Quentin Tarantino's Manson murders movie

"brandishing a gun"

I meant that there was no even trying to talk them out of what they were doing by saying "you've got the wrong house, dude" or whatever.

There was no right house for any inhabitants to argue that, though: Charlie already knew that Melcher had left almost a year earlier

it's not that important but it IS a massive coincidence

I meant to add that there was still a huge element of coincidence, so that I didn't sound like I was dismissing your reaction! But the whole film is strung together on coincidences - that Cliff keeps seeing Pussycat, that Tate happens across a theater showing her flick, that the hippies are living on a ranch Cliff used to work at, that Randy is stunt coordinator on Bounty Law so Cliff is left driving around idly that day, that the plot of the pulp novel Rick is reading happens to align with his own career AND a random stranger asks him about it SO he has an emotional breakdown/breakthrough... plus the IRL coincidence that the up-and-coming pregnant actress wife of a notable director happened to have moved into a house that Charlie Manson happened to have a resentment toward.

Most of Tarantino's plots are largely hung on coincidences, apart from the straight revenge drive of Kill Bill?

In Dogs, Mr White just happens to have taken a younger robber under his wing out of some paternal motivation, and then just happens to be paired on the job with a colleague who's apparently been turned into an irrational psycho by a stint carrying a bag in jail.

In Pulp, Jules and Vincent just happen to be chilling in the diner when Honey Bunny and Tim Roth rob it; Alexis Arquette just happened to have missed them with every shot in the apartment; the gun just happened to go off when Vincent was talking to Marvin in the car; Vincent just happens to be taking a shit & reading Modesty Blaise when Butch comes back; Marcellus just happens to have popped out for lunch and just happens to be crossing the street when Butch is leaving; they just happen to stumble into a shop owned by some possibly-white-supremacist S&M rapists; Mia just happens to be a coke fiend being guarded by someone who just happens to be a user of a different unlabelled powder; etc etc etc

In Dusk Til Dawn, the Geckos just happen to take refuge in a bar that's open all night for the clientele's particular preferences.

In the second half of Death Proof, the film crew just happen to be fake test driving a car on remote roads when a woman-hating road racer happens to be driving the same road

In Django, Jamie Foxx's Django happens across Waltz on a horse, which sets the whole story in motion.

In H8ful, a blizzard makes Sam Jackson stumble across Kurt Russell (almost on a horse), and then Russell & Jackson stumble across Goggins, and then trap all three of them in a single room with a crime gang who intended to pull an ambush in town.

Jackie Brown plays around with this - nearly everybody has a scheme going that they're trying to pull off without anyone noticing, but Jackie and Max try to unloop the schemes by pulling an elaborate fake coincidence, with the dressing-room shell game.

(I don't remember Inglorious well; have never rewatched.)

tate's film was new in theaters and she set out to see it, i thought. and it's plausible that leo is continuing to read the novel because he subconsciously identifies with "easy breezy."

it's the cliff stuff that makes it a big coincidence: easy to imagine that some stuntman stumbled on spahn ranch (lots of people went out there at least once, seemingly, but a guy who used to know spahn might have stuck around and scratched deeper into the surface, sure), and easy to imagine that tate and polansky had a recognizably famous neighbor who might've gone out and drunkenly yelled at what he perceived as some loud hippies that night. the movie's major what-if is, what if those worlds had crossed over by the ranch-visiting guy being best buds with the yelling-at-hippies guy? and that's not much of a stretch REALLY: i'm most of the way through the longworth miniseries and realizing how many second- and third-tier Young Hollywood types actually did encounter manson in some fashion. for that matter, you could also imagine this story where cliff and dick are younger, cliff is a little less square, and he meets the mansonites at a crazy party at dennis wilson's house. but of course then you lose the whole aging-old-hollywood stuff, the mini-generation-gap between the Korean War vet generation and the boomers.

good recollection sic. yeah he generally doesn't go in for plots where things lead in to other things. more of a, this scene produces this change in this *character*, so now that informs way they act in the next situation that arrives in their laps, the choices they make. pulp fiction, with the biggest pile of coincidences listed above, does this very very effectively with jackson's and willis's characters. and if the movie can be said to thematize people making choices in response to crazy, wild, pulpish events, then maybe it's a great match of this kind of storytelling with this specific material. if it's really a major interest of his as a storyteller then we could maybe identify others where it works better or worse.

like, the only one i've seen where the plotting is completely ruinous is hateful eight. i complained abt this in the relevant thread but that whole movie is, we're just locked in a room with a bunch of people, and stuff happens when it's time for it to happen and in between we're waiting. crisis comes about not because events have built to that moment, but because jackson decides it's time to share some new information about the stew.

finally seeing this tomorrow

she set out to see it, i thought.

nah, it's definitely a coincidence that she happens across that marquee. it's possible that having been out of the country for weeks, she's not even super-aware of it being in release

and it's plausible that leo is continuing to read the novel because he subconsciously identifies with "easy breezy."

tbh it looks to be about 94pp, it's not like he's wading through
Infinite Jest over 14 months

either way it takes the conversation with Pumkin Pie to actually bring it forward

we're just locked in a room with a bunch of people, and stuff happens when it's time for it to happen and in between we're waiting. crisis comes about not because events have built to that moment, but because jackson decides it's time to share some new information about the stew.

ha ha sure. but H8ful is built like a play where the point is just to let everybody show off and give page-long speeches. and the locked-room portion takes place pretty much in real time, so you're only waiting while Jackson listens to everyone else and figures out how to leverage what he knows.

(that said I don't remember the stew reveal, unlike the jelly bean clues, the not-to-standard coffee tension, and then the crisis kicking off when another batch of now-poisoned coffee makes Kurt Russell's neck explode.)

if it's really a major interest of his as a storyteller then we could maybe identify others where it works better or worse.

I'm for sure interested in tracking this now. iirc True Romance pretty much runs on a this-action-leads-to-that-situation engine, even with branches splitting off and rejoining, and Natural Born Killers is all driven by the leads' actions, which in this context might speak to his disinterest in returning to those stories once he'd directed Dogs.

sic i'd want to draw a distinction between something being UNLIKELY i.e. Vincent being in the bathroom, many of your other examples; and coincidental because i do think the is a pretty fundamental difference (tho it is late and I'm struggling to articulate it)

I know heroin causes constipation but it might have been a couple of days since he took a shit in the diner later in the movie

(do come back and articulate it when rested! thread isn't going anywhere)

the stew reveal was the one that broke the camel's back for me but i don't know if it was worse/stupider than anyone else. but basically the movie masquerades as having some kind of finely-tuned puzzle logic, and then "one of these people isn't who they say they are" turns out to mean "unbeknownst to the audience i've eaten the stew here before and this isn't their usual recipe." like wow way to craft a locked-room potboiler there quentin.

so it feels right that the normal rules don't apply

you guys should all watch Beatty's Rules Don't Apply btw

made by a fully grown adult

The ranch scene had some tension to it at least. The diCap / child actor BS though, that was some weak sauce

I bet QT was all about Rules Don't Apply...

"unbeknownst to the audience i've eaten the stew here before and this isn't their usual recipe."

oh nah, Jackson keeps saying he knows things are wrong before he even gets into the building! the back & forth with the Mexican non-chef in the stables almost comes to guns drawn

the whole movie is just a showcase for ham though. each reveal is more an excuse for Jackson or Russell or Goggins or Leigh to crank it a few more notches over the top, rather than an intricate puzzle piece

(obv anyone is welcome to hate it on those grounds! but it feels to me like after the multiple hamfests in Basterds & Django he decided to just get story out of the way & hang up a canvas backdrop for ppl to chew scenery in front of. now it’s out of his system & he could do a leisurely all-real-location* hang sesh with Once Upon.)

finally saw it.

thoughts going in: jesus the last thing anyone needs is another fkn manson thing

thoughts coming out: I have never enjoyed anything Tarantino has done more than I enjoyed this

more later but basically I am a VG truther now is how I break it down to an extent

*Cliff’s trailer is almost certainly a set, Spain’s bedroom could be, and the Western sets are of course sets irl. But not much else?

hrmmm well it's been a while since i've seen H8 but i'll defer to you... i just remember being annoyed by the stew thing at the time. the "great cast hamming" thing i would buy, but it'd help if the dialogue were more interesting or if anybody created any really memorable characters. as soon as it was over i forgot so much of that movie....

The diCap / child actor BS though, that was some weak sauce

counterpoint: sure it was

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.

This seemed like deliberate movie logic, part of the fantasy, when we find that we’re actually in a shaggy Burt Reynolds-like action comedy instead of a serial-killer movie.

(Not unlike Uma Thurman on a plane with her giant sword in the final shot of part one of Kill Bill.)

That sorta thing makes sense in Kill Bill, which is a total cartoon from beginning to end.

Was holding back groans through the climax of this. Not only recycling his Inglorious Basterds trick, it’s tonally completely out of place, dumb in not a good way (flamethrower was the cherry), and it cemented the weird Conservative bent that flows through the whole thing.

I liked things about this, but honestly don’t get the full on love it’s getting.

This seemed like deliberate movie logic, part of the fantasy

i agree with you! and said so! i liked this aspect of it!

i think a lot of the full-on love, at least from where i'm sitting, is how generous it feels. it just lets you unspool time with these characters in this place. you could watch a documentary about hollywood c-listers in the late 60s, or read a biography of one of them, but neither would really get you inside the place like this does.

i'm not quite getting the 'conservative' thing?

IT'S THE REAL DON STEEL SHOW, STILL SUCKIN' "EM IN

the movie feels conservative because Rick and Cliff are anti-hippie and because Tarantino's 1969 Hollywood doesn't seem to belong to the same California as the Watts riots, the RFK assassination, Gov. Reagan vs. People's Park, etc. ... that's a legit way to portray Hollywood's perception of itself, but it also reinforces the reactionary theme of two aging white guys struggling with change

Doc otm about H8ful, film is poorly conceived from start to finish, the actors cant save it cuz they have almost nothing to work with. It fails as a western, as a locked room potboiler, as a play-on-film.

But it does succeed at taking a great cast, a great setting and 70 mm and making it boring.

Lol exactly

did either of you watch it on 70mm

Cant imagine how that would improve the experience. Does the totally boring set that 90% of the movie takes place on look 10x better?

I enjoyed the Netflix serial for a rewatch but I’d say the 70mm projection looked at least seven times better

nbd if anyone disagrees but it’s pointless to specifically disparage an element you didn’t actually see amongst legit personal criticisms or dislikes

I wasn't able to catch one of the 70mm screenings, but I honestly don't see how it could have made it that much better. I mean, it *looked* fine when I saw it. But this movie is not "2001."

Hey guys!

This was v good

Right? You were OTM upthread about expectations after the last few but this was good.

:D :D

Saw it again with my sis on Friday, who hadn't seen it yet -- another highly positive vote. And my dad's wanting to see it as well! (Kinda wished we had the chance to see it with him, since, after all, he was alive that year and we weren't even gleams.)

I’ve seen this four times already.

Took my dad to see it, and he loved it. The Batman contest Ad reminded him of a couple of funny childhood incidents related to the 60s show, both involving my cranky-ass grandpa. These would have occurred around 1966-67, at the height of the show’s popularity.

The first story: A local theater (this was in Watertown, MA) was running the old Batman serials from the 30s to cash in on the current Batman tv craze. To promote this, they set up a hotline number with a “special message” from Batman and Robin (this was when pre-recorded messages were still pretty novel).

It just so happened that my dad’s home phone number was one digit off from the hotline’s, so the house started receiving misdialed calls from children expecting to hear from Batman. After a few days of this my grandpa was pretty fed up.

The next time a young boy called asking to speak with Batman, my grandpa replied “THIS IS BATMAN TALKING TO ROBIN...THIS IS BATMAN TALKING TO ROBIN...HANG UP AND DON’T CALL AGAIN!!!”

My dad jokes that whoever that poor kid was, he’s probably a serial killer now.

The second story: my dad and his brothers were watching the Batman tv show with my grandpa. In this particular episode the villain was Mr. Freeze. In one scene Batman evades Mr. Freeze’s clutches by pretending to be frozen, subsequently revealing that he was protected by special thermal underwear.

At this point my grandpa stood up and proclaimed “THAT’S IT! I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS BULLSHIT! and left the room. Afterwards he refused to watch the show ever again.

this was sort of a mixture of the Coens' "Hail Caesar!" and "Inherent Vice", maybe some of Altman's "Long Goodbye" as well. Mixture of old-school Hollywood fantasy/homage with rambling/shaggy-dog pacing, with Tarantino's particular penchant for gruesome violence tacked on at the end. If there's any conservatism here, I don't think it's of the explicitly right-wing political variety - it's a conservatism borne of wanting to preserve a comforting fantasyland, to maintain its continuity across generations. I think focusing on how much the Manson murderers are a stand-in for hippies/the new generation in general is fundamentally wrong, because it excludes the fact that Tate, Polanksi & co. are the flipside of that new generation: they're young, more beautiful, cooler, they smoke weed, they party at the Playboy mansion with hippies and ultimately they hold the keys to the kingdom that Cliff and Rick want so badly to stay a part of. The reason I bring up "Hail Caesar!" is because this similarly presents an old school Hollywood studio "solution" to the problem (ie, Manson): some scrappy underdog trad white guys save the day and the kids and the olds find common ground at the end, the central disruption presented by Manson is avoided in favor of a preservation of the status quo.

I think that context is important but also in the background - the more important, and more moving, story is the one that's just generally about these guys being old and confused and driven by a near-crippling need for validation, and following them around for a few days in a lovingly recreated facsimile of a very specific era.

Also the dog:Cliff::Cliff:Rick, obviously.

(in Hail Caesar the problem is unruly "talent" + communism, both resolved by an old school studio arm-twister whose job is to preserve the status quo)

It's funny you bring up the Coens, because like Tarantino (or PTA) they're so careful and controlled they're like the antithesis of shaggy *filmmakers* even when their stories go that direction. Unlike Altman, yeah, who is as shaggy a storyteller as it gets.

Are there any good interviews with Tarantino? Is he a particularly thoughtful guy? Everything I've read has largely been blustery or fan-boy-y, but does he ever offer any deep thoughts about his films? Just curious. I'd love to read not about the references he's making or whatever but his creative decision making process as a writer and director.

idk sometimes he drops references to interesting stuff that informed his process ("Where Eagles Dare" for IB, for ex.) but generally I would say he's insufferable to listen to/read.

I think the most interesting thing I ever read him saying about making anything was talking about the function of various languages in the European theater in WWII, which is obviously a key part of IB

Busting in here to advise folks to go see Charlie Says before you throw any more money at this.

Sub-Headline in an LA Times email I just saw --

Both Netflix's "Mindhunter" and Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" downplay — or erase — Charles Manson's white supremacist ideology.

We learn next to nothing about Manson in OUATIH