‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ Tarantino's Next

That's to be expected. For me the touchstone is more the 70s, as I turned 9 in 1970 & graduated high school & turned 18 in 1979, & even that's ancient history to a degree!

Here's a different way of putting it into perspective; 1970 is almost 50 years ago now. In 1970, 1920 was 50 years ago, & how many people alive in the 70s that weren't alive in the 20s knew that much about that era?

Granted they knew some things about it, but 50 years ago is a long time, no matter how you slice it.

 

And, after seeing the movie, my co-worker still has no idea who Margot Robbie was supposed to be playing, or that she was even playing a “real life” historical figure. I recognize that most people here can’t put themselves in the shoes of a 30-year-old who doesn’t have a doctoral degree in 1960s history and pop culture, as most of us do.

 

Hey, it goes with the territory!

 

Eras, decades, years tend to become defined by events. It seems that in the 21st century things are quite homogenous. Other than 9/11, has there been any landmark events that infiltrate your memory since 2000? And without those cultural yardsticks, time slips away in a wash of months and years without much to differentiate it from the year before. The news of yesteryear made you stop in your tracks and take notice. Now it's just an alert on a cellphone. It can be deleted and moved past with a keystroke or two.

 

To be fair, the woman in the movie onscreen and Robbie playing her didn't look that much alike. I could see how someone might be confused and think that Robbie conned her way into the theater or something.

 

You’re the only person on this whole page to actually talk about the movie.You get a

 

I can't. The scene has Margot Robbie saying "I am Sharon Tate, I am in the movie." Suggest the confused movie-goer should lay off the acid-dipped popcorn in future.

 

I've heard it said that someone born in the US in 1980 would have lived basically the same sort of lifestyle to the age of 15 as someone who was a kid in the 1920s or 1930s (even with some limited digital and computer technology invading the 1980s home), and especially if you were brought up in a more rural area.

 

My son was born in 1990. He knows a good amount about this story and history in general as well as a vast knowledge of all music.

Comes down to good parenting to supplement his education.

 

I don't agree with that & here's why: My wife was born in SW Iowa in 1981, in the same small town we live in, in an extremely rural area, but her life at that time was quite similar to the way I grew up in a more urban environment in NC, albeit at different times. Since moving from NC to Iowa, I've found that most of the people my age who grew up here, grew up the same way I did in NC, with many of the same experiences.

 

For someone not obsessed with the 1960s, it is likely very difficult to discern that “Sharon Tate” is a real historical figure and that “The Wrecking Crew” is a real movie, while “Rick Dalton” is a fictional character and “Bounty Law” is a made-up TV show.

We all get that distinction; it’s not surprising to me that a thirty-year old with no special interest in the period would be confused by it.

I’m 90% sure that my wife, who is my age, didn’t get that the guy Cliff fights on the studio lot was supposed to be real life historical figure Bruce Lee.

 

Not sure I follow your line here...

Anyway, I guess we have gotten way off track here.

 

If you walk into the movie not knowing that Sharon Tate was a real person, as impossible a mental leap as that may be for 99% of the people on this 60s-obsessed forum to make, it’s highly difficult to grasp that she’s not just another make-believe character in the film like Rick and Cliff.

What was driven home to me listening to my co-workers discuss the movie today is that none of them have the slightest idea who Sharon Tate (or Squeaky Fromme, or Michelle Phillips, or Bruce Lee, or any of the other historical figures in this movie) was. To them, Margot Robbie was playing a fictional character, just like Uma Thurman was playing a fictional character in Pulp Fiction.

To them, this wasn’t a movie blending fictional characters Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth into recognizable real life events; to them, the whole movie was a work of fiction like Pulp Fiction.

 

Got it. Some young people don't know history. Thanks.

 

I was a young teenager in 1969 and remember all the real-life events of the film of the film pretty well. Even if you can pick apart the technical accuracy and say "this car isn't exactly right" or "that song didn't come out until a year later," what I will say is that the 1969 shown in the movie is very, very close to how I remember the year feeling. And (as I said elsewhere) I didn't visit LA until 1975, but the overall feel of Hollywood Blvd. and Bel-Air and Chatsworth and the Valley feels very accurate to me -- I'd give it a 90% on the historical score, which is not bad for a non-documentary entertainment film. The film convinces me that I saw the LA of that era.

I think the point of the film <no spoilers> is to show how and why a couple of down-on-their-luck actors have a dramatic encounter with the Charles Manson gang, and to explain what Hollywood was like to live and work in 50 years ago. All of that is done extremely well in the film. I can see how people who either a) have no interest in history, b) have no interest in Hollywood, or c) think anything more than 25 years ago is ancient history might not appreciate the film. For the rest of us -- certainly classic rock fans, movie fans, Tarantino fans, and people in that age range (born prior to 1960), the movie does resonate with us quite a bit. I qualify on all of those, and I thought the film was powerful, fascinating, visceral, extremely well-made, and drew me right into the world of people I never knew.

 

Went to see Once Upon A Time this morning at the AMC in Torrance, for $6.75 each, me and my wife thought this was a great movie. I was 22 years old in 1969 at the time and everything seemed very real as far as scenery.
One detail really cracked my up. Brad Pitt was wearying a T-Shirt that said Lion's Drag Strip on it, when I was a teenager I had a neighbor half way down the block that had a dragster and was full blown into racing.
I used to go with them on the weekends to Lion's Drag Strip for the races. It's not there anymore, but it was about 5 miles from our house at the time, I still remember hanging out in the pits and watching them work on the car.
I also remember the immense amount of smoke from the tires as it wafted into the pits, and last but on least the hot dogs.

 

I just found out today that some of the VFX crew on this film had to add a brown polluted sky to LA, because 2019 got rid of a lot of that. I can say for a fact that there was much, much more air pollution back in the 1970s in LA than there is now.

 

Every time I drove to LA from SF throughout the 1970s, my eyes burned. That’s no longer the case.

 

That’s amazing to me. As someone who has never lived there, I believe you, but what has been the difference?

More people, more traffic = more smog.

No?

 

Modern technology, like emissions testing, the way cars are built...

 

I did see both. Same timeline but very different look back. Mama Cass and Michelle Phillips in both films.

 

I’m kind of burnt with talking about this movie. The reaction is generally positive but could also be said to be all over the place. I don’t want to say.

I was born in 1966. I first heard of Manson with some crazy interview he did with either Tom Snyder or Geraldo Rivera. I cannot remember which.

Being a fan of rock music, counter culture, and, yeah, true crime, I latched onto Manson. He was an otherworldly figure. Hippie culture, music, women, what’s not to like? (outside of crazy ideals and ridiculous race conflicts and murder).

Manson was kind of my guide through the late sixties. He simultaneously ruined the “flower power” vibe and “Summer of Love” in one fell swoop. He was a a-hole, but as noted earlier, a man with great charisma and ability to have people with more conflicted ideas believe in his dogma ::::: cough cough :::::

Anyway, maybe the insertion of the Manson Family diverged the goal of this movie, but I don’t think it did. It was an introspective look into what was the late sixties, the aging TV star, and the counter culture movement that was coming to a head in LA. All in all, it was deftly done and pulled off with aplomb and reverence.

Everything else just seems to be bitching or “I know more than you do” or high art snobbery. It was good film; enjoy it.

That’s it for me comrades. I can’t take anymore of this.

 

Thanks.

 

Since my generation (1958 - had muscle cars spewing out smoke, city buses farting black clouds, every time they took off, and in the 80s, my then father-in-law, and I poured our dirty motor oil into the ditch across the road, and back in the early 60s I had a doctor examine me while he had a lit cigarette hanging off his bottom lip !!!
We were some ignorant people, so yeah, I can imagine a big improvement.

 

I lived there as a child in the early 70's. We had smog days where school recess was cancelled, and I believe a few times where school itself was cancelled.