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Sandra Olmsted’s Cinematic Skinny: Tarantino’s . . .
Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood:
A Fairy-Tale, Alternative History
By Sandra Olmsted
Once upon a time in the 1960s, people embraced the Age of Aquarius’ peace, love, and trust; unfortunately, some, such as Charles Manson, used the new kindness and openness for evil. Charles Manson taught the Aquarians that peace and love aren’t as important as keeping up your guard on Aug. 9, 1969.
To appreciate director Quentin Tarantino’s new film, one needs basic knowledge about the Sharon Tate murders. Shortly after midnight, Sharon Tate, 26, a rising star and wife of director Roman Polanski, her unborn son, celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring, writer Wojciech Frykowski, and social worker/coffee heiress Abigail Folger were murdered in the home at 10050 Cielo Drive. Polanski was in London for ‘The Day of the Dolphin’; Tate was 8 1/2 months pregnant. Because the house at 10050 Cielo Drive in LA’s secluded Benedict Canyon had previously been rented by Terry Melcher, a record producer who had not given Manson a record deal, Manson, a wannabe, ordered his minions to “totally destroy everyone in [the house], as gruesome as you can.” They did.
Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood, however, is about Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), an aging TV cowboy star, his stunt-double-turned-personal-assistant, Cliff (Brad Pitt), their glimpses of Rick’s more famous Cielo Drive neighbors, and Cliff’s odd encounters with the Manson family. Sharon (Margot Robbie), Roman (Rafal Zawierucha), Jay (Emile Hirsch), Wojciech (Costa Ronin), and Abigail (Samantha Robinson) and even Manson (Damon Herriman) and his “family” are important but ancillary characters in Rick’s and Cliff’s story.
Tarantino tells the tale of Rick and Cliff primarily as a straight narrative with some small flashbacks. His narrative meanders through the decline of Rick’s career and a new opportunity in Spaghetti Westerns. During this time, Cliff and Rick encounter members of the Manson family going through dumpsters for food and hitchhiking around LA.
While Rick thinks they are hippy trash, Cliff is intrigued by Pussycat (Margaret Qualley) He eventually gives her a ride home to George Spahn’s (Bruce Dern) unused Spahn Movie Ranch where she and the part of “the family” live and where Cliff and Rick used to shoot the once popular, long-running TV show Bounty Law. When Cliff insists on seeing George, his encounter takes on the feel of a Western when a stranger comes into a hostile town, and Squeaky Fromme (Dakota Fanning) is George’s “protector.”
Meanwhile, according to Marvin Schwarzs (Al Pacino), Rick is doing career-killing, guest appearances on various shows until Rick has a career-changing conversation with an 8-year-old, Method actress (Julia Butters), who challenges Rick to do his best. When Rick gets Cliff a job on the lot, Cliff screws it up by fighting with The Green Hornet star Bruce Lee (Mike Moh), who also teaches the Tate-Polanski household martial arts.
Rick and Cliff embody the rough, wary, tough guy personas of Westerns, and Tarantino used that for the subtext of his film. In Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood, Tarantino also uses Rick and Cliff, who are well-grounded in the art of cowboy-style, self-defense, to postulate an alternative history. In the process, Tarantino defends his own use of violence in his films by showing the value of the potential for violent self-defense and the accompanying wariness.
Tarantino also has an all-star cast portraying the many stars of the era, and Tarantino portrays the era through excellent production design, a nostalgic top-40 soundtrack, and the blaring radio and TV commercials taking Age of Aquarius commercially mainstream. For nostalgia, aside from marques advertising movies of the era, Tarantino includes homages to Western and Western directors, such as Sergio Leone, and iconic places, such as Musso & Frank, where movie deals have been made since the early days of Hollywood, and even the Playboy mansion.
Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood runs a meandering, but intriguing, 161 minutes and, typical of Tarantino’s films, is rated R for language throughout, some strong graphic violence, drug use, and sexual references. A Columbia Pictures release, Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood opened wide July 26.
