That was a great film. I was flipping through the DVR and saw this was auto recorded and I figured I should watch it since I like a lot of QTs other work (hateful 8, pulp fiction, inglorious bastards).
I knew nothing about it other than it was about an actor and his stunt double. I didn’t even know which one was the actor and which one was supposed to be the stunt double going in. I didn’t even know about the Charlie Manson tie in until they kept hinting at it. I just knew it was a QT film and knew about the 2 main actors.
I like QTs work so I figured I would enjoy it. And I did, because the ending was a total surprise. I watched the movie assuming the ending would just be the main characters drunkenly sleeping through the murder next door, and then a sad montage about what happened. Had no idea they’d break into Leo’s house instead. Since I didn’t know the details of the manson murder too well, I didn’t even know if the part where they broke into Polanski’s neighbors house was what actually happened at first (but when the dog attacked I knew it was a fictionalized ending).
Tate seemed like such a likable character and what I saw online said she was like that in real life too. So it was nice to see her get a happy ending, I think it was one of the best endings in film.
I know people are divided on this film, but I loved it and am very glad I watched it. I think I’d rank it as my newest favorite QT film, its better than hateful 8 which was my favorite of his.
I also liked how throughout the film they keep dropping hints on what a badass Cliff was. The audie murphy reference, him jumping onto the roof. When he slammed bruce lee into a car, that was totally unexpected and I loved it.
Did they ever hint at Cliffs age? Was a a war hero in WW2 or Korea? If he was in his 40s, he would’ve been in WW2 and if he was in his 30s he would’ve been in Korea. But I’m guessing he was in his 40s.
The blowtorch ending however felt tacked on. I could’ve done without that. its not even the violence of that, I don’t mind that. It just felt so over the top that it took me out of the film.
Quite a few websites say that Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio’s characters were inspired by (respectively) Hal Needham and Burt Reynolds. None of them quote Quentin Tarantino though. In any case, the inspiration seems to be limited to the fact that Reynolds was in Westerns in the late 1950’s and Needham was his stuntman and friend. Their lives don’t seem to be that similar to me. Pitt was 54 when the film was shot. If his character was 54 in 1969, it seems to me to be more likely that he served in World War II rather than the Korean War.
It was not common for stunt men, or actors, or indeed anyone, to maintain the rigors that Brad Pitt goes through to look like that. And, in fact, Brad Pitt has the resources of an A-List movie star to achieve it, with trainers and nutritionists and cooks, etc.
A 1960s stunt man living in a trailer behind a drive-in theater hoovering canned beans, mac-and-cheese, and a six-pack of cheap beer for dinner every night would find it difficult to maintain that rigor.
As for the flamethrower, I knew it would make an appearance toward the end as soon as I spotted it leaning casually against the wall in the shed early on when he went in to get something. Call it “Chekhov’s flamethrower.”
Pitt in the movie looks as if he is a man who does a lot of physical work every day. He is ripped like, to use a contemporary actor, Charles Bronson (48 in 1969) not like a modern gym rat.
Hal Needham was five years older than Burt Reynolds. So if the duo of Pitt and DiCaprio was based on them, it actually would be more likely that Pitt’s character was older than DiCaprio’s. In fact, I got the feeling that the age difference of the characters was somewhat like the age difference of the actors, and Pitt is eleven years older than DiCaprio. The movie implies that, although DiCaprio’s character is clearly richer than Pitt’s, Pitt’s character is a mentor to DiCaprio’s character. DiCaprio’s character had been lucky enough to be the lead in a TV show for several years, while Pitt’s character was only scraping by with stuntman jobs. He had had problems in the several years before the time of the movie getting those jobs, so DiCaprio’s character had hired him as his driver.