The Bill Simmons Podcast - Tarantino’s Genius, Brad Pitt’s Finest Hour, and Other ‘Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood’ Reactions With Wesley Morris | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: August 12, 2019

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Wesley Morris of The New York Times to discuss Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood,’ including Brad Pitt’s star power, Leo and Pitt as a duo, Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate, the ending, Tarantino’s re-creation of late '60s Hollywood, his legacy as a filmmaker, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That includes the Ringer NFL show where we are breaking down fantasy. How many parts is that, Craig? Eight? Eight. I listened to two of them this week. Heifetz is on tilt. It's really, it's a good podcast that I enjoyed hearing them break dudes down and the Todd Gurley discussion and stuff like that.

So check that out if you want to know a little bit more about fantasy football. It's a good podcast. Coming up, we're going to talk to my old Grantland teammate, Wesley Morris about Quentin Tarantino and once upon a time in Hollywood first, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, on the line right now, one of my favorite people that I've ever worked with. He's a Pulitzer Prize winner. He is a critic at large for the New York Times. Is that your title?

Critic at large? That's my title. Great. Wesley Morris. Actually, can I just say I like Critic better. Critic at large, nobody understands what that is. I don't even know. It just sounds like you're prowling the streets at large

trying to criticize things. You have not talked about the Tarantino movie, I don't think. You definitely haven't written about it, which is obviously a bummer for people like me who love to read your stuff, but we're going to break this down now. This movie has been out for about two and a half weeks. It is past the $100 million mark, which is really cool.

Is it? Well, just that we have movies that don't have superhero costumes. No, no, no. It's remarkable. I didn't know it. It crossed the line. I didn't look at Box Office Mojo this morning. I did.

Well, obviously, I'm very prepared when I do podcasts. Yeah, it actually crossed it today. Kind of a startling reaction to this film and almost feels generational. I have it. I think it was the third best Tarantino film.

I need to see it a few more times, but it has a chance to get to number two for me. Pulp Fiction is one for eternity. I just thought that was one of the most creative, interesting movies I've ever seen in my life. And I'll never forget seeing it in the movie theater. But this one, there's so much going on. I was pretty blown away by it.

I was surprised that there were a lot of people out there that were not. And we're focusing on, in my opinion, some pretty petty stuff. What was your reaction to the movie? Okay. I know I'm not supposed to answer a question with a question, but can you just do us all a favor, Bill, and just, can you set the table for us for like what your experience was? Because you did take a couple of weeks to see it. I did. Well, I was away one of the weeks. I was in Hawaii and I wanted to see it and it wasn't playing within like an hour and a half of us. So I had to wait.

Then I came back, we were swamped with stuff and finally went on a Friday night at the Arclight, which is really, you know, seeing this movie in LA was pretty special, seeing it in Hollywood. My take, because I avoided reading everything. I knew there was some backlash stuff and I knew there was some people getting pissy about Tarantino and all this stuff that usually happens when you release a movie. But I really tried to

avoid everything. And leaving the theater, my first reaction over everything else, and I don't know how there's not another reaction than this reaction as your first reaction is, oh my God, Brad Pitt. That was one of the great movie star performances I've seen in the last 35 years where it's like, you and I have talked about the concept of stardom over and over again this decade and how there's just a certain very small group of people that can transcend a movie screen and come off it and just feel like stars. And he has done this a couple times in his career. But I don't think as powerfully as he did it in this movie. And that was my first reaction leaving where I was like, wow, I didn't think Brad Pitt still had that performance in him, the charisma, the, the, how handsome he is, how he carries himself, how he makes a character that's supposed to be unlikable,

just exceedingly likable. And I was blown away. What do you, so what do you think of that as a first reaction? Uh, I have more questions. So what happened before we get into like the, the, the quote problems, unquote, and actual like maybe problems. What happened in the night you saw it when he climbs, when he like parkours up to the roof of Leonardo DiCaprio's house to fix the TV antenna. Yeah. And does, takes off the shirt. What happened?

A lot of jostling in the seats from, I think, a lot of the people in the theater, including my wife, who I think almost knocked her popcorn over. Now, because I find that moment, I mean, there's a lot, I think there's a lot of things in this movie, and this is why I would urge, well,

I don't know, it is a movie that really does reward multiple viewings because Tarantino is the sort of director who can do that. But the first time I saw that movie, I saw it with my friend Brian, who I probably will reference a couple times during this conversation because he's a valuable movie-going partner. But he takes off his shirt and everybody gasped. There's like a, there is like a murmuring in the audience. This is a person who we've seen, we've seen him shirtless many times before,

but for some reason there was something about like, I think it was the, the, he still has it was sort of embodied just in his, like his chest and his abs and his forearm. Um, and those shots of him driving that, that was it a Thunderbird, the son of Thunderbird is whatever, whatever DiCaprio's car is and whatever his cars are is, um, just the shots of him commanding the steering wheel and i don't he just his forearms look great they kind of go out of his way out of their way to to make brad pitt he's a war hero

we're told yeah we can see that he's got scars and from his from his stuntman work as well so i mean who knows if if his banged up body is from combat or from his stunt man work as well. So, I mean, who knows if, if his banged up body is from combat or from, from stunt manning and his face is sort of, his complexion is kind of not that great, but there's just this inner light coming through this, this, this, this, you know, American stuntman, war hero, you know, man, who in 1969 would not have been a movie star, right? There was obvious, one of the arguments the movie's making about the way the business is changing is there's no infrastructure for even a person like,

you know, Brad Pitt being a stuntman for, you know, I don't know if DiCaprio's character would be described as washed up, but like in between, he sort of is about to fall through the cracks of a changing Hollywood studio system too. He's hitting the Joe Don Baker early seventies part of his career. Yes. Which is funny because I think they ripped off a Joe Don Baker movie in the

late sixties. which is funny because I think they ripped off a Joe Don Baker movie in the late 60s the I just didn't think Brad Pitt was going to be in a movie with that kind of performance again I'd given up on him the same way you would give up on like an athlete and I didn't know you know the Angelina Jolie part of it and how ugly that breakup

was and all the stuff we read and kind of the whispers about how he had gone off the rails and all that stuff plus read and kind of the whispers about how he had gone off the rails and all that stuff. Plus he's older, he's over 50 now. And it just seemed like, when you're talking about it's 2019, 1991 was Thelma and Louise, which was really when he was on the map as like just a handsome guy going all the way through. And now this is a full three-decade run of him just as a guy who guys would feel like they would want to hang out with and women would think is just handsome.

And he's been able to parlay that into all these different roles. I think we all can agree Brad Pitt is a very handsome man. Oh, yeah. I don't think there's... Well, but you know what I mean. I know what you mean. I'm with the ladies on this one. The thing is,

I've seen this because we've talked about this before on the pod that he was a character actor trapped in a leading man's body. And I think that's true to some degree. But I also think

he's an incredible leading man. And when people make that character actor trapped in the leading man body thing, it kind of dismisses how crucial he is as a leading man. I was thinking about how many A-plus list leading men do we actually have who had the charisma that he has in this movie? Not to make this a whole Brad Pitt, just a back rub session, but this was like when I grew up, it's going to be the only thing we can all as a culture agree about with this

movie, probably, probably. But like when, when I was growing up, McQueen, Redford, Newman, Eastwood, it wasn't a long list of people that when they came into a movie, it was like, oh yeah, that guy's a movie star. And I think Denzel has it. I think Leo has had it most of the time. I think Matt Damon can have it. I think Cruise obviously has it. Hanks has had moments when he's had it, but it's a pretty rare quality. So anyway, I left the theater thinking this was Brad Pitt, kind of like his Dirk Nowitzki 2011 finals title, where it's like, oh man, I'd written the chapter on his legacy. I didn't realize we were going to keep

rewriting the legacy. Is that fair? That is very fair. What I would say though, is I actually, okay. I know. I just, I just said, I'm, I'm, I'm with the lady, but the truth is I never really understood.

So in Thelma and Louise, when he shows up and gets Thelma to like, be interested in him enough to like, to take him back, to take him back to the hotel room, he runs off with the money. He is breathtakingly hot in that moment, but you don't really get the sense that you're watching a terribly good actor, right? This is a person who has a kind of physical presence that the movies have always sort of relied on, right? Of all genders, lots of movies run on the engine of a sexy person who shows up halfway through and does something to the actual stars of the movie.

Brad Pitt was that person. He was the Margaret Qualley. Not that she's as good in the Tarantino movie. She's the hippie who he picks up. She's not as, she, he, his function in film and Louise is similar to her function in, in, in once upon a time in Hollywood, not exactly, but I never really bought Brad Pitt as an actor, right? I, every time he's with, every time he was paired with somebody else in a movie, and we can go through Brad Pitt's filmography, there's something lacking. He is paired with a person who can do the things in a scene better than he can do the things he was supposed to do.

I'm thinking principally of something like Interview with a Vampire, right? That's a misprint. Where you can just see what he doesn't, like what Tom Cruise is willing and able to do with a ridiculous good part that Brad Pitt just can't do. It was like he was embarrassed to be in that movie in a lot of ways.

And Tom Cruise is unembarrassable. And so it was unclear in what was that 94 interview with the vampire, like what, what Brad Pitt was going to wind up doing. And for me, I think it was, I mean, you know, he did 12 monkeys, which was supposed to be a sort of curve ball. Um, but it wasn't, I mean, I'm like a lot of people, I'm very conventional in my, in my movie star awareness in some ways. And I think it was Moneyball that was a thing for me that was just like, Oh, Brad Pitt is only going to make sense as an older movie star. He's only going to make sense as a person who doesn't have to be an action figure and can actually use the

properties of the things that I think probably make him him, right? Which is a kind of stillness, a kind of reserved, a kind of reserve. I think people might think he isn't very bright. And so there's a kind of still waters run deep quality with him so that when he gets apart, like playing Billy Bean and Moneyball, it's like he's using parts of himself that you didn't think he actually had, which in that movie pretty much amounted to his intelligence. So 91 and 95, he resonates in character parts, right? Like Thelma and Louise, True Romance 7, stuff like that.

Fight Club. Ah, Fight Club, yeah. So that was like the young version of the Brad Pitt kind of charismatic, holy shit role. I thought he was amazing in that movie. Yes. And then Ocean's Eleven, I think is a really pivotal Brad Pitt movie

because that's a charisma movie and him and Clooney, it's a charisma contest between everybody in the cast and him and Clooney have the most charisma. But then you go, you know, basically throw away that decade until you get to Inglourious Bastards and Moneyball where, you know, I thought Moneyball, he was a revelation. We did a rewatch of his podcast about that two years ago. He just carries that movie and he's so freaking likable, but you're right. Part of it is because he's a little bit older and has a little wisdom to him. He's always been compared to Redford, really since River Runs through it as our generation's Redford. And I do think there's some similarities.

Very similar. like our generation's Redford. And I do think there's some similarities. I think- Very similar. I think Once Upon a Time in America, if it's made 40 years ago, and it's like, you know, kind of 19, it's like electric, what was that movie? Electric Cowboy? Oh, Electric Horseman.

That kind of era Redford, right before he started to get a little older. He's probably the Brad Pitt part in this movie. Uh, yeah. I wonder what, I mean, Tarantino,

the reason to bring my friend Brian up is that he had a really interesting insight, which is the Tarantino obviously loved to resurrect old movie stars and give them parts in his movies. This is the opposite sort of chemical. I just want to say before I say this, um, and I finished my friend Brian's thought,

I just want to say that I really do love the sort of intellectual, moral and philosophical and cultural project that this movie represents. And part of what I love about it is what I'm about to say. Okay. He, I mean, I'm stealing this from my friend, but like,

I also believe it. He, I mean, I'm stealing this from my friend, but like, I also believe it. Tarantino typically takes a preexisting sort of lost, forgotten, washed up movie star and puts them somewhere in his movie, like an important movie star, someone that we sort of slept on, someone who should have gotten more than they got. A Pam Greer, for instance, in Jackie Brown, or Robert Forrester in Jackie Brown. And what he does in this movie, I mean, and so what he does with like, Travolta is sort of a different case, right? He was a movie star who lost it all, basically. And he gives him a part that sort of changes

the trajectory of the latter half of his career. Right. This is him taking two fictional washups or one fictional washup in his shadow, essentially, and cast both these parts with actual movie stars. Right. And it's just really interesting to think about what DiCaprio and Brad Pitt have to do to, to fill the outline of, on the one hand,

a probably bad actor who only would get bad material with a kind of great bad acting, on the one hand. And on the other hand, in Pitt, like a strong, silent type who really has to be, um, he has to be able to express something. And I think a lot of, I wonder how much time he spent trying to figure out, or maybe it's just so maybe the reason this performance is so great as a, as a, as a work of movie stardom is that he's, I don't know, I don't really believe in this concept, but I think it really does apply here. Like this might be a part he was when, when, when Gina Davis picks him up and takes him to the hotel room in 1991, this was the part that dude in that hotel room was made to embody in 2019. It's a good point.

I don't know. Well, think about this. It's just fascinating to think about. You talked about how he's missed a couple times. And I think that's a really important part of this Brad Pitt conversation. Because there have been directors and there have been studios that have tried to take advantage

of this star quality with him and build movies around it. And we saw it with the interview with the vampire, which is basically him and Cruz. And it just didn't work. Meet Joe black, I think is a great example. Oh,

there's another one of just Brad Pitt is so handsome and charismatic. You're going to love them in this. We just really didn't Troy. Remember, remember Troy and he got, got an awesome shape and it's just all these good looking dudes and we're going backwards and nobody liked that. Mr. and Mrs. Smith and World War Z. I feel like those are the five that

they went into it thinking Brad Pitt's a movie star. This is going to work. And it didn't work. But I'd say four of those five movies were hits. right? Like, uh, uh, the zombie movie was a huge hit. And I actually liked him in the zombie movie. Well, like the second half of the zombie movie, when he really doesn't, where he actually can't do anything because his life depends on him not being able to do anything when he's lit, when he's limited, when he is sort of forced by the, by the plot to express very little or to like do very little with his, with his body,

he actually gives you a lot more. Um, I mean, he really is like a, like a, I don't know, like his, his,

his innate sense of self is almost spiritual in its, um, easiness. And I don't want to make it seem like he just, I mean, maybe he does just sort of show up and know his lines and can just, he understands. I don't know, there's something deeper going on here. And it's going to be interesting.

Oh, sure. We're so far away from the Oscars, but whether he is best actor or best supporting actor is going to be a really good debate. Because if he's nominated for best supporting actor, I think he's going to win. Wait, Bill. Bill. Is this really going to be a conversation that people are going to have about what category to put this person in?

I'm just saying, I think it was a best actor performance. And I think there's a difference in significance between those two awards. I would agree. I think he was in the movie enough to be nominated for best actor. I really don't hope they don't do the cop out to hope that, Oh, it'll be easier for him to win the other category. Like,

no, this is a best actor. Both of those guys are in this movie a lot and should be nominated for best actor. We didn't even mention one of the, one of the thrills of this movie is just him and Leo in the same movie and having, and having all these scenes together. And it's a movie really about the relationship between those two guys.

And in fact, one of the things I loved about it was the ending. We're doing a ton of spoilers. So if you haven't seen this movie yet, I would just put this podcast away until you actually see it, people listening. So there you go. Spoilers from now on. The ending is so fitting for their relationship, right? Brad Pitt does all the work. He single-handedly beats these three Manson people, these crazies, and Leo is just hanging out in his headphones as this stuntman takes care of business and then the person jumps in the pool who's already going to probably die and Leo goes to get the flamethrower and gets him.

Brad Pitt goes to the hospital and Leo's just hanging out. He's the hero. It was exactly what their relationship was. I thought that was amazing that they did it that way. I'm sorry. I just, I don't know. I might start crying with just happiness because, okay. So wait, Bill, can we just, all right, well, let's end the DiCaprio pit phase of this conversation. I really do think we have to talk about the, God, it's crazy to use a term like seismic but like it this movie does

do something that is really really fascinating in terms of like the reaction it gets out of people who hate it yeah and the reaction that i mean in the thing in the movie that i think that it is i don't think it's i don't think it's i don't think it's i mean wrong to hate i don't think it's, I don't think it's, I mean, wrong to hate, I don't know which, you know, the first most important woman in the movie is sort of presented as a figment. But wait, let's just go back to DiCaprio and Pitt for one second, though. What you were trying to say there was there's been some absolutely atrocious takes about this movie and we're going to dismantle some of them in a second, but go ahead. Yes. I think that's what I was trying to say. I find it fascinating that DiCaprio and Pitt don't do their best stuff in this movie together. Oh. oh right like all of DiCaprio's best scenes are on his own and all of Brad Pitt's best

scenes are on his own they don't do their best stuff at the same time well wasn't the relationship it was supposed to be awkward though right that tennis final but it was I thought their scenes were supposed to be have this kind of weird

their buddies but Brad Pitt's working for him and they're kind of sizing each other up the whole time where Brad Pitt's clearly seen the beginning of the end of the road with this guy's career, Leo's career. And Leo's kind of saddled with this wife murdering stuntman that he knows he's not going to be able to pay for for much longer. So I thought it was all colored by that. Oh, sure. I mean, I love seeing them together. There's that great scene where they like toward the end where they're at that

Mexican restaurant and they're both totally hammered. Yeah. There is, there is something great about seeing them together. I'm just saying that the writing in this movie does not there. I mean, I guess there's a version of this movie where the ending is the two of them exterminating these, these,

these Manson. No, I can't. They couldn't do that. That's the thing. That's what made it so great. Cause they needed the stunt man and take care of business. But you're right.

Brad Pitt's best stretch in this movie is the car ride to the spawn ranch, which I think is top five or six stretches of a Tarantino movie. For me personally, I just thought from the moment he picks her up to the moment he leaves the spawn ranch, put it this way, nobody in the theater is like, I'm going to go get some popcorn right now. Or, oh, I have to go to the bathroom.

People are glued for 20 solid minutes. And I think, you know, this movie is too long. It drags in the first hour. There's no question. I think a lot of his movies have issues like that. But part of me thinks he does that because he wants to set up those 20 minute stretches where all of a

sudden it's like, oh shit. Uh oh. Stuff's going down. When he starts walking toward George Bond's little house and those Manson family people and he turns around and they're starting to line up behind him. It's fucking great moviemaking. How can people not appreciate that? I don't think people are watching the moviemaking in a lot of ways. I think they're, they're, they're looking, I mean, I don't want to say what people are looking at. I think that some of the reactions to some of the, some aspects of this movie, I mean, they really do involve matters of

representation, right? Like how are the women, how are those people at the spawn ranch depicted and what are they depicted doing? And so there's that shot when he would wait, Bill, where were you going though? Keep going. I don't want to interrupt you. Sorry. No, you were going. Oh. All right. Well, I mean, there's just that part where he leaves. He finds George Bond. By the way, just a wonderful,

a wonderful, pissy Bruce Dern. Yeah, it was a good heat check by Bruce Dern. Definitely a Dion Waiters Award candidate for whenever we do this movie. He's in it for three minutes. And there's something about, I mean, the second time I watched it, the first time I watched it,

I was just sort of, you know, I was afraid something, I don't know if you felt this, and I think part of the thing that made that sequence so riveting is before you even know that this movie is taking the liberties it is eventually going to take,

you don't actually know because you're dealing with fictional characters. Right. What's going to happen, you know, you don't know what's going to happen to Cliff when he goes to the ranch. I was ready for him to die. Yeah, me too.

Especially considering our history with Tarantino where it's like, oh, John Travolta's taking a shit, he's just going to die now in Pulp Fiction. You just have to be prepared for any character to die at any time in a Tarantino movie, which is why that scene is so, I don't know. In a Tarantino movie, that scene is just going to be better because he's the one guy who's going to kill off Brad Pitt. Right. So it's really suspenseful. So the second and third time I watched it, I was really paying attention

to just how lovingly Brad Pitt is looking at Bruce Dern in that sequence. Yeah. Like, it just like is crass and is like curmudgeonly and nasty as George Spahn is to Cliff in that moment. Brad Pitt is returning all of that nastiness with a kind of just beatific look,

um, of, of just appreciation for this man, having given him work. Um, it just, I don't know. I love,

I love how, um, walk on water. This character is the Brad Pitt character. Right. Just hold on. Oh, go ahead. Sorry.

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Get your free pair of socks. Limited time offer. If they're not stance, they're just socks. All right, back to Wesley. So we got to talk big picture a little bit, which I think people miss too.

This is my second big point about this movie. The whole point, and this is why it's unacceptable to have the Margot Robbie takes of the most important female character in this movie. The whole point, and this is why it's unacceptable to have the Margot Robbie takes of the most important female character in this movie didn't have enough lines and blah, blah, blah, they didn't explore it. You're just dumb if you think that, because the whole point of this movie is to show how kind of scary the end of somebody's career is when they're in the limelight and things

are going their way and all of a sudden that starts to is when they're in the limelight and things are going their way. And all of a sudden that starts to shift and they're starting to figure out, holy shit, this life I was really enjoying, this stardom that was so great is now starting to flip on me. And it might be ending. And I might have to sell my house and get a fucking condo. And I might not be able to pay my stuntman anymore. And I might have to go to Italy and make three shitty movies that Al Pacino wants me to make. And then the flip side of that is everything that happens with Margot Robbie. And I can't believe people didn't get this. The whole point of this is that Sharon Tate's at the beginning of her career. All she is seeing is the good that can happen when things start to take

off for you in Hollywood and the feedback you're getting. And she's so desperate to be recognized. Like she's not even, you know, she doesn't have that career sophistication yet where she just knows she's a star. So she has to like pose next to a poster in the movie theater and tell people who she is. Can you please stand by the poster so people know who you are? Yeah.

And then she's posing like nobody who's actually a star would ever do that, which was the whole fucking point. And then that scene when she's watching herself in the movie is the best scene in the movie. And her performance is great. And we don't need more of a backstory with her because it would affect how great that is that we don't know a lot about her. All we know is she thinks she has a chance maybe to be famous, maybe to be a star. And she obviously

likes acting. And we're watching this wash over her as she watches that scene. She's the most crucial character in this movie. She's more important than Brad or Leo in this movie because it's all about when your career is starting, all the shit you bring to that in a positive way and you're not tainted yet by anything. You're just starting out at 100 on the I'm not tainted scale. That's the whole point of

her in the theater. Then you're juxtaposing that with where Brad and Leo are and all the shit that's going on with them. If anybody doesn't see that, I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, I know. I mean, I agree with you. I think that just the way that Sharon Tate is, the way she is required to sort of be

this bright and optimistic person with everybody. I mean, Tarantino directs Margot Robbie to constantly be throwing her limbs around and her, like, anytime she greets somebody, it's like with both arms open. My favorite sequence in this movie. And I mean, did you say that you're at the spawn ranch was yours? I thought it was the best 20 minutes stretch, but I think the Margot Robbie scenes were the most affecting. I think that that drive she goes on.

And I mean, it really does. It really moves me when she, she picks up that hippie. Yeah. And I mean, I guess there's a version of this movie where, like, you spend 20 minutes with her and the hippie talking. But, I mean, I didn't need that because she's such a life force and you understand the goodness. I mean, you also had spent an unknown amount of time, or I can't count the number of minutes, like, listening to people like Rick, DiCaprio's's character say just only the worst things about hippies,

right? That they suck, that they're terrible, that they're stupid. God fucking hippies. Yeah. And I think that there is a way that Tarantino kind of believes that about the hippies.

It is, it is, it is one of the less, it is one of the squarest depictions of hippies I've seen in a movie. But the person who does believe in hippies, the person who gets what they're all about,

the person who is part hippie herself is Sharon Tate. And so she picks this girl up. She drives her, she's like, I'm only going this far and And the, and the hippie girl is like, well, that's all right. I'm that's fine enough for me. There's a shot of them getting out of the car and they hug each other.

And Sharon Tate is just so happy. And the hippie goes her way and she's happy. And, and then, Oh, but the rest of that sequence, it is, it is, it is she goes and picks up a copy of the Thomas Hardy book at a bookstore. And then she goes to buy a ticket or to not buy the ticket because she trades in her, I'm Sharon Tate-ness to get in the movie for free. But that whole sequence where she walks into the theater and she sits down and she watches herself in this movie. And he actually just uses Sharon Tate, which I also think is great. Yeah, and I think one of the coolest things about this movie is it made me kind of appreciate Sharon Tate and think about her in a different way than just the person who was brutally murdered by the Manson family.

That is what I was going to say. Yeah, and I think that's why it was so important he actually used the real Sharon Tate in the movie because he's trying to say like, hey, this lady was actually good and had a real chance to have a career and got brutally murdered. But I think the wonder and the joy and the unknown of when somebody's career

is starting to take off and you haven't been tainted by anything yet. You haven't had one bad review. You haven't heard one bad thing. You haven't lost a part. You haven't had a director say a terrible thing to you. Nothing. She's completely untainted, which is why she picks up the hippie,

which is why it was so important not to do too much of her. Because you can't have a scene where she's just having breakfast being like, you know what? I'm completely untainted. I'm really enjoying the wonder of it all. You can't do that. That's the whole fucking point of a movie.

You have to show it. And they show it. And what they showed with her character from beginning, middle, end, right to the point where it's like, hey, Rick, come on up. Come on up to the pool. That's the last scene in the movie. Yeah, let's have a drink. Like, she's so hopeful.

And that was what he was trying to get across. And I thought Margot Robbie, you know I've loved her since Focus. I'm the only person who likes Focus. No, I'm with you. Yeah, I thought she was a revelation in Focus. I think she's a really great actor. And it's really rare to have somebody who's that beautiful who can also act.

Usually it's one or the other. Well, this, of course, was the Brad Pitt problem for a long time, right? That's true. This is why I think it's really great when these movie stars, where you weren't really convinced that they could do it, they hit their 40ies and fifties and suddenly it's either, they don't trust what they look like, or they just, they have, they've developed the soul, which is really the answer to the question. Um, but I mean, I, Oh God, the, the, the, the way Tarantino is really thinking

about what a movie is and can do and what American culture is and what American culture does, right? I really do. I mean, and I don't know if you had this experience when you saw it, but there's a moment where the movie's ending and you get the title, right? The title comes up. There's a title shot. Yes. And I'd forgotten that the movie was called once upon a time in Hollywood. And then the movie's ending and he reminds you in the way the, the, the once upon a time shows up and then you get the points of ellipsis. Um, and then you get in the, in Hollywood part and basically what you've been watching. I mean, it's not like this is a huge revelation on the movies part, but you've been watching a fairy tale, right?

Yes. You've been watching a fairy tale. You've been watching a movie about the stories that the movies can tell and kind of what the power that a movie has to shape a kind of reality, right? This is a movie in Tarantino's hands that actually changes the outcome of one of, I mean, 1969 was crazy. Just pick an event, pick a month, and there was some culture-altering event in it. My birthday. Does my birthday count? Me being born?

Would you put that ahead or behind the moon? Going on the moon. I'd go behind. I don't have that big of an ego. No, but I think he does two things in this movie that A, are brilliant and B, are fucking awesome

twists. First one, you're leading the whole time, the whole time, you think Sharon Tate's going to get brutally murdered at the end of this movie. If you hadn't read anything. You think all this is leading to the Manson murders, and then it's like, well, how are Leo and Brad going to be involved in this? What, like what's going to happen? And then he just, right. So that, but that's two hours of this movie. You're like, Oh man,

it's going to be a bummer when Sharon Tate gets murdered. I love Sharon Tate. I've grown attached to her just during this movie, but I don't want to see her get murdered. And then he swerves away from that, which I thought was awesome. And then the voila, as you said, of the once upon a time, dot, dot, dot, in Hollywood. And it's like, oh, yeah, you fucking morons. This whole time, this is supposed to be a fairy tale.

On top of it, with what he did with Brad Pitt, where Brad Pitt, I'm supposed to like, he's a handsome, charismatic, great guy. But then they throw in the wife killer stuff. And then it's like, actually, Brad Pitt's not a good guy in this movie. He's a bad guy. But I'm rooting for him the whole time. He's a good guy. And I think that's why people got really thrown off by the wife killer thing. Tarantino puts that in because he wants to make it clear. This guy's not a good guy. And this was what happened in the 1950s and 60s. You could maybe have killed your wife and still acted.

You could have some sort of baggage that could never find out in 2019. But in 1968 you could be a stuntman in a movie and they could call you the wife killing stuntman that's how fucking weird it was in the 1960s that's the whole reason that's in there but he puts that in there because he wants people to know this guy

is really dark he is somebody that if three Manson family people came into his house, he would be able to handle business and he might have a really, really dark side. So be prepared. I thought that stuff had to be in there.

I think other people were like, why was that in there? Why did he have to kill his wife? It's like, yeah, because he's trying to set up that this was not a great guy. Right. I also think that he's,

he's really messing with the properties of what we've been talking about before with movie stardom, right? Like what, what is the, what, what is a movie star seduction really capable of? Right. And I think that he also has sort of pitched this movie to his moment, right? I don't know. I don't exactly remember when it went into production, but it definitely, I think it was in production when the Weinstein story broke and he was almost, I mean, in Tarantino, I mean, one of the questions was what did Tarantino know? One of the questions, I mean, and then, you know, Uma Thurman told her story about, you know, her life on the Kill Bill set. And so I do think that there also is this way in which you are given,

and DiCaprio is fundamentally, if he's not Reagan conservative, he certainly, he does not like what the country, how the country is evolving, right? Yeah. He's definitely an old school Hollywood person when it comes to the way the business ought to project it. You know, the way

the movies are sort of an advertisement for American value. And this is why he can't bear to bring himself to go to Italy and make spaghetti westerns. It's because they're not really American. Yeah. And he hates the hippies. Right, and he hates the hippies. Right. And he hates the hippies. And he, you know, there, and there is a kind of, there's a constant racism that is right beneath the surface of this movie against Mexicans.

Um, there's a, there is a, there's a, just a general air of intolerance and all the culture that you're experiencing for the most part is white people on TV and on the radio. All these advertisements about being the tanning lotion and the cologne that makes you smell like a man. There are four essential characters. There are four essential traits to a man. And this is the cologne that'll get you to all of them. Yeah, guess what? That was 1969.

And that's what he's trying to tap into with this movie. This is what life was like in 1969. If you're going to bring your own baggage from 2019 into this movie, it's the wrong movie for you. But I do think, though, that Cliff really is a response to 2017, 18, 19, right? I think there's this amazing moment, and I'm stealing, now I'm stealing, I stole something from my friend Brian, I'm going to steal this from Jenna Wortham.

There is this moment when he is leaving the spawn ranch and he's left the shack where George is, and he's going to his car, and yet he's about to find out that it's been, it's been knifed and all of the Manson girls have come and they're just on, you know, in an old Western, those women would all have been,

would have been prostitutes and they would have been lining the doors of a bordello or like the, the, the, the space of a bordello. But in this case it's it's it's that configuration but but you're they're hippies and they're yelling all kinds of you know things that brad pitt and jenna you know in classic brilliant jenna fashion was like well

this is what tarantino thinks life is like for a cis straight white man on Twitter. Just having these women be yelling at him all day long. And I think that the movie, I think the ambiguity, the idea that we are, we are being asked to watch a person we're, we're being asked to spend as much time as we spend with cliff. And, you know, cliff who, who beats up bruce lee um cliff who

possibly who possibly killed his wife and the in the the rumor the myth of of it isn't even like it's not a rumor with cliff right a rumor is like i think cliff might be gay, right? I think a rumor is like, I think Cliff is wearing a hairpiece. Yeah. But that rumor about the wife killing with Cliff, it turns into a myth. It kind of makes him, it makes him more than he actually is, not less.

And I think that there's something about the way this movie is thinking about how we build up these, how these sort of these stories about men get told and the sort of pre-existing patriarchal means by which the myth-making machine further mythologizes people who don't necessarily, who might not necessarily deserve it. You know, Rebecca Gayhart plays the wife of the movie, by the way, and there is nothing that she does

that necessarily warrants whatever may have happened to her, obviously, but that we don't actually know that he did it so that there's this possibility that maybe she died some other way. Or maybe, I mean, I'm guessing what his defense was,

was like the harpoon kind of slipped, I don't know, and killed her that way. Yeah. But I like the idea that I'm not entirely comfortable enjoying spending two hours and 43 minutes with, or two hours and 35 minutes, 39 minutes with, with either one of these two guys. And Tarantino wants you not to be, there's this scene where at some point it's toward the end where, um, Cliff, I'm sorry, where Rick goes out, DiCaprio goes out to the car where the hippies are and they're about to,

what we do, what we think is go to the Polanski-Tate household. And do you remember what he's wearing in that sequence? Yeah, it's like a, isn't it like a Hawaiian shirt or something, like something? No.

What is it? It's like he's got, like he's grown this horrible hair. He's got this shitty facial hair. He's wearing, he's carrying that blended margarita in the blender still. And he's wearing a robe where basically it becomes a skirt. He's not even wearing pants. I mean, there's a way that he, that, that Tarantino is, is constantly reminding

you that basically what you're watching is a movie about Beavis and Butthead. I mean, they literally at some point are sitting there critiquing Cliff's, critiquing Rick's FBI appearance in classic Beavis and Butthead fashion where you're watching the show and you hear them just basically being like, yeah, here comes the FBI shot. Yeah.

I mean, the idea that those two people are the heroes of your movie. And the act of heroism they allegedly commit is committed in utter incompetence. Brad Pitt is high and DiCaprio doesn't know what the fuck is going on. And he thinks there's like a zombie in his, in his, in his, in his swimming pool.

Brad Pitt's so high that he doesn't eat. As you're watching it, you're worried he's not going to be able to react like he normally would. I'm with you. These guys are, these are two jackasses and two symbols of celebrity gone wrong

in the late 60s. I love Brad Pitt wasn't even a celebrity or the stuntman wasn't a celebrity. But all the little touches he puts in of a culture that, you know, I turned 50 this year. I barely remember that 1960s TV culture and all those shows. That was even before my time. But those were basically, if you wanted to break into Hollywood, you had to be on one of those shows, right? Clint Eastwood was on one of those shows. Who else was Redford? Every actor that was an actor. Oh, everybody was on a Western or some police. Those were all the

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Cancel anytime. Terms do apply. We didn't mention one thing that I can't believe is just also getting glossed over in this movie. We're going to talk about the Bruce Lee stuff in a second. The way he recreated Hollywood and LA in 1969 fashion, I thought was spectacular.

And I don't know if it's colored by the fact that I live here and I know all the parts of LA where they were. It was just so jarring to see the 1969 version of them, but they did it so seamlessly and so beautifully. It was really one of those, you're watching it going, how the fuck did they do that? There was like real wow factor to some of the filmmaking and how painstakingly just perfect it was. And then the stuff like Leo being in The Great Escape in a dream sequence and Leo being in these actual TV shows

where they just CGI him in. You think about Forrest Gump 25 years ago. And one of the big gimmicks of that movie was, oh, Forrest is going to be in these actual clips. And if you watch Forrest Gump now, those clips look so fake. Him shaking hands with Lyndon B. Johnson. And we thought this was a really cool gimmick in 1994. Now, 25 years later, we're at the point where

he's just seamlessly recreating 1969 Hollywood and all the cars and the suitcases and how the highways look and what it's like to drive down sunset in Hollywood. I thought it was incredible. I really did. I thought it was just flat out incredible. Of course, glossed over last couple of weeks. Well, I mean, there, I mean, there, there is this recreation of, well, I mean, first of all, I mean, most people, a lot of people weren't there, so they don't really know what that was like, the degree to which the, there's a kind of meticulous Hollywood recreation, like, like not even the best Hollywood, by the way, I was just thinking about, um, you know, every time even the best Hollywood, by the way, I was just thinking about,

um, you know, every time you see a TV, it's usually not, it's not anybody's, it's not TV's finest hour. It's not American culture's finest hour. There's Robert Kool-Aid at some point when Brad Pitt comes home on the TV.

Um, it's, it's not even the best TV of 1969. It's just the TV that was there. It was bad TV. But I also think that there is a way that, you know, I mean, it seems unreasonable to not think about Tarantino not thinking about race in a movie that mostly features white people.

For a person who, you know, one of the admirable, if not entirely perfect things about him as a filmmaker is that he is very interested in how race and American popular culture works. And the idea that, you know, you wouldn't, that he doesn't know that he's made a movie about two white guys,

um, in a culture that was hegemonically white, where every image you basically saw in 1969 would have been of a white person. There is that great moment of Peggy on Mannix, talking to Mannix at some point. I thought that was a nice touch. But I think, you know, so to go to this sequence where Brad Pitt kind of flashes back to why he might have been fired from, why he might not be hireable anymore. When he works with DiCaprio, you go back to this Green Hornet set. And I mean, I don't even know, I don't remember what year that would have been.

Obviously, it would have been in the early 60s. But, you know, the Green Hornet, the show that had Bruce Lee basically playing Kato is not exactly the most flattering depiction of an Asian person in popular culture,

obviously. And that sequence where he and Bruce Lee kind of fight, it doesn't really bother me because Bruce Lee is sort of presented, I mean, I'm very open to people being bothered by it.

But I think there's a way in which the fantasy aspect of the way that sequence works immediately calls into question whether or not it's true, right? But I felt like people missed the fantasy part of it. And that's only the most crucial part of that whole scene.

This is Cliff, a jackass, a racist, a loser, might have killed his wife, but also a charismatic guy remembering this fight that he had with Bruce Lee. God knows what actually happened. He's remembering his five years later, whatever became the reality in his head of how this went down. I think the big tell is the fact that we see him on the roof and he's thinking off to it. It's not a recollection. It's his version of the events. They have to be distorted.

And I think the big tip off is like, first of all, the dent in the cars is insane. That would never happen. And also like just Bruce Lee behaving like that. Now, I know he definitely had a little bit of swagger to him, but if you did this with, let's say you did this with Muhammad Ali, who has, let's say instead of Bruce Lee, they put Muhammad Ali in this scene. And Muhammad Ali was this exaggerated version of himself. Is that possible? Well, but people would be like,

oh yeah, they're really making, they're making like almost a parody of Muhammad Ali. I get it. Muhammad Ali wasn't like that. I wonder if with the Bruce Lee thing, it was so over the top that I think Tarantino thought people would get it, but it doesn't seem like people got it.

That was my take. I also think that the last laugh is always with Bruce Lee of that sequence too. Like who's Cliff, right? You know, like Bruce Lee goes on. I mean,

at that point, Bruce Lee is Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee is Cato, you know, for better and for worse. And the other interesting thing about that sequence is the refusal of, on behalf of everybody in that sequence to call Cassius, to call Muhammad Ali, Muhammad Ali. Right. But that just tells me that we're going back to like 1964, right? Right. So the Cassius Clay thing is the tip off that this is at least five years ago when this happens.

Right, right. So, or maybe even four years, four to five years ago. So that was another thing. Look, Bruce Lee's family, I know when I get it, if the family gets mad, I personally think Steve McQueen's family should have been just as bad. They have Brody from Homeland as Steve McQueen.

Steve McQueen, like one of the coolest movie actors of the last 60 years, and he comes off like a fucking doofus in this movie. I would be mad about that. The McQueen family should be giving interviews. What the fuck? Steve McQueen was way cooler than this. He's just this loser

sitting at the Playboy Mansion longingly looking at Margot Robbie giving somebody the gossip blowdown. Was Steve McQueen like that? I don't, I mean, on the one hand, I don't know. He doesn't have a lot to do. He just does the things that you think Steve McQueen in the movies would do, which is sit there and smoke

and try to size up the situation with like a self-serving kind of wisdom, that does not seem wrong to me. Oh, come on. That doesn't bother me. Wesley, stop it. I mean, it just, the point of that sequence, though, is to actually, it's to say, the point of that sequence is to illustrate that the culture is changing, right? The point of that sequence is to have Steve McQueen tell the story of Sharon Tate's relationship

to Roman Polanski and to... And to this other dude, the hairdresser. Yeah, Eddie... Jay Sebring. Jay Sebring, yeah. Yeah, Jay Sebring, right. And the punchline of the story, I mean, it's not a great story,

and the punchline isn't that great, but the point of the story is, I'm telling you, he's talking to a woman standing behind him at this point, and she, at the, this is all of the Playboy Mansion,

which is the other sort of source of, of sort of cultural insight, right? Mm. In which, you know, the Playboy Mansion was as central to that end of American culture as Warner Brothers in a lot of ways. And the point of the story

that Steve McQueen tells is that, you know, he tells us, you know, with Polanski and then J.C. Brink, I never stood a chance if that's what Sharon Tate is interested in. If that's the kind of man she wants, I could never have gotten with that.

Do it a little bit cooler. I couldn't get past Brody from Homeland and the guy from Billions being Steve McQueen. It was just too weird. I just couldn't get past it.

The Bruce Lee stuff, whatever. If that's going to be your lead takeaway from the movie, I don't know what to tell you. Where do we stand on Tarantino now? We're nine movies in. He's claiming he only has a tenth movie and then that's going to be it. And I think...

Oh, he's not really saying that, is he? Well, he is. He's saying he's going to retire after his next movie. And I think he's gone backwards a lot with his movies. He did it with Django. He did it with Inglourious Bastards. He did it with this movie where he's going backwards and, and trying to say something bigger, trying to say something bigger about where we were in this moment. And in a lot of cases, redoing history, which he's done now over and over again.

I, my takeaway after seeing this movie, and I'm not saying it was perfect. I just thought it was really cool. And I think when you leave a Tarantino movie, you just feel like you have Tarantino perfume on you by the end of it. You know, there's just nobody like him. He makes very specific types of movies that are unique to him,

which is why I think he's so important as an artist. I don't love every one of the movies, but they're distinct. It's like the old thing when you talk about writers on a website. If you can cover somebody's byline and I have no idea who it was, that's the difference between somebody like you where if somebody covered your byline and showed me your piece, I would know it was you. You're distinct. You're a one of one.

I think Tarantino is a one of one. I think Tarantino is a one of one. And I wish one of these movies that he'd made over the last 10 to 12 years was set in current times about something that was happening now. Because I'm interested in his perspective on it. And I think some of my favorite stuff that he does is the little dumb arguments, the stuff about the Royale with cheese and just characters arguing about stuff that's happening. Reservoir Dogs, the Madonna scene. He's talking about like a virgin. I'm not saying he has to,

I wish he weaved more pop culture in, but I wish there was, what's his take on life now in 2019? You're saying that he was trying to tell us stuff in this movie. I don't know whether he was or he wasn't. Maybe there was a little bit of that, but I would actually really like his take on 2020.

What would his Roger Ailes movie be? What would his Harvey Weinstein movie be? What would his political movie be? Like stop going backwards, QT. I sometimes don't like artists to spend all this time in the past. But I mean, it isn't entirely,

I mean, I think what you want him to do is respond to the moment. And I don't know if he, I mean, I'm not saying he couldn't do it, but I mean, he's not somebody who really ever has been interested in contemporary culture in a lot of ways. I mean, even if you think about a movie like kill bill, which I mean, parenthetically is like the, the way that Asian culture is arguably fetishized in that movie by

him is a, is a connecting is sort of a, it's the thing that may, it's an aspect of a thing that makes the Bruce Lee thing in this movie sort of annoying. Right. Um, it's just that you don't quite understand why he felt he needed to do that. Um, but I also think that like a movie like kill bill is also, it's pretty modern in a lot of ways and is really thinking about you know using all of this trash culture and great asian cinema to make what ultimately is going to turn out to be a tarantino movie and i don't think that tarantino lives in the real world despite his marches with black lives matter and that sort of stuff i think tarantino is about trying to figure out, he's as much an archaeologist, a cultural archaeologist, as he is a filmmaker.

And I don't think he really wants to leave the library or the video store, so to speak. And I think that there's so much, you know, I'm saying this as a person who also does a version of this for a living. I'm not a great American filmmaker. But I'm really interested in, you know, looking at culture to try to figure out what stories it tells about this country. And he's, I mean, even when the things don't work and there aren't very many, I mean, and glorious bastards for me is the one that I have the hardest time with just in terms of me as well. That's why I was not on that rewatchables.

It's 75% very, very good. And then I just don't have the, I don't have the sort of moral and philosophical patience for the finale of that movie. But people, some people love it. I guess my question is,

so we're doing gonger on the rewatchables this week. We already taped it. It's running, uh, I guess my question is, so we're doing Gone Girl on the rewatchables this week. We already taped it. It's running, I think, Tuesday. What would his version of that movie have been? Oh, well, that's a great question. That's what I'm saying. I'm not saying, hey, two hitmen in 2019 and then all this other shit's going to happen. I'm just being like, what would his version of the social network have looked like?

Like, why is Fincher the one who's repeatedly been able to capture whatever moment we're in? Because Fincher's a zeitgeist director, right? Yeah, but that's what I want from QT. But you never had that. Tarantino is really about... I had it in Pulp Fiction. No, even then you were watching the work of a movie historian

You weren't watching a person living in the present But I was watching Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction I was watching somebody take crime movies that I've grown up with And throw in all this crazy shit And pop culture conversations And just flipping things the way I thought them But it felt like a very in the moment movie. It felt like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp, especially in 1994.

It felt like a 1994 movie that had to come out in 1994. The movie that he just made, he could have made it five years ago. He could have made it 10 years ago. I honestly don't think, I don't think he makes Cliff. I don't think he makes Cliff and Rick the people he makes them five years ago. I honestly don't think, I don't think he makes Cliff. I don't think he makes Cliff and Rick the people he makes them five years ago. I really don't. So I really don't. All right. You have to sway me on this one. So I think there's something so finished about both those guys, right? This is going to be the highlight of both those guys live that night in Cliff's house,

that night at Rick's house, when house when the Manson hippies come over and they do a number on them. I also think that the thing that I love about Tarantino, and it is so true in this movie, is that to the degree that I believe him as a historian and as an archaeologist or like a cultural anthropologist in some ways, is that the Manson hippies, while tripping on acid before they go into Rick's house, one of the women gives this really insightful argument for why they should kill everybody. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to screw it up.

I wrote it down. Hold on. Let me find my notebook. Yeah, we're going to kill the people who taught us how to kill, is what she said. Yeah. And I just, like, before you know that they're not going to share in Tate's house, you're like, well,

I mean, I don't support, obviously I don't support that, but I also really understand that as a, that is an actual ethos, right? That is an actual, like, platform from which to do something truly awful. Yeah. They wind up in the right house in some way because Sharon Tate is not responsible for the thing they think they are responsible for it. But, like, think about all the... She's not responsible for the thing that, like, that Cliff and...

Or that Rick especially is responsible for perpetrating in his work. And think about all the times before that moment that you have watched Rick kill people. You've seen him, like, use a blowtorch on Nazis. You've seen him basically threaten to shoot a little girl in the head. You have watched him gunned down two, I don't know what those guys are in the FBI clip. I wasn't,

I don't remember. I look kind of military to me. You've seen Rick do nothing. Bounty Hunter, he's called Bounty Killer. The show is called called bounty killer. I mean, you've seen, you've seen Rick do nothing but kill. And so there is a way in which if you grew up watching TV in the 1950s and 1960s that, you know, according to her argument, all you're doing is seeing just constant violence and constant killing with the exception, as she notes, of I Love Lucy. I will say this, though. So we disagree fundamentally on why he made this movie, I think. I don't know why he made it. I personally believe he made it because he's nearing the end of his career as an accomplished, significant filmmaker in his mind.

So he's looking at the arc of how good a director can be for how long, right? And usually it's like an eight to 10 year peak for any great director. If you just go through, flip through the IMDbs, pick whoever, they're usually going to have an eight to 10 year prime. And in very, very, very rare cases, it's going to go 25, 30 years, right? So he knows he's at the tail end of, I am becoming too old. I am running out of things to say, and I'm running out of ways to understand the generation that I'm in.

But most important, I'm hitting a stage where I might not be at the peak of my powers pretty soon. And I'm starting to think about the mortality of a career. And I think that's how he ends up with this movie because it's about the start of a career and the end of a career. I feel like that's what this movie is about. These two guys are at the end of it.

Margot Robbie's at the beginning of it. And from that basis, everything else comes out of that. Now, I might be wrong, but that's my theory. No, I don't disagree with you. I actually, it could just be that simple. I also think, though, that this is a person who is constantly thinking about the more, the more violence he makes, the constant, the more constantly I think he is thinking about what violence is. And I mean, cause I think that, you know, one of the things that, that I, that I felt

on the first time I saw it, the first full time I saw it, I should say, cause I, I had to, I missed the end the very first time I saw it. I had to leave. So the first full time I saw it, I was kind of bummed out. And I was bummed out because, and this is a crazy thing to say, but I was bummed out because I didn't get to see the thing that I thought I was going to see, which was how Quentin Tarantino, of all people, maybe the most perfectly positioned director to tell the story of the Manson murders, was going to do the Manson murders. And I will translate that, I will translate what I just said in the most crass possible way, but I do think it was a thing that got people, that piqued people's interest, which was, how is Quentin Tarantino going to kill Sharon Tate? And I think he knows that people were expecting that if he was going to make a Godard, for instance, this might be the most morally Jean-Luc Godardian thing that he's ever done. And what all I mean by that is Godard was a person who liked to frustrate the expectations an audience would have of what a movie could and should be based on all of the culture that they had previously consumed.

So if he's going to make a movie with Brigitte Bardot, for instance, and Brigitte Bardot is going to take off her clothes, he's going to make sure that you can't see Brigitte Bardot naked in her sort of nude entirety. He's going to frustrate your wish, if you are so inclined to see that. He's going to stop you from seeing it there's a way in which not having sharon tate murdered is i mean it is a real commentary on what we want in a movie in a lot of ways and he while he does give us like a it's weird because that that ending is as like thrilling as it is that that that sort of physical comedy slapstick murder sequence. It ultimately, in the scheme of what you thought you were watching, is dissatisfying because it's not what you thought you were going to see.

And so I think that this movie, in a lot of ways, is him really thinking about himself as a moral artist, right? Like this is the most mature thing that I think he's ever made because it's a, it's ultimately a work of restraint. It is a perversely wise in some ways. My favorite sequence in this movie is that, that sequence on the set. One of my favorite, my most favorite sequence, it isn't the finale. And it might be more than the finale. It's the scene with the,

with that little actress on the set. Yeah. Between it's a, what is that little girl's name? Trudy, Trudy, Trudy Fraser, Trudy Fraser is her name.

And she initially seems standoffish. She's about, she, we learned she's eight years old. I don't believe that. I think, I think just like Rick, I think she also is 12 years old.

But she is the wisest person in the movie, and she's wise in that Tarantino way, but there's something also very understanding about what an eight-year-old would want from an adult in a moment like this, where they're sitting on the set, he's reading a book, and she really

wants to know, tell me the story of this book that you're reading. Tell me how it ends. And she says, he says, well, I'm not done reading it yet. I'm still in the middle of it. She goes, but I don't want you to tell me the story of the whole book. I want you to tell me the story of the book where it is. And he indulges her. And in indulgingging her he realizes that he has a gift for storytelling and he's made this little girl who in, you know, very understandable little girl fashion wants a story told to her

and he has the ability to sort of control the, I don't know if that's what really happens to whatever that guy's name is, Easy Breezy. I don't know how Easy Breezy winds up but he can control Easy Breezy's, you know, beginning, middle, and end, according to him. She's never going to read that book.

And so I love that sequence because it sets up the possibility that Tarantino also can tell us the end of a story that we think we know the end to. But maybe we don't. Maybe if we recast it as a fairy tale, if we make it something that is a lot more digestible and sort of morally... I mean, it is morally satisfying, but also kind of maybe cinematically disappointing

because you're not getting a thing that you thought you were going to get because you know a little bit about the Manson murders and know it doesn't end well. Um, I don't know. I just feel like it's a real, it is a real, it is a weird, it is a real perverse moral achievement. This movie.

That was well said. We didn't mention Andy McDowell's daughter. Oh yes. Delightful. Had no idea that was Andy McDowell's daughter. Great job by her. What a heat check. Yep. Delightful. Had no idea that was Andy McDowell's daughter. Great job by her. What a heat check. Yep.

Comes in hot. Just owns every minute she's in the movie. Has a nice little turn. And I thought she was great. We have to wrap this up. I wanted to mention, because I was thinking about these filmmakers that stand out, that are distinct. And just randomly last week, couldn't sleep, flipping channels, Personal Best was on. When was the last time you watched that movie?

Oh, boy. I mean, I don't think I've watched it in years. Wesley, you got to cue that one up again. Okay. So Robert Towne again okay so Robert Towne who is in the running for best screenwriter ever and certainly had he was nominated for an Oscar three years in a row and did

just it's him and Goldman probably in the finals so he decides to direct the movie and he directs a movie about a pentathlete, well, originally a hurdler played by Meryl Hemingway, who falls in love with her coach and then another female athlete on her team. And this movie is indescribable.

Yeah, I remember that. The stuff he does in this movie, it is... I would actually just want to sit next to you as you watch this movie, just for your reactions. I remember it being really erotic. Yeah, it's so over the top, almost in an SNL way. There's one scene where they're doing the high jump, and he just has the camera so that the women, they're coming in and they're going over the high bar.

And it's just them from the waist down, basically. And it's like, what's happening? Why are you doing this? But he's just feeling it. It's a heat check. And it's very like the physicality of the movie and the way the human beings interact and the sexuality of it, he's just like, I'm going full tilt. I'm going 10 out of 10. I'm really doing it.

It's not a great movie, but it's a distinct movie. It's an interesting movie. The Tarantino thing, I think this movie is going to be remembered as great and it's distinct and he really goes for it. I think that's how I'm going to remember it. I agree. He does go for it.

I just think it's really something. It has lived in my brain in a way that no American movie I've seen in the last couple of years has. Let's get Brad Pitt a best actor. I know it's like the worst corner, but I hate when the people are in the wrong categories.

I'm the same person who obsesses over the NBA MVP. Put people in the right categories, for God's sakes. This is important. I'm with you. Put them in the right category. Wesley Morris, this was a fucking pleasure as always. We can read you

in the New York Times. I hope you write about this movie at some point. I will. And you're coming here next week because we're going to tape, I think, at least three rewatchables,

including Fatal Attraction, which is going to be one of the great moments of my life. Oh my God. One of the great moments of mine too. I can't wait.

Thanks for coming on. All right. Bye, on. All right. Bye everybody. All right. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Don't forget to go to ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. Don't forget to talk about

the rewatchables. Gone Girl. Me, Mally Rubin, Sean Fennessy, and Shea Serrano. That is coming on Tuesday. Until then.