Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

[sponk]

Tsk! It was written by a man.

[worldsgreatestsinner]

Not completely out of his arse - it is visible (and pointedly placed towards the centre of the screen) when someone (Pitt?) goes into the shed earlier in the film.

Ah, I didn't notice that.

The trend for when critics praise this on Twitter to immediately have someone jump in the comments "WHAT WAS GOOD ABOUT IT? THE MISOGYNY? IS THAT WHAT YOU LIKED! SEXIST!" is getting right on my fucking tits.

[Mister Six]

Good review of the film here by Walter Chaw, one of my favourite film critics.

Chaw has fallen down the woke hole over the past year or so, but he seems fine with the ending and makes no mention of the Bruce Lee brouhaha so I feel comfortable in not giving a flying fuck about either of those complaints.

[nw83]

I thought the Bruce Lee sequence was supposed to be the Brad Pitt character's exaggerated self-aggrandising fantasy. It's either a flashback or a fantasy, and it makes more sense as the latter. So the fact Bruce Lee is ridiculous in it tells you more about Pitt's character (he's given to childish heroic fantasies) than about Lee ...?

[worldsgreatestsinner]

Walter Chaw actually made a twitter thread about the Bruce Lee stuff,  calling out the people who are critical of it as racists.

https://mobile.twitter.com/mangiotto/status/1155538390386761728

[Phil_A]

Lee's family making a stink over his characterisation in this is pretty funny when you think that they actually approved Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, a film with about as much connection to reality as Man In The Mirror did regarding Jacko.

[worldsgreatestsinner]

For anyone interested, the Sony Movie Channel are playing a series of films next week selected by Tarantino as being influential on OUATIH - So they're playing The Wrecking Crew, Model Shop, Getting Straight, Gunman's Walk, Hammerhead, Easy Rider, Cactus Flower and Bob, Carol, Ted & Alice.

[Rev+]

I thought the Bruce Lee sequence was supposed to be the Brad Pitt character's exaggerated self-aggrandising fantasy.

No, it's definitely supposed to be taken as something that actually happens in the film's reality.  It's pretty much just there to establish that Pitt's character is nails.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

What's up with Leo during this informal roundtable interview? Tired? Bored? Shy? No sense of humour? They're all having a nice wee laugh about this and that, but he doesn't really seem to be paying attention to anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_W12HmsIMY

Hats off to him, though, if he's just an awkward sort who can't be bothered with social interaction.

Also, Brad Pitt always comes across as a nice fella. I'm sick of Hollywood stars turning up on chat shows to perform their "Hey, I'm just a funny, self-deprecating dude!" act, but Pitt does appear to be the genuine article.

[nw83]

No, it's definitely supposed to be taken as something that actually happens in the film's reality.  It's pretty much just there to establish that Pitt's character is nails.

I think what gave me that impression is Pitt's character is wearing a tuxedo in the scene, the same clothing that Di Caprio's character is wearing on the set at that moment (his first and only time in that TV show). So it seems more like a 'this is obviously what would've happened if I was allowed on set' fantasy.

This is all from memory though, and my short-term memory is like a sieve.

[worldsgreatestsinner]

Yeah, but the way it happens is

They're filming Green Hornet. Leo and Kurt talk in the trailer. Leo is wearing the tux. Brad is outside in normal clothes. Kurt says his wife doesn't want Brad on set. Leo convinces him. Kurt comes out and tells Brad to get over to wardrobe and he'll be used if needed.

Brad has then been to wardrobe and he's waiting to see if he's going to be used. He's sitting in the tux. That's when Bruce starts boasting about how deadly he is. Brad and Bruce fight. Brad is thrown off set.

[nw83]

Yeah, but the way it happens is

They're filming Green Hornet. Leo and Kurt talk in the trailer. Leo is wearing the tux. Brad is outside in normal clothes. Kurt says his wife doesn't want Brad on set. Leo convinces him. Kurt comes out and tells Brad to get over to wardrobe and he'll be used if needed.

Brad has then been to wardrobe and he's waiting to see if he's going to be used. He's sitting in the tux. That's when Bruce starts boasting about how deadly he is. Brad and Bruce fight. Brad is thrown off set.

Definitely a flashback about something that's happened, then. Thanks!

[Mister Six]

Aye. When the flashback scene ends, Cliff says "Fair enough" - as in "Fair enough, he should have kicked me off the set for throwing Bruce Lee into his wife's car."

That doesn't preclude him imagining himself a tougher man than he is, but the start of the film has loads of flashbacks that apparently play out as happened, so there's no reason to believe that's the case here.

[Mister Six]

Personally I agree with Walter Chaw's takes on the scene:

https://twitter.com/mangiotto/status/1155563546564071424?s=19

https://twitter.com/mangiotto/status/1154814770119245824?s=19

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

This is stating the bleeding obvious, I know, but it recently occurred to me that Quentin Tarantino really has spent most of his life watching films and television shows. How else could he have absorbed this massive amount of stuff? Like most of us on here, I consider myself an enthusiastic and fairly knowledgeable connoisseur of pop culture, but I doubt I've seen even a third of the films that QT has seen.

I mean, he strikes me as the sort of avaricious film nerd who, even if you tried to catch him out by mentioning a parochial piece of British crap like Holiday on the Buses, would be able to prove that he'd seen that too.  I just don't know how he's found the time.

[worldsgreatestsinner]

I remember him saying that his mother and stepfather really encouraged his interest in cinema from  a young age and would take him to double-bills of stuff like Carnal Knowledge. He also worked in a video store and would sit around watching everything he could. Along those lines, AV Club have broken down all the references in Once Upon... that they could.

https://film.avclub.com/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-annotated-1836793225

[Mister Six]

This is stating the bleeding obvious, I know, but it recently occurred to me that Quentin Tarantino really has spent most of his life watching films and television shows. How else could he have absorbed this massive amount of stuff? Like most of us on here, I consider myself an enthusiastic and fairly knowledgeable connoisseur of pop culture, but I doubt I've seen even a third of the films that QT has seen.

I mean, he strikes me as the sort of avaricious film nerd who, even if you tried to catch him out by mentioning a parochial piece of British crap like Holiday on the Buses, would be able to prove that he'd seen that too.  I just don't know how he's found the time.

He worked in a video rental store for years, didn't he? Nine-hour shift, all the tapes at your disposal - and if you're really passionate you can stick around after hours too.

And since then he's become rich enough that he has the time and resources to indulge this stuff. You and I couldn't take a year off just to cane every American film released in 1953. He could, if he wanted to.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

True, but what sort of video shop was this? One specialising in obscure grindhouse films and esoteric arthouse fare? If it was a normal video shop, Tarantino must've spent most of his time complaining to customers about their lazy failure to rewind Rocky II back to the beginning.

Being richer than the sun will allow you the time to watch the complete works of Robert Culp and Mario Bava, but he seemed to know all about this stuff in detail before he'd even gazed down a lens.

[worldsgreatestsinner]

From what I've read in the past it was a little store but one with lots of obscure stuff. Even in the late 2000s when I lived in America you could still find little rental stores with a stack of lesser known films, when Tarantino was working in one of these the range would have been really impressive. Do you know the podcast Projection Booth? They did a special ep about video rental stores in America and the one the hosts talk about working in back in the 80s sounds like it had nearly every title imaginable.

[popcorn]

There's old footage of Tarantino visiting the store, Video Archives, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUMZ6CPL9hk

Apparently when it closed a few years ago he bought the entire inventory, about 8000 tapes and DVDs.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

From what I've read in the past it was a little store but one with lots of obscure stuff. Even in the late 2000s when I lived in America you could still find little rental stores with a stack of lesser known films, when Tarantino was working in one of these the range would have been really impressive. Do you know the podcast Projection Booth? They did a special ep about video rental stores in America and the one the hosts talk about working in back in the 80s sounds like it had nearly every title imaginable.

There's old footage of Tarantino visiting the store, Video Archives, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUMZ6CPL9hk

Apparently when it closed a few years ago he bought the entire inventory, about 8000 tapes and DVDs.

Interesting, thanks to you both!

[maett]

6/10 Not enough Manson family and anachronistic fonts and 50s TV editing/shots. Like most Tarantino films some nice set pieces but some dull filler (Sharon Tate watching her own film, overlong clips of Rick Dalton's previous work)
The end with Tex Watson and the the other murderers alternated between disappointment and gratification  The Bruce Lee stuff felt odd, I don't know much  about him but seeing him portrayed as a bit of an arsehole was unusual. Is Tarantino not a fan?

[Mister Six]

dull filler (Sharon Tate watching her own film

Dull filler or an important bit of context that serves to bring Tate back to life in the audience's eye as a human being rather than an iconic photo and a footnote in essays on Chinatown?

(The latter; it's the latter.)

Is Tarantino not a fan?

Quite famously a fan, I think, especially given the Bride's suit in Kill Bill.

Lee was always a bit of a showoff. You can see it in recordings of his interviews and public appearances. It didn't strike me as horribly out of place. The whole film is about piercing the myths of the Manson family as America's bogeymen and Tate as a photogenic celebrity victim. Lumping in Bruce Lee as some kind of undefeatable, perfect Ubermensch seems in-keeping with that.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Not too fussed about it, but seeing as I'm getting a free ticket with mubi go then I might as well eh.

[Head Gardener]

saw it tonight and it's really good better than Hateful Eight anyway

[Noodle Lizard]

I'm about 50/50 on it at the moment.  I thought the first two thirds really dragged at times (punctuated occasionally by great individual scenes/moments).  It was bizarrely-paced, and things like the narrator turning up about 10 minutes in only to disappear entirely until the final half-hour or so, made it all feel a bit inconsistent and poorly-thought out.  The final act was obviously great fun in and of itself, but not really in a way that required a lot of the two-hour build-up.  'Hail, Caesar!' is perhaps an obvious comparison to make, but it felt similar in the sense that it seemed like loosely strung-together ideas or scenes the filmmakers always wanted to do but had no real place for in their other movies.

Still: not bad by any means, and it looked gorgeous on the big screen.  And, being an LA resident, it was great to see familiar places transported back into the 60s, not just obvious landmarks either.

[cliggg]

I thought this was a really boring, pointless mess of a film . The last 5 minutes which were funny but the previous 2 hours and 40 minutes didn't make that worth it.

[amputeeporn]

Saw this last night and really loved it. I can't believe how innocuous the Lee scene is versus the outcry. I completely go with Chaw's take that it's affectionate, and anyway it's not like he gets his arse kicked.

Certainly more in the style of Jackie Browne than anything else QTs filmography. LA looks gorgeous, performances are amazing and Tate was handled so well.

Me and my girlfriend both commented that we left feeling so much happier than when we'd gone in. Unexpectedly warm and sweet. It was great.

[holyzombiejesus]

I probably sound dim but why was he feeding his dog at Leo DiCaprio's house? Did Leo Dicaprio keep some dog food in (and a bowl on the floor) for when Brad Pitt visited him?

[Mister Six]

He would house-sit for DiCaprio and they're best mates, so I imagine that DiCaprio had food and a dog bowl for him, yeah.

Saw this last night and really loved it. I can't believe how innocuous the Lee scene is versus the outcry. I completely go with Chaw's take that it's affectionate, and anyway it's not like he gets his arse kicked.

Chaw's done a longer piece on the scene for Vulture: https://www.vulture.com/2019/08/on-bruce-lees-character-in-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood.html