Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood 2019 is Tarantino respecting the audience
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People often complain about dumb movies with too much unnecessary spoon-feeding. We get so much explaining and over-explaining that the brain hurts sometimes. You already know what is going on. You are following the story. You don't need no god damned reminder of what you are watching. And yet the studio heads still think that you are too dumb to understand what's going on in front of you on the screen. Respecting the audience on the other hand is a leap of faith on a part of a film-maker and only the greatest do that well. Quentin Tarantino with his 2019 film Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood takes the hardest such leap of his career.
Tarantino likes to stretch out the tension. As pointed out by Nicolas Winding Refn ( another very good director that does violence exceptionally well ) the blood itself is not the fun part. Violence is like sex, the important part is before the climax. And the longer you can get it, the better. Tarantino likes to do long scenes where you know the ending will be explosive. And the scene builds and builds and builds in tension until ultimately ejaculating with blood at the audience's faces. With Once Upon a Time... Tarantino does his most ambitious build-up yet. He uses the entire run-time of the film, almost 3 hours of it, to build tension to a stupidly intense finale. Yet to do this, he must take the leap of faith and believe the audience at least know something about the history of Hollywood.
Most people who criticize this film say that nothing happens in it. Well first of all they are lying. There is a very captivating dramatic story about a broken man Rick Dalton played wonderfully by Leonardo DiCaprio. Tarantino usually doesn't make movies like that. His most famous work are not dramatic character studies, but fun violent comedies with a lot of wit to them. Here suddenly there is no promise of violence, it seems. And what we get is an Oscar-bait type character drama about a fucking actor. What the hell! Right?
Well those people that see this film as some sort of empty boring shell are the ones that prove studio executives right. And those are the ones that need explaining in order to get the movie. Those are the reason we get movies that spoon-feed the audience every second. Because those people don't know the crucial information which is the key to the tension of the film working in the first place. They don't know about the real story of Sharon Tate. And they surely have no fucking clue about how she died.
The film quickly establishes 3 main elements. It establishes our main characters Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth ( Brad Pitt ). It establishes Sharon Tate ( Margot Robbie ) and her husband Roman Polanski ( RafaΕ Zawierucha ), and it shows the hippie girls ( Margaret Qualley, Sydney Sweeney and others ). If you know the real story, you can put two and two together and understand that Tarantino has the balls to put the murder of Sharon Tate on the screen. You suddenly say to yourself "oh fuck" and dread the whole movie in fucked up anticipation. Because ( spoiler alert ) in the real life, Sharon Tate was murdered by a gang of hippies under the influence of their cult leader Charles Manson, played in the film by Damon Herriman. Yet since the film has fictional characters, and since Tarantino already rewrote history in one of his other films Inglorious Bastards ( which coincidentally stars Brad Pitt too ), the dread is mixed with a spice of anticipation. Because you know the shit's gonna be interesting.
From one side you have Brad Pitt. Signaling people to remember Inglorious Bastards and the murder of Hitler at the cinema. Therefor rewriting history. Maybe Tarantino wants to save Sharon Tate. From the other side though, the film has Leonardo DiCaprio, signaling the people to remember Titanic, where he played a fictional character in the real tragedy. And where his character didn't stop the tragedy from happening. Maybe Tarantino will show us her murder in all the inglorious detail.
Those who don't know shit about her, or about her murder, watch the scenes where she is just wandering around the town, and goes to the cinema. And they ask themselves: why the fuck am I watching this? They don't experience the dread that those people who know the history experience. They don't feel like the shit will go south very quickly. They don't think to themselves how sad this whole thing is. So for them the movie is an empty shell where "nothing is going on". Yet for those who do know Sharon Tate and her murder, the movie is a well crafted emotional roller-coaster.
When it comes to the Rick Dalton story, I believe Tarantino is both saying something about himself, or fears he has of himself, and both commenting on a sad reality of the show-business. Something which a Tarantino fan years later, borrowing one of the actors will do way more to the point in The Substance.
Tarantino only wants to make 10 movies out of a fear that he might lose his ability or enthusiasm for the medium at one point and start making mediocre crap. So he is limiting himself to only 10 movies to avoid such fate. Rick Dalton, is therefor a manifestation of this fear, as Rick is falling out of fashion, so to speak. ( Keep this idea in mind, so I will not need to remind you of this when the ending of this review comes ).
The director of The Substance Coralie Fargeat is known to be a fan of films by Quentin Tarantino. The best example of her fandom-hood could be seen in her 2017 film Revenge starring Matilda Lutz. The film feels kind of sort of like a Tarantino revenge flick. Something along the lines of Kill Bill. But with a Frageat spin on it. Her next film The Substance talks about the same issues, the dramatic section of Once Upon a Time... is talking about. Ageism. Or the tendency of Hollywood to throw away aging stars and replace them with fresh meat. Basically ( as stated in The Substance ) you have to be between 18 and 29 to survive in the show-business. Otherwise you are almost useless.
Tarantino, while doing his observation way more subtly than Fargeat ( I mean anything is more subtle than The Substance, come on ), he still goes into a direction, into which Fargeat forgot to, or decided not to, go. And that direction is introduced by Tarantino with the character of Trudi Frazer, played so well, she is better than the Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprion himself in the scene, by the fucking legend herself, Julia Butters.
First of all, as with all women in the film, Tarantino introduces the 8 year old Trudi with a shot of her feet. And given the real life implication of this ( Tarantino is most certainly a foot-fetishist ) we already see he is trying to invoke a certain concept into the brains of the audience members. Then we notice a strange thing. We have a middle aged man who is psychologically tormented meeting an 8 year old girl somewhere on the back-lots of the Hollywood system. No parents, no guardians in sight. And the two start a conversation.
But unlike some of the less nuanced movies about Kevin Bacon characters Trudi is not a Pumpkin-puss. She is not a little bitch that Rick can fuck with. She is a serious motherfucker. She is in fact so motherfucking serious, that this broken ass depressed Kevin Bacon character becomes inspired again. And later nails the scene in the movie within the movie.
And the interesting thing about Trudi is that if you think about her meta-textually, Julia Butters, the actor that played her, is not a little bitch you can fuck with too. Julia Butters is a motherfucking serious motherfucker. I would even say that Julia Butters is the best casting decision Tarantino ever made in his entire career.
The legend ( that I took out of my theorizing ass ) goes something like this. Michael Bay ( yes Michael Bay ) directed a movie where Tarantino did dialogue touch-ups in 1996 called The Rock. The film was produced and distributed by Hollywood Pictures. An offshoot of Disney that dealt with more mature themed movies. So you can say Michael Bay worked for Disney for a while.
Then in 2016 Bay makes a serious military picture called 13 Hours, where the script has two little girls that one of the soldiers is talking to on the phone. The girls do not have huge parts. So he doesn't need them to be good actors. He asks around, probably the word gets to the people working at Disney, and one gentleman working there as an animator on such films as Frozen recommends his little girl, who by that point already did some TV acting. ( All of that was me making shit up, so take that with a grain of salt ).
Michael Bay meets this Julia Butters and puts her in the shots where the soldier talks to them on the phone. But then she probably does something. Some incredible fit of acting. Some crazy timing when it comes to humor. Something... That Michael notices, which makes him thinks he needs to give this girl a little bit more to do. And that is how 13 Hours gets the "25 happy meals" scene, cementing her as a legend.
( I'm still making shit up ). Tarantino watches 13 Hours and takes Julia into his production for the Trudi character. Now... probably she had nothing to do with the script of the movie. But maybe she did. It is no fucking coincidence that her real life father works at fucking Disney, and the book she reads in the movie is about Walt Disney. If it is a fucking coincidence it is a fucking brilliant coincidence. But what I think happened, is that Trudi was inspired by Julia Butters. It almost feels like Tarantino wrote this part specifically for the girl. I'm taking all this theory out of my ass. I don't know what went there behind the scenes. But it looks like this could be the case. And if it is the case, this is some cool ass case. But if it isn't, at the very least it is a nice fucking legend.
Now, Julia Butters later played Spielberg's sister in Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans, which brings me to some interesting 4-dimensionall chess game Tarantino is playing here with us. The scenes between Rick Dalton and Trudi Frazer are inter-cut with scenes of Cliff Booth giving "Pussycat" a lift to the ranch, where a very tense scene about visiting an owner of said ranch goes on.
First we have a flirtatious exchange between Cliff and Pussy ( Margaret Qualley ) almost suggesting that something will develop between them later as the movie goes. Tarantino even points our attention at that by making their first few conversations entirely without dialogue. In a Quentin Tarantino movie.
Also it is rather important to note ( and which is more obvious now, since Julia Butters grew up ) Margaret Qualley and Julia Butters are very similar. They look almost like sisters. Maybe that was intentional on the part of Tarantino. He even gave the two girls a similar nickname. Butter's is Pumpkin-Puss which she objects to immediately. Qualley's is Pussycat. Which she wears with pride. Yet in both nicknames there is a reference to a female reproductive organ. He is inter-cutting between the two story-lines probably on purpose trying to point our attention at the thematic through-like that goes through both of these stories.
So Rick Dalton approaches a little girl on set. And then Cliff Booth gives a ride to a similar girl ( in Rick Dalton's car ), where this girl ( who's name is "Pussycat" or even sometimes just "Pussy" ) offers Cliff a blowjob. And Cliff in return asks her to prove her age, which she can't. Making us believe that she is underage. Cementing a rather interesting thematic through-line.
While he gives her the ride, the tension in the scene is built from the possibility that Cliff might yield to her seduction and therefore compromise himself legally. At this point we already should suspect her with involvement in the Manson family.
Then we arrive at the ranch and the ranch has a lot of girls like Pussy. All assumed underage. And all look like they'd fuck Cliff to blackmail him into joining the cult. So the tension is rising.
Meanwhile Rick Dalton is playing a villain in the movie within the movie. And said villain kidnaps a little girl. Cementing the child-abuse theme of that sequence. Yet Tarantino is smart about it. If Rick could be a Kevin Bacon character. Or at least a temporary representation of one. Cliff and ultimately the guy he comes to see on the ranch ( the owner George Spahn played by Bruce Dern ) are on the other side, as victims in such a situation. If Rick represents the reason the law exists, Cliff represents the victims of those who abuse said law.
While Cliff ultimately goes away unharmed, George is the one who is harmed. Because as far the film is concerned, he is fucking ( almost without wanting to ) an underage girl, which uses that leverage on him to secure the ranch for the Manson family. That girl is also not a coincidental casting. Because that girl is played by non-other than Dakota Fanning. Who you may know also used to be a little girl acting sensation. And who also worked with Steven Spielberg.
While Qualley is a mirror of Butters in a looks department. Fanning is a proto-Butters. Fanning is a girl that used to be Butters. And speaking of Spielberg. The movie she did with Spielberg War of the Worlds is referenced almost directly in the ranch scene. As Cliff approaches the front door of the shack, there is a net between him and Dacota Fanning's character. And the camera shoots a closeup of her through said net. A shot that Spielberg did in almost exactly the same way with the same exact actor on War of the Worlds.
![[embedded image]](/pictures/user_upload/blenderdumbass/tarantino_spielberg_fanning.png "The same shot from War of the World and Once Upon The Time, featuring Dacota Fanning")
Tarantino has almost definitely made this shot to reference the Spielberg movie. It is a known thing that Tarantino is a big movie references guy. So a reference to a different movie is something that is expected from him. But why this specific reference? Well, he is trying to draw attention to the fact that Dacota Fanning here used to be a sort of Trudi Frazer. And in a way, if Tarantino didn't actually write Trudi based of Butters. He must have at least written her based on Fanning.
If we dig even deeper, Margaret Qualley is here not on accident either. She appeared as a porn actress in a proto-Tarantino writer / director Shane Black's film The Nice Guys where a thematic through-line is very much the same one as the one used in this portion of the Tarantino picture. Tarantino is even giving it a reference in the end of the movie, subtly suggesting that both films could exist in the same universe. ( There is a premier of a porno-film in the background, while The Nice Guys ends at a premier of a porn-film ).
And talking about Kevin Bacon characters Dacota Fanning too appears in a film called Hounddog by Deborah Kampmeier which is undeniably about the thematic through-line of child-abuse. The film literally starts with two kids playing "show me your and I'll show you mine".
And if we remember that the tension of the rest of the movie hang on the death of Sharon Tate. We can also remember that Sharon Tate's husband at that point was Roman Polanski, who is infamous for having a situation that fucked his life. One day, back in the 70s ( after the death of Sharon Tate ) Polanski, in the house of his friend Jack Nicholson had a little private time with a 13 year old girl Samantha Gailey. This forced Polasnki out of USA. And by this very day people are trying to get Polanski back to get him his sentence, while, strangely enough ignoring the requests of Samantha herself ( who is now a middle aged lady ) to pardon him and leave him alone already.
It is as if escaping the grip of Harvey Winstein ( which produced all his movies, apart from this one ) made Tarantino finally be able to address the elephant in the Hollywood's room. Freeing him to discuss this topic. Yet being Tarantino and being smart to the point of brain-plosion this made him make probably the most nuanced looks at the subject matter, without even directly stating that this is the subject matter. The closest he gets to literally stating the theme is with Cliff asking Pussy her age.
But this whole pedophilia theme obviously begs the question: Is Rick Dalton a Kevin Bacon character? Is Rick Dalton a pedophile? Well let's put our tin foil hats and let's prepare our theorizing asses, because I will shit-out a theory and you can agree or disagree with it. Shall we?
Yes. He is. Rick Dalton, one of the coolest actors in Hollywood lives with his stuntman, with which he doesn't even have sex. He doesn't have a girlfriend. And he seems to be psychologically unstable. And while Cliff is seen flirting with girls that could be adult. Rick has no interest in them and later awkwardly approaches a literal 8 year old. Calling her Pumpkin-Puss for fuck sake.
Yet Trudi being an absolute legend kicks some sense into the motherfucker and makes him serious. Literally showing Rick that age is just a number, so to speak, by behaving more adult than even he is. And while it could be a terrible thing to do, with a normal person, on Rick it does something entirely different. He realizes that little girls or adult girls... all the same shit. And that opens in him some sexual realization that no longer needs to be suppressed. He can date a grown woman and it will be literally the same exact thing as dating a little girl. Because this 8 year old Trudi is literally the same as an adult and super serious gal. What happens next? Well, he goes to Italy to make spaghetti westerns, dates a few women and later even marries one of them, bringing her to his house in the USA.
The funny thing is, his new wife Francesca Capucci is played by Lorenza Izzo who you may remember, played one of the psychopath girls in Eli Roth's film Knock Knock and who also was Eli Roth's wife. And if you remember, Knock Knock had the same thematic through-line.
And now here is my final observation. Do with it whatever you want. I took all this shit so far out of my stupid ass. So... Quentin Tarantino, one of the hottest writers and directors of the last few decades. And he has no wife and no children for a very long time. Suddenly he makes Once Upon the Time... In Hollywood. He make a movie with a character of Trudi, where Trudi is played wonderfully by Julia Butters. Who probably kicks some sense into Quentin himself. One of the girls Rick Dalton is dating in Italy ( before Francesca Capucci ) is played by Daniella Pick, an Israeli model and singer. After the movie Tarantino marries Daniella Pick and they now have two children. The first one they call Leonardo.
Happy Hacking!!!
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Troler
c:0First of all, this is such a great review! I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Second,
And now here is my final observation. Do with it whatever you want. I took all this shit so far out of my stupid ass. So... Quentin Tarantino, one of the hottest writers and directors of the last few decades. And he has no wife and no children for a very long time. Suddenly he makes Once Upon the Time... In Hollywood. He make a movie with a character of Trudi, where Trudi is played wonderfully by Julia Butters. Who probably kicks some sense into Quentin himself. One of the girls Rick Dalton is dating in Italy ( before Francesca Capucci ) is played by Daniella Pick, an Israeli model and singer. After the movie Tarantino marries Daniella Pick and they now have two children. The first one they call Leonardo.
That is a banger way to end this review!
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