Oh that is incredible. I’ll add her to my list of People Who Need To Be In Everything, along with Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Shea Whigham.
Interestingly the guy who plays Manson also plays him in the second season of Mindhunter.
Isn’t Tex’s lack of surprise due to the fact that he doesn’t really remember Cliff? Cliff remembers of course, but to the others he’s probably just another pretty face. Remember that they still think they’re in Polanski’s place but they actually have no idea who is in either house–just that they should kill whomever is inside. Tex’s lack of surprise is mostly just a lack of recognition. There’s no other connection.
— Alan
Saw this today. What a love letter to Movies, Music, Cars, Actors, Neon of the late 60’s.
It’s a rambling tale that was very enjoyable to watch. I agree with @Matt_W that having at least a cursory overview of Charles Manson and the grisly murders will give you more enjoyment than if you didn’t know anything about them.
I felt Tarantino really builds the tension, both of the overall story and the underlying story of Rick Dalton and his stunt double Cliff. I felt like we got two climaxes, one where the scene with Dalton and the little girl, and of course the real ending of the movie.
The soundtrack of this movie is going to be crazy. By using just pieces of music and switching songs with cuts of driving around LA, this was not only a good homage, but a great way to give a sense of time. You know it’s later because a new song is playing. But there are so damn many of these snippets, the song list must be pretty darn long. I don’t know many of the songs - is this list appear to be accurate?
Reading some of the comments - the fight with Bruce Lee I think is there to give credence to his badassery at the ranch and his confidence in handling the “Fix it” situation. But it’s probably there as well because QT loves martial arts and to pay homage to people in the late 60’s, you’d probably be asking why he didn’t have Bruce Lee in it if he wasn’t there.
And QT sure loves watching Margo’s legs. I can’t disagree with those boots and hot pants.
I love QT movies by and large, it would be hard to place this, but it’s a damn solid effort that I would recommend to anyone. Ask me again once the DVD comes out & I can watch it a few more times!
I saw this last night. It’s nowhere near as bad or nihilistic as Hateful Eight, but I’m still not sure it’s entirely successful. I’d describe it as the product of two different Tarantinos at work. There’s Tarantino the storyteller, who has created a couple of great characters - the actor and the stuntman trying to cope with the changing culture in Hollywood and the prospect of their careers becoming obsolete. I liked those characters and I think that story is interesting. But the problem is that it’s buried under a load of ejaculate from Tarantino the narcissist, who is overindulgent with his editing, sloppy with his narrative and piles on style and references for no reason. Most of that stuff is just the fetishization of the pop culture from a certain era, with the same lack of context and self-awareness that Ready Player One had about the eighties. The wish fulfillment and wistful depiction of a more innocent Hollywood gets totally lost in the stew. I felt like I was trying to watch a movie with Quentin Tarantino sitting next to me constantly elbowing me in the ribs and trying to bend my ear with stories about some vintage movie poster he put in the corner of the frame. Shut up Tarantino, I’m trying to watch your movie.
I will confidently say that I’m getting sick of how Tarantino depicts female characters. I get that he wants to use Sharon Tate as a symbol, but Margot Robbie is a wonderful actress who deserves better. And I really couldn’t stand the portrayal of the Manson Family girls as flirtatious hotties (Tarantino’s go to trait for female characters) basically indistinguishable from the girls in Death Proof.
It’s very frustrating to me because there is a good story here about Leo’s character. I don’t think I’ve seen Leo portray this kind of insecurity before. And Brad Pitt was like a dopey dog lolling in the sun or loping along after his master. I was constantly curious about the nature of their relationship. I just wish it had been situated in a less self-indulgent fairy tale narrative.
Do you really think Tex doesn’t recognize Cliff? Consider these three things. 1) How often does someone show up at the ranch, muscle past all the girls, and beat the shit out of one of the few men present? Cliff should have been pretty memorable to everyone at Spahn’s ranch that day. 2) Tex was called over specifically to size up Cliff. The idea seems to be that Tex is a strong enough judge of character to determine whether an outsider is acceptable or not. 3) Brad Pitt is a pretty memorable fella. I mean, seriously, people as beautiful as Pitt kind of sear themselves into your eyeballs, don’t they? Yeah, okay, maybe they’re a dime a dozen in Los Angeles, we’re talking Brad Pitt here. Who would forget meeting Brad Pitt???
Seems to me the greater stretch is to surmise that Tex doesn’t recognize Cliff.
And do they think they’re in Polanski’s place? I might be forgetting some of the conversation in the car, but I don’t recall any specific reference to going after Polanski or Tate. Tex just tells the girls that Manson ordered the murders of some people in the house, and the girls have to take it on faith. Tex directs them to Rick’s house, and not Polanski’s house, right? Again, I might be misremembering.
I’m actually not attached to this interpretation, but it certainly occurred to me that Tarantino was using our expectations of what actually happened as a great big fake-out, and the incident in the movie was just a disgruntled Tex trying to get back at Cliff. I’m assuming the people Manson’s followers killed in the days after the Tate murders – in the real world, I mean – also weren’t attacked in Tarantino’s alternate reality. It was all in our mind. None of it was in the world Tarantino shows us. Everything we know about Manson and the people he killed was just a big feint in the service of letting us experience an America unsullied by those historic moments of senseless violence.
-Tom
I recall touches of it in The Aviator. But, yeah, he carried that really well. It was compelling to watch.
-Tom
I appreciate it, but I’m not subscribing to this interpretation. QT is not that subtle, and the odds of Cliff being at that house so late at night are staggeringly low. Let alone after being in Italy for months.
No, they were supposed to go to Polanski’s house, where Manson ran into Jay Sebring. Tex was talked into switching up plans by the girl who recognized Rick and railed against the violence inculcated by TV.
I’m not sure this is fair. Female characters in Tarantino films are rarely flirtatious hotties: The Bride, Zoe Bell in every one of his movies, Daisy Domergue, Jackie Brown, Emmanuelle Mimieux, even many of the Manson family girls in this film. Was Sadie a flirtatious hottie? Squeaky? Gypsy?
Yeah, this is mostly where that interpretation falls apart. To conclude that Tex and Pussycat somehow tracked him down, they would be showing up at his trailer, wouldn’t they?
I missed this, then. So Tex was telling the truth about Manson sending them? The dialogue establishes that they’re specifically supposed to go to the Polanski house? If so, that handily scuttles the interpretation that this universe’s Manson wasn’t a murderous psychopath.
-Tom
You’re right, although I’d dispute Zoe Bell on that list. Secondary female characters then.
This scene, from Death Proof, is over 7 minutes long. Women talking to women about whatever the fuck they want to. Zoe geeks out about driving that Challenger. The whole scene easily and flyingly passes the Bechdel test. Are they all attractive? Of course. Everyone in the movies is attractive. It’s hard to watch this scene and dismiss any of them as “flirtatious” though. They seem like fully realized characters to me.
I’m not saying that Tarantino doesn’t have his problems. He’s pretty enamored with the cool man tough guy archetype. Thurman’s story of being pressured by him to drive that scene in Kill Bill 2 is pretty harrowing. But for a guy who directs the kinds of violence and testosterone drenched films that he does, he clearly makes an attempt to get women right and acknowledges when he fucks up.
This article, which I just happened to run across on Polygon, is pretty good regarding Tarantino and the women in his films.
I wanted to say I was giddy when that old tv show clip came on with “and now the moment you’ve all been waiting for” followed shortly by cliff smoking that acid laced cigarette and saying " and away we go" when he took his dog for a walk.
Just classic. I was on the edge of my seat!
I haven’t been a fan of QT movies and I made the mistake of thinking this one would change my mind.
I went out to the lobby about half way through for a trip to the urinal and on the way back in I decided a better use of my time would be to go grocery shopping. So, at least I can’t argue that I didn’t get anything at all done today.
Maybe it’s because I don’t have much contest of the Manson murders but I, my wife, and the two friends I went with really did not like it. It completely came off as a movie made for people embedded in the movie industry, and while I can see the artistic ideas in it it all fell flat.
We all felt that the move felt like it had no point, almost all of the side stories were pointless (well acted but pointless), and the movie could have been cut down to half it’s size.
I don’t really like any of his movies except one either. Good to know.
There are two kinds of people who see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: those who feel a sense of dread when Tarantino holds on the Cielo Dr. street sign, and those who don’t even notice that he’s holding on a street sign. I feel that the movie will have a very different kind of impact for people in the first group.
-Tom
Yeah, I think this is super important. The criticisms of the movie are, to me, on point, but they may or may not affect one’s enjoyment of the film depending on stuff like this. I spent the whole movie up until the end section with a growing sense of dread, which made the denouement really work.
My knowledge of the Manson murders basically consists of listening to the Haunting of Sharon Tate episode of the Flop House. Is that enough? I can only just take self-indulgent era Tarantino as it is.
Tex frames it as: “Charlie told us to go to Terry’s old place and kill everyone there.” (Charlie’s actual orders: “Destroy everyone there.”)
It’s Susan Atkins who – as noted by others – steers them onto the house next door.
Reality isn’t far off: in real life, Manson told Tex explicitly that they were to “destroy everyone” at 10050 Cielo Drive…and take anything of value (Charlie desperately needed money, which was one of the major motive forces that set all the dominoes falling.) If they didn’t get a bunch of cash and valuables at the Tate residence, though, they were to go and do the same thing to all the neighbors until they’d come up with enough money.
That Tex and the others returned without money really set Charlie off. (Which is nuts: Voytek Frykowski had taken a HUGE delivery of mescaline and pot earlier in the day; there was a few hundred dollars of hash in plain view in his and Abigail Folger’s bedroom; and let’s not even get into them doing nothing with Jay Sebring’s Ferrari in the driveway.) He was convinced that Tex (who’d done acid earlier in the day, and then snorted a bunch of speed just before the murders) had fucked it up. That’s why Charlie led everyone back to hit another mansion – in this case the Labianca house – the next day.