"I Haven't Slept in Three Days, My Hip is Acting Up, and the Beer is Warm."/"So...you're Good."
Ang Leehas spent almost his entire career showing the common humanity in the disenfranchised, whether they be the lower rungs of Class Society, gay cowboys, set-apart and -upon martial artists, political spies, and Incredible Hulks—the commonality of the different. Even with the slightly lighter touch he employs here, he does the same for Catskill Jews and Hippie culture inTaking Woodstock.Both groups are isolated and flung apart, but come together—initially uneasily, but soon in mutual satisfaction, to produce something intangible and real, that would change everything.
For a little while.
Elliott Tiber, nee Tieschberg, (Demetri Martin) is a repressed jangle of contradictions, a cosmopolitan boy lost in the woods. He's hasn't quite left the nest of his parents (Henry Goodman, Imelda Staunton) who own—barely—the El Monaco Hotel in the Catskills town of White Lake. He hasn't quite left the closet, either. A painter, he hasn't met with success in The Big Apple. He deals with the banks about the Hotel's financing, but has nothing to say about how it's run, despite trying to stir up business. He's the President of the White Lake Chamber of Commerce...which is basically just a Chamber, but in a Church basement, and little Commerce.
The one thing he has going for the Hotel is a low-key Arts Festival he puts on every year, featuring a couple folk-singers and the gonzo theater-troupe who inhabit the barn on their property. Until...the planned "Woodstock" festival with a few choice acts is driven out of their original venue by the locals, and Tiber makes it known to the organizers that he has a permit for an arts festival, a rare thing with the reluctant townspeople, who are content with the "regular crowd" and don't want much disruption. Pretty soon, the Tieschberg's and local dairy farmer Max Yasgur (a genially subdued Eugene Levy, making more of less) are persona non grata around town as the area is crowded with a motley crew of organizers, "suits," crew-men, helicopters, expectant hippies, and, as the concert grows closer, one of the largest traffic jams in the Nation's history.
By that time, the Tieschberg's are in constant motion as their hotel is over-crowded, water-shortaged, beer-deficient and out of control, if not for the efforts of Mr. Tieschberg and self-appointed head-buster Vilma, a trans ex-Ranger with a baseball bat (Liev Schreiber, in a bad blonde wig and a Southern Belle's wardrobe, looking just like you'd expect him to, and bringing a rueful dignity to the enterprise).
As long as Lee focuses on the chaos, the film is a raucously good-natured train-wreck. Once he leaves the side-show for Elliott's Odyssey to "The Festival," the film becomes one of those earnest little movies that tells you its important but can't show you, just as it can't show the concert going on. Oh, you hear snippets of song-track that was featured at Woodstock, but not the actual performances (as they're owned by somebody else, I guess) reverberating in the background. There's a couple of FX shots that suggest the scope of the thing (one an LSD-influenced version that shows the crowd turning into an undulating sea-scape that would be more effective...oh, if you really were on acid, say), but the whole sequence is not only un-involving, it diminishes the event...far-off, rather than far-out.
Woodstock has been romanticized so much over the last 40 years that it might better be called "Three Days of Peace, Love and Understanding and All the Crappy Parts You've Forgotten." But, Lee doesn't shy from the problems (segmented into easily focused nuggets of information through a split-screen technique which was the vogue at the time), although nothing is dwelled upon: the famous "brown acid" is mentioned, the muddy conditions, the interminable traffic jams, the inconsistent weather and jerry-rigged wiring that combined to cause so much metal on the grounds to shock when touched, the unsanitary conditions, the constant air-lifting of accidents and overdoses. and the fact that damned few people heard much music. It was enough to "be there," and that entailed a super-human ability to "go with the flow," of which, with the rain, there seemed to be plenty. It's all catalogued, but briefly, because like a lot of movies about "big events," it boils down to who's telling the story and how much they really played a part in it.
For the sub-title of the movie should be "Elliott Tiber and what he did at Woodstock." Tiber's account has been questioned by organizer Michael Lang* who claims that he may have had the permit, but he wasn't present at all the places he claims he was. And so the movie is reduced to the old conundrum of who gets to re-write history as Tiber shows "how Woodstock was important to him," as well as how "he was important to Woodstock." This might have been a bit more convincing if Tiber weren't portrayed by Demetri Martin. Martin is a gifted comedian as his stints on "The Daily Show," and his own "Comedy Central" series have amply displayed. But, "Taking Woodstock" shows none of the puppyish energy that makes his observations so hilarious. Instead, his Tiber is slackly reminiscent of Chance the Gardener in Being There, wandering like a ping-pong ball through the movie, with just as much dramatic weight. He is handily eclipsed by Goodman and Staunton, Schrieber and Emile Hirsch's "Charlie"-obsessed Viet-vet.
In the end, it's a let-down—like being stuck in the traffic jam and missing the concert, although Lee does manage to show us a lot of entertaining portraits while missing the big picture.
In the final irony, the cost of a ticket to the "real" Woodstock was $8.00. An evening ticket to "Taking Woodstock" costs upwards of 10.
*Lang is played by Jonathan Groff as an intensely smooth corporate hippie, who never seems to sweat the small stuff...or the big stuff, for that matter. In fact, he rarely seems engaged in any of the complexities of the festival, concentrating on "The Big Picture."
Speed Racer(Andy Wachowski/Larry Wachowski, 2008) "This will change everything," said an editor friend of mine. He was referring to the cutting style, I think—the fast blink-of-an-eye editing that has become the norm for action movies, to the point where it seems like a competition to see just how little footage can be used to create an impression that the eye-ball will retain so that an idea can be processed.
The cutting style for Speed Racer stills allows a thought to sink in your head, even if that thought is: "That's a complicated move—not that it matters."
Crowds stayed away in droves from "Speed Racer" and it's just as well. It's another of those all-flash-no-substance muddled-message Wachowski Brothers films.
But it's also a kid's movie—race-winners get a bottle of milk to drink at the Winner's Circle—with curse words and crudities (Bad guy Snake-Oiler says at one point in a race "Let's pinch theses turds off!"), kids giving the finger, and an adult's curdled cynicism.
All the heroes are naively game, but the movie regards them as something to be pitied. It's a paean to the independent spirit that conspires in the shadows, and it teaches kids the Golden Rule: "Screw them before they screw you."
But that's the way it is with the Wachowski Brothers. Fanboys like to see them as deep-thinkers, but you don't get far beyond the shallows before drowning in ambiguity. Folks crowed over the FX of The Matrix, and the veneer of the thing implied that it was a "Spartacus-frees-the-slaves" liberal message movie, but it was basically a fascist power fantasy where a superman saves the day as a Master of the Universe. And the crowd goes wide-eyed grateful for the benevolence of their new dictator. Leni Riefenstahl has brethren in the Wachowski Brothers.
The story is the basic "evil man" story of the cartoons transported to multi-corporation conglomerates trying to control everything, and an awful lot of time is spent showing just how eee-vil and corrupt (and surrounded by cool stuff) the bad guys are. The movie is over-crowded with incident and made busy with jokey things on the soundtrack with such regularity that one can start to predict when a "goose" will happen, such is the clockwork dependability of the movie.
Not that it matters, but how's the acting? Well, the best are old pros John Goodman and Susan Sarandon who know how to best exploit weak material. Christina Ricciputs in a spunky try, but Emile Hirsch, who is terrific playing real human beings is at a loss realistically playing a type with conviction. Matthew Fox plays "Racer X" anonymously, as if thinking it not worth fighting against the costume. And the kid playing Sprightle (Paulie Litt)is annoying as hell, but at least he's a professional kid, as all the others in the cast speak with mush-mouths. The monkey obeys orders well. Richard Roundtree makes a welcome appearance; he may be the coolest guy on Earth.
It's a movie that just ruins your day. The snarky cynicism and bad feelings can be summed up in this exchange that was probably going through the Wachowski's minds throughout making this car-crash of a movie—"The fans love it, don't they?" "They do, God help them."
I had all these cute little headlines to put at the top of this review, reflecting my disappointment with Gus Van Sant's bio-pic of slain San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk—"Condensed Milk," "2% Milk"—but ultimately it comes down to this: you owe it to yourself to see The Times of Harvey Milk, the Oscar-winning documentary on Milk and his efforts to fight discrimination. It'll cost you 90 minutes of your time—and I can't find it online without some kind of rental fee. But, it is definitive, and, frankly, more effective. The new film, Milk acknowledges its debt to this film in its final credits. Indeed, you'll see a lot of archive footage shared by both films. And Milk, a features recreations of footage from this film. The film ends with Sean Penn, as Milk, saying the words that you'll find in the video at the bottom of this review into his tape recorder for the prescient "In the Event of My Death by Assassination" tape he made. But that sentiment was not a private one. And the film does a disservice to Milk making it so.
It also inadvertently plays into stereotypes by suggesting that Milk's assassin Dan White was a closeted gay man instead of the mentally ill person he was. White's angry (and public) resignation during a meeting of the Board of Supervisors is also made private in the film. White's sneaking into the city hall with a loaded weapon to avoid metal detectors is alluded to, but not that White re-loaded his pistol after shooting Mayor Moscone and heading to the Supervisor offices to kill three other board members (Milk was the only one present). That the crimes were deliberate seems incontrovertible. But White was only convicted of manslaughter and released after serving five years in prison.
And one can quibble about Penn's performance as well, making Milk more fey in his mannerisms (Milk had hidden his sexuality in New York for years), and giving him a thick Bronx accent more Harvey Fierstein than Harvey Milk (ironically, Fierstein narrates the "Times" documentary).
Still, ya gotta do what ya gotta do. The original documentary is 25 years old and is probably past its shelf-life. A dramatic re-telling of the tale was probably due (a twin project "The Mayor of Castro Street" has been in the works, first by Oliver Stone and more recently by writer Christopher McQuarrie and Bryan Singer for years, and has, for the time being, been abandoned) if only to keep reminding people of the toll closeted life inflicted on the gay population. The battle continues to put a familiar face on homosexuality. And if a melodramatic re-telling of a pivotal story is required, so be it.
Van Sant does a fine job of mixed media cutting between vintage footage, newscasts, and recreations. And he gets great work out of his cast, particularly Penn, who's never seemed so relaxed in a role, James Franco (who gets better with each movie) as his first partner in San Francisco, and Emile Hirsch from Penn's Into the Wild as one of his youngest recruits.
In a time when the toppling of statues and monuments have been making the news, one may have missed your attention. Officials have removed the "Into the Wild" bus from its position in Denali National Forest in Alaska. The bus, where the body of adventurer Chris McCandless was discovered, has been a macabre destination for tourists and fans of the Jon Krakauer book and Sean Penn film made from it. But, many came ill-prepared. Many rescue operations had to be dispatched, and there were some deaths. And so, authorities flew in on one last rescue mission to end all rescue missions and end the possibility of any more tragedies that might echo that first one.
Here's the review of that film, written at the time of its release.
Finding Oneself and Getting Lost
There is a pleasure in the pathless wood, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Lord Byron
The films of Sean Penn's directorial career have all carried the underlying theme of obsession. But until now, he has always shown the dark side of it—The Indian Runner, The Crossing Guard, The Pledge (the latter two focusing on revenge, of sorts)—the Need to get even, to balance the books, to set the world and Nature right. But with his Oscar-winning role in Clint Eastwood's Mystic River, he seems to have cauterized that need from his system. His new film, Into the Wild, is just as obsessive but presents more of a spiritual quest. Nature is already balanced. Now one must become a part of it. Based on Jon Krakauer's book (which is expanded from his articles on "Outside Online"—originally called "Death of an Innocent" and not available on the site at this time), it dogs the footsteps of Christopher McCandless, who upon graduating from college, disappeared on a journey across the country and eventually to Alaska, where he tried to live off the land, and his body was found by moose hunters in an abandoned bus. If he wanted to become one with Nature, he achieved it. But there's no great trick doing that. As so often happens, the destination isn't as important as the journey.
Penn (who also wrote the complex screenplay) presents McCandless' Odyssey as a rite of passage, literally divided into chapters, starting with his shedding of everything tying him to a middle-class life like his parents (played cold and shrill, by, respectively, Willian Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden), and simply disappearing, leaving no trace, and ensuring that he would have at least a couple months head-start before anyone knew he'd left. These chapters serve as flash-backs of a sort (given the opening of the film, the whole thing could be a flash-back) to McCandless' day-to-day life living in the abandoned bus/hunting drop that would unwittingly be his last stand.
The narrative is punctuated by McCandless' writings in dreamy, floaty script, and a journal-like view from home from the perspective of his sister (played by Jena Malone). Each chapter begins with an extended montage played over songs by Eddie Vedder (which sounds like it could be horrendous, but Vedder's introspective lowing is the perfect counter-point to the images and one begins to look forward to the transitions). The results are never less than hopeful while never losing sight of the hardships along the way, the lessons learned and the experiences along the way.
Or the people. Along the way in the form of jobs worked, beds crashed, and meals shared, McCandless (who travels by the name of "Alexander Supertamp") encounters reflections of his parents and free spirits who push him to abandon his mental baggage, that, instead of establishing lasting ties, only steels his determination to complete his trek to Alaska. Here the movies shines with wonderful performances by Catherine Keener, Vince Vaughn (who's great), Hal Holbrook (who is heart-breakingly good-he should be recognized for this) and some folks that Penn just found on location (including a guy named Brian Dierker, who runs a ski shop in Flagstaff, Arizona--first movie--endearing performance).
And its here that if the movie has a weakness, it is that Everybody Loves Chris, wanting him to settle, and by having that be the sole reaction, one's manipulation-shield is engaged, wondering if Penn is stacking the deck, making his McCandless not merely charismatic, but near-messianic. Counter that with the fact that these people are road-blocks to his purposes, while being necessary way-stops on the journey, and those quibbling mountains become mole-hills.*
I suppose one could have done more to balance his character (for example, including the opinions of the native Alaskans who thought him merely "stupid"), but short of showing him rolling a drunk, I'm not sure that such a pruning would be all that worthwhile. His encounters are already showing the roads not taken, it is THIS path that is the subject of the film. Anything else would be a detour.
I didn't want this film to end, frankly. It's truly exciting to see a director use a kaleidoscope of techniques to tell a story that celebrates life.
Even if it ends in death.
* I wrote this entire review without mentioning the amazing work of Emile Hirsch asMcCandless--the guy's in the ENTIRE movie, and if McCandless is too much of a good thing, it's because Hirsch's performance is so constantly winning, and focused. You're compelled to keep watching this kid, and fear that his next step will be wrong. It's an involving, remarkable performance. While Penn's work is astonishing, he has the best co-conspirator in Emile Hirsch. His next role? He's playing "Speed" Racer. Sure, he looks just like him, but...I mean, c'mon, man. AAAAUGH!
50 years ago today, the Woodstock Festival began...
Written at the time of the film's release.
"I Haven't Slept in Three Days, My Hip is Acting Up, and the Beer is Warm." "So...You're Good." Ang Lee has spent almost his entire career showing the common humanity in the disenfranchised, whether they be the lower rungs of Class Society, gay cowboys, set-apart and -upon martial artists, political spies, and Incredible Hulks—the commonality of the different. Even with the slightly lighter touch he employs here, he does the same for Catskill Jews and Hippie culture inTaking Woodstock.Both groups are isolated and flung apart, but come together—initially uneasily, but soon in mutual satisfaction, to produce something intangible and real, that would change everything. For a little while. Elliott Tiber, nee Tieschberg, (Demetri Martin) is a repressed jangle of contradictions, a cosmopolitan boy lost in the woods. He's hasn't quite left the nest of his parents (Henry Goodman, Imelda Staunton) who own—barely—the El Monaco Hotel in the Catskills town of White Lake. He hasn't quite left the closet, either. A painter, he hasn't met with success in The Big Apple. He deals with the banks about the Hotel's financing, but has nothing to say about how it's run, despite trying to stir up business. He's the President of the White Lake Chamber of Commerce...which is basically just a Chamber, but in a Church basement, and little Commerce.
The one thing he has going for the Hotel is a low-key Arts Festival he puts on every year, featuring a couple folk-singers and the gonzo theater-troupe who inhabit the barn on their property. Until...the planned "Woodstock" festival with a few choice acts is driven out of their original venue by the locals, and Tiber makes it known to the organizers that he has a permit for an arts festival, a rare thing with the reluctant townspeople, who are content with the "regular crowd" and don't want much disruption. Pretty soon, the Tieschberg's and local dairy farmer Max Yasgur (a genially subdued Eugene Levy, making more of less) are persona non grata around town as the area is crowded with a motley crew of organizers, "suits," crew-men, helicopters, expectant hippies, and, as the concert grows closer, one of the largest traffic jams in the Nation's history.
By that time, the Tieschberg's are in constant motion as their hotel is over-crowded, water-shortaged, beer-deficient and out of control, if not for the efforts of Mr. Tieschberg and self-appointed head-buster Vilma, a tranny ex-Ranger with a baseball bat (Liev Schreiber, in a bad blonde wig and a Southern Belle's wardrobe, looking just like you'd expect him to, and bringing a rueful dignity to the enterprise).
As long as Lee focuses on the chaos, the film is a raucously good-natured train-wreck. Once he leaves the side-show for Elliott's Odyssey to "The Festival," the film becomes one of those earnest little movies that tells you its important but can't show you, just as it can't show the concert going on. Oh, you hear snippets of song-track that was featured at Woodstock, but not the actual performances (as they're owned by somebody else, I guess) reverberating in the background. There's a couple of FX shots that suggest the scope of the thing (one an LSD-influenced version that shows the crowd turning into an undulating sea-scape that would be more effective...oh, if you really were on acid, say), but the whole sequence is not only uninvolving, it diminishes the event...far-off, rather than far-out.
Woodstock has been romanticized so much over the last 40 years that it might better be called "Three Days of Peace, Love and Understanding and All the Crappy Parts You've Forgotten." But, Lee doesn't shy from the problems (segmented into easily focused nuggets of information through a split-screen technique which was the vogue at the time), although nothing is dwelled upon: the famous "brown acid" is mentioned, the muddy conditions, the interminable traffic jams, the inconsistent weather and jerry-rigged wiring that combined to cause so much metal on the grounds to shock when touched, the unsanitary conditions, the constant air-lifting of accidents and overdoses. and the fact that damned few people heard much music. It was enough to "be there," and that entailed a super-human ability to "go with the flow," of which, with the rain, there seemed to be plenty. It's all cataloged, but briefly, because like a lot of movies about "big events," it boils down to who's telling the story and how much they really played a part in it.
For the sub-title of the movie should be "Elliott Tiber and what he did at Woodstock." Tiber's account has been questioned by organizer Michael Lang* who claims that he may have had the permit, but he wasn't present at all the places he claims he was. And so the movie is reduced to the old conundrum of who gets to re-write history as Tiber shows "how Woodstock was important to him," as well as how "he was important to Woodstock." This might have been a bit more convincing if Tiber weren't portrayed by Demetri Martin. Martin is a gifted comedian as his stints on "The Daily Show," and his own "Comedy Central" series have amply displayed. But, Taking Woodstock shows none of the puppyish energy that makes his observations so hilarious. Instead, his Tiber is slackly reminiscent of Chance the Gardener in Being There, wandering like a ping-pong ball through the movie, with just as much dramatic weight. He is handily eclipsed by Goodman and Staunton, Schrieber and Emile Hirsch's "Charlie"-obsessed Viet-vet.
In the end, it's a let-down—like being stuck in the traffic jam and missing the concert, although Lee does manage to show us a lot of entertaining portraits while missing the big picture.
In the final irony, the cost of a ticket to the "real" Woodstock was $8.00. An evening ticket to Taking Woodstock costs upwards of 10.
* Lang is played by Jonathan Groff as an intensely smooth corporate hippie, who never seems to sweat the small stuff...or the big stuff, for that matter. In fact, he rarely seems engaged in any of the complexities of the festival, concentrating on "The Big Picture."
Id, Ego, and Super-Ego ("The names have been changed to protect the innocent...")
or "Nothing's Too Good for 'the Man Who Shot Liberty Valance'"
I run hot and cold on director Quentin Tarantino. Because he runs hot and cold in his movies. He started out as a grand cribber of cinema, achieving success right out of the gate by using ideas that he'd seen in foreign films that few others had seen—his years as a video-store clerk stood him in good stead and he had a marvelous ability to see good quality, even in mediocre films, and parlay that in his films. I've always seen the Quentin Tarantino success story as a bit like "The Emperor's New Clothes," another of those where if you outlast the folks who remember your source material, you'll do just fine, and I've seen it happen time and again, not only in film-making but in music, as well. One can say that there's only so many notes in the scale and only so many ways you can photograph something, but that gives lie to those movie-story-tellers and composers who still somehow manage to make something unique, distinctive, and artistically personal. But Tarantino can surprise you. He does me. After being largely "ho-hum" about Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, I found his version of Jackie Brown impressive and heart-felt. There was hope. I thought his half of the "Grindhouse" double bill—Death-Proof—was a better version of the exploitation films he was trying to emulate, and I was amazed at what he did with Inglourious Basterds. I considered that the best movie he's ever made. Judging from the last line of the movie, Tarantino thought so, too. If it wasn't for mis-steps like the Kill Bill movies and junk like The Hateful Eight, I'd be more confident walking into one of his movies. And there were never any lingering doubts about what I'd just seen, good or bad with Tarantino. The fact that I HAD lingering doubts aboutOnce Upon a Time...in Hollywoodwas actually a good sign. The movie had enough good things—smart things—that it stuck like a burr in my cortex, and let me suss it out, rather than dismiss it.
Forget Inglourious Basterds (well, don't—it's a good absurdist film about movies with a lot of catharsis thrown in). Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood may be his best movie. Born of his love for that grimy corner of L.A. immersed in movie-making where he grew up, Tarantino has culled pertinent details and coalesced them into a tale of two Hollywood discards, who, despite their circumstances and their frailties, just might make a difference and do some good in the world, aside from the negligible jobs of making fantasies for themselves and others.
The film has the basic structure of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (a title borrowed by Tarantino and quite a few others) that set its own events in a fairy tale narrative setting. Disparate characters orbit around each other until an inevitable collision creates a unified favorable result. The interactions depend largely on Fate and the separate machinations of those involved. It so happens that they share the aspect that two individuals of experience act as agents to ensure the future of a third whose life is just beginning.
Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a youngish actor having a mid-career crisis—too old to be thought of as in his young heart-throb days and too young to be considered a good character actor—having seen success starring on an early 60's western series called "Bounty Law." He could be Steve McQueen from "Wanted: Dead or Alive" but without the successful transition into big movies. Or Clint Eastwood ("Rawhide") without the Leone "spaghetti" westerns. Or Clint Walker ("Cheyenne") or James Garner ("Maverick") or Burt Reynolds ("Gunsmoke" and "Riverboat")—it really doesn't matter "who," DiCaprio's Dalton has aspects to all of them, but without the mainstream success transitioning to movies after TV. He has a narcissistic streak—he's an actor, after all—that sees more bad than good and he drowns the career disappointments (like losing the lead in The Great Escape to McQueen, which Tarantino has the generosity to show what it would've been like) with booze and smokes and self-recrimination.
He's done a couple cheap exploitation films, but sees them as a step downward, opting, instead, to guest-star on some TV shows—like "The FBI" and the upcoming pilot for "Lancer" starring James Stacy (Timothy Olyphant) and Wayne Maunder (Luke Perry—his last role before his death). Even this doesn't enthuse Dalton, who's just scraping by to make it to the next "Pilot season" where he might (but probably won't) score a lead in a series. Even an offer by producer Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino) to go to Europe and star in some foreign films is seen by Dalton as giving up and "settling."
That actually sounds pretty good to Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), who has moved from being Rick's stunt-double on "Bounty Law" to being the guy "who carries his load"—acting as go-fer, handy-man, and chauffeur for Rick (Rick can't drive owing to an earlier DUI). Cliff is the guy who gets things done, doing odd-jobs around Rick's house on Cielo Drive (while living in a trailer behind the Van Nuys Drive-In, where he dotes on his trained pit-bull, Brandy). Cliff abides. He's never had the chances that Rick has had and things that Dalton might be grieving over, he sees as a pretty good life. If Dalton thinks the glass is half-empty, Cliff is just happy to have a glass.
The two might be twins of each other, while polar opposites—like the twin aspects of Edward Norton in Fight Club—one self-involved and indecisive, the other pragmatic and decisive. It's not clear who's in charge of who, with Rick giving orders and Cliff giving pep-talks ("Hey, you're Rick fuckin' Dalton! Don't you forget it!"), but the two are close—real close. You can't have one without the other.
Cliff and Rick watch the latter's performance on "The F.B.I." (Burt Reynolds originally appeared in the featured episode)
The movie takes place over three days—Saturday and Sunday, February 8th and 9th, 1969, and then six months later, on August 8th, 1969 (a date that will live in infamy). The first two take a look at the day-to-day lives of Rick and Cliff, as the latter ferries Dalton to take a meeting with Schwarz and to the studio set of "Lancer" where the former series star is set to guest-star as "the heavy" in an attempt to expand the range of roles being offered to him.
For Cliff, it's a mildly frustrating experience as there won't be any stunt-work for him to do on the shoot, as Dalton's role doesn't require any—and because the stunt-coordinator (Kurt Russell) is reluctant to hire him, given Cliff's past—there's the incident about the death of Cliff's wife (of which Cliff was accused and acquitted) and the rhubarb that ensued when Cliff was stunting for Rick on an episode of "The Green Hornet" TV series, where he had a little too much of co-star Bruce Lee's boasting and roughed him up in a fight.*Instead, Cliff is assigned to fix Rick's TV aerial. We also get to see a bit of Cliff's solitary existence.
We also get to see a bit of the life of Rick Dalton's neighbor on Cielo Drive, Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), who has come back to Hollywood after appearing in a movie for director Roman Polanski and subsequently marrying him. We mostly observe her, a beautiful young actress, returning to her roots and enjoying an upward spiral of success. At one point, she talks her way into a showing of the Dean Martin vehicle The Wrecking Crew (and Tarantino shows scenes of the movie featuring the actual Sharon Tate—not Robbie posing as her—which is a lovely touch) and basking in the reaction of the audience to her performance.
We also see her join Polanski at a party at the Playboy Mansion, dancing with the likes of Michelle Phillips and Mama Cass of The Mamas and the Papas while being observed by the likes of Steve McQueen (Damien Lewis) and Connie Stevens (Dreama Walker) and being speculated about in the bitchy coveting way of Hollywood—"Well, she has a "type:" prosperous men who look like ten year old boys, while McQueen offers a calculating scenario of how she broke off with hairdresser Jay Sebring, who's maintained a close relationship: "All he (Polanski) has to do is fuck up and she comes back to him." Hollywood isn't such a friendly town that it isn't covetous or catty.
So, these three—Rick the craving, Cliff the competent and Sharon, the girl in the spotlight. But, there are others. Not working towards a dream, but sponging off the spoils of it. At one point, a grungy looking Charlie Manson (Damon Herriman) appears at the Polanski driveway, looking for record producer Terry Melcher (his work with Paul Revere and the Raiders appears all over the film) and Brian Wilson, friends of his that used to live there. He's turned away. But, he's never far away.
For example, in his ramblings while Rick is at the studio, Cliff encounters a pack of young women, dumpster-diving and attracting attention. They're part of Manson's coven—"The Family"—currently squatting at the Spahn Ranch, a former movie set owned by an acquaintance (Bruce Dern) of Cliff's. Cliff's repeated encounters with one of the Manson followers (Margaret Qualley) makes him curious, and a bit concerned, leading him to go out there and try and check up on the old man, which is hostilely resisted by the "Family." Cliff doesn't care, brushing past objections and the defiance of Squeaky Fromme (Dakota Fanning) to find Charles Spahn blind, practically bed-ridden and entirely dependent on the Manson family.
Cliff's trip out there is the stuff of fears, intimidation and threat, a seemingly loving and organized group of free-thinkers, who, when challenged, become a mob of primitive zombies, brain-washed and untethered except to each other, and Tarantino does a masterful job of creating an underlying sense of primal dread in his shot choices and a creeping sound design that gets under the skin. Cliff is a skeptical observer, implacable in his mission to find out Spahn's condition and doesn't care what he has to do to accomplish it, and he doesn't care how many "dirty hippies" he has to go through to find out for himself.
The third day of the film's timeline is where the crux of the movie plays out. And given the "history" of the Manson "family," that date of August 8th, 1969 should put an anticipatory fear into any movie-goer. That date, six months after the first two days, sees changes in the lives of all three protagonists, and, in its history, signals the end of an era, of transitions from which nobody came back. That date, historically, has marked the end of the 60's and when L.A. changed from a dream factory to the end of dreams and free-love innocence—the death of "The Summer of Love," suffocated by a predatory, anarchic savagery.
But, this is Tarantino's movie and his love-letter to the Los Angeles of his youth. Just as he re-wrote history in Inglorious Basterds, he refuses to let that third act play out in reality, and subverts it into an equally savage last act, that manages to re-align the timeline, and keep Hollywood—HIS Hollywood—the stuff of dreams, rather than satanic nightmares.
It leaves one in a semi-happy Twilight Zone of hope, where...no, not everything is perfect, as the world can still be cruel and unfair, but it isn't turned upside down in favor of the devils, rather than the angels the city was christened for. Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood is a superbly realized, great film of slavish detail and loving devotion. It may even be better than its director, Quentin Tarantino, thinks it is—which, given his penchant for giddy self-aggrandizement, is something one never...ever...thought could be said.
The pilot—the original version—for the "Lancer" TV series directed, indeed, by Sam Wanamaker. Around about 27 minutes in, things will start to get mighty familiar to those who've seen OUAT...IH.
The actor is Joe Don Baker.
A gallery of Rick Dalton's Italian films
Sharon Tate...once upon a time.
* The incident is uncharacteristic of Lee and, at the behest of Lee portrayer Mike Moh and Brad Pitt, the scene was toned down considerably so that "The Dragon" isn't bested by Cliff in a fight, but it is interrupted in a draw.
By that time, the Tieschberg's are in constant motion as their hotel is over-crowded, water-shortaged, beer-deficient and out of control, if not for the efforts of Mr. Tieschberg and self-appointed head-buster Vilma, a trans ex-Ranger with a baseball bat (Liev Schreiber, in a bad blonde wig and a Southern Belle's wardrobe, looking just like you'd expect him to, and bringing a rueful dignity to the enterprise).
As long as Lee focuses on the chaos, the film is a raucously good-natured train-wreck. Once he leaves the side-show for Elliott's Odyssey to "The Festival," the film becomes one of those earnest little movies that tells you its important but can't show you, just as it can't show the concert going on. Oh, you hear snippets of song-track that was featured at Woodstock, but not the actual performances (as they're owned by somebody else, I guess) reverberating in the background. There's a couple of FX shots that suggest the scope of the thing (one an LSD-influenced version that shows the crowd turning into an undulating sea-scape that would be more effective...oh, if you really were on acid, say), but the whole sequence is not only un-involving, it diminishes the event...far-off, rather than far-out.
Woodstock has been romanticized so much over the last 40 years that it might better be called "Three Days of Peace, Love and Understanding and All the Crappy Parts You've Forgotten." But, Lee doesn't shy from the problems (segmented into easily focused nuggets of information through a split-screen technique which was the vogue at the time), although nothing is dwelled upon: the famous "brown acid" is mentioned, the muddy conditions, the interminable traffic jams, the inconsistent weather and jerry-rigged wiring that combined to cause so much metal on the grounds to shock when touched, the unsanitary conditions, the constant air-lifting of accidents and overdoses. and the fact that damned few people heard much music. It was enough to "be there," and that entailed a super-human ability to "go with the flow," of which, with the rain, there seemed to be plenty. It's all catalogued, but briefly, because like a lot of movies about "big events," it boils down to who's telling the story and how much they really played a part in it.
For the sub-title of the movie should be "Elliott Tiber and what he did at Woodstock." Tiber's account has been questioned by organizer Michael Lang* who claims that he may have had the permit, but he wasn't present at all the places he claims he was. And so the movie is reduced to the old conundrum of who gets to re-write history as Tiber shows "how Woodstock was important to him," as well as how "he was important to Woodstock." This might have been a bit more convincing if Tiber weren't portrayed by Demetri Martin. Martin is a gifted comedian as his stints on "The Daily Show," and his own "Comedy Central" series have amply displayed. But, "Taking Woodstock" shows none of the puppyish energy that makes his observations so hilarious. Instead, his Tiber is slackly reminiscent of Chance the Gardener in Being There, wandering like a ping-pong ball through the movie, with just as much dramatic weight. He is handily eclipsed by Goodman and Staunton, Schrieber and Emile Hirsch's "Charlie"-obsessed Viet-vet.
In the end, it's a let-down—like being stuck in the traffic jam and missing the concert, although Lee does manage to show us a lot of entertaining portraits while missing the big picture.
In the final irony, the cost of a ticket to the "real" Woodstock was $8.00. An evening ticket to "Taking Woodstock" costs upwards of 10.
The one thing he has going for the Hotel is a low-key Arts Festival he puts on every year, featuring a couple folk-singers and the gonzo theater-troupe who inhabit the barn on their property. Until...the planned "Woodstock" festival with a few choice acts is driven out of their original venue by the locals, and Tiber makes it known to the organizers that he has a permit for an arts festival, a rare thing with the reluctant townspeople, who are content with the "regular crowd" and don't want much disruption. Pretty soon, the Tieschberg's and local dairy farmer Max Yasgur (a genially subdued Eugene Levy, making more of less) are persona non grata around town as the area is crowded with a motley crew of organizers, "suits," crew-men, helicopters, expectant hippies, and, as the concert grows closer, one of the largest traffic jams in the Nation's history.
