On ONCE UPON A TIME... IN HOLLYWOOD and The One R

Around the time when I was graduating from college my father was having problems finding a job. He had worked for one company most of my life, but when he didn't take a promotion, he was made redundant. The main reason why he didn't take the job was because he/we would have to move to Seattle (as I have been told, much of this is second hand information that I remember from twenty + years ago). As a man who didn't grow up with computers, the world was passing him by. My mom and I noticed that his behavior had gotten a little off, and one night when I think my mom asked him what he wanted to do, his answer was that he wanted to die. Then he had a stroke in front of us. It was, to say the very least, theatrical (like I said, the very least).

My father then spent the next ten years living up to his wish, albeit slowly. He had multiple miniature strokes, which ruined his short term memory, and the longer it went on the "simpler" he got. Sadly, he was in care for years in Portland as my mom could no longer live with him or take of him because there was a persistent and real fear that he might accidentally do something terrible (like leave the gas on) if he was left alone. Eventually he lost the ability to speak, and in one of the last conversations I had with him, he told me that he recently watched THREE FUGITIVES and loved it. I moved to Los Angeles in 2004, he died in 2007. I didn't see him for most of those three years, but by the end he was in a wheelchair, out of Portland in a Veteran's home, unable to speak, and toothless due to a root canal. There are so many layers of horrible to this story. One of the worst is that he sort of wished it on himself.

Before I moved to Los Angeles, I started dating a girl named Sara. We had gone to college together and she worked in the computer center, so I saw her all the time. I was painfully shy then (while also being loud, such is my lot), and we may have flirted a little, but when I ran into her at a Liz Phair concert - around the time I was let go from working as a film buyer for a theater chain - we connected through Friendster and set up a date (which happened after I was let go). Around that time I came to LA to see if I could live there, and as I had a number of good friends already in the city, it seemed like the right thing to do. So, here I was dating Sara and we had an amazing first date. One where you talk all night until you get in the car and then make out for so long (but because it's a first date you don't push it) you go home sore and exhausted. But the longer we dated the more I had to think about my future. LA was calling, but could this woman I went to college with be "the one?" Eventually our clothes came off, but by the time we got around to having sex, I was twisted to the point where I couldn't perform because there was too much pressure, and if we had I might have felt locked in. She dumped me shortly thereafter. I think I'm legally required to tell you that that hasn't happened to me again, but it's one of those things where I know that what was going on in my head made it a non-starter (which is a form of decision-making). I moved. And a couple years later, maybe even a decade or so after, I checked in on her - for whatever reason - on Facebook. As I can best make out from what's available there, she had a brain tumor and died a couple years ago.

I don't talk about this ever (out of respect for her), but I dated a supermodel. She lived in my apartment complex and we ended up hanging out for a week and a half before she moved back to Europe. It was perfect. We went out dancing, we watched the World Cup, we were clicking, I could make her laugh. And after she left I ended up sending her an email a couple weeks later just saying that I missed her. She then said she was going to a party in Somerset, and needed a date. I told her that I didn't think I could afford it, and she said she had frequent flier miles. Two days later I was on a plane bound for England. Oh, also, around this time I was fired from one of my writing gigs, just as another place I was writing for folded. My trip to England to see her (and my brother and his family) was fucking magical. Ask to see the pictures some time.

Two years later she got in touch and we had lunch. It was going okay, no BEFORE SUNSET, and then I joked that if Trump got elected, we should get married, because I wouldn't want to live in America any more. She then said, "but what about kids" and said something along the lines of "would it be real?" And I was like "yeah, I'd love to have kids, I would totally marry you for real" and she said "then why didn't you ask me two years ago?" I just assumed I was good company. That she liked me, but that also I was in her life because she wanted someone. I never thought she wanted me.  I went home after she basically said "I don't like you any more" and I put on STOP MAKING SENSE because it was all I could do to stay sane. (she invited me to her birthday party this year, so I think we're good, though that could have been an automatic thing).

Should I have proposed back then, or tried to stay in Europe? I remember that moment (one of our last together) where she was on the fence about going home or coming to meet my brother and maybe staying a while, but as we had just left Somerset after sleeping for maybe four hours in a tent in the middle of a party, I was exhausted and wasn't up for twisting her arm even if she wanted me to do so. But then also, everything to that point had been perfect, and I didn't see a future for us, so why ruin perfect? Maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough. But then also, that would have been insane. Like, what am I going to do in Europe. Also, we never watched a movie together. If I put on something like RIO BRAVO is she going to dig it? I mean, not that it's that important, but still. I've fallen in love with people and moved fast, but I don't know how that with her would have worked. Would I have found a job in Europe, or would we come back to the states, but if the... None of it made sense to me.

I went out drinking with a friend a couple years back, and he was having a rough time because he had just broken up with someone, and asked if I had regrets. I said no. I said something after that like "are there things I regret, yes." and he told me I blew it. When I think about the things where I feel like I failed, where there was a moment to choose path A or path B, I don't always feel good. Well, some of them I feel good because they were awesome. But at the same time, I can't dwell on them. I lost my father before I lost him, and as the situation worsened  I was talking to another friend about it, and his father died when he was three. And when I was opining that I wish I got to know my father as a man, he was like "well, you're talking to the wrong person about that, at least you had one." And though I wish I had known my father better, and I wish I didn't remember the sick version of him more than the non-sick version, my father was essentially a good egg, all things, and though I might have some qualms about how he raised me, and questions about who he was, I don't have any control over it. I know my father's life was probably miserable in his final years, but I also know that if I spent more time with him, it would have destroyed most of the best memories (of which there are less than I would like), and would have been at a certain point more for me than him. Did I abandon him? Maybe. What would my life been like if I stayed in Portland and married Sara? Would I have gotten a job at a place like Powells (or more likely retreated back to Movie Madness, even if there would have been zero money in it), would we have been happy, had kids? Would the European have my kids and maybe we get divorced, or we compromise and live in England, where I might have been able to find work and would have been closer to my family? These are all paths that could have been.

I don't know. But I also don't think about these things except when I think about these things, because it's wanking. And I've got nothing against jerking off, but I don't like dwelling on whatever happened that I cannot change because A) that's not how time works and B) I believe I am made of my decisions, good and bad. This is the path that got me to where I am now. And that may not be the best path, but I don't hate my life, or the various and numerous highs and lows that have come from it. Is it possible the best me has an Oscar/mansion/children by now? Of course. I could also be dead. I could also be blind. I could also be in a plane wreck. If you're really going to start rolling some twenty sided dice, go all the way.

The things that I have done that I feel like may have hurt people I don't feel good about, but I think a lot of them - if I were to apologize - might net blank stares. Mostly because I don't know if they always feel the same way I do, just as probably the most embarrassing moments of my life may not be a blip on theirs. Maybe I feel this way because often when people quote me back to me I generally don't remember that bit of cleverness. Things stick to people in different ways. There's very few people I would want to apologies from- but I'm also willing to admit that is partly white privilege talking. I've lived my life trying not to hurt people almost to a fault. I feel like Frankenstein at times while my inner soul is Bill Haverchuck. I'm this super large skinny nerd.

Speaking of. ONCE UPON A TIME... IN HOLLYWOOD, let's dive into spoilers.

SERIOUSLY, SPOILERS

SPOILERS BITCH
SPOIL
SPOIL

At the end of the film, our heroes kill the three people who would have killed Sharon Tate and those who were staying with her at the time. This is something that once the film screened was kind of spoiled immediately because no matter how you dance around the subject, you can't talk about the movie for great lengths without talking about the ending and by talking about Tate, by including Tate, one suspected Quentin Tarantino would pull another INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS situation by reworking what happened. Honestly, I was hoping for something more clever, like that the Manson clan killed Cliff and Rick instead. Not because I hated them, but because their deaths would be a transference like what happens in DEATH PROOF.

Instead, the Manson clan are taken out by a "good guy with a gun" as played by Brad Pitt's wife killer Cliff Booth. And as much as it is satisfying to watch the three die a grizzly death, the violence towards women is more pronounced (perhaps because there are two of them), and over the top. I am not defending the Manson people in any way shape or form, but the images of a woman set on fire, and having their brains beaten out register stronger than what happens to Tex, who gets chomped hard by a pitbull, which - using that kind of dog - seems a conscious choice. And though I felt catharsis in this moment, it's a deeply conservative movie in the sense that it validates the viewpoint that competent but terrible people may be the solution to abjectly terrible people. (As for the narrative beat of Pitt's character being a wife killer, I suspect as much as this is a point Tarantino makes to give him a greater redemption arc, but could also be that Hal Needham told him a story about Robert Vaughn's stunt double that he had to include because it was too out there not to.)

This is a movie about regret. But what regrets? For a movie about 1969, Tarantino removes race, sex, and war mostly out of his equation, relegating all three to a trunk ride. Yes, Sharon and Roman Polanski go to the Playboy Mansion, but it's to dance around clothed people. Bill Cosby isn't there even if he was. Polanski, who - going by what I know of the situation - was an all around shit husband who wanted an open marriage, is not much of a character, nor are many of the Hollywood icons featured in the film (Damian Lewis must have had most of his role cut out, right?) This is about two middle aged white guys who need affirmation and support and redemption. Because they know they need it.

Ever since DEATH PROOF, Tarantino has been making period films. I wouldn't say he's retreating to the past, but he has - at least in 3/4 - been righting historical wrongs. You can get away with that easy in DJANGO because of genre. But the brilliance of BASTERDS - which was apparent from reading the script - was that his changing of history was also about playing against our expectations. "They're going to try and kill Hitler, but they will fail because history." "but what if they did succeed?" That's a great narrative gimmick, but it's also an atomic bomb. Christopher Nolan must have felt the same way with MEMENTO and INCEPTION and DUNKIRK. There are certain narrative devices that can only be used once, or only used once people forget about them. That QT goes to that well again is unfortunate even if he does an incredible job of making his alternate timeline a rock solid case. But once he introduces the alt timeline, the ending is boring. Sure, it's fun, but we know where it's going.

My problem, on a DNA level, is that this isn't useful. It's fun in IB because it's about sticking it to Nazis and giving Hitler the death he deserved, but this is more personal - even if Tarantino elides the underbelly of the real people and the time and place. I love Tarantino, and outside of THE HATEFUL EIGHT (which as politically on point as it is, is self indulgent wankery) I like to love all his movies. But at the end of the day, even though I think the ending is saved by Rick being shy and awed by Jay and Sharon liking his work, Tarantino wants to change the past. I don't.

But also, I get it, I didn't spend twenty years working with and for Harvey Weinstein.