Tarantino returns to the 20th Century with his love letter to the “golden days” of Hollywood as the inevitable Manson murders lurk around in the backdrop. The core story involves aging Western/Action movie star Rick Dalton and his stuntman caretaker Cliff Booth trying to get by on TV guest star roles; aka, the villain-of-the-week gigs. Why is Sharon Tate’s horrible fate in this? She and her rapist husband Roman Polanski are Cliff’s neighbors.
Overall, it’s a good movie but it would be a great movie if QT would finally remember that more is less. I don’t have a problem with long films. I have a problem with them when there’s meandering bullshit eating time. Here’s how I would describe it best without spoiling the surprises. There’s a sequence of Cliff driving home from Rick’s house in a posh LA neighborhood to his trailer behind a drive-in theater in not-so-nice Van Nuys (famous home of the US porn industry). Beyond getting a sampling of what the LA area used to look like 50 years ago, it doesn’t serve the story via the medium. If this were a novel, then it would’ve been perfect as the author lists the sites all while telling the reader what Cliff is musing about.
I want to address the elephant in the room too. Sharon Tate’s presence. We all know about her horrible fate alongside the other four victims at the hands of Manson’s followers. It’s about as tasteful as watching a movie involving the four planes and passengers that died in the 9/11 attacks. So you sit through this waiting for “the other shoe to drop” moment when QT has a much better, more entertaining story happening. A struggling Has-Been trying to cling to his addiction of fame, public adoration and the lifestyle acting in movies provided him for it’s the only life he knows.
However…see Once for it is a work of fiction interspersed with cameos of historical figures played by actors: Bruce Lee, Steve McQueen, Squeaky Fromme and Mama Cass. Ergo, QT plays hard and fast with the truth as you will see in the last act. He also has a defensible stance against someone in The Guardian who took him to task for violence against women. When it comes to anyone in the Manson Family, regardless of gender, violence in self defense against those garbage people is justified.
In closing. I would say the movie QT ripped off this time is harder to pin down. Django Unchained was easily his version of The Skin Game. Somehow I keep coming back to James Garner since the movie which made me associate Once with something else was 1988’s Sunset starring a not-as-famous Bruce Willis playing silent-movie cowboy star Tom Mix and James Garner playing an aging Wyatt Earp during Hollywood’s infancy. Together, they try to solve a murder with the ever awesome Malcolm McDowell playing the villain. I was in college when it was originally released so I don’t know if this was a flop or modest hit. I did see this years later for I am a huge Garner fan and it’s quite interesting given Blake Edwards directed. I could sit through crap like Tank or Fire in the Sky just to watch Garner chew the scenery. Same goes for the majority of Edwards’ work. Good job finding something more obscure to rip off QT.
Alamo Extras: A explanation of movie cameras using a chimp; What’s the point of movies through channel surfing. Numerous movie trailers which help set Once‘s mood/mindset:
- Satan’s Sadists
- The Female Bunch
- The Secret Invasion
- Any Gun Can Play
- Hooper (Burt Reynolds’ tribute to Hal Needham’s work)
- The Stunt Man
- Billy Jack
- Death on the Run
- Gunman’s Walk (sic)
Stuntman stories from legendary stuntman Gary Kent:
- A tutorial on stuntman lingo: e.g. gag = stunt, bump = extra money for a stunt, cowboy up = doing something that’s going to hurt, etc.
- His work on the Billy Jack movies
- What the Spahn Ranch was like; many Westerns were shot here and it was the Manson Family hangout during the Tate murders
- Meeting Charles Manson before anyone knew who he was; someone hired him to fix a vehicle and he had to be threatened with physical harm to hold up his end of the bargain