The Ringer - Celebrating Quentin Tarantino Week2019-08-02T06:20:00-04:00http://www.theringer.com/rss/stream/204709372019-08-02T06:20:00-04:002019-08-02T06:20:00-04:00The Stuntwoman Who Made the Stuntman of ‘Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood’
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<figcaption><a class="ql-link" href="https://www.jasonraish.com/" target="_blank">Jason Raish</a></figcaption>
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<p>To capture the old-school, rough-and-tumble aesthetic of 1960s moviemaking, Quentin Tarantino turned to his longtime collaborator, stuntwoman Zoë Bell, to help bring Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth to life</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="nfdE49">In <em>Death Proof</em>, Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 film, a question gets asked from the bar of the Texas Chili Parlor. With platinum blond hair falling past her shoulders and a margarita in a glass boot in front of her, Pam (as played by Rose McGowan) asks, “How exactly does one become a stuntman, Stuntman Mike?”</p>
<p id="GxFjk2">Wearing a silver satin jacket adorned with Icy Hot patches, Stuntman Mike (as played by Kurt Russell) replies, “Well, in Hollywood, anybody fool enough to throw himself down a flight of stairs can usually find somebody to pay him for it.”</p>
<p id="vmIW4a">Stuntman Mike eventually reveals he actually got into the business through his brother, Stuntman Bob, but that self-deprecating boast about toughness captures what Tarantino adores about old-school stuntmen.</p>
<p id="nYOTiS">Mike is the villain of <em>Death Proof</em>, but 12 years later, Tarantino’s brought back the archetype for Cliff Booth, Brad Pitt’s character in <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em>. Tarantino presents Booth as the rugged hero of the film. Even if he possibly killed his wife.</p>
<p id="Q3tk6I">Booth is the quietly charming, unflappable force who’s willing to take a punch, fall off a roof, or get hit by a car for Leonardo DiCaprio’s insecure, often buffoonish actor Rick Dalton. And if the opportunities for Booth to get paid by putting his body in harm’s way have disappeared, he’ll happily just get drunk with Dalton or fix the TV antenna on his roof. But in order to help inform the audience about what a badass Booth is, Tarantino turned to the film’s stunt coordinator—Zoë Bell, a 40-year-old New Zealand native who’s been collaborating with the writer and director for more than a decade.</p>
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<p id="xBAHGf">Eruptions of violence have always been present in Tarantino’s films, but he didn’t get into heavy stunt work until the <em>Kill Bill </em>movies. Bell, who previously worked with Lucy Lawless on <em>Xena: Warrior Princess</em>, doubled for Uma Thurman during the movie’s vicious and acrobatic fight sequences. (Last year when Thurman <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/03/opinion/sunday/this-is-why-uma-thurman-is-angry.html">revealed to <em>The New York Times</em></a><em> </em>that she was injured in a car accident during the making of <em>Kill Bill: Vol. 2</em>, the film’s stunt coordinator, Keith Adams, <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kill-bill-stunt-coordinator-breaks-silence-uma-thurman-crash-1083542">told <em>The Hollywood Reporter</em></a><em> </em>that he wasn’t on set that day and hadn’t been notified that Thurman would be driving the car herself.) </p>
<p id="A3LWTE">At times Tarantino’s follow-up, <em>Death Proof</em>, feels like he made it explicitly to showcase Bell, who plays a version of herself in the film. In one scene where Tarantino references his own <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvFZUOn1TCs">opening scene for <em>Reservoir Dogs</em></a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK1LoZ7KJWU">rotating the camera around a restaurant’s table in a single shot</a>, the characters aren’t talking about Madonna and dicks, but about how incredible Bell is. “Physically speaking, Zoë is amazing. I mean agility and reflexes, nimbleness, there are few human beings who can fuck with Zoë,” says Tracie Thoms’s Kim. Bell proves just what she is capable of later as she hangs from the hood of a 1970 Dodge Challenger during one of the greatest cinematic car chases of this century.</p>
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<p id="X12Zyl">Under stunt coordinator Jeffrey Dashnaw, Bell continued to appear in and/or work on Tarantino’s <em>Inglourious Basterds</em>, <em>Django Unchained,</em> and <em>The Hateful Eight</em>. She also started getting more into acting and began to explore producing and directing. Her highest profile stunt work in years came in 2017 as she doubled Cate Blanchett as Hela in <em>Thor: Ragnarok</em>. Then Tarantino asked her to be the stunt coordinator on <em>Once Upon a Time</em> ... (She also briefly shows up as Janet, the wife of Kurt Russell’s fictional TV stunt coordinator, Randy, and the character who calls out Cliff’s rumored homicidal past.) While most stunt work now relies on digital effects, Tarantino tasked her with making the stunts as era-appropriate to the 1960s as possible. That meant, for one, a lot more pads and a lot fewer wires. I spoke with Bell about the role that stunts (and stunt performers) play in Tarantino’s films and why Brad Pitt taking off his shirt on that roof wasn’t just a beefcake shot. </p>
<p id="qE5fak"><strong>Why did you decide to transition back into stunt work?</strong></p>
<p id="4qDLrk">I don’t perceive this as a transition back into stunt work. I perceive it as—I guess this sounds a little bit existential—making career choices that double as life choices. So there’s <em>Thor</em>—Taika [Waititi], the director, is a friend of mine; [stunt coordinator] Ben Cooke, he’s my stunt brother from way back. I was going to be working closely with Cate Blanchett; I was going to be close to New Zealand; it was a regular paycheck, which sometimes in the acting game hasn’t been quite as regular. There’s a bunch of things that went into it that I was like, I really want this as the life that I’m living.</p>
<p id="TKjSx7">Then when Quentin comes along and offers me this epically moving, romantic, full-circle notion of being the stunt coordinator on a movie called <em>Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood</em> about an actor and a stunt guy, it’s a massive responsibility and a huge honor, and one of those life stories.</p>
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<cite>Dimension Films</cite>
<figcaption>Quentin Tarantino on the set of <em>Death Proof</em> (2007) with Rosario Dawson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Zoë Bell, and Tracie Thomsin</figcaption>
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<p id="iYwAdv"><strong>When you were discussing the stunt work that he wanted in this film, what type of direction did he give you?</strong></p>
<p id="eY0L6A">The most relaxed, natural part of the process for me was the creative stuff, because I’ve been back-and-forthing with Quentin in that manner for 10 years in various roles. A lot of that was watching period pieces, looking at the reference list that he had running, absorbing as much of that, and then really, at the end of the day, just listening and letting Quentin paint pictures in my head, which is not hard.</p>
<p id="ZdU6GM"><strong>In terms of painting pictures in your head, just as an example, there’s the scene where Cliff does this series of quick jumps to get up to Rick’s roof. Does Quentin say, “I see him doing three jumps”? Or is he more general like, “We need to find a cool way to get him up to the roof”?</strong></p>
<p id="kCmdtn">It depends. Some particular scenes that are drama-based or have either literal dialogue or physical dialogue, he’ll stand up and act it out. He kind of becomes each character and you become immersed in his imagination. For things like the jumping up on the roof, he’s like, “Zoë, I want something that’s easy for a stuntman, but everyone else would go, ‘What?! How?!’ He’s going to climb a chimney, or he jumps up something, or he pole vaults, or he flips up and over.” So he’s got an idea of it, but then he wants me to throw suggestions that would fit to the location, the scene, what happened before, what happens afterward, and then he’ll know it when he sees it.</p>
<p id="JVhOPw"><strong>It’s interesting with Cliff’s character, because at the start of the film he admits he’s not even really a stuntman anymore, but we have to see what he’s capable of physically because of what he does later in the film. There’s got to be character development through the stunts he does in his everyday life.</strong></p>
<p id="Ib5SEX">We as stunt people know that some of the most beat-up looking women and men in their 50s were probably some of the baddest asses, even if they’re maybe moving a little slower. A big part of it for us was just that [Cliff] was a very talented stuntman whose loyalties maybe cost him an amazing career because he was loyal to Rick, whose career didn’t take off the way Rick was hoping. It also tells you a lot about what Cliff’s priorities in life are.</p>
<p id="2Yp9k8">There are these layers that are so fun to peel back that speak to the fact that before getting paid to do the glossy version of action, [Cliff’s] a war vet. He’s actually been through some legitimately horrific stuff. And at the end of the day, rolling around on the movie set, drinking a carton of milk and smoking cigarettes is a dream compared to where he’d been. So I love those little glimmers of when you get to see “Holy shit, this dude is so capable.” He’s not just some stoner dude living in a trailer with his dog. Well, maybe he is, but he’s also, you know, a multidimensional character.</p>
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<img alt="2005 Taurus World Stunt Awards - Backstage" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-Fxp5odt8hcDnZ_WxPYI9G_U0H8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/18436550/118020219.jpg.jpg">
<cite>Photo by J. Vespa/WireImage for StellarQuest PR and Consulting</cite>
<figcaption>Zoë Bell and Monica Staggs, winners of Best Fight award for “Kill Bill: Vol. 2,” with Daryl Hannah (center) at the 2005 Taurus World Stunt Awards</figcaption>
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<p id="C4jDQq"><strong>You only learn he’s a war vet through a single line of Rick’s dialogue, halfway through the movie, and then it’s never mentioned again. Did you guys have more in-depth discussions exploring that history?</strong></p>
<p id="sazlEs">We definitely explored it with Quentin and with Brad. It became an important thing for Cliff’s stunts. There was talks of “Do we show when he takes his top off that he’s scarred up?” The map of his life we see on his body. Then there’s the way that he stands and faces the world. Green Beret was the keystone for Quentin—[Booth] was a badass and he’d killed people and had to witness horrific things.</p>
<p id="KPzAaP"><strong>Obviously Quentin has respect for all sorts of people in the movie industry, but looking at his filmography and his interests, do you feel like he has a special affinity for stunt performers? </strong></p>
<p id="4YbnNM">I feel like he does. I don’t mean to be putting words in his mouth, and maybe I’m projecting because I feel this way, but there’s something about stunts to this day that still carries a little bit of that old school. You still got to be a little rough and tumble. Stunts have definitely been gentrified, but you can’t be a stunt person and be worried about getting hurt. You need to be savvy about how to stay safe, but you can’t be doing it worried if you’re going to be getting a bruise or a scratch. I think that that lack of preciousness is probably one of the things that appeals to Quentin, the Wild West of it.</p>
<p id="u5Lygd"><strong>Nowadays so much stunt work revolves around things like wires and CGI. How do you make a movie that features old-school stunt work but is still compelling to modern audiences?</strong></p>
<p id="XkySph">Some of the stuff we wanted to look stylistically authentic to the time— because it is [Rick Dalton’s fictional TV show] <em>Bounty Law</em>—or we are reenacting something. Because as audience members we’re far more savvy and educated now—you don’t want it to just look hokey unless you’re playing on the hoke. There was one sequence that ended up not making the film, but it was very much a haymaker-type fight and a bar brawl—flying over the tables and crashing over the bar. We still wanted the connections to look solid and we still wanted it to look painful, but we were playing into the heightened sort of slapstick of that time in that particular sequence.</p>
<p id="Fg1FOn">In one of the opening sequences [for <em>Bounty Law</em>] there is a balcony fall. Rick Dalton shoots him, he falls off the roof, he smashes through the balcony and he hits the bottom floor. That’s straight out of old-school westerns. I had done a bunch of research about it and people got pretty drilled doing free falls like that. When it came time to do that I took it upon myself to believe that the authenticity of a gag like that is an important piece of the movie. Whether you notice it or not, it had to be done as authentically to the old school as possible. It took weeks of prep and finding the right person. These days you’ve got so much technology and there’s so many techniques and tools and devices that we have that keep everyone safer. When you do something like a balcony fall, we have wires and we have CGI at our disposal. To consider not using those things, we have a responsibility to continue in the safest way possible.</p>
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<img alt="Sony Pictures’ “Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood” Los Angeles Premiere - Arrivals" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ObqAgj8tGxhPb_aacXPXpCy-jig=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/18436544/1163671777.jpg.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage</cite>
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<p id="ok2jvw"><strong>Are there generational differences between the attitudes of stunt people?</strong></p>
<p id="Juaq7A">I’ve found this weird thing where I sit between the two. I’m not the new generation, but my experience was more with an older generation than it would have been in America because I was in New Zealand. We were a little bit behind; the technology hadn’t reached. We were still a little bit ... I don’t mean “cowboy” in the irresponsible way, I mean cowboy in the “Fuck, let’s give it a go” kind of way. But there are performers out there now, and most of their performance career has been flipping on wires, maybe on a green screen, lots of motion capture. The experience required is quite different to what it used to be.</p>
<p id="QpLQrO">Now, people aren’t doing back falls as much, but they are being smashed into buildings two stories up. There’s a different level of required pain in jobs and each generation feels like the next generation has it too easy. Your parents are like, “You kids have got it so easy.” And then you’ll probably say that about your kids. Your kids will probably say that about their kids, until the world explodes and then no one cares.</p>
<p id="ztwLR4">I think that’s probably why that balcony fall and this project was so exciting, because it was an opportunity to step outside of the polished, flawless action world and just get a little bit more rough and tumble again. </p>
<p id="GeGGKn"><strong>I hadn’t really thought about it this way before, but the second half of </strong><em><strong>Death Proof</strong></em><strong> with the car chase could be seen as a metaphor about different generations of stunt performers, where the older generation is a little wilder and thinks it’s fun to push the limit of responsible danger, while the younger generation thinks the old way of behaving is going to get them killed.</strong></p>
<p id="5oXehW">There’s an element of modern-day people that think they are taking it more seriously than—and I’m using air quotes here—the “cowboys” used to. But then the cowboys can turn around and say, “We’re way tougher than you because we didn’t use pads.” My basic feeling is if you’re going to be good, no matter what area you’re in, you need to have an appreciation and a respect for where you’ve come from and have a respect for those that are taking the torch and running with it. I do have a little bit of the old school in me where I’m like, if you’re not willing to eat shit and hit the ground occasionally in the middle of your job, then I personally think you’re spoiled. But that’s just me.</p>
<p id="5hsTJe"><strong>In</strong><em><strong> Death Proof </strong></em><strong>there’s the scene where Stuntman Mike talks about working on shows like </strong><em><strong>The Virginian </strong></em><strong>and </strong><em><strong>High Chaparral</strong></em><strong>, which are the type of shows that Cliff could have worked on. Cliff is a hero in </strong><em><strong>Once Upon a Time ... Hollywood</strong></em><strong>, but was it ever talked about that there might be a sinister side to him? You get it a little bit during the scene of him with his wife on the boat.</strong></p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="mSdgSR">There were conversations around him being a war vet and the alleged killing of his wife, but in the same way we were discussing his relationship with work and his relationship with his dog and how long he had his dog and all that stuff that may or may not have any holding on anything. But no, I personally never read sinister into Cliff. I may be projecting, because I kind of fancy that if a woman could be a Cliff back in 1969, I might’ve been a bit of a Cliff. I liked that idea, but instead I was the stunt coordinator’s wife telling Cliff to get fucked, which was kind of awesome, too.</p>
<p id="woc0ah"><em> </em><a href="https://ericducker.contently.com/"><em>Eric Ducker</em></a><em> is a writer and editor in Los Angeles. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.</em></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/8/2/20750988/zoe-bell-quentin-tarantino-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywoodEric Ducker2019-08-02T05:50:00-04:002019-08-02T05:50:00-04:00The Art of the Casting Flex: How Tarantino and Others Use Megafamous Actors in Bit Parts
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<figcaption>Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>Quentin Tarantino has always been known for putting big actors in bit parts, but ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’ takes the practice to a new level. Here’s what it says about the director—and what other casting flexes say about his colleagues.</p> <p id="fyelV3">Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio were starstruck. “Luke Perry!” DiCaprio exclaimed, deep into May’s <a href="https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a27458589/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-leonardo-dicaprio-brad-pitt-quentin-tarantino-interview/?fbclid=IwAR0OquYObQxAEv-L6Z19NhEMhrr5EOIj3RM0U54WSkEPR8huOmjGXDFtoYc">daffy <em>Esquire </em>cover-story chat</a> with Pitt and Quentin Tarantino to promote their new movie, <em>Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood</em>, and the great many famous people who would appear therein. “I remember my friend Vinny, who is in the film as well, we walked in, and we both had this butterfly moment of like, ‘Oh my God, that’s Luke Perry over there!’”</p>
<p id="2GNeSU">So: Brad Pitt, Leonard DiCaprio, and Vinny were starstruck. “‘That’s Luke fucking Perry!’” Pitt echoed. “We were like kids in the candy shop, because I remember going to the studios, and [<em>Beverly Hills, 90210</em>] was going on, and he was that icon of coolness for us as teenagers.” </p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="QXqqQB"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’ Exit Survey","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/29/8934724/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-exit-survey"},{"title":"The ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’ Characters, Ranked","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/29/8932082/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-character-ranking"},{"title":"Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right: On ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/29/8934778/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-review-quentin-tarantino"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="4WRHs2">Perry, of course, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/3/4/18250584/luke-perry-dead-obituary-90210-riverdale">had died in March</a>, at 52; <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood </em>turned out to be his final film role, a perfect epitaph for an icon of coolness and a new pinnacle for the very notion of famous actors getting super psyched about hanging out with other famous actors. “It was this strange burst of excitement that I had, to be able to act with him,” Pitt enthused. “Man, he was so incredibly humble and amazing and absolutely committed. He couldn’t have been a more friendly, wonderful guy to spend time with. I got to sit down and have some wonderful conversations with him. It was really special.”</p>
<p id="sJ4hqE"><em>Once Upon a Time </em>… <em>in Hollywood</em> is an alluringly chill bromance, a vengeance-minded demystification of <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/30/20746969/charles-manson-family-history-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood">the Manson family,</a> and a love letter to ’50s and ’60s Hollywood so painstakingly detailed (what with the billboards and marquees and radio stations and whatnot) that it basically functions as a <em>Grand Theft Auto</em> sequel you get to watch Pitt and DiCaprio play in real time. It is also, eventually, an ultraviolent spectacle so queasy that I winced when the rest of the people in my theater lustily cheered the late-game reappearance of, uh, the flamethrower. (It’s maybe the first movie I’ve ever seen in a theater that I kind of wish I <em>hadn’t </em>seen in a theater.) </p>
<p id="wpL0V0">But above and beyond all that, Tarantino’s ninth film is an ungodly brash Casting Flex, an Avengers-style battalion of marquee superstars for a modern age in which the real Avengers, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe from which they sprang, have both cultivated a new crop of marquee superstars and paradoxically rendered the very idea of a marquee superstar close to irrelevant. <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em> is a throwback within a throwback, one last triumph of pure star power over intellectual property, individual charisma over corporate-franchise might, <em>who </em>over <em>what</em>. </p>
<p id="2Xejrd">It’s a losing battle. Look at <a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81tBH9rZjaL._SL1500_.jpg">the <em>Avengers: Endgame </em>poster</a> again. Look at it. Twelve legit stars ranging from moderately to extremely famous (plus a raccoon voiced by <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/10/2/17927580/bradley-cooper-star-is-born-wedding-crashers-the-hangover">another extremely famous person</a>), and at that point, <em>half the people in the movie, including the super-famous ones, are still dead</em>. That <em>Endgame </em>functions as a teary farewell to Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man is no accident; the MCU didn’t need him anymore, and doesn’t need any one person at all, having gobbled up so many Hollywood A-listers that they’ve all blurred gorgeously together. (<a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/22/20703783/marvel-phase-4-comic-con">Mahershala Ali</a> is the latest young titan to be absorbed.) The colons and roman numerals in a marquee title are now more important than the marquee actors, the mask more important than the man, the character more important than the human playing that character, the cinematic universe more important than the beautiful bodies fueling it. (Yes, even the body that graced us with <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/4/30/18523227/avengers-endgame-captain-america-butt-investigation">“America’s ass.”</a>)</p>
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<p id="GmnXT9">Whereas <a href="https://scontent-frt3-2.cdninstagram.com/vp/d3471cc3ebd56dad4b1baba799106000/5DAD2407/t51.2885-15/e35/65302415_695776360836451_4147880634645462142_n.jpg?_nc_ht=scontent-frt3-2.cdninstagram.com&se=4&ig_cache_key=MjA5MDgwMDM4Njc2NzQ2Njc1Mw%3D%3D.2">the initial poster</a> for <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em> contented itself with flaunting perhaps the two biggest male movie stars of the past 30 years. Tarantino’s film expertly leverages both what Pitt and DiCaprio have in common (charisma beyond imagining, fame beyond enduring) and what <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/23/20704241/brad-pitt-leonardo-dicaprio-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-careers">sets their respective illustrious careers apart</a>. (DiCaprio’s big moment as fading actor Rick Dalton comes when he freaks out after forgetting his lines; Pitt’s big moment as jocular stuntman Cliff Booth comes when he brutalizes three humans without freaking out in the slightest.) But <em>Once Upon a Time</em> is, from its first minute to its 161st, from its two megawatt leads to its humblest bit players, a tribute to star power in all its various wattages, a master class in casting as an art form every bit as vital as, well, acting. </p>
<p id="hzlEMr">There is Al Pacino, your first big surprise semi-cameo, as an oily producer channeling Mel Brooks in <em>Spaceballs</em>. (The highest possible compliment, so long as I’m alive.) There is Timothy Olyphant as the young-buck lead in a new TV Western, a fitting tribute given that in real life he toplined two of the best TV Westerns of all time. (<a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/5/30/18645202/deadwood-movie-timothy-olyphant-seth-bullock">The other one</a> is <em>Justified</em>, friends.) There is the 83-year-old and immortal Bruce Dern as George Spahn, the dessicated owner of the Spahn Ranch where the Manson family hid in plain sight. (Dern reportedly <a href="https://variety.com/2018/film/news/burt-reynolds-dead-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-1202930623/">replaced the late, great Burt Reynolds</a> in the role; also, James Marsden was <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/07/james-marsden-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-burt-reynolds">originally supposed to play</a>, uh, Burt Reynolds.) </p>
<p id="tKyUeN">There is Damian Lewis, in a brief but vividly melancholy turn as marquee idol Steve McQueen. There are Margaret Qualley and Lena Dunham and Dakota Fanning and Maya Hawke (she of <em>Stranger Things</em>) and Mikey Madison (she of <em>Better Things</em>) as various Manson Girls, the smoldering banes of Hollywood and all it stands for. There is virtual newcomer and actual 10-year-old Julia Butters, as the dead-serious child actor who <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2019/07/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-10-year-old-child-julia-butters-1202161562/">almost steals the movie from everybody</a>. There is, somewhere in there, Leonardo DiCaprio’s friend Vinny.</p>
<p id="pfmInr">And finally, there is the movie’s actual third lead, Margot Robbie, as the bubbly and beautiful and doomed <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/8/1/20748987/sharon-tate-movies-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-charles-manson">young starlet Sharon Tate</a>, who has very little to do onscreen other than look bubbly and beautiful and doomed, except <em>Once Upon a Time </em>in the end reveals itself as Tarantino’s lurid and queasy and still somehow deeply sentimental attempt to protect her, to shield both Sharon Tate the woman and, more importantly, Sharon Tate the marquee starlet she was destined to be, and to remain.</p>
<p id="ywG4Xv">It’s a metaphor, dude. <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood </em>luxuriates in every face that appears onscreen, from the ubiquitous to the relatively obscure, harnessing the star power of the actor to power the effortless mystique of the character. (Up to and including, yes, Luke fucking Perry as an iconically cool glowerer in a TV Western.) It is a celebration of the humans who appear in movies, even as the movies themselves have long ago entered an inhuman, or at least <em>superhuman</em>, era. We don’t get too many bona fide Casting Flexes these days. This movie might, in fact, be among the last. Take solace in the fact that it’s also among the best.</p>
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<p id="RQYxsH">The difference between a true Casting Flex and a mere Movie Featuring a Bunch of Famous People is the difference, to be blunt, between George Clooney’s <em>Ocean’s Eleven</em> and Sandra Bullock’s <em>Ocean’s 8</em>. Way back in 2001, Steven Soderbergh’s <em>Ocean’s Eleven </em>was a bacchanal of matinee idolatry (Clooney! Pitt! Damon! Garcia! Cheadle! Gould! Topher Grace!) so comically overstuffed it could make an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyUmQf5CTqU">“introducing Julia Roberts”</a> joke in the end credits. Everyone, no matter how meager his or her screen time, got a personality, which is to say a genuine <em>character</em> to play. Fast-forward to 2018 and Gary Ross’s quite disappointing <em>Ocean’s 8</em>, in which a cast nearly as fearsome (Bullock! Blanchett! Hathaway! Kaling! Rihanna!) settled for roles half as vivid, at best. The sum total of a second-billed Cate Blanchett’s character is [<em>rides a motorcycle</em>]. It’s a galling misuse of that year’s most fearsome cast; it’s the movie’s only truly memorable crime. </p>
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<p id="Q6JfYS">Take a quick spin through the past 30 years and pick your favorite, whether it’s <em>Saving Private Ryan</em> (Hanks, Damon, Giamatti, Danson, Diesel) or <em>Boogie Nights </em>(Wahlberg, Moore, Reynolds, Graham, Cheadle, and Philip Seymour Hoffman) or <em>JFK</em> (Costner, Bacon, Oldman, Spacek, Lemmon, Pesci, Tommy Lee Jones, and like 12 more). <em>The Departed</em> is a casting peak for both Casting Flex maestro Martin Scorsese and The Movies as an institution, DiCaprio to Damon, Nicholson to Baldwin, Wahlberg to Sheen. As a pared-down quartet goes, <em>American Hustle</em> (Lawrence, Cooper, Adams, and Bale) might sneak off with the crown, or maybe something even weirder like <em>Closer </em>(Roberts, Portman, Owens, Law). You get the point; you glimpse the depth and appealing darkness of this particular rabbit hole. </p>
<p id="3rWIC6">These prestige plays have always been easier to distinguish from mere celebrity cattle calls, be they knuckleheaded action flicks (shout-out <a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51UCE5qdZNL.jpg"><em>The Expendables</em></a>) or even more knuckleheaded rom-coms (shout-out <a href="https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w1280/cvFSwoY2VgAFkh9rBYQvpUVZtiq.jpg"><em>Valentine’s Day</em></a>). The line between capital-C Cinema and mere quality trash barely exists these days, of course: I laughed when the <em>Zombieland 2: Double Tap </em>trailer led off with the fact that it stars four Academy Award nominees (Harrelson, Eisenberg, Breslin, and a victorious Emma Stone). But that movie, like the original <em>Zombieland </em>(and its <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/6/3/18649763/actors-playing-themselves-cameos-keanu-reeves-always-be-my-maybe">famous shock cameo</a>), knew what it wanted to be and delivered on that promise. </p>
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<p id="n3QzJD">Tarantino remains, however, the premiere casting artiste of his generation, whether he’s restoring bygone idols to their deserved glory (John Travolta in <em>Pulp Fiction</em>; Pam Grier in <em>Jackie Brown</em>) or mingling A-listers with team players. (Pitt and a newly ascendant Christoph Waltz carry much of the weight in <em>Inglourious Basterds</em>, but the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/23/20706621/inglourious-basterds-quentin-tarantino-brad-pitt-cast-samm-levine-omar-doom">far motlier crew of basterds</a> are just as memorable.) Say what you will about <em>The Hateful Eight</em> as a (stupendously grueling) cinematic experience, but it’s another sort of Casting Flex entirely when your first teaser trailer teases not the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3460252/fullcredits">quite impressive cast</a>, but <em>the characters</em>, from “The Confederate” to “The Prisoner” to “The Mexican.” </p>
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<p id="g0K3cj">But <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em> is another beast entirely, an easy take-my-money proposition simply by giving us the first feature-length face-off between Pitt and DiCaprio (shout-out Scorsese’s very weird 2015 short <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_KSYIZ61q0"><em>The Audition</em></a>), but immediately surrounding them with big stars in tiny roles and stars-to-be in even tinier ones, plus a raft of sterling medium stars who can balloon to marquee size with a single line delivery. (“I never stood a chance,” sighs Lewis-as-McQueen.) The spectacle that powers a Quentin Tarantino film—the grisly violence, the pulverizing self-regard, the unparalleled period detail, aching hipness, the feet—constitutes, of course, a franchise all its own, a shaggier sort of cinematic universe arguably more important than any one star shining in it. But he specializes in movies greater than the sum of their parts that still honor the dignity and singularity of the parts themselves. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="BmQEh8">The alternate universe Tarantino sketches here ends with Sharon Tate still alive, snatched from the jaws of history and free now to flourish as a both a human and, well, a celebrity. God bless her, and, yes, sure, god bless QT for granting it to her, and us. <em>Once Upon a Time … in</em> <em>Hollywood</em> is not, at times, to put it mildly, a very nice movie, but it is tender and kind beyond imagining in allowing everyone onscreen to be both their best selves and the best movie-poster versions of themselves. Even Luke Perry. Even Vinny. </p>
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https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/8/2/20751215/once-upon-time-hollywood-cameo-cast-oceans-11-actors-al-pacino-luke-perryRob Harvilla2019-08-01T22:54:20-04:002019-08-01T22:54:20-04:00Quentin Tarantino’s Issue With ‘Boogie Nights’
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<p>Quentin Tarantino’s one gripe with Paul Thomas Anderson’s classic film is one that only he could have</p> <p id="LVuEIt"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU01nQAQJl8&feature=youtu.be">In a recent interview with <em>The Ringer</em></a> for the <em>Feature Presentation</em> podcast, Quentin Tarantino disclosed a gripe he’s always had with Paul Thomas Anderson’s classic film <em>Boogie Nights</em> that truly only he could have.</p>
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<p id="Ig6v3T"><strong>Subscribe: </strong><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/halloween-unmasked/id1435524582?mt=2">Apple Podcasts</a> / <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-ringer/halloween-unmasked">Stitcher</a> / <a href="https://art19.com/shows/halloween-unmasked">Art19</a></p>
https://www.theringer.com/video/2019/8/1/20751197/quentin-tarantinos-issue-with-boogie-nightsAmy Nicholson2019-08-01T08:12:55-04:002019-08-01T08:12:55-04:00Quentin, You’ll Be a Director Soon
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<p>In our third and final episode, Quentin the video store clerk transforms into Quentin the big-shot filmmaker</p> <div id="slBNvO"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed-podcast/episode/17xFtXDGpy8Fb8K5qBuPmP" style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 232px;" allowfullscreen="" allow="encrypted-media"></iframe></div>
<p id="EMC9P9"><a href="https://art19.com/shows/halloween-unmasked/episodes/debea764-beb3-47b7-a26e-91442a7bf84e">In our third and final episode, Quentin the video store clerk transforms</a> into Quentin the big-shot filmmaker. It sounds like another L.A. fairy tale, but here’s a fuller version of the story with <em>Hollywood Shuffle</em> and <em>Boogie Nights</em> as Quentin’s inspiration and competition—including a fist pump from Dolph Lundgren and a phone call from Paul Thomas Anderson.</p>
<p id="kJG8Il"><strong>Subscribe: </strong><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/halloween-unmasked/id1435524582?mt=2">Apple Podcasts</a> / <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-ringer/halloween-unmasked">Stitcher</a> / <a href="https://art19.com/shows/halloween-unmasked">Art19</a></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/2019/8/1/20749936/quentin-youll-be-a-director-soon-tarantino-feature-presentationAmy Nicholson2019-07-30T10:22:57-04:002019-07-30T10:22:57-04:00Why We Keep Coming Back to the Manson Family
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<p>As the 50th anniversary of the Manson Family murders approaches, new books and films like Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’ and journalist Tom O’Neill’s ‘Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties’ pick up a gruesome story that has come to define a turning point in American history.</p> <figure class="e-image">
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<p id="ouS0P9">On August 10, 1969, a middle-aged couple named Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were viciously murdered by unknown assailants in their Los Feliz home. The night before, five people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate, had been brutally killed at 10050 Cielo Drive, a swanky home in Benedict Canyon. The two consecutive nights of carnage left Los Angeles in a panic. Several months of unsuccessful investigating and mounting dread followed, until the police arrested Charles Manson, a charismatic con man disguised as a hippie, and several of his drifter followers, who had carried out the killings on Manson’s orders as part of a poorly orchestrated white supremacist plot. The ensuing trials were an era-defining spectacle. “Many people I know in Los Angeles believe the sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969,” Joan Didion proclaimed in her essay “The White Album.” </p>
<p id="qpVBGW">Except: Not really. All these years later, it seems that the Manson Family didn’t destroy the ’60s as much as calcify a corner of the decade into a horror story. In the ensuing years, Manson became one of America’s most enduring modern demons, the debaser of girls and architect of mayhem, a spooky fable the culture tells about the counterculture. </p>
<p id="fioIdk">Rather than extinguishing the ’60s, the Manson Family’s crimes have made this particularly macabre chapter hard for many to leave behind. </p>
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<p id="UFyG54">People started trying to process the murders as a coherent narrative almost immediately after they happened. “As I first began to investigate the case for my 1971 book, <em>The Family</em>, the allure of the Tate-LaBianca murders seemed obvious: It had famous rock ’n’ roll stars like Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/11/20/charles-mansons-surreal-summer-with-the-beach-boys-group-sex-dumpster-diving-and-rock-n-roll/?utm_term=.3ac01169a15c">briefly housed the so-called Manson family</a>; it had the appeal of the Wild West; it had the bass drum of the 1960s, with its sexual liberation, its love of the outdoors, its ferocity and its open use of drugs. It had the hunger for stardom and renown; it had religions of all kinds; it had warfare and hometown slaughter; and it had it all in a huge panorama of sex, drugs and violent transgression,” writer Ed Sanders recently <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/movies/charles-manson-family-hollywood-tarantino.html">wrote </a>for <em>The</em> <em>New York Times</em>, in reflection of his 1971 book that kicked off a still-ongoing obsession. </p>
<p id="omgBnl"><em>Helter Skelter</em>, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s 1974 book on the 1970-71 Manson trial, is one of the first modern true-crime blockbusters, and it shaped the general cultural perception of the murders as the result of a cockamamie white supremacist plot gone awry. The book begat a miniseries with the same name in 1976, which was then remade in 2004 (with the iconic Clea DuVall as Linda Kasabian). Manson Family members then started releasing their own stories, including Susan Atkins’s 1977 memoir <em>Child of Satan, Child of God </em>and Dianne Lake’s 2017 memoir <em>Member of the Family</em>. There’s the 2014 biopic <em>House of Manson</em>, the 2016 slasher-flick <em>Wolves at the Door</em>, the 2016 Lifetime movie treatment <em>Manson’s Lost Girls</em>. There are podcasts. There are documentaries. There was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/17/arts/will-the-manson-story-play-as-myth-operatically-at-that.html">an opera</a> at the Lincoln Center. There was the canceled ABC drama <em>Aquarius</em>, with David Duchovny Muldering his way toward Manson. The next season of David Fincher’s <em>Mindhunter </em>will tackle Manson as well. (And this is not even touching on the hundreds of books and movies that use the Manson murders as a reference point, from Emma Cline’s drifting 2016 novel <em>The Girls</em> to <em>Mad Men</em>’s Megan Draper-in-Hollywood arc to the 2011 thriller <em>Martha Marcy May Marlene</em>.) There’s even a mumblecore comedy about<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/10/manson-family-vacation-lo-fi-labor-of-love"> being obsessed with Charles Manson</a>! As the 50th anniversary of the Tate-LaBianca murders approaches, a number of new projects have been released. Mary Harron’s <em>Charlie Says</em>, which focuses on the female Manson murderers, and Daniel Farrand’s <em>The Haunting of Sharon Tate</em>, which stars Hilary Duff, were released this year. And, most recently, Quentin Tarantino’s <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em>, whose plot <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/29/8934778/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-review-quentin-tarantino">orbits</a> around the Manson Family, imagining an alternate ending to its gruesome tale. “His image had become a repository for our fears,” Tom O’Neill, a journalist who investigated the Manson story for more than 20 years, recently wrote in his new book, <em>Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties</em>.</p>
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<p id="1MFrpu">While the quantity of Manson-themed books, films, and television is vast, the quality is all over the place; in lieu of insight, these projects tend to rely on tropes about cults and hippies, resulting in shallow, incoherent Wikipedia rehashes instead of actual stories. One of the major challenges of creating a cohesive plot out of what is known about the Manson Family is that so much simply doesn’t make any sense. Manson’s exact motives for the murders remain unknown, but Bugliosi’s account—that Manson wanted his followers to jump-start a race war by flaming the Black Panthers for murders—is so strange and incomplete that it practically begs for a different ending. Journalist Rachel Monroe devotes a section of her upcoming book on true crime,<em> Savage Appetites</em>, to the long-lasting damage Sharon Tate’s murder had on her family, which splintered after the actresses’ death. In it, Monroe discusses how even people involved or intimately connected to the tragedy had an impulse to fiddle with the story. William Garretson, the teenage caretaker who claimed to have slept through the murders, later went on to marry a woman who claimed that she was the daughter of Sharon Tate who had been cut out of her mother’s womb by the Manson Family and spirited away. “We both survived the same murder,” the woman, who called herself Rosie Tate-Polanski, <a href="https://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/victims_voyeurs_and_criminals_remembering_sharon_tate_and_the_manson_murders_partner/">told</a> papers at the time. </p>
<p id="49IMIy">“In my nearly twenty years of reporting on this case, people have asked me all the time: What do I think really happened? I hate that question more than anything. The plain answer is, I don’t know,” O’Neill writes in <em>Chaos</em>. O’Neill took an assignment to write about the impact that the Manson murders had on the Hollywood community from the now-defunct <em>Premiere </em>magazine in the late ’90s. He blew his deadline again and again, then decided to turn the project into a book, and then blew that deadline, too, as he stuffed his home with files of transcripts of conversations he had with hundreds of people for thousands of hours. While O’Neill had originally envisioned prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi as his protagonist, many of his other sources questioned the official version of events to the point that the celebrity prosecutor became an antagonist, threatening to sue the perpetually behind-schedule reporter. (In a page-turner stacked with gobsmacking facts, O’Neill’s years-long stipend for a single longform feature is still one of the more incredible tidbits detailed.) O’Neill was eventually able to produce a finished manuscript after bringing on a cowriter, the journalist and biographer Dan Piepenbring, to help organize his voluminous reporting. </p>
<p id="a8tJNJ">The result doesn’t quite rewrite the Manson narrative, but it makes a compelling case that the real story is unknowable. It doesn’t answer questions so much as it raises them, and provides a pocket history of the CIA’s illegal domestic surveillance program, CHAOS, as well as the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation, which sought to “increase factionalism” within the left wing. </p>
<p id="bW9Znq">The book examines evidence that the United States government granted the Manson family “curious leniency,” allowing them out of situations others would have been prosecuted for many times prior to their murder spree; O’Neill ultimately suggests that these privileges may have been connected to a plan to allow Manson to form his cult in order to foment negative public sentiment toward left-wing radicals. While it leaves much unanswered, <em>Chaos</em> successfully argues that the Tate-LaBianca murders are still, in many fundamental ways, a mystery, and not the horrifying and pat “Helter Skelter” nightmare presented by Bugliosi. </p>
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<p id="FErsTO"><em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em> also veers away from the established narrative about the Manson Family. Instead, Quentin Tarantino’s film recasts the events as a revenge fantasy. In 1969 Los Angeles, fading actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his best bud Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) are able to thwart the Family through a combination of happenstance, acid, and ready access to a flamethrower. Funny and immensely entertaining, <em>Once Upon a Time </em>will likely serve as an introduction to the Manson Family for a generation less familiar with its crimes. But it also highlights one of the most captivating aspects of the real crime—the way it tapped into fears about women. </p>
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<p id="PQCINI">Tarantino secured permission from the Tate family to portray Sharon Tate, who serves as the film’s avatar for innocence. Margot Robbie’s performance is a gentle tribute, one that luxuriates in Tate’s playfulness and imagines a world where she gets to stay happy and alive. While<em> Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood </em>has been warmly received, much of the critical thinking about the film has reflected on <a href="https://themuse.jezebel.com/quentin-tarantinos-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-double-1836675763">its often-cruel treatment of its female characters</a>. The way Cliff and Rick kill the Manson women is shown in gleeful, gruesome detail, and even the non-murdery Manson girls are depicted as repellant nincompoops—the ultimate, dirty-footed example of being <em>led astray</em>. Meanwhile, while Tate is lovingly portrayed, a damsel on a pedestal; unlike how <em>Inglourious Basterds</em> let its Jewish characters whoop Nazi ass, <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em> shows us two archetypically tough dudes saving a woman by … violently murdering other women. </p>
<p id="OY0b6Q">The way Tarantino positioned Tate is worth pausing on, even for ardent fans of the film. (I include myself in that category.) Tate’s longtime position as Hollywood’s most infamous sacrificial lamb is part of a broader cultural impulse to imagine and obsess over murdered women—particularly murdered young, beautiful white women—as sources of wisdom, vectors for understanding the world. “In antiquity, notes the historian Mary Beard, women were allowed public speech only as victims of martyrs. Some of that old thinking still lives with us, baked into the bones of Western culture,” Monroe writes in <em>Savage Appetites</em>. “So even as some victims are blamed or debased, others are afforded a kind of wounded authority, or an authority rooted in their wounds. Famous victims can speak for the rest of us. And we can use their tragedies to stand in for our personal cataclysms.” </p>
<p id="O5qYeG">The catalog of Manson Family content is part of a broader fixation on dead women. That this particular crime provides both Madonna (Tate) and whores (the Manson women) makes it even more irresistibly sordid, on top of all the other elements (hippies, cults, Hollywood) that collided to make it into one of the country’s most infamous massacres. Tarantino has plenty of company in leaning into this trope of the victimized woman as a symbol, including the popular podcast <em>My Favorite Murder</em>, which is hosted by two women and which reimagines heinous crimes as popcorn stories starring “sweet baby angels.” By presenting a daydream about two handsome fellas stumbling into savior roles, Tarantino has created a self-consciously wistful fairy tale about a world where Cliff and Rick’s brand of masculinity could actually help. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="bKf4MV">Although one imagines a tidy conclusion to the Manson saga and the other spends hundreds of pages tearing holes in the very concept of definitive answers, <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood </em>and <em>Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties</em> share an urge to find something new in the very well-tread narrative grooves of these murders. As Sanders noted, the crimes are so easily freighted with portentous significance; they can be rearranged as parables about the dark edge of ambition for celebrity, the perils of cultural change, and how drugs and racism can addle the brain. Senseless slaughter will never suddenly make sense, but the lasting desire to untangle the impossible knot speaks to the storyteller’s impulse to root out a moral, to find a better sense of an ending. This appetite seems unlikely to fade as this particular anniversary passes. Manson movies and books will continue to be released, forever—or, at least, until another real-life horror can tap into national anxieties with such grim specificity.</p>
<aside id="KCJeXh"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside>
https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/30/20746969/charles-manson-family-history-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywoodKate Knibbs2019-07-29T19:50:16-04:002019-07-29T19:50:16-04:00How Historically Accurate Is ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’?
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-Z5v9QbHcFeao6Nwsw30UAoF16A=/309x0:1058x562/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/64874374/MV5BNjQ5ZTYyY2UtMjY4Ni00NzRkLThiNTEtNzIwMzMzZDQzZDU0XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjUwNzk3NDc_._V1_.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Song Pictures</figcaption>
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<p>And a discussion on the metric of success in the streaming world</p> <div id="wSlj9C"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed-podcast/episode/6ybh3uAQ63rCwCLvUsEA68" style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 232px;" allowfullscreen="" allow="encrypted-media"></iframe></div>
<p id="3gBJbS"><a href="https://art19.com/shows/the-watch/episodes/9dfb565b-3bb8-4380-b7e3-11e4f445c3e6">There was a lot of news out of the TCAs this weekend</a>, including what Amazon wants its streaming service to look like over the next few years (2:43). After Netflix canceled the critically acclaimed <em>Tuca & Bertie</em>, the metric of success in the streaming world is called into question yet again (17:15). Plus: How historically accurate is <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em> (26:00)? And our favorite music from 1999 (39:20).</p>
<p id="gwauaw"><strong>Subscribe: </strong><a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Fthe-watch%2Fid1111739567%3Fmt%3D2">Apple Podcasts</a> / <a href="https://art19.com/shows/the-watch">Art19</a> / <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-ringer/the-watch">Stitcher</a> / <a href="https://www.theringer.com/rss/the-watch/index.xml">RSS</a></p>
https://www.theringer.com/2019/7/29/20746382/historically-accurate-is-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-amazons-celebrating-the-music-of-1999Chris RyanAlison HermanKate KnibbsLindsay Zoladz2019-07-29T10:30:12-04:002019-07-29T10:30:12-04:00Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right: On ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’
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<figcaption>Sony Pictures Entertainment/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>Quentin Tarantino’s alternate history on the Manson-tinged Los Angeles of the late ’60s is steeped in nostalgia, sometimes for worthy artifacts and other times for things best left in the past</p> <figure class="e-image">
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<p id="GP5g3W">There’s a dazzling, vertiginous crane shot in the first reel of <em>Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood</em>, taken from an angle sometimes called a “god’s eye view.” The deity in question here is Quentin Tarantino, and the kingdom upon which he gazes is—where else?—the parking lot of the storied Musso & Frank Grill in Los Angeles, where stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) is behind the wheel of a canary-yellow Coupe de Ville that belongs to his pal and employer Rick Dalton. They’ve just taken a boozy brunch meeting with Hollywood agent Marvin Schwarzs (the first of the film’s many holy-shit cameos: Al Pacino), who’s proffered some tough-love advice about Dalton’s dimming professional prospects. Dalton (played with charismatic pathos by Leonardo DiCaprio) made a household name for himself on the serialized ’50s Western <em>Bounty Law</em>, but that doesn’t mean as much in the age of <em>Easy Rider</em>. (Later in the movie, Rick uses “Dennis Hopper” as a slur.) From above, we see that Rick’s Coupe is exiting through Musso & Frank’s entrance—painted arrows point in the opposite direction of the way he’s driving. It’s a loaded visual detail: Sure, Cliff and Rick aren’t exactly the kind of guys to pay attention to minor traffic laws (Rick’s accumulation of DUIs are the reason Cliff has to drive him around in the first place). But more consequentially, the Age of Aquarius has officially dawned, leaving Rick and Cliff as boats against the current.</p>
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<p id="xcpq3V"><em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood </em>is a smoggy swirl of Los Angeles fact and fiction: Rick and Cliff are Tarantino inventions, but Rick lives on Cielo Drive, next door to Roman Polanski and a seemingly, but in this world not actually, doomed Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). It has the run time of an epic (two hours and 41 minutes, or approximately 0.88 <em>Avengers: Endgame</em>s) but also the loose, unhurried pace of a buddy flick. It is a movie that shows us in intimate detail what its characters do when they’re alone, killing time, if only to heighten the stakes of the everyday camaraderie when they are together. (Pitt also has some excellent scenes with a pit bull named Brandy, who very deservedly won this year’s Palm Dog at Cannes.) Rick and Cliff are lonely guys at heart, and you get the sense that they’ve rigged up the transactional dynamic of their relationship to avoid admitting how much they need each other emotionally.</p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="lPHQRj"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’ Exit Survey","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/29/8934724/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-exit-survey"},{"title":"The ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’ Characters, Ranked","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/29/8932082/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-character-ranking"},{"title":"Celebrating Quentin Tarantino Week","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/23/20706896/celebrating-quentin-tarantino-week"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="SZg0Ih">Though it’s ostensibly a movie about the Manson murders, <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood </em>is essentially a shaggy-dog bromance that invites us to crack open a period-appropriate beverage and plop in front of the TV set with Rick and Cliff. The revisionist approach to history recalls Tarantino’s most recent masterpiece, <em>Inglourious Basterds</em>, but tonally, it has more in common with <em>Jackie Brown</em>—a movie that, Tarantino recently <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2019/7/25/20727062/quentin-tarantino-feature-presentation-point-blank-reservoir-dogs">told</a> Amy Nicholson on a <em>Ringer</em> podcast, he initially conceived as being “a hangout movie.” “You would get to know the characters and then if you did know the characters and you did like the characters, maybe you might watch it every five years,” he said. “And every five years would be just like you’re hanging out with Jackie or you’re hanging out with Ordell.” DiCaprio and Pitt bring such charm and offbeat humor to their characters that it’s easy to imagine viewers feeling this way about Rick and Cliff, too. </p>
<p id="22rjHx">Which is occasionally jarring. In one scene, after the audience has been set up to think of Cliff as the one guy in the movie with his head on straight, we learn that he is rumored to have killed his wife and gotten away with it. A brief, smash-cut flashback is played for laughs, meant to suggest that—whether Cliff pushed her off the boat or she fell—the nagging woman had it coming to her. That’s all we ever hear about that story, and in a movie that is certainly not hard-pressed for time, it feels like a notable omission. As with just about everything else that happens in <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em>, if you don’t think twice, it’s all right.</p>
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<p id="44OidP">Even when they’re constructing alternate histories, Tarantino’s movies always exist in a kind of metaconversation with pop cultural reality. His casting decisions are sometimes playful winks (as when unbilled superstar Channing Tatum showed up as a surprise in <em>The Hateful Eight</em>) and other times earnest homages (helping to revive the careers of actors like John Travolta or Pam Grier), but they are always meaningful and knowing. <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em>, too, has some fun with stunt casting (Damian Lewis as Steve McQueen! Lena Dunham as a Manson girl!) that seems in jovial dialogue with the outside world. That’s true, too, of the duo at the top of the marquee—“Leo & Brad”—two stars still generating considerable wattage but who have been cast here as past-their-prime has-beens, offering up some kind of metacommentary on the fleeting nature of male movie stardom. This is a movie in which a character played by Brad Pitt is called “old man,” derisively, by a younger woman. Conversely, it is also a movie that features a shot of Brad Pitt taking off his shirt as if to prove, in the words of my esteemed colleague Jason Concepcion, <a href="https://twitter.com/netw3rk/status/1155596500979683328">“that brad pitt still got it.”</a></p>
<p id="exMeMn">But these knowing gestures toward the outside world make some of the more unsettling aspects of the film feel like devil-may-care provocations. Take Sharon Tate’s ex, Jay Sebring, a celebrity hair stylist who, in real life, was murdered by the Manson family along with Tate. He’s a minor, even underdeveloped, character in <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em>, but it is notable that he is played by Emile Hirsch, an actor who in 2015 pleaded guilty to assaulting a female film executive, after <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/emile-hirsch-brutally-assaulted-a-female-film-executive-hes-now-starring-in-the-new-tarantino-film">strangling her to the point of unconsciousness</a>. Tarantino is the most high-profile director to cast Hirsch in the aftermath of his assault charge, and while watching the film I couldn’t think of a single reason Hirsch was cast instead of any number of other actors who could have ably played the part. The presence of Polanski as a character, too, is unsettling, given that Tarantino has only recently <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/movies/tarantino-thurman-interview.html">apologized</a> for the cavalier comments he has made in the past about the woman who said that Polanski drugged and raped her when she was 13. You can’t tell the story of the Manson murders without at least gesturing toward Polanski, of course, but he’s presented here with an unexamined lightness that feels indicative of the movie’s general tendency to skirt tougher questions about violence against women. </p>
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<p id="4SpbHS">Tarantino’s depiction of Tate has come under some scrutiny, especially after a testy press conference at Cannes when a female journalist asked why the character was given so few lines of dialogue in the film. Tarantino’s response was oddly defensive: “Well, I just reject your hypotheses,” he said, refusing to elaborate much further. I wasn’t as bothered by Tate, or Margot Robbie’s wide-eyed, sweetly telegenic performance. The movie is, in some sense, just a vehicle to save her life and give her thwarted career a hypothetical second chance, asking us to imagine a world in which she had not been most famous for being brutally murdered while pregnant—a pretty sentimental idea, as far as Quentin Tarantino movies go. <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em> is suffused with soft-focused sentiment and nostalgia, though as it went on it was less clear to me what, exactly, the film is nostalgic for, and what other Hollywood evils it believes would not have happened in an imagined, prelapsarian world in which the Manson murders had been thwarted. Would Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski still be happily married? Would all the other unpleasantness be swept under the rug?</p>
<p id="MbnKSj">Am I thinking too much about it? Tarantino would probably think so, because above all things <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em> is nostalgic for a time when we <em>didn’t</em> think too much about it, when a movie could, supposedly, just be a movie. Depending on how willing you are to take it on its flashy surface, <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em> can be that too—a fun, uproarious, two-and-a-half-hour popcorn flick that only slightly overstays its welcome. If you’re looking for it to be a sharp, lucid commentary on Hollywood stardom, though, you might find, at times, the lens fogging up.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="XuU1jV">The last scene of the movie is, too, from the perspective of an overhead crane shot. Rick Dalton has just transformed from TV white hat to true-crime hero, torching the last of the Manson intruders with his trusty prop flamethrower. Cielo Drive is once again as quiet as <em>Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood</em>. The camera hovers above the gated yard of the Polanski residence, as a mercifully spared Jay Sebring and Sharon Tate invite their new neighbor in for a drink. I wanted it to keep zooming out. For all of <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em>’s sprawl, its final moments felt limited, domestic, insular. Was Rick Dalton finally meeting his neighbors, and maybe scoring a bit part in <em>Chinatown</em>, the only thing at stake all along? The visual details of this movie are so detailed, so warm, so lovingly re-created, that when I emerged from the theater I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be back in the impersonal time of the drone shot. But <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em> could have used that sense of panorama, if only to take in a broader vision of the world, and expand the edges of this movie’s supposedly all-seeing frame.</p>
<aside id="v9OVEW"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside>
https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/29/8934778/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-review-quentin-tarantinoLindsay Zoladz2019-07-29T09:22:26-04:002019-07-29T09:22:26-04:00The ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’ Exit Survey
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<figcaption>Getty Images/Sony Pictures Entertainment/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>It’s a Quentin Tarantino movie about Charles Manson starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt—there’s plenty to talk about</p> <p id="DCY23R"><em>Quentin Tarantino returned to theaters this weekend, which means revisionist history, ultraviolence, and odes to movies (and feet) returned to theaters this weekend. Join us as we discuss </em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood<em>, Tarantino’s Charles Manson–adjacent film starring a couple of true movie stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt.</em></p>
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<h4 id="y2YfwU">1. What is your tweet-length review of <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em>?</h4>
<p id="84zJ9Y"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/andrew-gruttadaro"><strong>Andrew Gruttadaro</strong></a><strong>: </strong>Movie stars being movie stars—you really love to see it.</p>
<p id="ec8wbL"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/sean-yoo"><strong>Sean Yoo</strong></a><strong>: </strong>I loved hanging with my dads Rick and Cliff. Very fun, good times; 10/10, would recommend.</p>
<p id="RCcdAu"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/alison-herman"><strong>Alison Herman</strong></a><strong>:</strong></p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD has led me to believe driving in la was a lot more fun when there were half as many people in it</p>— Alison Herman (@aherman2006) <a href="https://twitter.com/aherman2006/status/1155256672551489537?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 27, 2019</a>
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<p id="jJ3Nfo"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/miles-surrey"><strong>Miles Surrey</strong></a><strong>: </strong>A charming, languid hangout movie from a bygone era, and a heartfelt ode to being washed. Even though Tarantino claims he’ll direct only 10 movies—this was his ninth—<em>Once Upon a Time</em> feels like the perfect Retirement Film.</p>
<p id="qqy0F4"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/kate-knibbs"><strong>Kate Knibbs</strong></a><strong>:</strong></p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">FLTG Movie Review: 'Once Upon A Time….. In Hollywood’ This film will be appreciated by anyone who’s ever been in the Acting profession.. Also some knowledge of the Charles Manson family…. Tarantino makes Fiction from Fact.. I enjoyed it. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/APPROVED?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#APPROVED</a></p>— ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) <a href="https://twitter.com/FINALLEVEL/status/1155623455091580928?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 28, 2019</a>
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<p id="XJw9CK"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/michael-baumann"><strong>Michael Baumann</strong></a><strong>: </strong>There is a duality of Tarantino: On the one hand, he’s a dazzlingly talented auteur who takes great pains to create exciting, funny, stylish films. On the other hand, he has an appalling lack of empathy as a writer, views “transgressive” and “artful” as synonyms, and hasn’t accepted edits since 1995. When the first Tarantino is in charge, we get some of the best movies of the past 30 years. When the second is in charge, we get <em>The Hateful Eight</em>, which was the single most pointlessly unpleasant moviegoing experience—perhaps the most unpleasant artistic experience in any medium—of my life. <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em> is like 65 percent Good Tarantino, 35 percent Bad Tarantino. That’s more than 280 characters, but surely nobody would appreciate going on too long more than Tarantino himself.</p>
<h4 id="Ompw3k">2. What was the best moment of the movie?</h4>
<p id="lo9hZX"><strong>Baumann: </strong>Rick Dalton’s fit of rage in his trailer.</p>
<p id="YN95NB"><strong>Gruttadaro: </strong>The stretch from Rick’s conversation with the child actress (I’m sorry: <em>actor</em>)—in which he’s brought to tears by a dime-store novel about a bronco buster that hits too close to home—to his botched scene to his ensuing trailer freakout to, finally, the moment when he nails his next scene and is told by the child that it was the best acting she’s ever seen (which brings him to tears, again). That was all truly sublime.</p>
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<p id="nv0gzi"><strong>Herman: </strong>Tarantino’s passion for pop cultural flotsam has never come through as fiercely or as movingly as it does on the set of <em>Lancer</em>. All the most benevolent parts of this movie’s nostalgia are exemplified in Rick Dalton’s guest-acting gig: the affection for faded stars and unfashionable genres, the elevation of ephemera to monumental cinema, the depth of Rick’s angst and the salvation he finds in work well done. It’s a funny, surprising, perfect scene, populated by rediscoveries (RIP, Luke Perry) and new finds (Julia Butters!) alike. Rick deserves as many whiskey sours as he likes.</p>
<p id="rGYdSJ"><strong>Knibbs: </strong>When Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) watched the audience watch her during a matinee showing of her latest movie. It was just really sweet and beautiful.</p>
<p id="CLNPFW"><strong>Surrey: </strong>I dug all the movies/shows/commercials-within-the-movie—the immaculate attention to detail made <em>Once Upon a Time</em> feel like a living, breathing artifact of the ’60s.</p>
<p id="pCm4Sx"><strong>Yoo: </strong>Every single thing that happens after Cliff Booth finally smokes that acid-dipped cigarette. Cliff says, “… and away we go!” and away we went with the best final act in any Tarantino movie to date. We got the head-smashing, ferocious-dog-eating, flame-thrower-y ending we all deserved.</p>
<h4 id="pSoSEk">3. What was your least favorite part of the film?</h4>
<p id="PtmpFx"><strong>Gruttadaro: </strong>Can we go back to that whole bit about Cliff murdering his wife?</p>
<p id="39OZ2b"><strong>Knibbs: </strong>Margaret Qualley’s filthy feet. She was otherwise lovely but honestly, those yellowed arches were a better argument against joining a cult than all the murder.</p>
<p id="zI6Lyd"><strong>Yoo: </strong>It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but using Charles Manson for only one scene only threw me for a loop. Also the feet.</p>
<p id="d7dYlg"><strong>Surrey: </strong>Personally, I’m just not that into feet—sorry! </p>
<p id="hHN2EX"><strong>Baumann: </strong>We’re gonna play Cliff’s killing his wife for laughs? That’s a choice Serious Filmmakers are making in 2019?</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="oJjbrx"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right: On ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/29/8934778/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-review-quentin-tarantino"},{"title":"The ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’ Characters, Ranked","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/29/8932082/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-character-ranking"},{"title":"Explaining Who’s Real and Who’s Fake in ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’","url":"https://www.theringer.com/video/2019/7/26/8932432/explaining-whos-real-and-whos-fake-in-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood"},{"title":"A Pre–‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’ Lesson on the Manson Family","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/24/20708506/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-charles-manson-family-sharon-tate"},{"title":"Celebrating Quentin Tarantino Week","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/23/20706896/celebrating-quentin-tarantino-week"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="xvJ8qU"><strong>Herman: </strong>I’m as exhausted by the Tarantino Discourse as the next person, and the parts of this movie that gave me pause don’t erase the ones that thrilled me. But I also can’t turn off the part of my brain that balks when we’re asked to laugh at the possibility that Cliff murdered his nagging wife, or be content with Sharon Tate as a flat, largely mute background player in two men’s story, or cheer when Cliff bashes a young woman’s face into a mantel. At its best, Tarantino’s pining for a bygone era yields a bittersweet reminder of what was lost. At its worst, it creates a world where old-school masculinity has won out over social progress, with the Manson family as its unfair proxies.</p>
<h4 id="R69Z9L">4. What are your thoughts on the ending?</h4>
<p id="IdJdfn"><strong>Gruttadaro: </strong>We’ve done the whole alternate history thing before—and it’s a lot less complicated when deployed to burn Hitler alive—and in a lot of ways, this felt like Tarantino taking the easy way out. Viscerally speaking, though, I can’t really complain about the reappearance of Chekhov’s flamethrower.</p>
<p id="MhZpzq"><strong>Yoo: </strong>One of the best parts of the ending that I forgot to mention above was how casual Rick was when discussing the gruesome events with Jay Sebring. He literally burned a bloody hippie to a crisp with a flamethrower and he’s talking about it like it was no big deal. It was the perfect amount of humor after a jaw-dropping climax.</p>
<p id="u7D6wI"><strong>Herman: </strong>Tarantino’s clearly no stranger to rewriting history, often in the form of violent retribution for world-historical villains. But the Manson family aren’t Nazis, or slave owners, or even Bill; they were young, manipulated, drugged-out kids, and watching Rick take a flamethrower to one feels a lot less cathartic and a lot more uncomfortable than Aldo Raine’s branding Hans Landa with a swastika. I have no objection to Tarantino “saving” Sharon Tate, and even think it shows a strange kind of softening for his latest alternate history to preserve as many lives as it takes. But even as this ending is more complex than <em>Basterds</em>’ or <em>Kill Bill</em>’s, it’s also less successful.</p>
<p id="KMI0HX"><strong>Baumann: </strong>I’m not saying you can’t show violence against women in film, even at the hands of the film’s protagonist, and certainly Cliff’s killing would-be murderers/domestic terrorists isn’t half as disturbing as the fact that him getting away with killing his wife is played for laughs. It’s just disturbing to see it portrayed so … gleefully? Disturbing is probably what Tarantino was going for, but I’m not sure what the point was. It just comes off as a petulant “you can’t make me not offend you”–type gag, like a film school Jim Norton.</p>
<p id="ldmaCy"><strong>Knibbs: </strong>It’s complicated. I sort of loved it, and the violence itself wasn’t really an issue for me—it was stylized, slapstick mayhem, too ridiculous to even feel squeamish about—but the obvious glee Tarantino took at the over-the-top carnage was just less compelling than the joy he also clearly took in creating Rick and Cliff’s friendship, and their version of L.A.</p>
<p id="PArpyA"><strong>Surrey: </strong>What did you expect? The dude enjoys his revisionist history, and it isn’t a Tarantino film without a shocking outburst of violence. But Tate’s inviting Dalton over for a drink is also Tarantino at his most sentimental, something that’s a lot more commendable and nuanced than setting a bunch of Nazis on fire (which, it goes without saying, is also fine).</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6YbBTkIAniU9IgbZpXT5TWlYA9Y=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/18342342/Film_Review___Once_Upon_a_Time_in_Hollywood.0.jpg">
<cite>Sony Pictures Releasing</cite>
</figure>
<h4 id="8mB717">5. Pick one: Brad or Leo?</h4>
<p id="KV6yiu"><strong>Yoo: </strong>I love both my parents equally. Don’t make me choose.</p>
<p id="07e3NJ"><strong>Gruttadaro: </strong>With a shirt on: Leo, because of the stretch I mentioned in Question No. 2. With a shirt off: Brad, by a mile.</p>
<p id="omQhg6"><strong>Knibbs: </strong>I will always pick Leo in general, but this movie belongs to Brad Pitt.</p>
<p id="qrVNdD"><strong>Baumann: </strong>Brad. Both in general and here specifically, where he was charming enough to forget from time to time that he murdered his wife and make everyone treat it like a minor professional inconvenience for him.</p>
<p id="4Edp1t"><strong>Surrey: </strong>I’ll go with the guy who didn’t kill his wife, and who doesn’t make me feel awful about myself when he takes his shirt off. </p>
<p id="PUFMSx"><strong>Herman: </strong>Leo is acting here (and quite well!). Brad is giving pure, unadulterated movie star. In a movie about stardom, Brad wins by default.</p>
<h4 id="HCbNkq">6. Who is the best side character in this movie?</h4>
<p id="eOtyfH"><strong>Yoo: </strong>Mike Moh’s portrayal of Bruce Lee was iconic, and that fight scene with Cliff was basically Tarantino porn. Also … <em>SHWARZZZZZZZS</em>.</p>
<p id="TyrrjT"><strong>Surrey: </strong>Brandy is the best movie dog we’ve had in a while. Even the great Charlie Cooper didn’t bite a would-be murderer in the nuts!</p>
<p id="v9cad1"><strong>Knibbs: </strong>The little Method actor girl who makes Rick cry! What a sweetie, what a thespian!</p>
<p id="VLwsf3"><strong>Herman: </strong>There’s so little of Sharon Tate’s inner life here that she qualifies as a side character, but Margot Robbie’s performance delivers so much more than what’s on the page. “Be the most charming, carefree person alive” is quite the tall order; Robbie meets it and then some.</p>
<p id="nhZ8y9"><strong>Baumann: </strong>Well, the most <em>prominent</em> side character is the longing, lustful shot of the female foot. I know Tarantino’s got a foot thing, and go nuts, dude, but I left the theater knowing more about Margot Robbie’s plantar fascia than Sharon Tate—thanks to the only instance in human history of someone wanting to take their shoes off in a movie theater. Then I missed most of the dialogue in the car ride between Pussycat and Cliff because Margaret Qualley’s feet were front and center, pressed up against the windshield like this was a fetish porn parody of <em>Midnight Express</em>. I’m excited to see Tarantino’s <em>Star Trek</em> movie just to see how Starfleet ends up operating with all their crewmembers in flip-flops.</p>
<p id="JeGAwR"><strong>Gruttadaro: </strong>Damian Lewis as a lovelorn wallflower-y Steve McQueen for a split second. Actually, never mind: It’s obviously Brandy the dog.</p>
<h4 id="yBt5rK">7. Which Rick Dalton movie/show would you pay money to see a full version of?</h4>
<p id="rT8UEw"><strong>Gruttadaro: </strong>This one:</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7umpULvyNrSRJ779VF4VV5c_npU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/18342341/source__1_.gif">
<cite>Sony Pictures Releasing</cite>
</figure>
<p id="YMvftR"><strong>Herman: </strong>I already did! What’s <em>The 14 Fists of McCluskey</em> if not <em>Inglourious Basterds</em> with flamethrowers instead of machetes?</p>
<p id="qQQLgR"><strong>Baumann: </strong>I found myself quite interested in the whole <em>Lancer</em> plotline. I’d watch a boozed-up Leo trade barbs with Timothy Olyphant.</p>
<p id="AaQYMH"><strong>Surrey: </strong>Give me the box set of every dumb Western he filmed in Italy.</p>
<p id="0NToz4"><strong>Yoo: </strong>I would pay all the money in the world to watch <em>Operazione DYN-O-MITE</em>! Italian James Bond? Yes, please.</p>
<h4 id="XX4KZE">8. Which L.A. landmark were you most excited to see in the movie?</h4>
<p id="1qqZwf"><strong>Gruttadaro: </strong>It was just really amazing to see a Hollywood Boulevard that didn’t resemble hell on earth.</p>
<p id="79DTwU"><strong>Herman: </strong>Hollywood Boulevard has never looked more classy and less clogged with guys in Elmo costumes selling fidget spinners.</p>
<p id="Nxglet"><strong>Surrey: </strong>The long stretches of highway without traffic congestion? </p>
<p id="rVl4Ea"><strong>Yoo: </strong>I was fortunate enough to watch the movie in the Cinerama Dome, and it was quite the trip when the dome was shown in the movie. The crowd erupted in applause; what a Hollywood moment. </p>
<h4 id="B1gbAO">9. Where does <em>Once Upon a Time … </em>rank in Tarantino’s filmography?</h4>
<p id="OHYIr7"><strong>Yoo: </strong>Too early to say, but I definitely thought it was better than <em>Django Unchained</em> and <em>The Hateful Eight</em>.</p>
<p id="86hnCm"><strong>Gruttadaro: </strong>Just outside of the top five.</p>
<p id="1okQq4"><strong>Herman: </strong>Toward the bottom—which is still to say, better than most other movies. </p>
<p id="UZJvD0"><strong>Surrey: </strong>I need more time to sit on it, but I’ll definitely place <em>Once Upon a Time</em> in the upper tier along with <em>Kill Bill: Vol. 1</em>, <em>Pulp Fiction</em>, and <em>Inglourious Basterds</em>. I’m not the biggest Tarantino fan in the world, but most of his movies, including this one, are fun and rewatchable—minus <em>The Hateful Eight</em>, which should be chucked into an active volcano—and this one’s no different.</p>
<p id="dT3Rpi"><strong>Baumann: </strong>Somewhere in the middle. The cast and visuals were so good, but they just made the Bad Tarantino bits all the more frustrating for having blemished a movie with so much else going for it.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="NaYQkn"><strong>Knibbs: </strong>It is certainly in the top three. I always have a hard time making rankings, but I will say that I plan on going to see this movie in theaters again, which I haven’t done for a film in years.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/7/29/8934724/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-exit-surveyThe Ringer Staff