Tarantino has frequently defended his use of violence, saying that "violence is so good. It affects audiences in a big way". Tarantino has also occasionally used a nonlinear story structure in his films, most notably with Pulp Fiction. He has also used the style in Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, and The Hateful Eight.
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Mike Moh's Lee gets into a small brawl with Brad Pitt's stuntman, Cliff Booth, where the latter gives the former as good as he gets. The fight ends in a draw (but that wasn't always the plan in the script) and the scene has sparked considerable controversy regarding how Tarantino uses an historical figure like Lee in an effort to service his main character, Cliff, by showing that the stuntman is the last man with whom to fu** if he can go toe-to-toe with Mr. Enter the Dragon. Tarantino spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about this choice, and how Lee's depiction comes off as "arrogant" -- which Lee was in real-life to a degree, according to those that know him:
"The way he was talking, I didn’t just make a lot of that up. I heard him say things like that, to that effect. If people are saying, 'Well, he never said he could beat up Muhammad Ali,' well yeah, he did. Not only did he say that, but his wife, Linda Lee, said that in her first biography I ever read ... She absolutely said it."
When it comes to modern film auteurs, Quentin Tarantino's sitting in the back of the theater, applauding at what's happening in cinema while knowing he has been cooking crack since the early '90s, barely staggering. Seriously: Even his "worst" films still get "B" ratings on CinemaScore. His visual stew, which mixes hefty doses of pop culture references alongside homages to the genre flicks that he grew up loving, has helped Tarantino craft one of the most stellar feature filmographies in the modern era.
With Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood now in theaters, the inevitable debate has arisen: Which Tarantino flick is the illest? This is the guy who's not only reinvented what popular culture wanted from cinema but refined his approach with every new flick. He may pull from the films of yesteryear, but he's also influenced a generation (or two), with tomorrow's filmmakers possibly not even realizing how much of their style he authored. He's that damn good.
Quentin Tarantino has written his resignation letter with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Quentin Tarantino's latest movie makes a statement about the state of the film industry from the confines of a Hollywood throwback.
REUTERS: SHAMIL ZHUMATOV
Television is everywhere in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
A movie producer (Al Pacino) sits in a restaurant in Los Angeles while an episode of the crime series FBI plays on a TV behind a bar.
Across town, in the Hollywood hills, actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) tune in at the same time.
Dalton is a guest star on the show as the villain of the week. Dalton has been typecast as rogues in the twilight of his career, but he was once the hero.
First, in a popular 1950s western TV series Marshall Law and then in a string of films that certified him as a movie star (Dalton's career is inspired by Burt Reynolds).
It's 1969, Hollywood's golden age of film studio dominance is coming to an end, change is in the air and there's no place for Dalton anymore.
A letter of resignation
Tarantino is an acolyte of cinema. His career has its own movielike mythology: the video store employee who dreamed of making films, got a chance and changed the modern landscape with the one-two punch of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.
Tarantino's films double as tributes to the movies where he found inspiration; martial arts epics (Kill Bill), war films (Inglorious Basterds) and westerns (Django Unchained), but it's different with his ninth film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; he says he'll retire from filmmaking after 10. The adoration is present but it's a letter of resignation to cinema.
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Once Upon a Time in Hollywood laments the end of one Hollywood age while signalling the emergence of a counterculture that would pave the way for "new Hollywood"; independent filmmaking, summer blockbusters and auteur directors.
Tarantino uses the Manson family cult to represent the change sweeping Hollywood. Hippies are hitchhiking on every corner Dalton and Booth pass on their commute. In a confrontation with cult members, Dalton calls them a bunch of "Dennis Hoppers", a reference to Easy Rider, the film Hopper directed that's credited as a marker for the beginning of the new Hollywood era of the 1970s.
The other shift is represented by Dalton's neighbours Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha). As Dalton arrives home, dejected from another day a work, Tate and Polanski ascend their driveway like Hollywood royalty.
Tate, Polanski and Manson's cult aren't present for historical accuracy. Akin to Inglorious Basterds, Tarantino uses history as the backdrop for a story. The Once Upon a Time in the title implies the fantasy side of the film; Kurt Russell provides narration like he's reading from a storybook.
The Manson family represent disrupters like Netflix or indie filmmakers. One cult member is named Sundance, the namesake of America's largest independent film festival, a sly dig at the institution that helped launch Tarantino's career. The discontent is not misguided, Sundance has become a nursey for young directors to go from micro-budget debut films to multi-million-dollar franchise blockbusters. The festival has become a corporate launchpad that presents itself as a humble patron of the arts.
Echoes from '69 today
If Tarantino is set on calling it quits, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood makes a statement about the state of the film industry from the confines of a Hollywood throwback.
The shifting media landscape of '69 is not too dissimilar to what's happening in 2019. Once-great film studios are crumbling or merging. Modestly budgeted comedy, drama and horror is slowly disappearing. Anything that can't get made into a film is shifting to television — even great films being adapted into TV series, streaming services are hungry beasts.
Therefore, TV is the dominant medium in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The sales of colour TVs over black and white sets saw an uptick in '69, and Tarantino uses the timeframe to emphasise the impact of a generation who schedule their lives around what's on a small screen.
In '69 the popularity of TV humbled film studios, in 2019 smartphones and devices are having the same effect.
Tarantino shows us how the disruptive counterculture has overtaken traditional filmmaking institutions. In one sequence, Booth visits an old western film set where the cult lives. The set is where Booth once took hits as a stuntman for Dalton on Marshall Law.
Tarantino shoots the old western backlot like a hillbilly horror film. While Booth assesses the situation, cult members are shown piled up in a dilapidated living room staring dead-eyed at a TV.\
When Booth finally locates the owner of the property (Bruce Dern), he's taking a daytime nap because he needs to be fresh to watch TV at night with his partner (Dakota Fanning) who hates it when he snoozes during her favourite show.
In a separate scene, cult members, ordered by Manson to kill, discuss what it's like to grow up with a lot of murder on TV. They philosophise about the need to make a statement about their generation by killing the actors (Dalton) who taught them how to kill.
Pop culture zealots are out to destroy their idols. Hollywood has begun to cannibalise.
Dalton and Booth are avatars for Tarantino's state of mind about the modern film industry. For once, Tarantino is questioning whether there's life after show business.
The film's themes can translate to any career path undergoing major disruption. Job security is no longer a concrete prospect and you can't help but feel Tarantino has seen the writing on the wall for his own industry.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a melancholic film about the inevitability of change and the certainty that all good things will come to an end.
Cameron Williams is a writer and film critic.
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