Los Angeles Times - 04.10.2019

E2 FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2019 LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR

HOLLYWOOD

atSunset&Vine

arclightcinemas.com

WEST LOS ANGELES

at Pico&Westwood

landmarktheatres.com

LAGUNA NIGUEL

Regency Directors Cut Cinema

at Rancho Niguel

regencymovies.com

BURBANK

AMC

Burbank 16

amctheatres.com

DOWNTOWN LA

Alamo

Drafthouse

drafthouse.com

PASADENA

Laemmle

Playhouse 7

laemmle.com

WOODLAND HILLS

AMC

Promenade 16

amctheatres.com

PASADENA

Pasadena

aclightcinemas.com

TONIGHT

Q&AwithNataliePortman

afterthe7:00PMShow

CENTURY CITY

AMC

Century City 15

amctheatres.com

SHERMAN OAKS

atThe Sherman Oaks Galleria

aclightcinemas.com

HOLLYWOOD

TUSTIN

AMC Tustin

at The District

amctheatres.com

LUCY

IN THE SKY

NATALIE PORTMAN JON HAMM

Inspired By Real Events

“I LOVE THIS PERFORMANCE.

“‘LUCYINTHESKY’

MARKSABIG,BOLDSWING

Natalie Portman is primed

to go astronomically mental.”

forfirst-timefilmmakerNoahHawley.”

NOW PLAYING IN SELECT THEATERS

POP MUSIC

For a brief moment in his

then-young rock career,

Mark Lindsay lived in a gor-

geous home at the top of

Benedict Canyon. The sing-

er-songwriter, co-founder of

the group Paul Revere & the

Raiders, moved there with

his buddy, record producer

Terry Melcher, in the late

’60s. He wrote some of his

band’s best work there, in-

cluding the single “Good

Thing,” which he penned on

a piano in the living room.

Lindsay left the house

when Melcher wanted to live

with his girlfriend, actress

Candice Bergen. They soon

rented the place to director

Roman Polanski and his

wife, Sharon Tate.

What happened next in

that living room inaugurat-

ed one of the darkest weeks

in L.A. history. But Lindsay

still remembers the place

fondly, even if he did once

bump into Charles Manson

at a party there.

“Those two years were

my golden years,” Lindsay

said onstage at the Grammy

Museum on Wednesday

night in conversation with

director Quentin Tarantino.

“I remember drinking rosé

in the garden with Terry

outside in that liquid sun-

shine and saying, ‘it doesn’t

get better than this’ and

thinking it’ll never get

worse. It didn’t until 1969.”

Setting the tone

For director and L.A. na-

tive Tarantino, however, the

coincidence is a thread that

ties his whole film “Once Up-

on a Time ... in Hollywood”

together. All of his obses-

sions — vintage rock and

roll, movie-business lore,

darkly comic idylls cut

through with horrific vi-

olence — wound through

that property at the top of

Cielo Drive (it’s now demol-

ished, of course). He and

Lindsay talked about evok-

ing that golden era of L.A.

rock radio in “Once Upon a

Time” and how it set the

tone for the nightmare to

come.

“Paul Revere & the

Raiders was exactly the

kind of band that would

have rocked my little socks

off,” Tarantino said of Lind-

say’s pre-fab conceptual,

velvety-voiced act. “And the

reason Manson knew of

Terry Melcher was because

of Paul Revere & the

Raiders.”

“Once Upon a Time” was

the rare original summer

flick to best $100 million at

the box office this year. The

star-packed throwback fol-

lows a TV actor (Leonardo

DiCaprio) and his loyal

stuntman sidekick (Brad

Pitt) through the wane of

their careers in late ’60s L.A.,

all while something evil kin-

dles in the canyons over the

hill.

Throughout the film,

Lindsay’s songs help set the

hyper-specific tone of the

era’s music — less the raw

psychedelia of the tastemak-

ing historians and more the

amber hues of the innocence

that Manson would soon

shatter.

Though Margot Robbie’s

Sharon Tate pokes fun at the

band in the script (“Don’t

tell Jim Morrison you’re

dancing to the Raiders!”),

their slinky, creepy song

“Hungry” plays as she meets

Manson for the first time in

the driveway.

Uncanny scene

It’s by now no spoiler to

say the film takes some lib-

erties with the actual events

the night of the Manson

murders. But for Lindsay,

Tarantino’s vigilant re-cre-

ation of the scene — down to

the actual sheet music in the

actual piano from the living

room that night — was be-

yond uncanny.

“The room where Abigail

Folger slept was my room,”

Lindsay said. “It’s just like

I’m back again.”

On Wednesday, even

Tarantino’s conversation

was peppered with such call-

backs. Onstage, moderator

David Wild, a rock journalist

and Grammy scriptwriter,

got a text from another fa-

vorite Tarantino sound-

track source, Neil Diamond,

suggesting the director sync

a few more tunes in his next

project. Tarantino’s movies

have always mined vintage

rock for unexpected revela-

tions and new contexts, ever

since his impeccable use of

Dick Dale’s “Misirlou” in

“Pulp Fiction.”

“I want to be known for

my discography as much as

my filmography,” Tarantino

said. When he’s picking

soundtrack cuts, he joked

that he imagines that “every

director I know is in there go-

ing ‘Oh, God, now I have to

get out of the business.’ ”

“Once Upon a Time” was

a chance to marinate ever

deeper in the era’s AM radio

(especially the old L.A. sta-

tion KHJ). Tarantino and

music supervisor Mary

Ramos unearthed around a

full daytime block’s worth of

recordings from the era for

research — ad jingles, DJ

patter and all. Drive-time ra-

dio wasn’t just a historical

reference point in the film,

he said, but a way to set the

“I WANTto be known for my discography as much as

my filmography,” said director Quentin Tarantino.

Tarantino and

Raiders singer

draw out a

distinctive era

Mark Lindsay and the

‘Once Upon a Time’

director talk about

creating the ’60s

sound, then and now.

By August Brown

MARK Lindsay performs with the Tesoro High

School choral ensemble at the Grammy Museum.

Photographs byRebecca SappGetty Images for the Recording Academy

[SeeLindsay,E3]