The Origins of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”

(My Theory)

I enjoyed Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” when I saw it a few years ago, but I didn’t think it was great film.

The thing that struck me about the film was this: Tarantino must have already established himself as a very big deal if the studio execs in Hollywood were willing to let him make this movie — because it’s basically a dramatization of a thirteen-year-old boy’s view of the world.

I was once a thirteen-year-old boy myself.

When my friends and I were thirteen, we spent a lot of time talking about tough guys and who would kick whose ass in a hypothetical fight.

Who would win a fight between Clint Eastwood and Chuck Norris?

Who would win a fight between Rambo and five gorillas?

Who would win a fight between “Mean” Joe Greene and three alligators high on cocaine?

etc., etc.

I’m guessing girls don’t spend as much time talking about such things.

I’m guessing just the three lines of adolescent boy talk I transcribed above have convinced many adult females to click the “back” button on their browser and find something else to read.

Anyway, in my experience, adolescent boys can talk about hypothetical fights and relative levels of badassery for hours — and my theory is that “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” can probably be traced back to a bull session in which Tarantino and some boyhood friend of his traded opinions on these perennial topics.

I imagine young Quentin sitting somewhere and talking with a buddy.

Let’s call the buddy Dave.

Quentin makes a statement he thinks will be completely non-controversial. He says that movie stuntmen are super badass.

Dave more or less agrees. He says movie stuntmen are badass for sure. Then he adds, as an afterthought, “but Bruce Lee is even more badass!”

“No!” says Quentin. “In a fight, a movie stuntman would totally kick Bruce’s Lee’s ass. That karate shit is mostly fake anyway.”

“You’re wrong, Quentin! One spin kick and your stunt man is on his ass!”

The argument develops. Things heat up. Since the testosterone is starting to flow in both lads, the two get into a fight. Quentin walks away with a bloody lip.

Thirty years pass.

Dave grows up and gets a job selling insurance. Quentin grows up to be an acclaimed movie director — and, when he’s made several popular films and become such a draw at the box office that the studios will let him do pretty much whatever he wants, he decides to make his capstone film. It’s a film that will prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that . . .

• Stunt men are total badasses.
• In a fight between a stunt man and Bruce Lee, the stunt man would totally kick Bruce Lee’s ass.
• Stunt men are such total badasses that if those weirdos from the Manson “family” had attacked a stuntman instead of an effete movie director, the stunt man would have totally kicked their asses, too.

If you’ve seen “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” you know that the events I’ve just described are actually depicted in the film.

The vidcap below shows old-school stuntman Cliff (played by Brad Pitt) settling the disagreement between Dave and Quentin about who would win in a fight between a stuntman and Bruce Lee.

You can see that Bruce Lee is not getting the best of it.

In the background you can see a blue car, already dented from where the macho stuntman threw the hapless martial arts star into the side panel during their first exchange.

The next vidcap shows manly man Cliff “cleaning up the neighborhood” by pummeling one of the (supposedly) tough guys in the Manson “family.”

You should be glad that’s not an actual video: if it were, you’d have blood splattered on your monitor.

But what’s the point of all this celluloid violence?

As far as I can tell, the point is to show that stuntmen are total badasses — so in your face, Dave!

Perhaps I am oversimplfying slightly. Perhaps there is a larger point. Perhaps “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is also a grumpy comment about how Hollywood movie-making has changed over the years. The implied message seems to be “it’s not like it used to be.” There’s a definite “Make Hollywood great again” vibe about the whole film.

Mainly, though, “Once Upon and Time in Hollywood” seems to be a bit of score-settling, with a 30 million dollar budget.

Context matters. If Quentin Tarantino had sent the script for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” to the studios when he was thirteen, it would have ended up in a pile. Because he sent it to them later, when “Quentin Tarantino” was a name to reckon with, it ended up on the wide screen.

That’s my theory.

Whaddaya think?