Quentin Tarantino's Manson murders movie

who did the manson family vote for

Saw it this afternoon. I guessed the 'twist' about halfway through but really couldn't guess the exact resolution.

Having seen Leone's Once Upon films over the past three days just because (America got a one-off screening yesterday at the local Alamo so I figured why not see the other two beforehand), I was reminded how West was very much its own metaWestern by intent. (Nothing more to add beyond that, more just that was an interesting reminder about how that's always been going on anyway since before I was alive.)

I find myself thinking of the very end of Hollywood quite a bit here. It's a 'perfect' moment because there's this weird sense of private-in-public space, how there's no immediate TV coverage or anything, no press hanging around, it's just neighbors chatting -- almost like everything is suspended in air, and tomorrow things will somehow change radically but just in a different direction.

I've only seen about half of Tarantino's films and never more than once. I hardly think it perfect, but this might actually be the one I'd see again. And I'm honestly surprised by that, pleasantly.

Secret MVP for Margaret Qualley who between this and Fosse/Verdon's had a pretty great year.

The soundtrack seems like something that Ace Records should have put out on CD this past decade with Alec Paleo doing the liner notes. (VG's blog post on the subject = great, as are her thoughts throughout this thread.)

xpost Cesar Chavez

I killed Tarantella with my big fucking hernia

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, August 12, 2019 7:46 AM (fourteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I got and appreciate this.

Bill Simmons’s new podcast has a good long conversation about this movie, including equating Margaret Quallry’s character with Pitt’s in Thelma and Louise.

https://people.com/movies/quentin-tarantino-defends-bruce-lee-once-upon-a-time-after-backlash/

smdh

Would totally watch a Bruce Lee v. Dracula movie. Or even a Brad Pitt v. Dracula movie.

I guess we got the latter already.

who are you s-ing your h at there

“The way he was talking, I didn’t just make a lot of that up,” Tarantino said at a press conference for the movie in Russia. “I heard him say things like that, to that effect. If people are saying, ‘Well he never said he could beat up Muhammad Ali,’ well yeah, he did. Not only did he say that, but his wife, Linda Lee, said that in her first biography I ever read … She absolutely said it.”

Narrator: She did not say it.

Robert Clouse worked with Lee on Enter the Dragon and later published a biography of him. Here's an excerpt:

Another time Yeung, aka (Bolo) went to see Bruce at Golden Harvest Studios. Bruce was screening a Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) documentary. Ali was world heavyweight champion at the time and Bruce saw him as the greatest fighter of them all. The documentary showed Ali in several of his fights. Bruce set up a wide full-length mirror to reflect Ali’s image from the screen. Bruce was looking into the mirror, moving along with Ali.

Bruce’s right hand followed Ali’s right hand, Ali’s left foot followed Bruce’s left foot. Bruce was fighting in Ali’s shoes. “Everybody says I must fight Ali some day.” Bruce said, “I’m studying every move he makes. I’m getting to know how he thinks and moves.” Bruce knew he could never win a fight against Ali. “Look at my hand,” he said. “That’s a little Chinese hand. He’d kill me."

maybe she said it in tarantino's upcoming revisionist bruce lee biopic

Dragon 2 - The More Bruce Lee-er Story

In my head it’s always “hush” morphing into the doors’ “touch me”

the Doors were one of the most glaring omissions from the soundtrack, but I understand why they weren't included

The Rhino "Where The Action Is" Nuggets box is a good companion to the film/soundtrack.

otm

i loved this. i welled up at the scene where rick's telling the girl about his book. when she told rick that was the best acting she’d ever seen I DIED. VG i love your post about rick and his career. that’s most acting careers in a nutshell. swinging between self-loathing and vanity, never quite smashing it, doing your best work as a baddie on a TV show that never sees a repeat.

i saw the 35mm version with Pete B erstwhile of this bailiwick and it was projected a little out of focus, which is a shame. after the movie though they had a big stack of posters on really nice stock. (one small detail: on the poster the ellipses in the title appear in different places depending on whether you're reading the tombstone at the bottom or the big title at the top i.e. once upon a time... in hollywood vs once upon a time in... hollywood. no, it’s not important. but the sloppiness almost feels… diegetic?)

the manson family baddies went to the wrong house, right? they were supposed to go to 'tim's old house' where sharon tate lived? right? but instead they go next door and encounter... the guy who'd just beat the fuck out of their friend at the ranch. completely coincidentally. or did i miss something there?

something else.. when rick's first talking to timothy oliphant there's a jump cut and suddenly they're both wearing their hats. was that really in the movie or just a projection issue?

you can put me in the anti-headbashing - flamethrower gets you the over-the-topness you need from that scene. but mainly that’s because i’m a big wuss.

i think it’s ok that nobody's characters changed. nobody ‘arcs’. i liked that. for a movie as obsessed with TV as this one is it feels appropriate. and it fits with the fantasy ending. crazy shit happens and everything goes back to the way it was - tune in next week. apart from cliff and rick’s relationship, i guess. though that change happens in spite of the events of the movie, rather than because of them.

“Lee is the only speaking character in the film whose hairstyle and wardrobe aren't painstakingly accurate to the period” - hmm big disagree here, i think most of the hair wasn’t right, particularly tate’s. if you look at pictures of people from the late 60s the hair is just DIFFERENT. nobody styles it that way any more. it’s like we’ve forgotten how. i mean, in the movie it was good enough, it didn’t bother me, but 15 years from now we’ll look back at this and be like jeez that hair is so late teens.

“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” - agree w/this 100% tho

speaking of people still alive: Squeaky Fromme “was released on parole from Federal Medical Center Carswell on August 14, 2009,[20][21] and moved to Marcy, New York,[22][23] where she and her boyfriend Robert Valdner, who pleaded guilty to a manslaughter charge in 1988, live in a house decorated with skulls.[24]” o_O

you can put me in the anti-headbashing COLUMN i meant to say..

the manson family baddies went to the wrong house, right? they were supposed to go to 'tim's old house' where sharon tate lived? right? but instead they go next door and encounter... the guy who'd just beat the fuck out of their friend at the ranch. completely coincidentally. or did i miss something there?

You did, yep - after they take the car back down out of the cul-de-sac and park, one of the backseat girls messianically tells the others about some ideas she's been formulating while tripping. She argues that they have been shaped and twisted by Hollywood, that its imagery of wealth and violence has corrupted society. Rather than kill the people at Terry's house - whose identities I don't think that even Charlie knows, let alone the four killers? - she suggests that it would be a better, more meaningful strike to go and kill the guy they grew up watching kill on TV.

(I found the headbashing over the top on first viewing, and was looking forward to taking it less squeamishly on second round, once it wasn't coming as such a shock. Nope: just as brutal the second time. Also thought that maybe it was meant to play as exaggerated through Cliff's acid-tinged perception, first time, and dropped that on review. His brutality is amplified by the acid for sure, though.)

that's a good point about the hairstyles in general, Lee's is not the only one that's not really period-correct

Bruce looks especially anachronistic because the scene on the Green Hornet set is early 1967 at the latest and he didn't wear his hair that long until 1973

All of the hairstyles, bar maybe the tyre-stabber, look like (wigs or) modern movie versions of '60s hair. (Conditioner is better now!) That's fine: the signage restored for backgrounds is done to represent glamour and artifice, too, not to signal absolute realism. I lolled delightedly both times at Leo's six-months-later wig.

Green Hornet Lee

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/de/6b/63/de6b6379604c276286cb1e8a43d7ad7e.jpg

the rat-flavored dog food is real and no one can tell me different

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-manson-family-member-dianne-lake-reviews-quentin-tarantinos-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood?ref=author

and encounter... the guy who'd just beat the fuck out of their friend at the ranch. completely coincidentally. or did i miss something there?

Actually maybe you took a bathroom break around here? The night they go to Terry Melcher’s house is six months after the day Cliff goes to the Spahn ranch, which is part of why they don’t recognise him.

(whereas he can still identify each of them, with a specific feature he’s logged, because unlike these would-be murder-spree doofi , Cliff is a dangerous killer with his wits about him)

Disappointing. The dialogue didnt exactly sparkle, the comedic moments fell flat and the ending was dumb. Brad Pitt and Leo Di Cap were great in it though.

yeah no i get that it's six months later. and yes the violence-against-tv-violence thing makes sense directed against rick. that and the fact that he just enacted every jock-rage stereotype in the book. ("amount of taxes i pay!!") they're on their own revenge kick! that's what finally fires them up. yes. duh.

re: the jump cut with the hats, i found this interview with the editor:

We have the moment where Jim Stacy introduces himself to Rick Dalton which is a weird example. That was a scene that played out in one take and we wanted to collapse it and Quentin said, “This is my homage to the Brian De Palma movies of the late ’60s — using the jump cuts in this way.” So I said “OK.” He’s pretty firm that there are no rules. Even though plenty of people would look at that and say, “What are you doing? You can’t do that.”

https://www.provideocoalition.com/aotc-raskin-hollywood/

My assembly for this movie was not short. It was about four hours and forty-one minutes long. So there’s two hours worth of movie that didn’t make the final cut of the movie.

and sorry to harp on this because it's not that important but it IS a massive coincidence that cliff, the guy who showed up at the ranch six months ago, who tex ALMOST managed to get back in time to beat the shit out of (and agreed at how thrilling it was to watch tex gallop back - his body and that horse together i could have just watched for hours probably) - just happened to be the dude in rick dalton's kitchen when the manson family decide spur of the moment to go in.

how much black culture is in this movie?

zero.gif

Hold up, so they targeted Rick Dalton's house on purpose? No joke, I had to take an emergency phone call right beforehand so missed the violence speech! If they targeted Rick on purpose, then ... history is altered before anyone even gets killed? Sharon Tate was never even a target?

ok you're making fun of me now

morbs you should watch the movie

1. tate was never really a target in real life, right? manson had sent the killers to the *house,* not having a clear sense of who actually lived there. he had seen tate there, months before (as shown in the film) but didn't necessarily know who she was, and may have just conflated several different plans and grievances in targeting the house formerly occupied by terry melcher, who had declined to give manson a record deal. (i've been listening to the longworth series!)

2. again, in the film, the killers pull the car up, contemplating their plans for the tate house. what changes events is drunk dalton coming out and yelling at them for being loud hippies. IIRC they then move the car back down the hill so that it can be kept at the ready without attracting such attention, and in the interim realize who dalton is and convince themselves that killing him is the best thing to do.

xpost Not making fun at all! I made it to them bringing the car down the hill and then my phone rang (I was that asshole, I had it on do not disturb except from important numbers. It was my mom, but it was not important). I ran out to answer it then ran back in, but I missed the speech. I just assumed they went to the wrong house, because they were doofi but also because it would have paid off the bit with Manson going to the wrong house earlier in the movie.

Huh, now I have to think about how that changes the movie. I'd been thinking about it like dummy Manson people go to the wrong house and get their ass kicked, thus "saving" Tate. But in this new (to me) reading, she's never "saved" because she's never in danger. In this movie she would have lived and had a future even if they killed Leo and Brad Pitt.

yep. yes that is what i assumed as well but i was actually watching the whole sequence o_O. i guess i'd conflated their brainwave about killing entertainers with keeping to their plan to go to the house where tate lived. but no, they switched the plan. their genuine delight at nostalgically remembering rick from their childhoods was so amazing and relatable. yet somehow was able to sit congruously in their heads with a desire to murder him.

the last shot really was brilliant, the overhead view, knowing that you're now in fantasy alternate-timeline, and the people move away inside, and you're left looking at the parked cars and knowing what really happened. it's all a bit like a dream. somehow rick's sober and dressed well and looking great after a night where he's torched a woman with a flamethrower and dead drunk.

Also, I guess them being the actual target better justifies them taking out the intruders by any means necessary. I watched it as Pitt and Leo essentially killing a bunch of unlucky strangers!

regarding leo's sobriety, it's not clear how much time has passed --- there must have been some time with the cops arriving, extensive questioning before pitt gets in the ambulance. was there time after also? or does sebring appear as the ambulance is driving off? it felt plausible to me as that late-late-night, early morning time, after a bizarre all-night experience, where you're not exactly sober but things have started settling in a little...

sure, and the jolt of an experience like that would wake you up. but he was already so drunk at the restaurant he couldn't drive back home, and then had an entire pitcher of margarita. and he looked like shit. on the drive of tate's house he had on nice slacks, shirt tucked in, ready for a.....drink? with a pregnant woman at 4 in the morning?

like i said tho i LIKED that because it's like you're zooming off into the fantasy world at that point, so it feels right that the normal rules don't apply

sobered up enough to need a couple cooldown drinks before going to bed

also, adrenaline is a hell of a drug and dealing with some knife-wielding maniacs is just the thing to harsh your margarita buzz

Also, Hollywood hours are akin to Vegas hours: there are no clocks.

Surprisingly boring, but it had its moments. Fantastic soundtrack. Looked amazing especially the street signs and shop lights all popping on. I think PTA’s LA video for Haim makes LA look just as good though.

Margot was great.

Lot of very audible and visible boredom in my screening. Watching Apocalypse Now earlier in the week on an IMAX screen didn’t help this in comparison.

Worst scene? Probably ‘Brad Pitt tries to wake up Bruce Dern for 20 minutes’.

Also, I guess them being the actual target better justifies them taking out the intruders by any means necessary. I watched it as Pitt and Leo essentially killing a bunch of unlucky strangers!

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, August 16, 2019 6:20 AM (eight hours ago)

peak josh in chicago here.

even if you missed the bit where they deliberately chose to go to that house after they arrive at the house they are still planning on murdering the inhabitants! tex refers to himself as the devil while brandishing again, they chase rick's wife with a knife. it's reasonable to kill people doing this to you.

"brandishing a gun"