re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood opening day check in thread ***Spoilers Inevitable***

Man I thought those acting scenes were boooooooring

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Dyke Van Dyke's show ended in 1966 so nobody was interviewing Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie in 1969 dammit!

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When CBS lost DVD, they reran it as a part of their daytime schedule (through 1969).

Rose Marie and Amsterdam were being interviewed together into the 90’s. They were both doing Sullivan, sitcoms, and talk shows in ‘69. They were good friends, she actually insisted that he was the only person they should bring in for the role.

That interview of Rick and Cliff at the beginning was on the set of Bounty Law....but it was from the past since Bounty Law had been canceled by 1969, and that’s why Leo’s character was now doing guest spots on FBI, Lancer, etc. So that interview could have been done anytime from 1961-1966, when the Dick Van Dyke show was still airing new episodes and why the guy said he would be interviewing Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie next time.

Loved it

Absolutely loved it

The movie isn't about the Manson family.

It's a euphemism for "Old Hollywood" of Doris Day and how the Manson murders marked the end of golden Hollywood and transitioning into the pessimistic movies of the 1970s.

Leo is an old aging bastion of Old Hollywood and seeing the end coming. He IS old Hollywood. He's on the verge of tears, a nervous wreck, hiding a slight stutter.

But I digress

Brad Pitt's performance was strong as all hell. But goddamn Leo's performance I think was so underappreciated.

When he flubs his lines, then has his blowup in his trailer, and that scene where he's negotiating the ransom for that girl he kidnapped... holy shite that scene I thought to myself "now this is some fricking fantastic acting" and the little girl literally tells him "that was the best acting I've ever seen" .

"And you... I remember you what's your name?"
"I'm the Devil. And I'm here to do the Devil's work."
"...... nah it was dumber than that."

That last scene was UNREAL. I'd never imagine you could get a theater full of senior citizens to laugh and chuckle while Brad Pitt smashes people's faces in and people get their faces mauled by a Pit Bull and Leo torches a girl with a flame thrower.

Would see again, no doubt

Passable but underwhelming.

Describes each of Tarantino's last 3 movies IMO.

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It's a euphemism for "Old Hollywood" of Doris Day and how the Manson murders marked the end of golden Hollywood and transitioning into the pessimistic movies of the 1970s.

Leo is an old aging bastion of Old Hollywood and seeing the end coming. He IS old Hollywood. He's on the verge of tears, a nervous wreck, hiding a slight stutter.

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Everyone in this movie just wants to work in Hollywood. Everyone’s relationship with Hollywood is romantic but we all know there is something awful coming.

I might be reading too much into this but I kinda think QT sees himself in all the actors. He is just a humble filmmaker and wants Hollywood to be what it never was. I am not a wordsmith but I am curious to see how people connect this movie with QT/harvery Weinstein’s relationship and what we know about Polanski’s future legal troubles.

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It's a euphemism for "Old Hollywood" of Doris Day and how the Manson murders

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1969 was such an important year. Certainly 1968 was no slouch with assassinations of MLK and RFK, riots, but 1969 had Woodstock, the Moon Landings and the Tate-Labianca killings all within a 4-week window.

That was "Peak Hippie" - and while 1969 was literally the last year of the 60s, that 4-week window marked the end of that whole era.

Film, television, music, discourse, American culture all turned stark and gritty almost overnight. This abrupt transition/change is largely what Hunter S. Thompson was talking about in the wave speech from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

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Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshite, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

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The story is...non-existent. It’s like stuff is happening, but nothing is happening.

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Sometimes I think people need the plot to have a literal goal for the characters to strive for. Start the film with Morgan Freeman explaining what the End Zone is and each reel is the characters advancing twenty five yards. Character development is a wasted art.

Anybody catch the throwback character to Bastards with Antonio Margaritti???