apart as they did when they were together.

VG, I agree with your reading of how Rick and Cliff's roles are sustained through the ending (also that you have been OTM all over this thread)

on reflection, my difficulties with the ending all seem to stem from Tarantino's lack of interest in realistic violence, illustrated here by his decision to play the killings of the Manson family members for comedic effects

the timing of Cliff's decision to smoke the acid-dipped cigarette is a nice touch; our anxiety for everyone in the house spikes when we realize he's going to be tripping his head off at the worst possible moment; like Rick, we’ve learned to depend on Cliff, and now his cool competence will be most at risk when it's most needed

this is an obvious opportunity for Tarantino to ramp up some terror; Cliff ought to be more disoriented when the family members appear and more frightened, confused, and clumsy when the violence starts; but Tarantino chooses instead to have him continue looking good and cracking wise

Cliff's throwing the dog food can is the most visceral and persuasive moment of violence in the whole film, but as soon as Brandy leaps to the rescue, one horror after another is visited on the hapless bad guys without much sense of danger to the good guys

Cliff strolls through the carnage of the next minute or so in such a relaxed way that the knife wound in his hip doesn't feel dangerous; it's more of an inconvenience, swiftly punished by protracted head-smashing; we get multiple shots of him pulverizing a woman's head against various hard surfaces, but iirc little if any of her brains and blood appear on Cliff, and we get no particular emotional reaction from him before he passes out

the other face-smashed woman's popping up, firing the handgun, running through the glass door, falling in the pool, and getting roasted are all bits out of a slasher movie, but without a slasher movie's suggestions of Michael-Myers-style invulnerability; she doesn’t seem to be much of a threat to the heroes during any of these mishaps, making her final napalming gratuitous as well as corny

once the violence kicked off, I cringed during the face-smashings, but the sense of risk to the good guys dissipated so quickly that I felt I was supposed to be appreciating the gore either as comedy horror or as justified cruelty to the cruel-in-another-timeline home invaders ... neither sentiment worked for me in the moment

the same sequence, even the use of that stupid flamethrower, could have generated more terror and horror and a stronger cathartic effect if it had been staged with Cliff, Rick, and Francesca experiencing more damage and trauma, with their survival held in doubt until the end

but maybe that would have been too suggestive of the actual Cielo Drive killings, or too much like a horror movie, or inconsistent with the tone Tarantino was trying to maintain

those were my reactions seeing it yesterday; I wouldn't be surprised if I missed some important details or if I respond to it differently seeing it again

I could hang in the back seat of Polanski’s car for awhile