Point of the scene where Margot Robbie goes in movie theater
She goes into town, buys “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” for her husband, and then goes to watch a movie … about 10-15 minutes given to all of these scenes. What was the point?
shareAtmosphere (like all the longish driving scenes)...and a yet another opportunity for QT to indulge in his foot fetish.
shareBut her feet were out of focus. What was that about?
shareIn real life, and some years after Tate's murder, Polanski made a movie out of "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" -- called Tess. I think Tess was made in Europe and released after Polanski fled the US. So that's an "in joke."
Another in joke: the very old man who sells her the book (and gets one line, I think) was an actor from way back in the days of Universal TV series like The Virginian. His name was Clu Gulager. He was great in Don Siegel's "The Killers" (1964) as the younger part of a two-man hit team with Lee Marvin as the older one -- pitted against Ronald Reagan(in his last screen role) as a crime boss! Gulager died in 2022, three years after the release of this movie, at the age of 93.
The movie theater where Tate/Robie buys her ticket and goes in is "the Bruin" in Westwood Village, West Los Angeles, right next to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA.) In the late sixties(when the scene is set) and the seventies. the studios opened all their biggest movies in Westwood Village. The Exorcist played in Westwood Village(at the National theater, now torn down) for weeks as the ONLY theater in Los Angeles showing the film. The lines were very long.
The theater was called "The Bruin" because the UCLA sports teams are all called "the Bruins" (as in California bears.) The theater across the street from "The Bruin" is "The Village Theater" (where Pendulum is playing in this movie) and together, those two theaters have hosted movie premieres for decades.
In the summer of 2022, during the actors and writers strikes, Quentin Taratino was photographed buying tickets to "Barbie" at the Village theater -- I think he bought Oppenheimer tickets the same day (at the Bruin?)
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The bit where Sharon Tate persuades the theater manager to let her in for free to see the movie because she is in it(The Wrecking Crew, a Matt Helm spy spoof with Dean Martin) is based (naturally!) on a REAL situation where Tarantino asked to get into the Bruin to see a movie he WROTE (True Romance, maybe?) He simply converted that real life experience into a movie scene.
I think the writing and acting is charming in this scene -- from Robbie as Sharon Tate, from whoever played the theater manager(I cant find his name) and especially from Kate Berlant as the theater ticket taker ("You're IN the movie?")
There is some "magic" in seeing the fictional version of Sharon Tate(Margot Robbie) watch the REAL version of Sharon Tate (pretty in different way) actually IN the movie on screen. Its poignant. I don't know why Robbie's feet are out of focus. And can we agree that now QT does the "foot thing" because everybody expects such shots? (Like Hitchcock with his cameos in all of his movies.)
All that said, yes, this is a "mood and atmosphere" scene, but it gets into some nice detail about the people who actually WORK in Hollywood, I think:
While Rick Dalton is off "doing his job" shooting a pilot(pilots are/were shot on weekends when sets were available), Sharon Tate -- with time on her hands because she is NOT working -- goes off to see the RESULTS of her work: a not-very-good movie.
But Sharon gets to hear people cheer and applaud her in a fight scene, creating the satisfaction that actors and directors sometimes feel.
In real life, back in 1972, Cary Grant urged his young friend director Peter Bogdanovich to go the Radio City Music Hall in NYC to watch Bogdo's hit comedy "Whats Up Doc?" with a full house audience in the hundreds. Grant told Bogdo, "It will do your heart good to hear people laughing and applauding at what you created."
That's Sharon Tate, here.
So why didn't Mr. Tarantino decide to make the scene with Rick and Cliff going to the theaters to see themselves in a movie and both them and the audience enjoying themselves instead of Sharon Tate? It doesn't make sense to have her suddenly show up and become the protagonist for an entire sequence when you could accomplish the same goal by using the main characters that are the focus of the movie. It just feels unnecessary and self-indulgence on the part of Mr. Tarantino because he felt the need to have her in the movie but it doesn't add anything to the story. If Mr. Tarantino felt that the story of Sharon Tate was so important and that he wants the world to remember her for who she truly was and not the tragedy she is famously associated with he should have just made the movie about her. The fact that the Manson family is even in the movie in the first place is already making the association in people's heads that "oh right, here it comes" when I believe Mr. Tarantino's goal was to celebrate her life rather than having her being remembered the way she currently is. I get the whole point of "Once Upon a Time..." that it's an alternate reality or a wishful revisitation of the past where in this timeline Sharon Tate doesn't get murdered so again, why even have the Manson family involved at all? Why not make a timeline where the Manson cult doesn't exist? This is really what bugs me about this movie because on one hand it feels like a celebration but the final act is about revenge and feels like an entirely different movie tonally.
shareYou raise several good points and I find them interesting to discuss -- rather than to put down or argue about. But I would like to discuss them a little.
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So why didn't Mr. Tarantino decide to make the scene with Rick and Cliff going to the theaters to see themselves in a movie and both them and the audience enjoying themselves instead of Sharon Tate?
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My guess: Unlike Rick and Cliff(Leo and Brad), Robbie was playing a REAL PERSON -- a real actress -- and so it was poignant to see Robbie in the theater seat and the real Sharon Tate on the big screen. As that movie proved -- it was "The Wrecking Crew" a truly silly Dean Martin spy spoof -- Sharon Tate was not a major actress in 1969, the movie also showed her to be a sweet innocent party girl who just liked to dance all the time. She was put on a very unfortunate collision course with the horrific Mansons -- but THEY were the "dark side of the coin" in 1969 hippie Los Angeles, welcomed into the homes of rock musicians (mainly) and movie people because it was a free and open time. Worse for Sharon Tate: she was very pregnant when murder came to call.
..and if you know the history of the time, this movie theater scene hurts a bit: Sharon Tate was no big deal, just a nice girl trying to make it in Hollywood -- boosted for a time by marriage to Polanski, but as "Steve McQueen" in the movie opines, likely headed to be cheated upon and divorced by him eventually. But she never even got THAT life.
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It doesn't make sense to have her suddenly show up and become the protagonist for an entire sequence when you could accomplish the same goal by using the main characters that are the focus of the movie.
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Well, she is one of the main characters, too. There are three: Rick, Cliff, and Sharon.
And in this long sequence(Sunday February 9, 1969) they all split up for different "stories": Rick goes to the studio to shoot his pilot; Cliff (1) repairs the TV antenna; (2) flashbacks to the wife he may have murdered and his run-in with Bruce Lee and (3) unwittingly confronts the Mansons at Spahnn ranch AND: Sharon Tate goes to Westwood Village(picking up a female hitchiker, buying Tess for Polanski and watching that movie -- for free as its "star." The sequence ends with all three characters "ending their day" to the strains of Joes Feliciano's California Dreamin': Cliff narrowly escapes the Mansons; Rick is picked up at the studio by Cliff; Sharon leaves the Bruin theater all alone.
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It just feels unnecessary and self-indulgence on the part of Mr. Tarantino because he felt the need to have her in the movie but it doesn't add anything to the story.
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I think it was at Cannes that a reporter claimed Tarantino barely gave Sharon Tate anything to do or say. He replied in cold anger: "I disagree with your hypothesis." So HE felt he was giving Sharon Tate a long bow in this movie. We see a somewhat frivolous(always dancing) and child-like woman in Tate(but there are LOTS of starlets like that in Hollywood), but we also see a good person. The Mansons brutally -- and I mean brutally -- snuffed her and her baby out, just like that, with long sharp knives, even over her pleas to at least spare the baby(one Manson girl was a witness to this, and turned state's evidence).
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If Mr. Tarantino felt that the story of Sharon Tate was so important and that he wants the world to remember her for who she truly was and not the tragedy she is famously associated with he should have just made the movie about her.
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Why did he have to? By writing that entire other fictional story about Rick and Cliff, he lured in two of biggest movie stars(Leo and Brad) to play them, and wrote good parts for the great Al Pacino and the cult hero Kurt Russell as well. Rick and Cliff were based roughly on TV/movie star Burt Reynolds and HIS stunt double Hal Needham(who became the director of various Burt films) and in telling THAT story and intertwining it with the reality of the Sharon Tate tragedy -- I think Tarantino gave us a very entertaining and downright emotional film.
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Thank you for your replies and I get what Mr. Tarantino was trying to do but my main issue really is that he tried to do too many things at once. IMO the movie would have been better if he didn't include any real life character and only went with the fictional ones which were already based on real people as you say. If it wasn't for the whole Sharon Tate/Manson storyline, the movie would have potential to grow on me but as it is and especially the final act I don't think I will ever feel the need to revisit it again.
shareFair enough. I take your points, thank you for expressing them.
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