Brand New and a Must-See

Once Upon a Time Is a Socko Hollywood Fairy Tale

A film by a kindred spirit, made seemingly just for me. I never saw 161 minutes go by so fast. First show, opening day, had sixteen of us at a theatre less than seven years open. Odd thing, I hadn’t gone in most of those, the last occasion for a movie about a heroic dog … forgot the title, and there are too many heroic dogs lately to look it up. $13.50 bought admission, a medium popcorn, and a lemon-flavor drink, to which I appended a Baby Ruth from the Run-In. Never figured on such joy from a new film. Only down spout was a projected image too dim and minus proper contrast. An exhibitor friend tells me this is widespread among theatres gone to digital. Actually cheaper, he says, to replace the entire system than elements needed to restore light. Audiences are compliant because most don’t realize how much better the show should look. Much of production effort therefore goes to naught. This appears to be a nationwide quandary, not just local blight. Consequence is a faded, washed out look to everything. Folks, it seems, are adjusted to a slow fade. The "imaging screen" (chipset) within most projection units is only warranted for five or so years. Digital changeover having been achieved six-seven years ago in most theatres means they’ve passed the factory-backed life span, and it simply costs too much to replace them. Theatres continue with compromised imagery until it gets bad enough to force an upgrade. In the meantime, movies lose color saturation and vibrancy, the chipset bleaching out and blacks turning to gray. Fast rule since nickelodeons: management will not do a lick more than what’s essential to get by. No squawks, no sweat. Where money’s a factor, we suck up what venues can afford. Happier view will come when Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood takes Blu-Ray aim at home screens, or Netflix gets it.

Tarantino invents a saga of fifty years ago. Ones of us old enough know historic names, but who else will? What is nostalgia for the writer-director may be dry dust for his audience. Again, Once Upon a Time plays like a personal gift to like minds, but what if someone had made a big-budget film in 1973, when I was nineteen, about convulsive era that was 1922 when William Desmond Taylor was offed and Arbuckle stood trial for manslaughter? A neat concept maybe, but would my parents have even found it relevant? I’m amazed at how much past we cling to. Rex Reed, fossil critic who at least knew the period first-hand, panned Once Upon a Time, for reasons I forget. Maybe he’s less sentimental for 1969 and knowing what a dingy year it essentially was. Tarantino does not shrink from grime, which to him came on wings of a counterculture that swept out what was left of the “good” Hollywood. No contradicting that, for at age fifteen and before, I mourned a seeming finish of movies to really care about. Break-up for me was 1968, during Fall of which I began reviewing films for a local sheet, and so saw virtually everything for remain of that year and through 1969. If H’wood had a worse annus horribilis, I’d challenge anyone to name it.

So like Rex, I know no wistful recall of late 60's movie-go. A best had by then evaporated: Connery as James Bond gone and an interloper in his place (reactionary me boycotted OHMSS), American-International sunk to bikers and drug culture (The Killers Three, Mary Jane, others). Lee Marvin stopped making good films after being my big-screen hero through 1967, and Hammer had increasingly tired blood. To review movies in 1968-69 was punishment even a $1.60 per column could not salve (sixty cents to get in the Liberty, a dollar to play critic). Check this list and decide how enviable my position was: The Stranger’s Return (“an assembly line of mangled corpses,” I said at the time), Skidoo (“Jackie Gleason wasted in a role no comedian could enliven”), Yellow Submarine (“I was unable to hear (The Beatles’) voices above those of a gang of sixth graders who insisted on joining in the chorus” --- a remark that got me in Dutch with Liberty management). Of The Wrecking Crew, a focal point of Once Upon a Time, I cited sets “where the viewer can actually see the overhead microphones,” but failed to mention Sharon Tate (still a starlet, not yet a most notable of filmland murder victims). My only rave for the whole of 1969 was The Wild Bunch.

Nick Adams Arrives in Japan to Star in Frankenstein Conquers The World

Once Upon a Time has Leonardo Di Caprio as a TV western star facing bleak 60’s prospect. Names have been suggested as to who inspired “Rick Dalton,” but the one I’d propose is Nick Adams, who had The Rebel (1959-61), then guesting on other series, a 1963 spike with Twilight Of Honor, which gave him an Academy Award nomination, and from there more guesting, and a brace of horror/sci-fi (his last a Mexican-made western) before premature passing at age 36 (on 2-7-68). I read somewhere that Nick used his acting fees to put a brother through medical school. He gave an interview to Modern Monsters magazine for their June 1966, Issue #2. I felt at the time he was a good guy for helping out a fledgling publication aimed at kids. Nick was adamant that Die, Monster, Die (“I wanted to do it. I liked the script when it was offered to me, and the part was a good one”), and Frankenstein Conquers the World, were not steps down (“People like horror films. I like ‘em. I’m not ashamed to admit it”). A heartfelt wrap to the interview saw MM thanking Adams for his willingness to work in such a frowned-upon genre. That moved me at twelve, still does. Once Upon a Time’s Rick Dalton has apprehension over Italo-westerns he's asked to headline, as I am sure many fading names did. We could, of course, name two dozen with a hit vid show in their past who were faced by a same stall by 1969.

The era had a doomed quality. Not just because of Manson, but so many of other casualties. I noted names evoked, some portrayed (Bruce Lee, Steve McQueen), and thought …they are all gone. Ones who turn up in Once Upon a Time that survive: Michelle Phillips, Connie Stevens --- are there more? Seeing Kurt Russell makes me marvel at his being here and still up for vigorous work. I gather he came of a stable background and kept clear of bad influence, but look at all those who did not. Yet somehow, Once Upon a Time stays upbeat, friendly, cheerful in fact to watch (constant radio-or-TV in the background evokes American Graffiti ). And yet there is undercurrent of dread, especially for a third act which we know will pay off on earlier Manson glimpses and a Psycho-scary bit where Brad Pitt visits the viper’s nest (an otherwise deserted western ranch where Charlie’s “family” dwells). Tarantino, bless him, spares us the final terror. The finish echos not only a previous Tarantino film, but a favor Howard Hawks did us with Red River. Everything pointed to John Wayne dying at the end, but Hawks simply said no, because who wants to see that? Tarantino has a same instinct for what audiences prefer. He is, by all accounts, an ongoing student of Hawks, and clearly learned from the master.

Hippies in Once Upon a Time are a vile lot. One of them has rotten teeth and slits Brad Pitt’s tire with a switchblade, for which Pitt bashes his face in. Now there is a level of crowd-pleasing we seldom get at movies today. I’ve not seen the counterculture take licks like this since Eastwood tortured Andy Robinson on the football field in Dirty Harry. I should have seen Tarantino’s spun-round third act coming. Let’s just say that Pitt and Leo take out the trash to popcorn sailing delight of viewers who wish real-life could be as satisfying. Again I fear for passage of that half-century. Does anyone born after earliest 60’s know of the Manson case, or Sharon Tate, let alone details of the slaughter? I avoided reading about it after a first '69 newspaper’s shock, and did not care to see Helter Skelter or those dreadful books (I frankly shrink from people who like to read about serial killers). Had Tarantino staged the actual event, I would have walked out. Again, this writer-director knows his business. I hear Once Upon a Time in Hollywood cracked $100 million this past weekend. I’d like it to do ten times that in a long run. All involved deserve the moon for such a crackerjack show.