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Tarantino "Borrowed" Here in 2019 from the 2018 Movie "Bad Times at the El Royale"

posted 9 months ago by roger1 (2822)
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There was a middling movie release in 2018 called "Bad Times at the El Royale" -- an allegorical thriller set at a hotel on the California/Nevada border at Lake Tahoe(a resort lake that sits in both states.)

I was watching "El Royale" this week (I saw it in 2018 as well) and noticed something about 2/3 in.

In "Bad Times at the El Royale," eventually a "Charles Manson stand in"(played by Chris Hemworth) arrives at the hotel to take away an escaped girl from his murderous cult; he has some other "family members" with him to hold the rest of the cast hostage.

The music cue for Manson/Hemsworth's arrival at the El Royale...played for quite a long time , is: "Young Girls Are Coming to the Canyon," a late 60s song by the Mamas and Papas, I believe about the young girls who came to the canyons of Los Angeles (like Laurel Canyon) along with the hippies and musicians who hung out there. Among those young girls: the Manson girls.

So here's this cue in "Bad Times at the El Royale" and -- QT uses the same song as the cue for the REAL Manson family killers advancing on Sharon Tate's house(but choosing another house in this fictional re-telling). These young girls are coming to the canyon...to kill people.

Its funny: some critics found "El Royale" to be a sub-par Tarantino knock-off, what with its chapter title cards ("Room Four") and its over-articulate characters and its musical riffs...

...but here was QT using one of the musical cues FROM "El Royale" for HIS Manson family movie.

A borrowing? An "homage"? (Maybe QT liked "El Royale" and its writer-director), a THEFT?

We will never know, I guess.

[–] Kowalski (64127) 9 months ago

JUST A TIDBIT...BOTH MOVIES WERE FILMED IN 2018.

[–] roger1 (2822) 9 months ago

So great minds thought alike?

Fine by me.

What a coininkidink!

PS. Its possible that QT saw an early cut of "El Royale" in 2018? It took until the summer of 2019 to get the QT movie out in theaters.

We will never know..

[–] Batfleck (1538) 9 months ago

for Bad Times at the El Royale the Production companies were TSG Entertainment andGoddard Textiles it was Distributed by20th Century Fox

i looked up Tarintinos last three films and he has never worked with any of these. Do studios normally show random other directors from other studios early cuts of films? why would they?

[–] roger1 (2822) 9 months ago

i looked up Tarintinos last three films and he has never worked with any of these. Do studios normally show random other directors from other studios early cuts of films? why would they?

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Oh, I think professional courtesy. Maybe the guy who made "El Royale" was a friend/protege of QT and wanted to show it off.

I have read of this personal example:

In 1972, director Sidney Lumet visited the office of director Alfred Hitchcock at Universal. I don't think Lumet worked much at Universal. Lumet asked Hitchcock what he was working on and Hitchcock said his new movie coming out soon was Frenzy. Lumet asked if he could look at it, and Hitchcock allowed Lumet to watch the only scene fully "cut" -- the film's disturbing rape murder scene. I've always wondered what Lumet thought of THAT.

[–] Batfleck (1538) 9 months ago

Maybe the guy who made "El Royale" was a friend/protege of QT and wanted to show it off.

youd need to provide evidence for this. i cant find any indication of this online.

ive literally never heard of that, besides a director being personal friends and doing so or asking for help, a second opinion, feedback etc

[–] roger1 (2822) 9 months ago

Maybe the guy who made "El Royale" was a friend/protege of QT and wanted to show it off.

youd need to provide evidence for this. i cant find any indication of this online.

ive literally never heard of that, besides a director being personal friends and doing so or asking for help, a second opinion, feedback etc

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I can't "dig deep" on this one for you, but I will add this:

I have read that a group of "movie director brats" of the 70's -- specifically Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese and Brian DePalma -- hung out as friends(of a competitive sort) and showed each other their scripts(I'm sure) and(I think) their "first cut" early version of actual movies.

They also traded projects. Brian DePalma was supposed to do Taxi Driver(with Jeff Bridges, not Robert De Niro, in the lead) but "gave it" to Scorsese. (This story is in Quentin Tarantino's non-fiction book "Cinema Speculation.")

Spielberg was offered by Universal to remake Cape Fear, developed it a bit...and then gave it to..Scorsese(who got his biggest hit.) Newspaper articles circa 1990 and 1991 confirm this.

Spielberg and Lucas gave each other "points"(financial profit participation) in their movies.
(A lot of this can be proven in the book "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" by Peter Biskind.)

And these "director brats" would cast some of the same actors and actresses in their movies, or at least audition them: Amy Irving got the female second lead in DePalma's "Carrie"(behind Sissy Spacek) but lost Princess Leia in Star Wars. Harrison Ford did The Conversation for Coppola(ANOTHER director brat) American Graffiti and Star Wars for Lucas, and Raiders of the Lost Ark for Spielberg AND Lucas.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (2822) 9 months ago

This may seem "far afield" from your first question -- but there is all sorts of evidence for it with those OTHER people.

Did Tarantino know Drew Goddard, the writer-director of Bad Times at the El Royale? Nope, I can't answer that, it was just a guess.

But why'd that same Mamas and Papas song end up as "Charles Manson's theme song" in TWO movies?

[–] Batfleck (1538) 9 months ago

"but here was QT using one of the musical cues FROM "El Royale" for HIS Manson family movie."

okay..... its almost like two films can use the same music and one do it better......

[–] roger1 (2822) 9 months ago

okay..... its almost like two films can use the same music and one do it better......

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Well, I do think it is interesting.

The Mamas and the Papas didn't write the song about the Manson Family, but here it is used both times to show the Manson Family(or a fake one in El Royale) arriving to the same song.

Funny: I saw El Royale at a theater in 2018 and OATIH at a theater in 2019 and I don't remember noticing the song in both movies that time -- only in the Tarantino movie did I notice it. I had that song on a Mamas and Papas greatest hits album long ago -- I remembered the song from then.

[–] Martindo (58) 8 months ago

That was a weird movie. The "cult leader" trope might predate the historical Manson, so I didn't see it as a ripoff in Bad Times. Your observations about the music are superb. Given that Once Upon a Time used a HUGE number of real historical references (some of which were slightly off, like the date the 747 actually began commercial flights), I think you're right that QT was intentionally making an easter egg or paying homage.

OTOH, imitating the imitation isn't that unusual. See my review of Foundation:
https://martinschell.substack.com/p/can-a-solid-foundation-lead-to-a-weak-firststory