I’ve been loving the hell out of everything I’ve seen from Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood! The last trailer that was released was incredible and that was followed by a bunch of glowing reviews from audiences who had a chance to see the film at the Cannes Film Festival.
During a recent interview with Esquire, Tarantino compared his new film to Pulp Fiction and says it’s his love letter to Los Angeles.
“This film is the closest thing I’ve done to Pulp Fiction.”
This is in regards to the structure of the film and how multiple characters and story lines that are seemingly unrelated, all eventually intersect and intertwine with each other in unexpected and fun ways.
Tarantino goes on to say that it is his “most personal” film, and adds:
“I think of it like my memory piece. Alfonso [Cuarón] had Roma and Mexico City, 1970. I had L. A. and 1969. This is me. This is the year that formed me. I was six years old then. This is my world. And this is my love letter to L. A.”
I know we have a good idea of what the story for the film tells, but the article offers a new description of the story that offers a bit more insight. That description is as follows:
It’s 1969, a year of tremendous upheaval, not just in America’s streets but also on the backlots of Hollywood. The Golden Age is ending. The original studio system, which has been a source of stability and structure for fifty years, is collapsing as the under-thirty counterculture rejects traditional plotlines and traditional leading men. It’s the year Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy and The Wild Bunch break big—films that celebrate the antihero and upend the definition of what a matinee idol looks like. It’s against this background that we meet Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), a declining star and a veteran of TV westerns. Rick has, through a combination of ego and dumb decisions, blown his chance to cross over into movie stardom like Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis). About the only thing he can count on is the friendship of his longtime stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). (Meanwhile, Rick’s agent, played by Al Pacino, is trying to get him to do a spaghetti western.)
Then, one night, Rick realizes he might just be one pool party away from turning his career around. His new neighbors, it turns out, are the golden girl of the moment, Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), and her husband, Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), who is, thanks to Rosemary’s Baby, the hottest director in town. The stories of Rick, Cliff, and Tate unfold over three days or, as Tarantino says, in three acts: February 8, February 9, and, finally, August 8—the night when Charles Manson (Damon Herriman) dispatched four members of his “Family” to the house next to Rick’s on Cielo Drive in Beverly Hills, where they found Tate, hairdresser Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch), and three others. It was the night when, as Joan Didion famously wrote, “the sixties ended abruptly . . . the tension broke . . . the paranoia was fulfilled.” Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is a film that vibrates with ambition, with the entire cast performing at the height of their talent, inside a brilliant story.
I can’t wait to see this movie when it hits theaters on July 26th, 2019.