59of living room streaming, Rothman recently
told The New York Times, “young people
don’t go to ‘the’ movies, they go to ‘a’ movie”—
making the QT seal of quality that elevates
“a movie” to “an event” well worth the dig
into Sony’s bidding war chest.
Ironically enough, what ends up moving
those generations increasingly distanced
from “the movies” off of the couch to see
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood might be
that it’s a movie about movies. Indeed, the tale
of Tarantino’s early ’90s entry into the film-
making fray has been etched into American
mythology as if it were its own movie about
movies: high school drop-out turns his self-
education as a full-time video store clerk into
a game-changing, life-changing Hollywood ca-reer. In the same way that the
sampling and remixing of hip-hop’s pioneer
producers opened fans’ fresh ears to their jazz,
funk, and soul ancestry, so have Tarantino’s
post-modernist pastiches served as gateway
drugs that lead viewers to discover the direc-
tor’s heaviest influences: American exploita-
tion, Asian extremity, French New Wave,
Italian neorealism and surrealism, and quite
literally everything in between. His new film
isn’t the first set in the turbulent time of 1969,
but its story—of a television star, his stunt
double, and their struggles to find footing in a
radically changing Hollywood—might be the
only one that could bring Leonardo DiCaprio
and Brad Pitt together to shepherd stubborn
stay-at-home Netflix bingers to summertheaters. At 56, Tarantino is the guy who’s so
persuasively inserted himself into pop culture
as its resident movie guru that even the most
casual of film-goers will pay attention (and ad-
mission) when he has something cool to show.
When we speak the following day, I wonder
if he must be tired of hearing all this. This
age-old angle—that Tarantino makes “movies
about movies”—is “true, to a degree,” I begin.
He lets out a knowing laugh: “You’re saying it
well. That is true... to a degree. But it seems
like it’s being said in a way to dismiss my work.
To marginalize it, or, I don’t know... put it into
some kind of box and then talk about the box.”
Talking about “the box” can qualify a case for
his broad appeal, but he’s right: It doesn’t quiteMOVIEMAKER.COM SUMMER 2019PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW COOPER /
COURTESY OF SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT
MAN ABOUT TOWN: ALONGSIDE STARS LEONARDO DICAPRIO,
BRAD PITT, AND MARGOT ROBBIE, ONCE UPON A TIME... IN HOLLYWOOD
WRITER-DIRECTOR QUENTIN TARANTINO RESTORED LOS ANGELES’
EATERIES, STREETS, AND THEATERS TO THEIR 1960S GLORY