Quentin Tarantino's Manson murders movie

The whole thing of him killing his wife is obv part of why stuntmaster Kurt Russell doesnt want to hire him (and stuntmaster’s wife hates him for that reason too) but between that & the war veteran part gives extra backstory/color as to why this affable handsome stunt guy is Rick’s manservant instead of working regularly

the reason we only see the lead up is no one other than cliff knows the truth. It’s not ambiguous as to whether or not he was responsible, we just don’t know if he decided to pull the trigger there.

or what shakey said

(xpost)

And yeah it makes him this more dangerous-seeming character than just an ordinary stuntman, he’s clearly working through some bleak shit whatever the truth about his past may be.

like in Cliff’s mind he kicked Bruce Lee’s ass and maybe his wife was a goddamn nag and it is all with good reason, taking ppl down a peg or two to his level

but -outside his own head- in the actual world of movie production he is arrogant unpredictable sonofabitch who has basically made himself unhireable

^^^

(although he may be genuinely humble at this point / believing he's living in penance for past transgressions)

I didn't take the flashback as Cliff's memory as much as Tarantino showing us what happened

Definitely his memory, he reacts to it when we cut back to present-day taps aff Cliff on the roof

just because it's his memory doesn't mean he's an unreliable narrator also

No, his reliability is unknown, not least of all because he is not a real person, but a character in a film, and the boat scene isn't an actual memory, but a filmed sequence edited together with other film sequences, in order to create possible linkages in the viewer's mind.

lol ok cool

lock thread i guess?

Lock borad

just because it's his memory doesn't mean he's an unreliable narrator also

yes

moodles otm

an actual apocalypse and ye still at it

I mean, I know it sounds ridiculous to lots of folks on here, but we're pondering the reliability of a scene that is purposefully left ambiguous in the middle of a film about the fictionalization of historical events.

such a mind you have, it’s really wasted on all of us

Lol, I'm not saying it's an original thought in any way

neither am I :D

Oh I know, thanks

Cue "Ramblin' Gamblin'Man".

peace out in my karmann ghia

Anyone seen the long cut yet?

There is no long cut yet.

Oh?! I thought it had been shown already. My bad. IMDB has this to say;

In October 2019, an extended cut of the film was released in selected theaters with an additional 10 minutes, made up of 4 new scenes which include an extended version of the opening scene, two fake commercials and a new after-credits scene.

He showed lots of bonus material like that, and Bounty Law stuff, before screenings at the New Beverly for months too, but the theoretical four-hour version or Netflix miniseries is still in the future

i really do want that in my life

finally saw this today. liked how they don't make rick dalton a joke. he's self aware enough and also seems p committed to actually doing a good job and he is good at his job imo. dog attack + flamethrower the perfect ending too.

https://deadline.com/2020/11/quentin-tarantino-two-book-deal-harpercollins-novel-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-cinema-speculation-70s-movie-deep-dive-1234616927

Would totally read a Tarantino deep dive into '70s film, absolutely. And, hell, I'll probably read the novelization too.

Yeah as much as I hate his post-Jackie Brown work I'd be pretty interested in a book of nonfiction film essays tbh, would be cool if he transitioned into doing that more

This is basically one long slow build to one big gratuitous climax, just not THAT big gratuitous climax. QT is soooooo clever! Brilliant direction though. Shame it means nothing.

Well, I mean, one could argue that every single piece of culture, pop or otherwise, means "nothing". What a weird argument to make.

I do see the criticism about the long slow build for this one, but honestly I think I would have enjoyed it just as much (if not more!) if that climax never came and it was just a day in the life of these characters with the Manson stuff limited to the hitchhiker and Cliff's visit to the ranch. The most interesting parts of the movie were not the climax.

ofc it doesnt mean nothing, i just thought the climax ruined all the other little observations along the way. he just stuck it there for his brodude fans

that Deadline article got me high

stock 2020 response but i cannot beLIEVE this movie only came out last summer. picturing going to the theater and seeing it and posting to ILX afterwards, it all seems much more distant than even other movies of that same year.

i saw that this was streaming on one of the services we get (probably our friend's premium extensions to Hulu?) and was sorta tempted to watch it, i remember really enjoying almost all of it except the ending, but the length and the sense of "this would not be the same enveloping Movie Experience on my TV" have put me off. but maybe i should really revisit it.

God I can't wait to read both of these books

xp I've had the opposite experience this year, I feel like zero time has passed since March. OUATIH feels as long ago now as it did in March, when I revisited Reservoir Dogs and Grindhouse for the first time in a while. No idea why

I would have preferred this movie not just without the ending but just without the Sharon Tate parts. A part of the movie that has any impact - or just any meaning whatsoever - based on context from outside the movie, from outside fiction. hate that as a trick in films to summon pathos, tension etc.

No way, some of the Sharon Tate stuff was great! The joy she had in watching herself onscreen was fantastic.

I know what you mean but I think both of those scenes work perfectly w/o context, then again I love scenes in movies where characters go to the movies and just watch a movie. They may be meeting someone, exchanging money, cruising, or just watching a movie, whatever. That kind of scene is so beautiful and meditative and even if you just know that this woman Robbie is playing is going to go see herself in a movie, that's enough, it works. And the ending is just euphoric, a glorious climax of anti-climax and some of the best fight choreography and individual gore shots I've ever seen. The ending of OUATIH goes beyond anything Argento or Fulci did, and it's so wonderful.

xp

I'm curious about what the experience of watching this is like if you have little or no prior knowledge of the Manson murders.

I was shocked at how many people I knew who saw OUATIH and knew nothing about the murders. Some liked it, some loved it, some loathed it.

Did they get that the ending wasn't how things went down?

sharon tate’s the whole point of the movie

ie what if instead of being america’s most famous murder victim & forever tied to some of the bloodiest murders of that era, what if she could be a person who lived ... this may sound v overwrought but imo the ending is a gift to the memory of her & the movie in no way works without her

yeah agreed with Veg, to me that was the most interesting and generous aspect of the movie. the rick dalton stuff is fun but it was sharon tate that got me to feel and think about things. wish she were in more of it.

-Would totally read a Tarantino deep dive into '70s film, absolutely

-Yeah as much as I hate his post-Jackie Brown work I'd be pretty interested in a book of nonfiction film essays tbh, would be cool if he transitioned into doing that more

-God I can't wait to read both of these books

he was blogging pretty hardcore, mostly about 70s films and TV, from December up until lockdown - wouldn't be surprised if he only went and got a book deal because there was no point posting his essays to his theatre's website while it's shut down

Guessing the book pitch included a big Bogdanovich chunk: here's 1600 words on Daisy Miller and 2700 words on Corman and on Bogdanovich's Targets from one week in March, then two months (and ten other essays) later 2500 words on Paper Moon and Last Picture Show.

On the days when he was plagued with nostalgia, before he got over that curse:

The first time movie audiences got a taste of Sylvester Stallone’s voice as artist (writer/actor) wasn’t 1976’s Rocky but 1974’s The Lords of Flatbush.

The success of American Graffiti precipitated a large wave of unfounded romanticized fifties nostalgia that at one point threatened to engulf the entire decade, and that I, as a little boy who didn’t know any better, was especially susceptible to (back then I loved anything fifties and prided myself on my fifties trivia knowledge). During this tsunami-like wave of nostalgia came “Oldies” based radio stations, the “Oldies But Goodies” series of albums, other fifties hit collection records sold on tv (most people my age first learned who Chubby Checker was from these commercials), James Dean was reintroduced to the pop culture zeitgeist , i.e. you could buy his posters in head shops again, right next to Tim Curry’s Frank N’ Furter (after a fall from grace during the hippy sixties), The Wild One replaced both On the Waterfront & A Streetcar Named Desire as the seminal Brando film (again, those were the pictures and posters they sold in head shops). And on tv, the American Graffiti inspired situation comedy “Happy Days” (lest we forget Ron Howard starred in both), and then later it’s feminine opposite number “Laverne & Shirley.” And last but certainly not least, the ascendancy of Henry Winkler’s Fonzie to the schoolyard pop culture stratosphere (to this day his black leather jacket hangs in the Smithsonian). Well some sly shrewd fox over at Columbia noticed that not only was The Lords of Flatbush fifties based like American Graffiti, but it also had Fonzie in the cast, before the industry knew that was a big deal, but us school kids knew that was a very big deal. So even though Henry Winkler didn’t really have a tremendous amount of screen time, Columbia Pictures cut together a terrific tv spot that featured Henry Winkler’s footage (Fonzie’s drawing power among young school kids was no joke), and THE BEST and MOST CATCHY commercial jingle ever written for a movie tv spot (while the original song score by disgraced songwriter – movie director Joseph Brooks is fantastic, the tv spot theme is no where to be found in the movie), that I can sing perfectly to this day.

On a 1971 episode of a Western TV show:

David Carradine, a friend of movie star Glenn Ford, once told me that in the late sixties, Ford gave his agents some specific marching orders. He wanted to do three pictures a year. He wanted to be paid 200,000 dollars a picture. And he didn’t care what they were. So naturally that led to some pretty mediocre, uninspired movies (Smith, Heaven with a Gun & A Time For Killing). Then Glenn decided to make the move to television. He started off with the quality TV movie horror film Brotherhood of the Bell, directed by one of my favorite genre director’s Paul Wendkos (in Once Upon a Time in….Hollywood it’s Wendkos who directed Rick Dalton in Tanner & The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey).

It’s one of those TV episodes that if you saw it when it aired, like I did with my dad, you never forgot it. Bobby Darin plays Billy Dobbs, a man released from prison after serving eleven years. While in prison Billy turned into a schizophrenic who thinks he’s the western outlaw Billy the Kid. The opening of the show gets my vote for most dynamic opening teaser of a TV series of the seventies, if not of all time.

Billy, wearing period western cowboy duds, crests a hill on horseback, singing a little cowboy ditty to himself (Oh lord what a mornin’, oh lord what a mornin’, oh lord what a mornin’ when the sun begins to shine). He dismounts his steed and removes from the back of his saddle, what appears to be a long rifle or a buffalo gun, wrapped up in a blanket. Then the camera cuts behind him, and we see Billy’s on the hill looking down on a modern empty highway road, with a lone armored car moving his way.

As he continues to sing to himself, he squats down on his haunches, and unwraps the blanket, but we don’t see its contents below frame. Then finally Billy rises to a standing position and raises the weapon he just unwrapped.

Only it’s not a rifle…it’s a bazooka!

Then he fires a rocket into the armored car, putting a big hole in the side, and blowing the damn thing right off the road (he stole the bazooka from a gun collector, as well as a pistol owned by the real Billy the Kid). Then he mounts back up on his horse, and proceeds to rob the fallen armored car as if it were a stagecoach. Then rides off with thirty thousand dollars (this is such a damn good idea I’m surprised another screenwriter hasn’t used it again. Or nobody's tried it in real life).

Riffing on paperback novelisations:

John Frankenheimer’s Prophecy is pretty much a piece of shit from the word go, but the more it goes, the more enjoyable this piece of shit gets, till it can officially be classified under that beloved category, enjoyable piece of shit.

But with The Omen Seltzer didn’t just write a smash hit movie. He was also offered the chance to write the movie novelization based on his screenplay. He accepted and turned his script into a damn fine horror novel (that includes a lot of differences from the film. Including changing the first name of Peck’s character from Robert to Jeremy). Well, Seltzer’s novelization became a paperback sensation, turning into one of the best selling horror novels of all time. In the seventies when 7-Eleven store paperback spinner racks were filled with horror novels with lurid covers, there were four books that were always evoked. Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, Salem’s Lot, & The Other. Evoked as in written somewhere on the front or back cover, "Scarier than The Other". "Not since Salem’s Lot". "It starts where Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist leaves off". Well Seltzer’s The Omen novelization sold as much as those genre defining hits. At this date over two million copies. The Omen was such a popular paperback and legit good book, that a lot of people just assumed the movie was based on the novel, and not the other way around. So David Seltzer was on the verge of becoming a horror writer superstar in both pictures and print. The newspaper ads for Prophecy didn’t read, From the man that brought you 99 and 44/100% Dead. They read, From the man that brought you The Omen. Then both Seltzer’s book for Prophecy and Frankenheimer’s film came out, and that was the end of David Seltzer’s major horror career. In the letter pages of Cinefantastique & Fangoria Magazine all the fans complained about make-up artist Tom Burman’s crazy bear monster. At the sneak preview I attended at The Mann’s Old Town Mall Theatre, towards the end when the monster stands at the foot of the lake, back lit by a full moon, people in the audience said out loud, It’s just a bear! Now it’s a monstrous bear, with a face like a cheeseless pizza, but still a bear. In the supplementary section of the newly released Blu-ray of Prophecy, Seltzer swears the creature the Native American characters refer to as Katahdin was never suppose to be a bear.

That’s horseshit.

I read the book. And while Seltzer never gives a complete description of Katahdin, what he does describe sounds a whole lot like a mountain bear. It’s stronger than a bear (it can rip a person in half with one strike of its…paw?) At 20 feet tall it’s bigger than a bear. And it has huge saucer-like eyes. But everything else is exactly like a bear. It’s covered in fur. It has paws and it has a snout. It runs like a bear, it charges like a bear, it reacts like a bear. It reacts to its dead cub the way a bear would. Its cubs are like bear cubs if the fur on their face was ripped off. Besides, that it’s a contaminated bear, is kind of the point of the story.

<3

“Appropriately, the throwback novel will start as a Harper Perennial mass market paperback, “

Yess

Thanks for posting those, sic. They're from the New Bev site, right? I read a great piece by him on John Wayne and The Shootist on there a few months ago. (What a great movie, btw)

I really really liked this movie