When my older brother called about ten days ago to ask me to go see Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with him I pretty much stopped reading anything about the movie so as not to spoil the experience. If you plan on seeing Once Upon (and criticisms notwithstanding I wouldn’t discourage you from doing so) I recommend you stop reading about it also, this piece being the obvious exception.
Because whatever else they are, Tarantino’s films are an experience. They will dazzle you with crafty technical expertise and sheer audacity, shock you into numbness with casual, repetitive, cartoonish violence and bore the fuck straight out of you with twenty minute scenes that beg for an editor’s careful attention.
And they will, these days, disappoint.
From what little I had read about the movie before forgoing any additional reading, I knew that Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt had been cast in the opus, which apparently was to be loosely based on the events surrounding Charlie Manson and Co.’s August 1969 Tate-LaBianca murder spree, a subject so suited to Tarantino’s proclivities that I was and am still surprised he had not already taken it on.
Assuming that as he was basing a work of fiction on such a widely known famous and historic crime that he would stick some what to the facts (an assumption that yesterday was dispelled rather quickly) it was my original thought that this fine paring of actors would play (age aside) Terry Melcher, music producer and the guy who had sub-let his leased home to Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, and Dennis Wilson, drummer of the Beach Boys and the guy who unfortunately introduced Mason to Melcher, which in time occasioned Crazy Charlie to become aware that the house on 10050 Cielo Drive in the Hollywood Hills even fucking existed…
I liked Pitt for the Dennis Wilson role, though I wondered about the age thing (another assumption that was quickly dispelled once Pitt took off his shirt in the film) and DiCaprio for the son of Doris Day who in the ‘60s was going for a Robert Redford look, but landed closer to Greg Allman.
Tarantino should seriously consider doing Twice Upon a Time in Hollywood with this plot line, if not the casting, in mind.
Q had another film gestating ingloriously in his mind though — with DiCaprio playing washing up TV and B movie cowboy Rick Dalton, who had enjoyed enough celluloid success to purchase the property next door to the Polanski-Tate mansion, and Pitt portraying Cliff Booth, Dalton’s Stunt-Double/Body Man/Driver/DIY guy, who had enjoyed enough success in film to live in a dilapidated Airstream trailer behind a Drive-In with his pit bull, Brandy. More about this good girl later.
Booth probably would have had a better career if not for an unfortunate spear fishing gun accident (which some would call murder) with his late wife (of course Q takes every opportunity to visit violence upon women) and his propensity to throw the male leads in his gigs into parked automobiles.
But hey, nobody is perfect.
Certainly not DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton, whose drinking necessitated his good pal Cliff Booth becoming his baby sitter in the first place, but Leonardo does a fine job of breathing life into the dissolute leading man... his best scene being of an actor portraying an actor who struggles and triumphs in a minor role thus winning him a career reviving turn in Spaghetti Westerns thanks to Al Pachino’s Marvin Schwarz, a producer talent-scouting Hollywood for a horsey Italian director.
And certainly not good guy wife-murdering Cliff Booth, who, while he absolutely rocks the fuck out of a Champion Spark Plugs Tee…
...spots Charlie’s Angels…
…. panhandling on one of his beer runs down Mulholland Drive, or wherever, and calls them “fucking hippies.”
Booth can be forgiven this mislabeling — if not his carelessness with spear guns — because they do look like hippies, but Tarantino, who must be reasonably intelligent and somewhat sentient, cannot.
Uh, Quentin, Hell’s Angels kinda look like hippies also but are not, so you can step right off with that shit, buddy.
I’m gonna conclude before I venture into spoiler territory, and just say that if you enjoy Tarantino, you’ll probably enjoy Once Upon a Time, but take the title literally.
Q obviously prefers his Hollywood peopled with washed up actors, forty-five second walk ups, random naked female feet, foppish emigre directors and wife-killing handymen, than real people.
Much like Inglorious Basterds, which required an heroic effort by Brad Pitt to save it from being a complete waste of three hours, Once Upon A Time, though much better than that piece of dreck, is saved by an indefatigable little pit bull of an actress, Julia Butters…
... who survives being thrown to the floor in Rick Dalton’s career saving scene by wearing knee pads…
And real pit bull Brandy…
...who proves herself a very, very, good girl.
Go see it for these two and for the craftiness, if not the vision.
But don’t expect Pulp Fiction.