# Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (SPOILER THREAD) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 25, 2019, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646 "2019-07-25T23:57:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2019, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/141 "2019-09-02T19:05:10Z")
> [@jsc1953](#): > > What was up with all the shots of footwear & feet?? Tarantino has a foot fetish. His movies are full of women’s feet. ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2019, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/142 "2019-09-02T19:16:52Z")
The trailers call this “The 9th Film by Quentin Tarantino” and I tried to count them up. Assuming we start with Reservoir Dogs, I can get to 9 by counting Kill Bill as 2 movies, and skipping Grindhouse and Four Rooms. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/143 "2019-09-03T00:03:15Z")
You’re correct, and I believe that when he wants to do #11, Jackie Brown will be taken off the “10 movie” list because it wasn’t his story. ---
**Author:** ![Poysyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Poysyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poysyn)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/144 "2019-09-04T17:37:53Z")
I really enjoyed this movie, except I did have to turn away when Cliff was bashing the one woman’s face against the mantel. See violence like that onscreen is less entertaining when you have seen it in real life. I loved Brad Pitt in it _he was_ Cliff. Leo was great as well, but just not as authentic - I liked the comment above that Pitt just becomes his characters. I loved this more than most of QT’s films. ---
**Author:** ![Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b487fb/32.png) [@Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walken_After_Midnight)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/145 "2019-09-04T18:12:34Z")
I gave it a 7/10. I liked the characters, acting and the overall visual look/production design, but I thought it could have done with a better story, script, and - probably - directing, as there were times I felt it a bit amateurish. I also found the violence at the end to be rather gratuitous and juvenile. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Jeffrey\_Lebowski](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_jeffrey_lebowski/32/215_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Jeffrey\_Lebowski](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Jeffrey_Lebowski)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2020, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/146 "2020-01-01T01:32:08Z")
> [@MovieMogul](#): > > There’s absolutely no doubt that Sharon Tate is portrayed in a deeply compassionate and endearing way. But the fact remains that Sharon Tate the actress does not play even a miniscule role in the story. None. Sharon Tate the corpse is the only version of her this movie cares about. > > For Tarantino uses our knowledge (or for some, memory) of her horrific murder as a critical driving force in the narrative. The dates. The timeline. The telegraphing of details are all geared toward building tension about what we know is going to happen. He exploits her tragic fate as a way to push our buttons. I personally found this ghoulish in a way that the Hitler revisionism wasn’t in **Basterds**. > > There is undeniable poignancy in seeing Tate get the Hollywood ending she deserved, that the killers cruelly deprived her of in real life. But you could remove all of Tate’s scenes and they wouldn’t change the tale of Rick and Cliff one single iota. She’s only there as a historical harbinger, as a cheap device to give us a sense of dread before QT’s cute little bait-&-switch. > > The film isn’t the worst of his body of work (my vote goes to **The Hateful 8** or **Death Proof** ), and DiCaprio and Pitt are really excellent (especially the latter, since his character is mostly an empty shell). But I found the film devoid of anything interesting, other than the remarkable recreation of the period. All hat and no cattle, and an overly-familiar one at that. Nice summation, **MovieMogul**. After reading this thread, your take was the one closest to my own. I finally got a chance to see the movie on a flight yesterday, and while there were things about it that were undeniably terrific - the acting, the sets, the locations, the casting (along with other little touches) - there were other things that left me disappointed: the revisionist history done with a fanboy’s touch is probably what bothered me most (and too derivative, ffs). The scene with Cliff on the boat was one that I didn’t care for due to the set up of her berating and belittling him, making her a harpy. One funny Easter Egg that I caught was the scene when Tate and Co walked into El Coyote and there was an Adult movie premier down the street - that theater is The New Beverly Cinema, a revival house that nearly closed some years ago before it was bought by Tarantino (I saw The Killing (Kubrick) there a few years ago). ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2020, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/147 "2020-01-01T04:19:38Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > …[Steve] McQueen was actually mugged that night, and very calmly went to his car, got his gun, and pistol whipped his mugger senseless. Decided against going as a result of the mugging, > > McQueen had been in the Marines and had plenty of experience as a street fighter in his youth. He would not have been an easy victim if he was inclined to resist. > I actually wonder if QT got the idea from this hypothetical. Interesting! Didn’t know that. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2020, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/148 "2020-01-01T05:10:50Z")
Just saw the movie, which is why I’m so late coming to the thread. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I got that it referenced a spaghetti western, Once Upon a Time in the West. It wasn’t until I thought about it later that I realized he was telling us what would happen in the movie. It’s reality with a _Hollywood ending_. Now this is the third time he’s done this. IB rewrote Nazis; DU rewrote slavery. OUATIH rewrote the Manson murders. Three evils done over with crowd-pleasing, give it to the basterds, sorry, bastards endings. Sounds good. Until you think about it. Hitler wasn’t just a bad guy; he was the culmination of fascist philosophy and the scapegoating of others. Calvin Candie wasn’t just a bad guy; he represented a culture of institutional prejudice and racial hatred. Charlie Manson wasn’t just a bad guy; he was the product of a popular culture that trained viewers that violence was the answer to every problem and that the bad guys should be removed violently. One of these things is not like the other. You cannot argue that Quentin F’ing Tarantino believes that Hollywood culture created the Manson family or that the culture is an entirely pernicious and evil philosophy that must be destroyed as a way of life. Not the guy who spends the first two hours of a movie making loving recreations of elements of Hollywood culture virtually forgotten by everyone younger than him. (It’s true that he blackens that culture in his reimaging of it. No 50s tv show could possibly have the hero choosing the dead option in wanted dead or alive.) Not the guy for whom ultraviolence has been a stylistic obsession for a whole career. Is there any possible reading of this movie that says Tarantino has turned against himself and everything he’s ever done to give viewers the understanding that he has carefully destroyed his entire career? The “Hollywood ending” has been denounced by critics of all stripes for decades. Anyone who watches more a movie a year can see how abused the cliches are. Even Watchmen, for all its brilliance, put a totally ridiculous countdown clock in the last episode. Spoofing something you love by exaggeration is legitimate; saying with a smile that it is an evil leading to horrific crimes and you plan to perpetuate it with all your creative imagination isn’t. Can Tarantino do another - what he’s calling his last - movie with another Hollywood ending after this one? I guess the answer will tell us everything we need to know about OUATIH. ---
**Author:** ![Trisha\_Gaurav](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d07c76/32.png) [@Trisha\_Gaurav](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trisha_Gaurav)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2020, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/149 "2020-01-08T09:14:58Z")
> [@Stephe96](#): > > OK. Spoilers from here on out. > . > . > . > . > . > . > . > . > The only thing QT exploits is our knowledge of what happens on Cielo Drive on that night in August. The movie is very funny for two hours, but you always have that sense of dread about what is coming. And then of course he totally subverts our expectations. > > Not only do Sharon Tate et al survive, but the Manson gang don’t even make it to her house! Nope, they pick the house next door owned by Rick Dalton (Leo) after he comes outside and yells at them about their loud muffler. They back up and decide to switch targets…but unbeknownst to them, Rick’s stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad) has just entered the house after walking his (awesome) dog, Brandy. Things go very, very badly for the three would-be killers in a violent and hilarious fashion. A lot of stuff pays off in this final scene, and the audience I saw it with loved it. > > There is some brutal violence against women and I can see QT getting some flack over it, but the fact is that it really was two women and one guy who were intent on killing a bunch of people that night - QT is just giving us the revenge we want. > > What did everyone else think? Considering the fact that the Mansons were real murderers, Tarantino must be really messed up in the head if he honestly believes that they were killed or injured by Leo and Brad. Either that, or he’s pretending that he made them up so he can have control over their fates. But, I _love_ Leonardo DiCaprio, so I give it an 8 out of 10. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2020, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/150 "2020-01-08T20:08:38Z")
> [@Trisha\_Gaurav](#): > > Considering the fact that the Mansons were real murderers, Tarantino must be really messed up in the head if he honestly believes that they were killed or injured by Leo and Brad. 😕:dubious::rolleyes: Ok serious question. Do you have trouble distinguishing fiction films from real life? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2020, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/151 "2020-01-08T20:51:02Z")
Apparently he also thinks that Hitler and the Nazi leadership were killed in a Paris movie theater. Sheesh. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2020, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/152 "2020-01-08T23:19:25Z")
Shameless Plug: Here’s my interview with QT as he was doing his Oscar campaign tour last month: https://player.vimeo.com/video/383452113 (I don’t appear until 2:40) ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2020, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/153 "2020-01-11T14:50:05Z")
Hated it. I went into the movie completely blind, knowing nothing about the story or setting – for all I knew, it would show as much of the real Hollywood as _Doc Hollywood_ did. At a certain point I guessed that it may have been based on the Manson family, but the differences were enough that I chose not to draw any conclusions. Coming at it from this perspective, the ending was unpleasant enough that I needed to go watch another, happier movie as a palate cleanser. Had I known all the backstory ahead of time, would I have enjoyed it? Well, the ending might have felt more earned or logical than it did, but I still cannot enjoy this degree of sadism. Let alone find it funny. I can appreciate in some contexts over the top violence played for laughs, but watching people’s faces get bloodily smashed in, or skin torn off, is far too graphic for me, and the others that I was watching with (I was watching a private screening, with about 20 people who also did not know the backstory). Anyway, movies should not rely on the audience having read the programme before entering the theatre. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2020, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/154 "2020-01-11T15:53:01Z")
Really? You knew the film was directed by Quentin Tarantino, and were surprised that it was violent? That’s like watching a Fred Astaire movie and being shocked that there was dancing. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2020, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/155 "2020-01-11T16:40:11Z")
It’s not about whether it’s violent, it’s the style of the violence. Django unchained I was cool with, as the scenes with the dogs and the mandingo fight are clearly meant to be shocking – they’re played as the bad guy “kicking the dog”, and we’re supposed to side with the people who want the violence to end. And anyway it tends to pull away at the most horrific bits. And the end fight with all the ketchup flying around seems more like Star Trek VI (the gravity generators are down!) than reality. Meanwhile in this film, the audience is supposed to be relishing the violence, finding it amusing even. And that’s fine as an objective…the problem it doesn’t work here, in my opinion, is: 1. In the movie the hippies have not done enough yet for me to be wishing for their comeuppance. They have not yet kicked the dog. They did have legitimate reason to be pissed at Cliff, and there was suggestion that some of them were apprehensive about actually killing him. They’re not completely unsympathetic. Of course Cliff’s justified in using lethal force to protect his own life. But that’s not the same as someone being down and starting to have gruesome fun with them. 2. Seeing people get their faces mutilated in various ways is far beyond what I could watch and find amusing. I don’t care if they really are the bad guy; it could have been freaking hitler and I still would have found it deeply unpleasant. YMMV ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2020, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/156 "2020-01-11T16:48:39Z")
I saw this only a few days ago (but thought I might have vaguely remembered the end spoiled.) I very much laughed out loud at and enjoyed the violence that happened in the end. I was born in 1972, so didn’t experience the story as it took place, but my mother kept an interest in it (and had a copy of the book _Helter Skelter_) so I’ve always been familiar to some degree with the events. The characters very much deserved the deaths that they got, and in a better world than this that is what would have happened to the real people. I loved the whole movie. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2020, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/157 "2020-01-11T17:03:52Z")
Like I said, YMMV, but nobody laughed at the screening I went to, so I am not the single outlier on this. As for deserving it, the characters conspired to kill – we didn’t see yet if they could actually go through with it. This is a common set up in film and TV; it’s not uncommon for the protagonist to want to kill for revenge in this way and then have a change of heart. They don’t then get a slow gruesome death. What else had the hippies done? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2020, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/158 "2020-01-11T17:10:06Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > 1. In the movie the hippies have not done enough yet for me to be wishing for their comeuppance. They have not yet kicked the dog. They did have legitimate reason to be pissed at Cliff, and there was suggestion that some of them were apprehensive about actually killing him. They’re not completely unsympathetic. > Of course Cliff’s justified in using lethal force to protect his own life. But that’s not the same as someone being down and starting to have gruesome fun with them. Yeah, but these are the people who killed Sharon Tate. Not in the film’s universe, sure, but does that exonerate them? If not for a slight tweak of history, these people would have killed the person who the film spent a great deal of its running time portraying as the epitome of beauty and goodness. Is their grotesque fate not a form of, um, preventive retroactive justice? > [@Mijin](#): > > 1. Seeing people get their faces mutilated in various ways is far beyond what I could watch and find amusing. I don’t care if they really are the bad guy; it could have been freaking hitler and I still would have found it deeply unpleasant. > > YMMV Didn’t Tarantino, in fact, have the heroes mutilate Hitler’s face in _Inglorious Basterds_? It’s kind of his thing. Also, it’s realistic - in hand-to-hand combat, you should always go for the face (and the balls, of course). Brad Pitt’s character was hardly one to follow Marquess of Queensberry Rules. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2020, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/159 "2020-01-11T17:37:33Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > As for deserving it, the characters conspired to kill – we didn’t see yet if they could actually go through with it. Spoiler alert–in the real world, they went through with it. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2020, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646/160 "2020-01-11T17:43:17Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Like I said, YMMV, but nobody laughed at the screening I went to, so I am not the single outlier on this. > > As for deserving it, the characters conspired to kill – we didn’t see yet if they could actually go through with it. This is a common set up in film and TV; it’s not uncommon for the protagonist to want to kill for revenge in this way and then have a change of heart. They don’t then get a slow gruesome death. What else had the hippies done? Wait, these “hippies” were the ones who were going to kill Sharon Tate and we actually _do_ know that \*these - hippies in fact _did_ “go through with it”. Did you miss that this was an oblique alt-history of the Manson murders, this time the murders being inadvertently thwarted because, in this fairy tale (hence, “Once Upon a Time…”), the damsel in distress wasn’t ever in distress because her aging neighbors were having bad career days? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoiler-thread/837646.md?page=9)