Cinematic Nostalgia
Once upon a time, movies enraptured audiences like no other medium, filling opera house size auditoriums to capacity, symbolizing the apex of the entertainment industry. This was before broadcast television, VHS, bootlegs, DVD’s, online pirating and streaming platforms, when the only juncture to watch movies was in a theater. Billboards advertising the upcoming release of even midlevel movies were plastered along highways, snipes pasted one-sheet posters onto city walls, radio stations played ad spots narrated with enticement, magazine racks held rows of print issues dedicated to movie coverage, water cooler chitchat revolved around the cool new release of the week. All these advertising portals are still in existence, just shrunken to a squint. Sales for physical media have been in decline for over a decade. Video rental houses are relics, or simply nifty retro novelties. No more Tower, Virgin, HMV, Blockbuster storefronts, barely a handful of mom and pop record shops catering to the vinyl hounds whose favorite pastime is perusing shelves for hidden gems, nimbly fingering through alphabetized categories for something that may contain the potential to blow their minds. Ditto for comic book stores and regular bookstores. Living in a time where most media is experienced through digital streams, or ordered online for the tactile oriented, I can’t help feeling nostalgic now that these products are almost exclusively accessed with the click of a button. The towering stature of cinema has been reduced to a figurine. Some will call it a give and take scenario, pros and cons. As more and more movies forego a theatrical release, Quentin Tarantino may say there is more take than give, con than pro.
In New York City, dwindling patronage has shuttered the doors to most of the landmark movie theaters, leaving nary a single-screen theater open for attendance. Personal favorites, such as the Ziegfeld, Landmark Sunshine, the Paris theater, have closed, as have hordes of other monumental movie houses you can find on cinematreasures.org, a site that lists every operational as well as defunct movie theater worldwide. Earning a decent salary as a film critic is as rare as being drafted into the NFL, with fewer and fewer publications staffing reviewers due to cutbacks. Lack of bookstores account for scaled down book tours. Record sales have been gasping for air since Napster dropped the bomb twenty years ago. Gold and platinum plaques were once standard achievements for popular artists; nowadays these benchmarks are impossible to reach save for a breakout star or those few with a built-in fan base from when music still sold. Twenty years ago diverse sounding bands would garner recognition at a rapid clip, today you’d be hard pressed to name a handful of newcomers. Music videos, the best of which were as entertaining as feature films, have catapulted into nonexistence since MTV and VH1 began catering exclusively to reality television lovers. You can blame online pirating. You can blame streaming services. Whatever the culprit, the result is film, music, and books are not the lucrative commodities they once were.
Throughout upper elementary and high school I would fly to Israel for the summer, spending a blistering two months with my dad, who lived in Tel-Aviv with his side of the family. Movies were distributed over there about three to four months after they’d come out in the States, sometimes even longer, so for instance in the summer of ’98 I remember seeing Great Expectations, City of Angels, The Real Blonde, and The Spanish Prisoner in theaters with Hebrew subtitles, all which had already come and gone by winter or spring in NYC, a suitable technique for catching up with movies missed back home. Nowadays their calendars are closer aligned, but about twenty years ago, if a movie wasn’t a summer blockbuster of Godzilla or Armageddon sized proportion (sticking to ’98), it’d take a while to get there. I remember feeling like I had been to the future when describing The X-Files movie (ironically subtitled Fight the Future) to a friend obsessed with the show; that poor fucker would have to wait until, like, October to catch it in theaters.
A favored aspect of moviegoing in Israel included browsing the encased lobby cards for all the movies playing in the theater. Each movie had about a dozen or so of these cards on its plaque, beautiful stills of scenes from the movie, title and stars’ names printed on the lower corner. Instead of streaming a trailer, you would look at these photos to judge what was worthy of ticket price. The best theater in Tel-Aviv was, and may very well still be, the Rav Chen. Located in the center of Dizengoff, the Rav Chen is a six-screen theater that dates back to the early 50’s, when it was just a single screen, like the majority of theaters in those days; the original screen is still there, remaining the largest of the six. Above the box-office counter, in lieu of a marquee, the theater bolstered six huge stone frames, probably about 3-4 feet in height, looming large over the awning, each canvas displaying an illustrated poster of what was currently playing. These were not ordinary posters, each looked like a crafted hand painting. The drawn one-sheets were stunning to gaze upon as an adolescent film lover. Summer of 2000 was my last trip to Rav Chen, until I came back to visit relatives more than a decade later in 2011. Strolling to the theater, the first notable incongruity was the frames: they were empty. What once held invitingly beautiful images now stood blank; six empty housings not financially worthy of a tenant. The rigid structures that held such life like renderings of favorite movies were now transparent shells. Ticket sales not being what they used to be, going through the trouble of putting these illustrations up was not worth the cost. Lobby cards were also gone, yet strangely enough, their cases still stood, hollow within. Although I had already been privy to the dilemma the theatrical experience was in, seeing this decimal-sized example really kinda brought it all home. Movies still mattered, just not as much as they used to.
Once Upon A Time…in Hollywood is a celebration of the arts, primarily the movies, but also records, television, books. Strewn through every frame are movie billboards, advertisements for movies blare out of radios and TV’s, are seen gliding along buses, constant media played in the background, from drive-in theater screens to tiny black & white televisions, a perennial artifact. Set in1969 Hollywood, the prevalence of movies and television throughout makes sense, the feeling of viewing scenes and clips from them along with the characters is as whimsical as being transported to that time and place. The voyeuristic entrancement of watching the boob tube alongside the Manson family as Paul Revere and the Raiders perform on some talk show, or watching Sharon Tate watch herself at a matinee of The Wrecking Crew (as we, the audience, and Sharon Tate, as played by Margot Robbie, scan the audience’s reaction to what is playing on the big screen within the big screen, watching clips of the real Sharon Tate clumsily stumbling over the movie’s star, Dean Martin, breaking a vase and then later karate kicking the movie’s heavy), is hypnotically effective, a feeling of displacement from the era we’re living in, an entrenchment into Tarantino’s world.
An autodidactic filmmaker, endlessly gorging on VHS tapes and television since childhood, Tarantino is like an industry alumnus regarding the subject of his 9th feature, probably more than most working directors. The subject is Hollywood at the tail end of the 60’s, a time of turmoil for studios stuck in the myopic haze of big budget production, putting out generic bores like ‘67’s musical Dr. Dolittle, movies that would soon brusquely get pushed aside for waves of innovative films like Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider, which in turn would open the gate to the risqué cinema of the 70’s, the decade most cinephile’s consider to be the greatest. Extensively studying this era of movies with scholarly dedication, Tarantino took a deep dive into the late 60’s and the year 1970 in particular, researching the path that forged the road to some of his favorites like Deliverance and Freebie and the Bean.
Credited as the catalyst for his thesis-like exploration, Tarantino cites Mark Harris’ 2008 book Pictures at a Revolution as one of the best ever written about movies. The book scrutinizes the five Best Picture nominees of 1967; the year Harris hypothesizes the industry switched guards from Old Hollywood to New Hollywood. As surmised by the incarnated film encyclopedia, it’s around this time that androgynous, longhaired pot smoking dudes became the new version of a leading man, turning the stars of yesteryear into anachronisms.
Three years ago, at the Lumiere film festival in Lyon, Tarantino presided over a retrospective of films from the year 1970, screening 15 features including M.A.S.H. and Five Easy Pieces, engaging in a near two our discussion (available on youtube) with the festival’s director about the year’s significance in film history, hinting towards a desire to one day write his own book about the subject. Maybe one day we’ll get to read QT’s dissertation on New Hollywood, until that day we have his latest movie to marvel over, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.
OUATIH gets going with a meeting at famed L.A. eatery Musso & Frank between actor Rick Dalton, played with unbound vulnerability by Leonardo Dicaprio, and Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino; his most enjoyable on-screen appearance in a long, long time), the casting agent who arranged this sit down with the intention of persuading Rick to star in an upcoming spaghetti western to be filmed in Italy. The scene lays bare everything we need know about Rick: formerly the star of Bounty Law, a cancelled TV cowboy show, the clout he once possessed as a Hollywood player is losing potency with each television series guest spot he appears in, playing the villainous folly to the heroes of shows like Tarzan and The Green Hornet. It’s the only work he can get now that Bounty Law is off the air and his nascent movie career has flamed out. Marginally, Rick is aware his career has spiraled southward, but this meeting with Marvin brings it all home, leaving the TV cowboy utterly floored; you can see the gears rotating in Dicaprio’s pained facial ticks as he mulls over the dagger-like truisms speared by Pacino. “So Rick, who’s gonna beat you up this week? The Man from U.N.C.L.E.? The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.? How about Batman and Robin?” Marvin posits, imitating jabs and uppercuts that may as well connect directly with Rick’s gut because this revelation sucks the life right out of him, like validating a sneaking suspicion the entire town has been laughing at you instead of with you.
In Rick’s mind, flying to Italy to star in movies is the exemplary final nail in the coffin of his career. As he tearfully tells his stuntman turned personal assistant Cliff Booth in the restaurant parking lot post-meeting, “I’m a has been”. Tinseltown is never in short supply of out of work actors, no matter how talented or popular. Names that consistently shined in great movies for years are suddenly relegated to cable TV, settling into corny direct to video releases, sometimes completely vanishing from the trade, living off investments or a newfound vocation. Causes for such demotions or absences vary, usually it’s due to either one flop too many or paychecks too low to meet their overhead. It is strange to think of how stars high on the totem pole in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s ceased working in feature films. Think Nicolas Cage, John Travolta, Meg Ryan, among many others - where they stood then and where they stand now. Exposed sexual misconduct ended Kevin Spacey instantaneously. These days the dismal box-office returns of a Battlefield Earth or a The Sorcerer’s Apprentice are not the only reason for an actor’s multiplex disappearance. In the late 60’s, the tides were changing, and young faces like the Easy Rider trio of Fonda, Hopper, and Nicholson were replacing uptight fogeys like John Wayne. By 1969, as Tarantino expounded in the 2016 Lumiere film festival interview, “New Hollywood was THE Hollywood, and anything that even smacked of Old Hollywood was dead on arrival.”
Backstory details regarding industry shift towards youth counterculture are not explicit in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. Hippies flood the streets, Manson girls prance along alleyways, but there are no scenes where Rick loses a role to some New Hollywood talent. The new shift is stealthily burrowed into the story. One gander at the lifestyle of Rick’s next-door neighbors, Roman Polanski and wife Sharon Tate, furtively reveals the contrasts in their careers. As Rick stays home studying lines for a pilot he’s shooting the following day, another bad guy guest spot, this time on the show Lancer, the Polanski’s are hitting the town in style, partying all night with Steve McQueen and The Mamas and the Papas at the Playboy Mansion. A callback to a shot from the opening credits, tracking Polanski and Sharon walking through LAX in slow motion, flooded by the snapping cameras of a dozen paparazzi, brings it home when it is repeated towards the end with Rick and his new wife, this time sans paparazzi.
A certain “shaggy asshole” shows up unannounced at Sharon’s house one day looking for Dennis Wilson and Terry Melcher. It’s Charles Manson, but anyone going into the movie oblivious to even the most rudimentary details of the infamous Cielo Drive murders would have difficulty surmising his identity. Manson’s name is offhandedly evoked when the story reaches Spahn Ranch, but the Cielo Drive visit is his only appearance on screen; like the business side of things, the Manson Family backstory isn’t spelled out either. The movie settles into a languid pace, affording Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood space to breathe, cluing the audience in to the circumstances surrounding the premise by way of the time spent with the three main characters.
Brad Pitt plays Cliff Booth, an aging stuntman living in a trailer with his loyal pit bull. An on-set mishap some years back excludes Cliff from working steadily, lately turning him more into Rick’s valet/handyman than his stunt double. Bad as Rick perceives his situation to be, Cliff’s is even worse, financially speaking, the difference is Cliff doesn’t gripe about it, contentedly preparing an out the box mac and cheese dinner, guzzling cheap canned beer. The three characters (Rick, Sharon, and Cliff) form a complete picture, an overview of the industry tiers of success.
Basking in the authenticity of its milieu (the recreation of 1969 is most fascinating in the many driving scenes, the freeways occupied with nothing but vintage automobiles, a multitude of impeccably crafted detail), the wardrobe, the music, the people, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is more pensive than most Tarantino movies, eulogizing a time that will never reemerge in our age of technological advances. Long chunks of running time are spent in solitude; Cliff opening cans of dog food for his pit, the mush an interesting mix of flavors such as raccoon and pigeon, or driving aimlessly around Los Angeles, Rick rehearsing dialogue for a scene while orchestrating a complex concoction of alcohol, Sharon running errands around town. Meandering as this may have turned out, every second of screen time is nothing short of fascinating, even mundane tasks end up paying dividends. Sharon’s shopping excursion leads her to a movie theater playing the newly released The Wrecking Crew, where she innocuously finagles free admission from the usher by name-dropping her role in the film. Rick’s line rehearsals are put to the test as the cameras roll on the Lancer pilot, when after he blows one take too many he launches into a self-deprecating tirade privately in his trailer, chastising himself for knocking back eight whiskey sours the previous night. Cliff’s methodical dog food perpetration and canine bond probably offer the greatest payoff when the film reaches its climactic confrontation on Cielo Drive.
As in all Tarantino films, music plays a prominent component. His latest has deep cuts from Paul Revere and the Raiders, Neil Diamond, and The Rolling Stones. The soundtrack sonically complements the setting with such perfectly picked songs, after a few viewings the movie plays like a concert, similar to Dazed and Confused. From the rollicking Treat Her Right by Roy Head & The Traits trumpeting over the opening credits to the melancholic finale of Miss Lily Langtry (a cue from 1972’s Paul Newman vehicle The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean), the tunes go hand in hand with their allotted scenes, none more so than Vanilla Fudge’s soul-whirring acid rock rendition of You Keep Me Hangin’ On, creepily blasting just as some witchy shit is about to go down. Even the radio commercials for random products, like tanning lotion and cologne, are perfect placement holders with a bouncy rhythm.
Amorously as OUATIH relishes its showbiz community of black & white television programs, Technicolor films, production crews, there is a nefarious element coursing towards the town’s glitz and glamor, its manifestation ubiquitously known as The Manson Family, members of which are interwoven through the plot, until one of them hitches a ride with Cliff to Spahn Ranch, a rural location formerly used for film shoots, now home to the creepy cult of hippies. The Spahn Ranch section of the film is one of its most powerful; there is a palpable morphing of aura when Cliff arrives at Sphan, walking into what appears to be a decrepit ghost town, until these skeevy looking kids pop up one by one from swinging saloon doors and rusty vehicles, and suddenly the movie turns into The Hills Have Eyes, revealing a dark side to the free love movement As always, Tarantino’s grip on the tension is pulled tautly, the snap of violence just a nudge away.
After machine-gunning Hitler down in Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino has developed a knack for historical revisionism, which he indulges in once again with the climax of OUATIH, featuring one of the most cathartic explosions of violence since The Bride entered the House of Blue Leaves in Kill Bill. Enervating the Manson killers is one of Tarantino’s grandest strokes outside of Jews bludgeoning Nazis or slaves gunning down slave-owners at point blank range. The entire movie has been leading up to this point, the night of August 9th, when Cielo Drive turned into a bloodbath, its five victim splayed all over the property, and as crazy as the dissonance between the real life event and this movie’s fiction may sound, the moment is shockingly ameliorating.
Known to have revived the careers of actors Hollywood has curbed into obscurity, most notably resuscitating John Travolta back to A-list status for the remainder of the 90’s, Tarantino ends …in Hollywood with the glimmer of a similar prospect for Rick, a second chance, this time for a fictional thespian, as the large metal gates to the Tate residence creak open, inviting Rick into the New Hollywood regime, echoing his sentiment in the beginning of the movie, when he first lays eyes on his next door neighbors cruising up the driveway and tells Cliff, “I could be one pool party away from starring in the next Polanski movie.” In this alternate universe of reversed fortunes, ending with Rick being embraced by a pregnant Sharon Tate and her three housemates, he may be right. It’s a bittersweet moment. The audience is aware of the real life outcome, and yet, in this fairytale rendering, all is well, movies matter and are responsible for seismic differences in people’s lives.
The slats that once displayed impressively illustrated posters at the Rav Chen movie theater remain empty, art houses and non-chain movie theaters struggle to keep the lights on, mid-level movies are difficult to distribute theatrically, let alone fund. Yet, the movies are still here, still hitting the zeitgeist on occasion, and while IP’s seem to have a monopoly on current box office, the one component that has never lessened is the power movies possess in moving an audience, speaking to them in intimate, personal levels. Movies retain their powers to widen our perceptions, elicit sympathy, bring a crowd together, show how much we are all alike in spite of external differences. Contrary to journalistic hot takes admonishing readers that movies are nearing their mortal threshold, great works find a way into the world regardless of financial viability. The experience of experiencing them on a large screen together with a roomful of strangers may be fading, particularly in every city not named LA or New York, yet when watching Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood those thoughts take backseat to a place where life is nothing but the movies, encompassed by and significant because of them. And for a moment there, as the end credits roll, a Batman and Robin promo voiced by the original caped crusader playing on the soundtrack, a mirage-like optical illusion brings those lobby cards and posters back into focus; the Ziegfeld and Paris theaters are back in business.
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