Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, A Review.

Andy, Carole, and I went to see ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD last week. We tried to go see it the week before, but when we got to the theater we discovered that the e-ticket website had given me tickets for a different theater instead of the one two miles from our house. So we got a refund and planned to go seven days later.

As chance would have it, we saw the movie on the 50th anniversary of the night the Manson Family murdered Sharon Tate, Abigail, Folger, Jay Sebring, Steven Parent, and Wojciech Frykowski. This fact of synchronicity made Carole feel a bit weird.

As usual, I went to the movie not expecting much. I rarely see a movie I enjoy, and even rarely walk away from the theater feeling impressed by a film. Over the years I've found that Quentin Tarantino movies sometimes please me, and at other times I find his efforts to have wasted my time. So, I really didn't have much in the way of expectations.

I was amazed when, by the time the end credits rolled, that I had already decided that this movie rates as a classic film for me. I'll stand it alongside the best of the best in my memory of great movies.

Yeah, it was that good.

There are all kind of neat little touches that Tarantino added to the movie to make it a little more enjoyable and interesting than it might otherwise have been, but that's not why I enjoyed it so much. It wasn't seeing Damian Lewis and Mike Moh doing supernaturally good renditions of Steve McQueen and Bruce Lee respectively. (They were both so heatbreakingly good as the two actors that it was almost like seeing them back from the dead.) And it had nothing to do with Kurt Russell and Zoe Bell probably recreating the two characters they played in the execrable DEATHPROOF. Or the generally phenomenal job that both Brad Pitt and Lenoard DiCaprio deliver throughout the two hour and 42 minute neo-classic.

What it was for me was the recreation of a time and place that seemed utterly real, even if the movie was a kind of fantastic alternate history featuring these fictions and true personalities capering about in the compact and separate civilization that we call Hollywood.

And, for me, it was a film about tribalism, nationalism; and loyalty to that tribe.

Some people are parts of tribes. If you're a die-hard Irishman, maybe a Sicilian, you might get what I mean. If you're a Jew you probably know what I'm talking about. If you hail from Japan you likely will understand exactly what I am trying to get across. For Tarantino his tribe are the creative and business folk who were drawn to, and live and work in Hollywood. I get the distinct impression that he loves that place as much as anyone, and adores the folk who live there, toiling away in that industry, be they true artists or loathsome hacks.

This was a kind of love story tribute to Tarantino's adopted nation of Hollywood, and for his tribe who inhabit it as true citizens. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was, superficially, the kind of movie where QT steals from the best, re-crafting sly situations, borrowing cool titles, altering clever dialog, and molding it all into new emotions and fantastic images that are wholly original. With this movie he may very well have pressed all of that crude stuff into a perfect gem like a Mort Weisinger Superman squishing a lump of coal into a diamond.

The film glittered.

If you've managed to miss the promotions, the movie revolves around a weird kind of love story between two inseparable pals: Cliff Booth, a very skilled Hollywood stunt man who apparently works exclusively for his best friend Rick Dalton played to a kind of loony perfection by Leonardo DiCaprio. You never get the distinct impression that the two are gay, or that they have somehow sexually consummated their relationship. But you also wouldn't be surprised if they were and had. Instead you get a kind of vibe of total loyalty of each for the other. Booth seems to actually believe in the greatness of his buddy, and Dalton really does go to bat for his friend and servant.

Of the pair, Booth seems the less real. He's almost like a superhero. He is that kind of a creation. There doesn't seem to be much he can't do (including beat Bruce Lee in a fight), and he has the kind of self-confidence that one would imagine coming from a fellow with superpowers.

Rick Dalton, on the other hand, is a man who really doesn't believe in himself. Beset with tremendous doubts about his talent, he stays drunk much of the time, suffers from all sorts of psychosomatic ailments, and generally exists in a constant mope thinking that his days as an actor are almost over since his late 50s/early 60s popular western TV show was canceled. There is one scene in which it is revealed that he lost the part in THE GREAT ESCAPE that went to Steve McQueen that is nothing short of reeking grief in a purely brilliant bit of film making by Tarantino.

Everyone who has investigated the film even cursorily knows that the movie deals with the intersection of these characters' lives with those of some of the Manson Family. You are left wondering how that will play out and exactly what will happen as the two sets of humans are twined inexorably together leading to the last act in the movie. I have to say...the situation and my agonizing over what would happen created a lot of tension in my own noggin.

It is a supremely effective film.

To cap, the end of the movie is nothing short of exhilaration. There is action, and there is pure hilarious violence that I can only describe as glorious release. You'd have to see it to believe it, and to be amazed how Tarantino ties up so many tiny threads into a whole, logical, realistic bit of rope.

I was impressed while it was going down; and I was impressed as I walked out of the theater; and a week later I remain impressed.

It's a freaking great movie. Not decent. Not good. Great.

I'm placing it up there on the top shelf in my memories with the best of the best.

DiCaprio as the self-doubting Rick Dalton, and Brad Pitt as the super-confident Cliff Booth.

Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate. In some ways, the film serves as a kind of temple to the memory of Sharon Tate. And the flawless Robbie manages to make me believe that Sharon Tate was as perfect and joyful as a woman can be.

Moundsville, Part III, Prison Part B

The next part of the tour took us around the prison and into the more recent of the various wings. And by "recent", we're still talking about a pretty decrepit, old, and ratty section of the prison. One thing about this place is that it was COLD! The day was sunny and warm, but that damned place was frigid! The tour guide had warned us to bring coats, so we had. It was a good thing, too. She did tell us that in the summer it was every bit as hot in there as it was cold during the winter months. In summer the temperatures in that building would hover as high as 108 degrees. In winter as cold inside as it was outside. I cannot imagine being incarcerated in that shit hole.


This was one of the first actual cells we saw. I was stunned at how small they were. About seven feet by four feet.

This was a part of the prison for especially violent prisoners. There was an even more exclusive section of four cells where they always kept the four most dangerous men in the prison. That section is where the top two (Avengers Motorcycle Club members) were murdered by Aryan Brotherhood members (one of the Avengers was stabbed thirty-seven times).

Our guide telling us gruesome stories of the violence that ran like a current through that place. It's at times like this that I wonder why I think my supernatural horror stories can hold a candle to the horrors that men perpetrate on one another.

Another cafeteria. There were several in the prison.

If you'll look at the link for the Jimmy Stewart movie that I posted yesterday you will see a scene with this contraption in it. This was a cage that moved people from three different sections of the prison into the main holding tank. This was a really well engineered contraption that, despite its weight, was easily swiveled with no effort by our guide. I got into it and experienced the brief ride. There were only two like this on Earth--this one and one in the UK.

A totally abandoned part o the prison. Not even on the tour. I saw it while I was on the turnaround and took a quick shot.

Yet another part of this nightmare of a building. If there are ghosts, whatever walks here walks in droves.

This is definitely one place I would NOT want to be at night with the lights out.

Yep. The prison had its own post office. This was the main window.

Out in the grimy yard. One place that's not on the tour are the guard towers. These are, of course, the places I'd most like to see.

At one time this bathroom in the prison yard was private. But a prisoner had his face sliced off in there for being a smartass. They put his face back on and moved him to another prison where he was promptly carved up again. (Apparently he had a knack for cutting remarks.) After his face was sliced off they took the walls down on the toilets so no one could do that again. At least not in private.

This was the part where they locked us in the cell. I did not like this, at all. The cells were very, very small and I'd have certainly gone mad if cooped up in there for hours.

Our guide on the second floor closing off the cells by remote control.

Then it was into the small prison museum. There were two interesting things in the small museum. One was "Old Sparky", the electric chair. It was used to kill nine inmates. The thing was built by a prison inmate who had been a skilled carpenter before being incarcerated. After he built it they had to send him to another prison because the other prisoners had placed a death warrant on his head for building it for the warden.

And this was the other interesting artifact in the museum: A hand-written letter from Charles Manson to the warden of the prison. Manson was from the area (his mom had been an inmate in that very prison--as had a number of his other close relatives), and he wanted to be transferred from California to the West Virginia Pen. The warden told him "when Hell freezes over". I don't know why Manson would have wanted to be there, though. The place was a travesty. Hot, cold, filthy, ultra-violent, crawling with rats and roaches, old, leaky...I just don't get it.

After that, we were driving back toward North Bend, taking time to stop and look at the Ohio River from the Ohio side. All in all, it was a really good day of looking at some amazing American history.