Sitting In The Aisle: Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood 9/10

Spoilers ahead. I love movies. I go to movies to be entertained. I do not want the real world intruding. If someone falls two stories and gets up and runs away I am fine. If someone can stop time I am fine. If Bruce Lee is portrayed as the most cocky, confident man ever I am all for it. Cam invited me to go see Once Upon A Time In Hollywood at the Arclight. We saw the 35mm version which I would suggest. Made it feel more move-ish. This movie had us gasping, laughing, cheering, and feeling very satisfied. Cam went into this not knowing anything about the movie. She didn't even know Sharon Tate was a part of the story. I had already read a fake plot of it online and knew all the gossip behind the scenes. So I was super happy to see that I was wrong, the internet was wrong, and that Quentin Tarantino made another good movie. I hated Django Unchained. I hated The Hateful Eight. So I wasn't dying to see this one. If this is for real his last film then he did an amazing job and didn't drop any n-bombs.

This takes in an alternate version of Hollywood in 1969. One of the coolest things was watching this and realizing that not too much of the city has changed in fifty damn years. Rick Dalton is an actor that got big doing TV shows. His stuntman and friend Clint Booth drives him around and takes care of his home when he has nothing else to do other than hang out with his dog and just chill. Sharon Tate and her husband Roman Polanski move in next door and Dalton wants to meet them and try to get some of his fame back. He has been struggling for work and pretty much being the villain of the week on newer shows. One day while repairing a TV antennae Booth spots Charles Manson showing up at Tate's house looking for the former residents. The guy radiated nuts. While driving around the city Booth keeps seeing this girl hitchhiking but is never going in the direction she is headed until one day she says she and her friends are staying at Spahn Ranch. He takes her there and shit gets weird. I'll get to that in a second. Let me talk about the Bruce Lee scene.

I fucking loved this scene. I am a huge fan of Bruce Lee. I grew up watching all his films. I was a fan of his son Brandon Lee and The Crow, a film he died during the making of, is one of my favorite films of all time. I even liked the show WMAC hosted by Bruce's daughter Shannon Lee. Booth thinks back to a stunt gig he had during the filming of The Green Hornet. The guy hiring stuntmen doesn't want him and his wife doesn't either. Booth allegedly killed his wife and got away with it. On set Booth is listening to Bruce talking. He is asked if he could beat Muhammad Ali. Bruce is cocky as hell and I loved it. Booth is challenged to a fight. No hits to the face but whoever wins two out of three by falling on their ass loses. Bruce high kicks Booth winning the first round. Booth puts Bruce on his ass and into a car denting it. The fight is broken up and Booth is kicked off set.

Lee's family is upset by this portrayal of him saying “I can understand all the reasoning behind what is portrayed in the movie. I understand that the two characters are antiheroes and this is sort of like a rage fantasy of what would happen...and they're portraying a period of time that clearly had a lot of racism and exclusion. I understand they want to make the Brad Pitt character this super bad-ass who could beat up Bruce Lee. But they didn't need to treat him in the way that white Hollywood did when he was alive.” As a regular ass Black dude that is a fan of Bruce Lee I had no problem with how he was portrayed. If this was supposed to be a biography then I'd have a problem. But guess what? It's a movie. Not only did this fight never happen in real life the way this movie ended never happened either.

Dalton gets the role of a bad guy on a new series. He meets this little girl who takes acting serious as fuck and as they talk about a book he is reading he starts crying realizing that the story about a bronco buster that can't perform the way he used to and is fading away is closer to his own reality than he knew. The girl consoles him and he begins filming. He struggles even before they begin because with the fake hair and mustache he is worried that no one will know its him not knowing that is the point and what the director is looking for. Dalton is an alcoholic and blames it on his inability to remember simple lines and threatens to shoot himself if he cant get his shit together. He ends up putting on a really good performance impressing the little girl. I loved this scene. One of the cool things about it is that I kinda forgot what film I was originally watching during parts of this.

I should probably talk about Sharon Tate in this. Like I said, my friend didn't know she was going to be brought up in this and everyone knows how her life was ended at the hands of Manson's crew. So as I watched her so happy, going to see herself in a movie in a theater with people laughing at her comedic scenes and smiling, driving around the city, dancing at the Playboy mansion, and eventually becoming pregnant, I had this terrible feeling of dread. I was like “This woman is too happy to die the way she did.” Some people have complained about the lack of screen time she had in this. I think it was just right. Too much and it would have been exploitative and focusing too much on what was going to happen to her would have made everything else in the movie seem awkward as fuck.

Booth heads to Spahn Ranch with the hippy girl. On the way there she offers him a blowjob which he turns down and asks her age. She is down but he knows this girl is pure jailbait. They get there and the place is riddled with hippies. Just riddled! He wants to speak to Spahn since he did a movie with him years ago. They give him the runaround until he finally enters the house and the room. I was waiting for something horrible to happen or for the guy to be dead. No. He just living his life sleeping with a hippy and letting the run the place. Next thing you know a tire is punctured, a guy is hit so hard his feet leave the ground which made me cackle harder than I expected and likely embarrassed Camille. Booth's time on the ranch gave me the same uneasy feeling I had when watching scenes from other Tarantino movies.

I am not gonna get into the rest of this but towards the end the movie goes full Tarantino in the best of ways. This is one of the few non-superhero movies that I have seen this year and I loved it. I am not sure how good it would be a second time since a few of his movies are not as entertaining after the first viewing. Visually this movie looks great. Again. Saw it in 35mm. Of course the music was good. I loved the acting and the feel of Hollywood in this. There are quite a few stories happening at the same time and they all converge. This movie felt complete and I left the theater very happy that I did not wait to watch this at home.

Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton

Brad Pitt as Cliff Booth

Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate

Emile Hirsch as Jay Sebring

Margaret Qualley as "Pussycat"

Timothy Olyphant as James Stacy

Julia Butters as Trudi Fraser

Austin Butler as Charles "Tex" Watson

Dakota Fanning as Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme

Bruce Dern as George Spahn

Mike Moh as Bruce Lee

Luke Perry as Wayne Maunder

Damian Lewis as Steve McQueen

Al Pacino as Marvin Schwarz

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