Once Upon a Time in Knowing Hollywood History

Just like any movie, there are endless reasons a moviegoer may have disliked Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Even the most lauded films have their detractors after all. There is no greater proof than the fact that there are people  who believe Children of Men is a bad film (pray for them). On the other hand, I once met a guy whose favorite movie of all time – of all time! – was Shanghai Knights (sorry to knock Shanghai Knights, but you get it). Movies are personal, so a critique only holds as much weight as you give it.

There is, however, one reason people may have hated Tarantino’s newest effort that bears such credence it can’t be ignored. That is the fact that the final act’s emotional resonance hinges on the viewer knowing a fading piece of Hollywood history: the Tate Murders.

Those familiar with the Tate Murders are rolling their eyes at the very notion that the Tate Murders are esoteric in any way, while those who left Once Upon a Time questioning what Margot Robbie was even doing in the movie are saying “thank you.”

I’ve seen the movie three times. It’s safe to say it’s going to be in my Top Ten – hell, Top Five – and possibly even my number one movie of 2019. But if your criticisms derive from the fact that you didn’t know about the Tate Murders beforehand (which isn’t your fault), I completely understand. I might even agree with you given the lens you viewed the movie through.

Ultimately though, the movie just wasn’t made for you.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a movie made for people at least somewhat familiar with the Tate Murders. Full disclosure, I went into the movie only knowing the following:

• Sharon Tate was an actress.
• She was murdered by Manson acolytes.
• Margot Robbie plays her in the movie.

Luckily, that’s the bare minimum the movie begs you to know. Sharon Tate’s inevitable fate gives the character purpose. That’s why every part of Margot Robbie’s performance played for me. Her sincere and innocent love of life . Her pregnant belly, a distended symbol of a hopeful future.  Her destiny mutates that pregnant belly into a school bus without a steering wheel hurtling towards a brick wall. It’s what makes the ending so cathartic. With his fairy tale reconstruction of history, Tarantino gives us a steering wheel. My mom, who remembers the murders like they were yesterday, wept at the end, lamenting, “Why couldn’t real life be like that?”

For someone like my girlfriend, who grew up in France, far away from the bubble of Hollywood-centric culture, everything I just stated was entirely absent. Robbie’s inclusion seemed like nothing more than fruitless eye candy. The ending wasn’t cathartic. It was confusing. Violent without reason.

If only she would have known… But she didn’t. For her, it wasn’t a great movie. It was one of the most disappointing failures of the year.

For me, it’s Top Ten – hell, Top Five – and possibly even my number one movie of 2019.

With the exception of four-quadrant films, not every movie is made for everyone. That’s how we get some of the most interesting works. Hereditary is an incredible movie, but there are many people who will never see it simply because they don’t watch movies to be scared. That’s perfectly fine. Why watch a movie if you’re going to hate the experience? People like myself, and I suspect many of you reading this, might be eager to watch a challenging film, but for many people, watching a movie is just about having some simple fun.

That brings us back to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and the questions it evokes. Does a movie need to connect with everyone to be considered a great film? Is there a point where a movie has an obligation to appeal to a broad audience? Or is this more about the film suffering from the unignorable flaw of its audience needing to know information not present in the film to truly grasp it? Would this not even be an issue if Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was just some small, independent film whose reach didn’t extend past its niche? Probably not.

If you’re not in on the joke, who do you get mad at? Yourself or the filmmaker?

Can we only truly judge a film in terms of who it was made for, not caring about the opinion of those whom it was not?

If film making is a battle between creator and viewer, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood seemingly breaks the rules of engagement, but it’s not as if Tarantino hasn’t broken the rules before. It’s what he does. And it might be what I love most about his newest film.

Blockbusters, Indies, Art, Films, Trash Films — They’re All Movies

I hate movie snobs. Whenever I catch wind of some blowhard spitting movie snobbery, I just want to crush their skull in, which would make me a murderer, which is arguably much worse than a movie snob. I get the same violent urges towards art snobs in general. I’m talking about the kind of people who like to rank mediums of art.

“Painting is the highest form of art. Music is a close second, but only if it’s orchestral music, not rap. Rap isn’t art at all. And movies and TV are the lowest forms of art, if you can even call them that.”

Their reasons for not respecting certain mediums of art are usually steeped in ignorance.

“Movies are all explosions and superheroes.” Cherry-picking to denigrate the whole medium (and what’s so bad about explosions anyway?)

Or, “rap is all about drugs and violence.” Yes, and I suppose sculpting is all about men with small penises.

That same poisonous thinking permeates movie lovers as well. The cinephiles who scoff at whatever new blockbuster is playing at the mainstream theaters. Or the blowhards who would laugh in your face if you so much as suggest that they see the newest comedy starring a former wrestler (may this trend never die). These are the people who pat themselves on the back for watching foreign films. The people who won’t dare watch a horror movie if it isn’t directed by Ari Aster.

Netflix? Never. The Criterion Channel? Always.

It’s not personal taste I’m attacking here either. It’s when someone can’t appreciate a genre on its own merit. Instead they judge all movies on the merits of their favorite genre. A goopy, soupy horror movie like Society won’t hold a candle to Lost in Translation in terms of character depth and emotional resonance, but as a goopy, soupy horror movie, it’s really damn good.

Let me address my own blind spots here. All you need to see is my iTunes library to known my tastes fall heavily towards Junkfood movies. Give me Big Trouble in Little China. Give me any Fast and Furious. Anything with Rutger Hauer (RIP). But that’s not to say I don’t enjoy a good slow burn, a foreign film, or something drastically outside of my tastes. And most of all, I believe they’re all valuable in their own way.

You’ll often hear movies snobs say things like:

A movie should be a deeply serious work.

A movie needs to be about something important.

A movie needs to make you think.

A movie needs to challenge you.

Those are all great qualities to strive for, but in no way a prerequisite to be a valuable film. Usually what these people are really saying is, “a movie needs to do all of those things in the exact way that connects with me, no matter the genre.” But I don’t want the same thing out of a Coppola movie that I get out of a John Carpenter movie.

I’m not saying you have to love every single movie. I certainly don’t. Like I said, this isn’t about taste. This is about the asshole who scoffs at you for loving Hocus Pocus. Or the dickhead who thinks there’s a competition between art films and popcorn movies, and that art films are the clear-cut winner of said competition. Or that there’s even needs to be a winner at all.

Movies that make me think. Movies that make me zone-out. Movies with explosions. Movies with quiet moments of brilliance. Action movies. Horror movies. Character studies. They’re all movies, or film, or cinema, or whatever you want to call them. Those are just umbrella terms for endless possibilities. Movies are like people. You don’t have to like them all, but for god’s sake, respect them.

Except for Jean-Luc Goddard’s The Image Book. That movie fucking sucks

 

“Loved the script, Quentin. Just a few notes. Maybe less n-word.”

I’m fresh off of seeing Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which I thought was incredible, but I’ll leave it at that since this isn’t a review. I do, however, need to give the tiniest of spoilers with this one simple, and possibly surprising, fact: the movie doesn’t have a single utterance of the n-word. That, my friends, is progress. The lack of n-bombs seemingly comes at the detriment of not having a single black speaking role in the movie, but some progress comes at the expense of others, I guess.

Tarantino’s scripts have never shied away from the word, and his bold use of it has even created some iconic movie lines, for better or worse.

But there’s one of his films that particularly sticks out to me in its flagrant use of the word. I’m talking about The Hateful Eight.

Watching The Hateful Eight can at times be an uncomfortable experience if you’re not someone who delights in hearing white people saying the N-word. A more prudent writer might have prepared for this article by watching The Hateful Eight and counting every utterance of the word, but that sounds like a great way to go insane, so I skipped that. Plus, if you’ve seen it, you already know exactly what I’m talking about.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the movie. I saw it in 70mm and watched the four-part episodic series on Netflix. I’m not saying that wins me the “biggest fan” award, but suffice to say, I am a big fan of the movie. And no, this isn’t me flexing my woke muscles either, mostly because I don’t think it’s a particularly heroic stance to say that white people saying the n-word makes you uncomfortable.  As a screenwriter myself, it just brings up one one simple question: how do you give that script to someone for notes?

You’d have to expect the first note you’d get is, “maybe less of the n-word.”

OK, so maybe the note “less n-word” doesn’t give Tarantino enough credit as a writer who knows what he’s doing. Let’s go with the note, “I know that it’s probably historically accurate, but at what cost?” That’s part of what makes the word work in his films, after all. The word always fits with how the characters would talk, whether due to the setting, time, or characters in the scene, but is that level of accuracy in historical fiction even necessary? Will the audience be taken out of the movie because the characters aren’t using that common vernacular of the time? Or will they be taken out of it because at this point, that vernacular is jarring no matter the context?

I know Tarantino hand writes the first draft of his scripts, then types them out page by page using some old half-computer/half-typewriter thing, so this is more of a rhetorical question than anything, but at what point do you CTRL-F the n-word, see that you’ve used it 37 times, and then decide, “maybe I can delete a couple of these.”

The argument against everything I’m saying here could be made as simple as “Tarantino is a genius.” That it is exactly his use of bold, unwavering language that makes his work resonate. From top to bottom, this is how he crafts his movies. With unwavering, confident choices that few others would dare to make. There’s an old zen quote that says, “the way a person does one thing is the way they do everything.” How he uses the n-word is the same mechanism he makes all his directorial and prosaic choices with. They simply can’t be parsed.

Maybe that’s giving him too much credit and the movie would be better off with a few less n-words though.

Or maybe I’m just being overly sensitive.

Or maybe he should have added more. Who knows?

Make Terminator and the Predator Horror Again

I’m so over Predator and Terminator movies.

Of course, I’m also full of shit. I’m not going to pretend like I’m not there opening weekend for every new Terminator and Predator movie, but I have stopped expecting them to be any good. Fucking hell. Even the combination of Shane Black and Olivia Munn couldn’t make The Predator work (the fact that Black cast a convicted pedophile in it didn’t help either, not that it affected my viewing. I just think it’s really fucking funny to mention for some reason).

The Terminator franchise has had the same problems as Predator. There hasn’t been a good one since Judgement Day. In that way, Predator and Terminator are kindred spirits. For the record, here are the official rankings:

TERMINATOR
1 (tied). Terminator/Terminator 2: Judgement Day
Everything else: garbage

PREDATOR
1. Predator
2. Predator 2
Everything else: garbage

Both of these franchises have the same big problem: their obsession with bigger, badder, more-CGed bad guys. Every Terminator movie has some new model of Terminator with a new power desperately trying to outdo the previous. That worked to terrifying effect with T-1000, but past that, not so much. In the new Terminator movie, Dark Fate, it’s not a T800. It’s not a liquid metal Terminator. It’s not a nano-bot John Connor Terminator either. It’s a Terminator who can separate and become two Terminators. Wow. Scary… And it’s up against a new, good Terminator! Plus Sarah Connor! All of that won’t amount to much more than a bunch of nonsensical CG action, not heightened drama or suspense (no, I haven’t seen it. I’m just being a bitch).

Predator has seen a similar trend. We can ignore the AVP movies since they practically glow with radioactive badness. Nimrod Antal’s 2010 Predators asks the question, “What if there were more predators?” And the most recent Shane Black movie, The Predator, asks the question, “what if there was a BIGGER predator?” Just like our friend, the Terminator series, this seems to just amount to more CG nonsense, and very little drama or suspense.

That’s why I plead with the series to go back to their roots.

Make Terminator and Predator Horror Again.

That’s where the heart of the series lies. Even Predator 2 and Terminator 2 have horror DNA in them, and at the very least, are just great movies regardless. We don’t want to see a bigger, badder bad guy. We want to see an unlikely protagonist take on an insurmountable foe, and guess what…

An alien bred for hunting  = insurmountable enough.

A man-hunting robot = insurmountable enough.

Let’s take a look at the first two Terminator and Predator movies.

Terminator
Protagonist: a waitress and a normal guy who traveled back in time. Neither of them can ask for help without sounding crazy.
Bad guy: Killer robot.

Terminator 2
Protagonist: a kid and his robot.
Bad guy: Killer robot who can imitate anyone.

Predator
Protagonist: Bad ass soldiers.
Bad guy: an alien who eats bad ass soldiers for breakfast.

Predator 2
Protagonist: A hardened detective.
Bad guy: an alien who eats hardened detectives for breakfast.

Now let’s jump ahead to the most current iterations of these franchises!

The Predator
Protagonist: bad ass soldiers
Bad guy: An extra large predator, plus other predators, plus demon dogs, but the other predators and demon dogs sort of work together with the bad ass soldiers.

Terminator: Dark fate (Haven’t seen it yet, so yes I am talking out of my ass)
Protagonist: a bad ass female Terminator, Sarah Connor, a little girl
Bad guy: a Terminator who turns into two Terminators.

Don’t you see the problem just by reading that? It’s just shit piled on top of shit. Why don’t these movies connect with fans and audiences? They actively disregard the soul of the series and instead chase the mumbo-jumbo. The soul is horror. The mumbo jumbo is the weapons, the action, and the lore.

Instead, give me this:

Predator: New Blood (working title. Might also be called Child Predator)
Protagonist: an 8-year-old.
Bad guy: A predator.
Sure, you’d have to figure out why the Predator is going after a kid, but after that, you’re off to the races. Make it a kid with no allies. No one to turn to. Make the kid have to figure out how to defeat the predator using his/her smarts. Make it a horror film.

Terminator: Orphan Maker (working title. Might also be called Terminator: Child Predator)
Protagonist: an 8-year-old
Bad guy: a killer robot.
OK, so, yeah this is the same idea as my Predator movie, but no one said I was original. Again, give the kid no allies. Give the adults an active reason not to help or believe the kid. Let the kid figure it out. MAKE IT A HORROR FILM!

It doesn’t have to be an 8-year-old kid, but you get the idea.

The Terminator/Predator hunting a baby.

Terminator/Predator hunting someone in the desert – make the environment just as unforgiving as the bad guy.

Trap the protagonist inside of an insane asylum or prison.

The point is that the Predator and Terminator are enough. They don’t need to get bigger, and we sure as hell don’t need to give the protagonist powerful allies. Our protagonists situation just needs to get worse.

My Favorite Type of “Breaking Into Hollywood” Story

Since breaking into Hollywood as a screenwriter can be a long journey, it’s not uncommon to see people post about their breaking-in story after they’ve finally got their shot. They usually have a quasi-inspirational tone to them, urging others not to give up or feel bad that they haven’t achieved success yet.

Unfortunately, most of them sound something like this:

“The movie I wrote comes out this week. People are calling me an overnight success, but let me tell you a little bit about my ‘overnight’ success, because my 15 year journey has been anything but.

15 years ago I moved to Los Angeles and got the only job I could. An office assistant at a real estate company.

14 years ago I finished writing my first script and got my agent.

12 years ago I quit my office assistant job because I was making a living off screenwriting, rewriting studio films and making a solid living.

10 years ago I was EPing my first TV show while a script I wrote got produced in Germany.

3 years ago I wrote a spec script with my good friend and we were lucky enough to get Chris Evans attached to the lead role.

1 year ago that movie was greenlit.

Next week it comes out in theaters. Don’t let anyone tell you that success happens overnight. It took me 15 years.”

Fuck off.

It’s like those old Hollywood writers whose stories are always like, “I moved to Hollywood in 1932. My first day there I went into a grocery store to buy a ham sandwich for a nickel, and a producer started talking to me and asked ‘do you want to write pictures?’ I said OK and the rest was history.”

 

I’m Disturbed – The Trailer for ‘The Art of Racing in the Rain’

‘The Art of Racing in the Rain’ would be a tremendous title for a movie about drifting, and I’m sure if you hadn’t seen the trailer/a movie poster/been familiar with the book, you’d think that it was.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Unfortunately, it is not a movie about drifting. If you’re looking for a movie about drifting, you’re stuck with Tokyo Drift or the live action Initial D movie. Slim pickings. The Art of Racing in the Rain is actually a movie about a dog.

If you, like many others, are a person who loves dog movies, then The Art of Racing in the Rain is for you. Or is it?

I don’t know anything about the book, and I haven’t seen the movie to judge, but I have seen the trailer, and I must say,  it is a work of art (of racing in the rain). A horrible and confusing work of art.

Watching the trailer is a baffling experience, and I highly suggest doing so before you read any further, or before you live another second of your life.

See what I mean?

What exactly is going on here? Aside from the simple fact that you don’t know what the hell you’re going to be walking into when you see this movie, there are some odd pieces of this trailer I just have to talk about.

The IMDB Synopsis reads:

A dog named Enzo recalls the life lessons he has learned from his race car driving owner, Denny.

Great. Exactly what I want to hear from a dog: lessons about racing. Have you seen a dog in a car? Because I’ve seen a dog shit and puke in a car. That’s kind of what they do. The Art of Racing Home in the Rain because your dog shit in the car and it stinks so bad you’re going to puke and you still have to clean up the mess.

Old Man Voice on the Baby Dog

Kevin Costner is admittedly doing some real work here with that narration. It’s somber, reverent, and full of pathos – you know, exactly how you want an adorable golden retriever to sound.

The first line and I’m already feeling the crushing weight of my mortality. Kind of a steep departure from Josh Gad (A Dog’s Purpose/Journey) and his lessons of love and companionship, you know, something we’d actually be excited to hear the insights of from dog. The timbre of Costner’s voice alone assures me that this dog is going to die, and that the owner will probably die as well. Great.

That’s not even what bothers me most. It’s the disturbingly poetic lines like:

“He picked me out of a pile of pups. A tangled mass of paws and tails.”

Jesus Christ.

Kevin Costner’s gravely voice saying “tangled mass of paws and tails” will disturb me forever. It belongs in a horror film.

INT. MURDER HOUSE – NIGHT

He picks the dog out of a pile of pups. A tangled mass of paws and tails.

Speaking of horror film, there’s this gem as Enzo (that’s the dog) gazes at pregnant Amanda Seyfriend:

“It must be amazing having a body that can carry an entire creature inside….

…I just hoped it would look like me.”

What the fuck is going on here? Does Enzo want to impregnate Amanda Seyfriend? Or is he alluding to having already fucked her, hoping that his dog sperm had won dominance over his owner’s human sperm?

Through the lips of Josh Gad, that line might sound like innocent naivete. But through Kevin Costner’s lips, it sounds like the exact moment the horror music should cue in and it’s revealed as a horror movie about a dog who is jealous of his owner’s life. I’ve never seen a movie more primed for a horror-edit parody.

Which sounds like a pretty awesome movie. How about this:

A dog named Enzo recalls the life lessons he has learned from his race car driving owner, Denny, as he attempts to steal his life away from him.

Now that’s a movie fit for Costner’s growl.

And of course there’s the line…

“Faster, Denny. Faster.”

I’m not going to be gentle with my words here. It sounds like Danny is giving Enzo the red rocket treatment.

While I might talk a lot of shit, this is one of the top five trailers I’ve seen this year, even if its own efficacy makes me doubt the movie it’s trying to promote.

I’ll still be there opening weekend out of morbid curiosity with a full flask at my hip and 32 gallons of Pib Xtra, but what else is new?

Superheroes & Safe words – Other Articles This Week

Here are some articles I wrote on other sites this week! Let me know what you think!

Opinion

How to Make a Great Superhero Movie

Humor

I Think Our Safe Word is Too Long

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Twitter @joecabell0

facebook.com/joecabellowriter

 

My Sling

About two weeks ago I got into an ATV accident and broke my shoulder (An ATV is a four wheeled, small vehicle people ride to guarantee hurting themselves). I’ve since had to wear a sling and it’s changed my life for the better.

Suddenly I’m very popular. Like how people who had Segways when they first came out were popular, even though that’s not the case anymore (Segway is a two wheeled vehicle people ride to guarantee ridicule). Everyone wants to talk to me and ask me whats’ going on. Even strangers. Especially strangers, actually.

The other day a really cool looking guy in a wife-beater and red pajama pants stumbled up to me on the street asking, “when did that happen?” as if we’d known each other forever, or at all. It almost made the constant pain worth it.

Talking about it can get pretty exhausting, but I’m getting pretty good at responding. I feel the way actors must when they go on a press junket. At first they’re really self-conscious and nervous about their answers, but then they get so sick of answering the same questions over and over so they start coming up with really confident, creative answers.

It’s not that I’m lying to anyone about what happened. I’ve just been trying out different inflections or attitudes. Like a really weathered, “been here before” tone, like a soldier shot for the hundredth time (in total, not in a row. For obvious reasons). That one is my favorite.

For some people I play up the sadness and horror, and for others I’ve even been known to try a really jovial way. Like how Santa might act if he broke his shoulder.

I’ve enjoyed it so much that I’ve even started to wear my more complex, sleeping sling out in public, even though I don’t even need it anymore. It’s five pieces and makes the injury look 10x worse. To be honest, I don’t even need to wear the normal sling anymore. I wear it more to ward off any hard pats on the shoulder, or to avoid getting beat up. I’m not 100% sure on the psychology of people who beat people up, but I assume that there’s some kind of code to leave people with slings alone. There’s no sport to it.

I think a lot of it has to do with the way I look. I mean, people walk around with slings and injuries all the time and don’t get the attention I get (I’m assuming). I even avoid people with injuries. They just don’t feel safe to be around.

Here’s my theory: People will treat a guy wearing a sling totally differently if he’s wearing a suit opposed to wearing a Monster Energy Drink shirt. Not that I wear a suit all the time, or at all, but my style leans more on the side of suit than it does Monster Energy Drink shirt. I never had the nerve to buy one. Seems like something you should get for free.

Being a clean-cut, well dressed man, people must assume I was attacked, or a victim of some unfortunate accident. As if it somehow wasn’t my fault that I ran an ATV into a tree. I guess the lesson is, if you comb your hair to the side like a British boy, and wear button-up shirts (not button-down shirts. That’s a different thing), you’re admonished of all guilt when it comes to personal injury.

Once I’m fully healed, I can see myself continuing to wear the sling every once and a while. Maybe one day I’ll even get so good at wearing my sling that I’ll make up a more interesting story on how it happened, or wear a Monster energy drink shirt. It couldn’t hurt. Not anymore than running an ATV into a tree.