#ouatih pussycat

[crookedvultures]

"Looks like third time's the charm!"

[vintagepresley]

I use to read all the time as a kid and teenager, but as I’ve gotten older I kinda stopped because my brain just couldn’t focus enough. But thanks to Elvis I’ve literally been reading non-stop since the movie came out. (Of course all Elvis books, lol). But I branched out and read other things I had been wanting to read but never did because I knew I wouldn’t before (bc y’know can’t focus).

Anyway, I finally started reading the OUATIH book (one of my fave fucking movies). But bro.. Cliff has me dying. I’m at the part where he and Pussycat are in Rick’s car and he’s like looking at her fingers and admiring how long they are. But it’s what he thinks that had me in a chokehold.

“They’d feel pretty good wrapped around my cock and squeezing, with that big giant thumb of hers mashing up the head.”

When I tell you I wanted to scream but I was at work so I couldn’t. I don’t know why it reminded me of Big Daddy Elvis. LMAOOO.

Side note: I knew I liked Cliff for a reason tho. This man loves all sizes of women it seems, lol.

[zenosanalytic]

People What Aint From Round Here Is The Problem...

So I just watched Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood and I have THOUGHTS:

Ive read a few reviews&ruminations on this film at this point and I can’t believe that none of them got(or at least, mentioned explicitly) the primary thesis of this movie, spcl given that Tarentino flatly states it out the mouth of his primary protagonist within, like, the first 15-20mins of the film: “...most important thing in this town is when you’re making money you buy a house in town. You don’t rent... Hollywood real estate means you live here. You’re not just visiting, not just passing through. You fuckin live here.” i.e., the most important thing in Hollywood, to Hollywood, is the people FROM Hollywood; Everyone else is just a filthy, trouble-making tourist or profiteer who is “Passing Through” and “Doesnt Get It” and  “Is Fucking It Up”(It being the film industry), and probably “Secretly Hates Movies”. There are places and aspects of this movie that are basically a Nativist Angeleno rant, written by a life-long Angeleno film-nerd-turned-film-maker, against Hollywood’s critics(and his critics which he just totally conflates with the former), and probably non-Angelenos(and non-Californians?) in general.

There are two ways to read this thesis: Straight and Subverted/Satirized.

The evidence for reading it straight is pretty plentiful. Lots of reviews have puzzled at where the line connecting the constant hippie-bashing, the weird focus on knocking Polanski’s Polishness & preference for shooting in London, and the inexplicable pot-shot at Bruce Lee is, and I think this is it. “The Hippies” are repeatedly presented as a corrupting force: digging through trash, living in squalourous filth at the Spahn Ranch dragging members of “Old Hollywood” like its owner into it with them, selling drugs, and using sex to “control” men. And attached to this is presenting “The Hippies” as foreign; not only from another place, but refusing to assimilate with the LA way of life and hostile to it. The Manson family are the only explicitly identified “Hippies” in the film(other than, possibly, the one who sells Cliff an acid cig). The only “positive” portrayals of Bruce Lee in the film are silent ones of him teaching anglos kung fu, which has some fairly obvs and well-understood Implications.

But there’s also good evidence for reading it as subverted and satirized. Both Tate and Dalton are NOT from California, let alone LA, and Booth’s origins are left unclear. Dalton’s the only one of them explicitly id’d as being from elsewhere(Missouri), but Tate’s easy to google and she was a military kid who grew up all over the place. When Dalton returns from Italy, that sequence and his look in it are VERY reminiscent of the scenes introducing Polanski at the beginning of the film. The side-characters around Tate, perennially shown in a positive light, are also non-Angelenos. Doing Spaghetti Westerns revitalizes Dalton’s career, despite his disdain for Italian cinema. Tate and her crew, while not explicitly ID’d as “Hippies” and often shown in Mod and other fashion styles, are also presented in “Hippie” fashion, shown listening to “Hippie” music, smoking the “Hippie” Reefer(Im sorry, but Comedy Demanded this phrasing and I am Devout u_u), and implied to be living a polyamorous “Hippie” life.

It really is difficult for me to say which predominates. On the one entirely metaphorical hand, the ways in which Dalton’s Angeleno chauvinism are subverted and mocked are fairly obvs, but on the other emh, the film is FILLED with LITERALLY GLOWING nostalgia for this pre-Hippy, pre-Lefty, pre-70s, Conservative and Republican California&Los Angeles. Dalton’s focus on property-ownership&the film industry in the opening thesis could easily be seen as resolving these subversive contradictions to allow for a straight read(ie: Tate, Booth, and Dalton are “Hollywood People” who’ve both bought real-estate in LA, and who’ve grown up in film or film-adjacent fields and choose to center their adult lives in the film industry). So much, in fact, that I kinda started to wonder abt QT’s politics while watching it. And, if it WAS satirical, then what’s the point of the knock to Bruce Lee and focusing criticisms of Polanski on his Polishness and shooting in London? Is that just meant to characterize Dalton and Booth as nativists and racists?

It really cannot be said enough that there are REALLY MORE APPROPRIATE CRITICISMS to make of Polanski than 1)begin Polish, 2)possessing boyish effeminacy, and 3)preferring to shoot movies in London instead of LA. Which are this movie’s only problems with him(though it also takes the time to show him bitchily smoking a cigarette in an evening gown while being rude to a dog). Obvsl I dont object to villainizing an ACTUAL REAL LIFE VILLAIN like this shitstain, but I DO object to being asked(albeit gently) to participate in this film’s understated nationalist bigotry.

It’s possible that Cliff’s turning Pussycat down during the drive to the ranch was intended to be this but I highly doubt it. And if it was it’d be misrepresenting Polanski’s misdeeds enormously, considering that Pussycat, the too-young girl, is the sexual instigator in this film. Polanski liked to manipulate, drug, and rape underaged girls(he pulled the same shit with models in Europe before getting busted for it in LA, btw, then continued doing it after fleeing back to Europe); really not the same situation.

There’s another irony in that, while the film goes out of its way to call Polanski “boyish” and imply that makes him feminine and that this is Bad, there’s also a subtle under-current that... Tarentino sees himself in his youth the same way? He’s certainly never been short like Polanski and Jay Sebring are/were, QT’s 6 1, but the actors he cast to play them and the description made of the pair in-film are more than a bit reminiscent of how Tarentino looked&was discussed in the press back in the 90s when he was starting out. AAAaaand the film explicitly calls that Tate’s “Type”; leaving me with the question: would Tarentino be able to stop himself from implying a dead starlet would have been attracted to him? I leave the answer to your imaginations, Dear Readers u_u

Having said all that it IS a really good film, which I liked, I dont think it’d be very hard to set aside this political stuff while watching, the driving sequences are especially emotive&exhilarating, and there’s some seriously great acting in it. IDK if I’d say I liked it more than the recent Emma movie, tho.

I feel like each of the trio, Tate, Dalton, and Booth, were meant to symbolically Embody LA/Hollywood/California? Like Pitt especially seemed to be channeling movie characters and CJ from GTA: San Andreas throughout his performance, while I couldnt help but think of Ronald Reagan watching DiCaprio(spcl given the character’s likely politics). So there’s this sense in which the film is a fantasy of “Old Hollywood”, embodied by these three, Vanquishing its “Enemies”, represented by The Hippies(moralizing, pretentious, gross leftist) and potentially Polanski&Lee(foreign film ppl who refuse to integrate into the LA scene). Again, given the political history of Cali after this era, this embodiment raises some questions for me abt the film and QT’s politics(particularly in re: misogyny and feminism).

Also DiCaprio is totally going to get pitched a Reagan biopic off of this role and I sincerely hope he has the good sense to turn that shit the fuck down.

Circling back to the ranting at his critics, this movie was definitely and consciously a response to them. Like: up until the last 5-15 minutes of the film, and aside from a handful of too-lingering too fetishistic too on-the-nose creep shots of the female cast that Tarentino simply could not stop himself from making, OUATiH is precisely the sort of “Serious” film Tarentino’s critics have been saying he should make for decades now(of course he did Jackie Brown, which was that and which he blew Completely out of the park). And then there’s that bloody, gross-out, exploitation-movie ending. I dont actually think it was as bad as many critics were saying it was? For some reason I was thinking there was gonna be a massacre of the ENTIRE Manson family, which would have been totally out of left-field. But it WAS clearly a stinger of a major tone-shift thrown in as a Fuck You to the ppl who’ve called out his violent and exploitative preferences throughout the years. As for me I generally like his movies and think he’s a great filmmaker but he absolutely does go too far sometimes.

Rick Dalton, in an evening-gown, with a mixer full of iced-margarita in one hand, getting all up in the face of the driver of a loud exhaust-spewing jalope in his PRIVATE STREET was TOTALLY Tarentino himself :| By which I mean NOT ONLY that That’s ABSOLUTELY the sort of cameo he would have given himself 30 years ago and if it made any sort of sense at all in the film(which here it wouldnt have, obvsl), BUT ALSO that I feel 94% confident that Tarentino has actually done that at least once in his lifetime :| :|

I think the monologue&interactions T gives Bruce Lee leading up to the fight were probably more insulting to him than the fight itself. Contrary to popular discussion, it isn’t Pitt’s character totally trashing Lee, he gets in one good throw after Lee repeats a successful attack at his request(which I doubt Lee would have ever done from what little I know about him; not being predictable in a fight was his whole Deal), but rather an even duel between them(most of the fight is just the two blocking each others’ attacks). I dont think the film was trying to say “Lee was full of hot-air”, if it wanted to say that it’d have shown him getting trounced instead of showing him knock Booth down then trade him blow for blow, but more “Lee was pretty arrogant and a bit pretentious”.

OK, that’s abt all that I can think of right now: thanks for reading ^v^

[flippyspoon]

I'm living for the OUATIH Cliff/Rick headcanons right now. I've been thinking of how they linked up and started working together originally. I'd love to know your take on it

OOH. I’ve only seen it once and I can’t quite remember how much backstory they gave us for that- but I’m assuming they met on Bounty Law, right? Unless they said Rick brought Cliff in on Bounty Law and I missed it. 

I’d imagine them getting along well but not super close -chatting over cigarettes between scenes etc. And then Rick hits his DUI limit lol. And one day Cliff sees him getting in a cab. The next day he’s like, “You take a cab all the way to Beverly Hills twice a day? I could drive you cheaper than that.”

But Rick pays him well enough that he’s not saving any money.

Also like Rick has no idea how Cliff REALLY drives- he drives normally with Rick in the car and with Pussycat but by himself he’s a BAT OUT OF HELL. What if Rick has no idea lol. 

Anyway let’s talk about more about Rick insisting Cliff move in for a while “Just til you get back on your feet again, buddy, seeing as how you and Brandy saved our bacon and all.” 

Rick playing nursemaid bringing Cliff TV dinners and sitting with him ranting about whatever is in Variety that day. 

Since Cliff lets Brandy on the furniture, I’m assuming she’s eternally at the foot of Cliff’s bed.

[lifejustgotawkward]

365 Day Movie Challenge (2019) - #153: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) - dir. Quentin Tarantino

(Warning: a little spoiler-ish toward the end.)

I try my best to be an objective viewer of cinema, but in all honesty I anticipated the possibility that I might hate Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood with a burning passion. With the exception of Four Rooms and Grindhouse, I’ve seen every feature film directed by Quentin Tarantino, so I am well acquainted with his strengths and weaknesses; based on the Cannes reviews that I skimmed in springtime, I was uncertain as to whether Tarantino’s latest flick would be a Pulp Fiction triumph or a Hateful Eight disaster, but critical reaction seemed to lean more toward the latter. Imagine my surprise, then, when a friend and I sat in a nearly full screening at BAM last month - an unusually late one for me, 8:30 PM until at least 11:15 - and I found that I liked Hollywood more than not (more detail on the “not” in a moment).

Tarantino uses his new film to dig into the mythology surrounding Charles Manson, his “Family” of followers and the crimes they committed on August 8, 1969, murdering actress Sharon Tate, hairstylist Jay Sebring, coffee fortune heiress Abigail Folger and writer Wojciech Frykowski. Although Tate is a key part of Tarantino’s story, portrayed sweetly by Margot Robbie, the bulk of the narrative belongs to two fictional characters, washed-up actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his longtime stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). As Rick pogoes between jobs as villains of the week on network TV and villains in Spaghetti Westerns shot in Italy, Cliff divides his time between chauffeuring Rick around town and doing odd jobs for his boss/best friend. In between tasks, Cliff often spots an attractive young woman called Pussycat (Margaret Qualley) on LA’s wide boulevards, stretching her thumb out for rides to a place called the Spahn Movie Ranch. Unbeknownst to Cliff until he picks Pussycat up for a drive, the ranch has been overtaken by the Manson Family and George Spahn (Bruce Dern) is mistreated by the lot of them, most of all by “Squeaky” Fromme (Dakota Fanning in an exceptionally creepy performance). Cliff doesn’t know it yet, but he and Rick are on a collision course fated to intersect with the plans that the gang has for Rick’s next door neighbor, Sharon Tate.

Perhaps it sounds as though Cliff Booth is the most important of the three protagonists, but for sheer entertainment value, Rick Dalton has no peers. He may be a hack in the universe of OUATIH, yet in the real world the role is one of the finest of Leonardo DiCaprio’s three-decade-long career. Tarantino knows how to get performances out of Leo that provoke him to grow as an actor; his work in this film and Django Unchained are much more impressive to me than the nonsense that went on in one of Martin Scorsese’s worst messes, The Wolf of Wall Street. The loudly comedic sides of Rick’s day-to-day routines are enjoyable, but the scene that snuck up on me in OUATIH is the one in which precocious child actress Trudi (Julia Butters) tells Rick how much she respects the choices he made in a scene they had just shot for a TV Western, resulting in tears rolling down Rick’s face after Trudi walks away. It’s one of the best things I’ve seen at the movies this year.

I can’t fault Tarantino for his reliance on star power. Everywhere you look in OUATIH, there’s a recognizable face: besides the aforementioned actors, the cast also includes Emile Hirsch (who I will never forgive for choking and nearly strangling a female film executive in 2015), Timothy Olyphant, Austin Butler (he’s excellent as the disturbed Tex Watson), Mike Moh, Luke Perry (RIP), Damian Lewis, Al Pacino (hamming it up so much as a Jewish agent that it’s basically a stereotype), Samantha Robinson, Lena Dunham, Mikey Madison (I kept asking myself “who is that????” until I checked the cast afterward and realized she’s one of the daughters on “Better Things”), Maya Hawke, a very pregnant Danielle Harris, Scoot McNairy, Clifton Collins Jr., Clu Gulager, Rebecca Gayheart, Kurt Russell, Zoë Bell, Michael Madsen and Brenda Vaccaro, just to name a few. There are plenty of reasons to be interested in such a huge assemblage of talent.

I’ll also admit that there were three scenes that I considered genuinely moving. The incorporation of José Feliciano‘s cover of “California Dreamin’“ and a strings-heavy version of the Rolling Stones song “Out of Time” were highlights of the movie, while the moment when the film’s title slowly appeared onscreen in the final scene actually caused me to cry. It is apparent that Tarantino wanted to construct a tribute to Sharon Tate and her friends, the victims of a hateful group of monsters. I struggle, though, with piecing together the points Tarantino was trying to make besides the obvious one that those innocent people should not have died. What do we gain from the barely-there presence of Tate’s husband, Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), in the narrative? Is his jerky air supposed to indicate the behavior that would lead to the sexual assault he committed in 1977? And what about the heinous amounts of violence that are perpetrated against women in the third act? Is Tarantino’s vision of retribution one in which it’s OK to hurt “bad” women because he sees it as justified? Is Brad Pitt seriously going to earn a Best Supporting Actor nomination for bludgeoning a female member of the Manson Family - a woman whose beliefs may have stemmed from being brainwashed by the cult leader and his disciples - to a bloody pulp?

Despite the glaring flaws that support my misgivings, I still say that Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood is one of the better-crafted films that Tarantino has made in recent years. It has problems for sure, but at least Tarantino’s thesis statement wasn’t “hey, isn’t being nostalgic for the way things used to be in 1960s Hollywood (and, to a larger degree, America) so great?” The film shows the sunny optimism of Sharon Tate, starlet and mother-to-be, but it also depicts the ugliness and sadness of the Dream Factory, where hopes fade and end up in reruns on Saturday night. Of course Tarantino wanted to rewrite the script... who wouldn’t?