Once Upon a Time in Hollywood comes out in a few weeks, which means the promotional tour is ramping up. I was a little bit surprised by how lowkey OUATIH was at the Cannes Film Festival – yes, there was a splashy premiere and photocall, but didn’t it seem like it was kind of a minor event? I felt that way about Cannes in general this year, it was definitely missing some glamour and excitement. In any case, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie will probably all make the TV rounds in some way or another. Maybe Brad will do an in-depth interview with a friendly outlet, but probably not. In lieu of single-person interviews, the studio has set it up so Margot, Brad, Leo and Quentin Tarantino are all being interviewed as a group. It keeps things light, and it means that the most controversial thing is something related to Margot and Sharon Tate:
Margot Robbie channeled Sharon Tate in “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” with a little help from the late actress’ own jewelry collection. In an interview with the “Today” show on Monday, the 29-year-old actress sat down with her co-stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, as well as director Quentin Tarantino, to discuss how she got into character to play the pregnant movie star, who was murdered by members of the Manson Family in 1969.
As it turns out, Tate’s sister Deborah gave the film her blessing and provided the star with some of her sister’s personal possessions. “It was sometimes very sad to be that closely connected with real life Sharon,” Robbie told NBC’s Harry Smith. “It kind of hit you at moments and suddenly the tragedy of it all would kind of hit you and you would be tremendously sad and then other times it just made me feel so happy. But yes, there were moments where it was very sad.”
Macabre or no? When I first saw the “Margot Robbie wore Sharon Tate’s jewelry” headline, I thought perhaps she had bought the pieces at auction or someone (the costume designer) had spent months hunting down original pieces owned by Tate. If that had been the case, it would have been macabre, in my opinion. But Tate’s sister letting Margot borrow some pieces isn’t AS bad. Still, isn’t there still an option to say “no thanks, that’s kind of creepy”?
Here’s the interview – Brad and Leo don’t really have much chemistry together, right? They’re trying to be somewhat bro-y but Leo can’t make it work. It’s almost like Brad isn’t cool enough or ass-kissy enough to be part of the P-ssy Posse/Wolfpack.
Here’s the third trailer for OUATIH:
Photos courtesy of WENN.
I really look forward to the film.
For all the hype/star power/money that is being thrown in the direction of this movie, I have zero interest in seeing it…maybe when it’s on Netflix and there’s nothing else to watch.
THIS!!
Quentin abuses women on his film sets. Leo is a nightmare and don’t get me started on Pitt. Hard pass.
It’s definitely creepy more than anything. She also copied Sharon’s hairstyle at Cannes. it’s too much. I judge everyone involved in this crap.
Yeah, it’s ghoulish imo.
“Ghoulish” is the best description for this movie.
Her role is also non-verbal mostly; she’s watched. So the POV is creepy too
Mess
Definitely creepy. I read that Helter Skelter book when I was too young, and it haunted me for weeks. I think anything connected with Charles Manson is giving him too much attention and it makes me uncomfortable.
I’m old enough to remember when this happened, and where I was when I heard the news – on a train to Sydney, listening to my transistor. I read all the newspaper articles for days. Then I read that book. It frightened the daylights out of me. I agree with your comments, FHMom. No way will I see this. It really is creepy.
I’ve never read that, but listened to the You Must Remember This podcast series about it, and no, I don’t want to know more, see more, or give any money to this film.
When I was a kid in New Mexico, the Manson family were all over the news. I remember my Grandma being paranoid that some of them would end up in our state. There were reports that they hadn’t caught all of the family members, so people were worried.
I used to tell my co-workers back in DC that the Boogeyman was real when I was a kid: Charles Manson.
FHMom me too. Was it We are the people your parents warned you about. ?
I read it at 15 and was scarred for a long time.awful.
This is so creepy
Can’t wait to see this. It looks so good. Love the positive reviews.
Me too!
I’m enjoying the promotion. Brad looks like he is having a lot of fun. Margot too. Leo is finally loosening up. He’s more reserved in interviews. The people that have seen it say the chemistry on film is there. And really that’s what counts. They don’t have to be BFF off-screen. They seem to get along well together. But I knew the comments here for the most would be less than supportive.
How nice that brad is finally getting a chance to loosen up after attacking his own child.
I wonder if this will be another history rewrite like the WW2 movie? Brad or Leo ride to the rescue of Margot at the last minute. Otherwise this seems too from for me and I love Tarantino movies in general
I thought so when I first heard about this movie being made. Mainly because Tarantino’s only critique of the Lone Ranger was the slaughter of Tonto’s tribe by gunfire.
For a lot of people Sharon Tate’s murder ended an era, perhaps she inevitably dies in the film but under different circumstances? If they had her sister’s approval then it won’t be as horrible as the real events.
From what I’ve read, it is a rewriting of history along the lines of Inglorious Basterds. Otherwise, I doubt Sharon’s sister would have given her consent.
I used to love Tarantino movies…perhaps slightly less so now because they seem to be highly derivative, but I’ll give it a chance. I liked Inglorious BAsterds, so we shall see. On the topic of the jewellery….I’m fine with it. Tate was an actress, and I think she would have understood.
On a very shallow note, I never realized Leo is taller than Brad… and Brad has not been cool for decades, he looks like the kind of guy who tries too hard to be in the cool group – much like Tarantino, who is clearly over the hill and should just accept it already.
Margot Robbie, on the other hand, is very cool. I hope to see her in better movies.
In 2005-2006 Brad was cool. Brad and Angelina when they first got together were incandescent.
I think it’s in poor taste, to be honest. Stop turning that poor woman’s death into a spectacle.
I grew up in L.A., and my best friend’s father’s house was located in Benedict Canyon, less than a mile away from the house where the Manson murders took place. By the time we were ten, we had heard the stories about the murders, and used to scare ourselves by walking up to the gate which kept it contained around its empty lot. (In fact, the house, by then, was torn down, after it steadfastly refused to succumb to actual exorcisms, by two different owners.These owners had each complained of the walls, heavy windows, and roof shaking, steadily, for full minutes, like a phantom that keeps invisibly hurling itself back towards its old human body, with no way to return to that living, breathing, earthly form. My friend and I knew the nebulous rumors, if not the clear facts, well enough about that house: that it had never been lived in longer than three months, and that it later had become a drug den and, perhaps, as well, a place where Satanists honed their conjured spells. The latest time of day my friend and I would visit there, on our outlandish, bright pink bikes, was early twilight; we’d stand there with our fingers clenched between the magnet colored, high parallel bars that surrounded the space where the house had once been. Sometimes, we would make ourselves almost thrilled by our distinctly sharp yet shapeless fear, while others, we would inwardly propel to the ledge of real tears, as in the presence of our own, foreshadowing, almost personal tragedies, still
not yet reaped and sown. Our voices always lowered, there, as nearby any sacred mystery, as in an airy, high ,colorful cathedral. To most people in the country, the Manson case, ghastly and haunting, sinister as it might be, was many, many miles away, its lurid images surreal and somehow free of solid fact, disconnected as cartoons. But to L.A. inhabitants, even almost thirty years later, it was a visceral, visual, audible and eerily specific place. I always used to envision Sharon Tate crying and pleading for her life and for her child’s, and how the gaze of her murderer, impermeable as that of an inanimate object, would have stared back at her as flatly unmoved as the eye of the gun she soon knew was going to kill her. It was an echoic place–the whole canyon—and we wondered why the multiple screams for help and mercy on that summer night in 1969 had gone unheard. Sometimes, we would raise our own voices and call out, “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” not quite sure who we summoned, as we stared at the lot of the destroyed house, with its knee high wild grasses, pinkish gravel, and expanding webs of weeds. And always, after we shouted, we could hear our words repeated, every one. The only difference between our original calls and their entourage of echoes was a clear distortion, a blind, untraceable, and displaced sound of our replicated voices: like the voice of fate itself, you could not quite ever tell from which direction they were coming.
By the time I was 13, my best friend’s father had abdicated his high ceilinged, circular, rather ugly modern home in Benedict Canyon, which was so alluringly, addictively close to the burial site of the house of the Manson murders. I have never been compelled to go back there, don’t even know what has become of it, by now. Something morbid in me had been nurtured by those visits, though, and as a young teenager I read Helter Skelter and other true crime novels greedily, sometimes a whole book within one day. Such books never have an ending, really, or a cathartic, comforting conclusion: what’s done cannot be undone, the dead cannot be coaxed from graveyards back to the medium of life, but certainly, endless, horrible, savage crimes and killings have always happened in the world, and just as surely, ineluctably, will continue to occur.It is a tragedy, what happened to the Manson victims, but there are many other tragedies unfolding even as we dwell in our own lives. Sharon Tate was beautiful and rich, and married to a talented, controversial young director: that is why the Manson murders have been immortalized, I think, in Hollywood. That is why Tarantino (whose graphically, pointlessly over-violent movies I despise) feels he’ll have a built in audience with this one, for it’s a tale that became so infamous b/c it reveals that even the beautiful and wealthy and apparently lucky people are not immune to misfortune,nor immortal; they, too, can suffer from untimely, senseless, savage deaths, they too are vulnerable–ultimately almost as equidistant to forced death and injustice as everybody else. People remain fascinated with the stories of supposedly very “successful” and fortunate people being, underneath it all, unhappy, self destructive, and even suicidal(which is why the icon Marilyn Monroe remains fascinating to so many.) “Successful” people” with awful and untimely deaths at the hands of others remain an obsession for many people, too. I will not see this movie, but I’m not surprised it got made—recycled and mythologized as only Hollywood could make it.
elsbeth, if you aren’t a professional writer, you need to change jobs. You should submit this somewhere; it’s really wonderful writing.
I agree – if you are not a writer you need to start.
Veroncia, Well said. I agree.
Brad looks like he is auditioning for a role as the happy-go-lucky sidekick to Leo.
Barf.
I have no interest in seeing this movie. Not even on Netflix.
It’s been long enough that I don’t really find it one way or the other.
As for Brad not being cool enough, I am not a fan of his, but there is nothing cool about Leo and his pack. So if Brad doesn’t fit in with them, that is actually one in his plus column.
Eh. Leo is who he is. He’s gross, but I’ve been laughing at this entire press tour and the off-ness of Brad+Leo’s chemistry. I definitely put it on Leo. There’s something about Brad that rubs him the wrong way.
I imagine the thought of having six children is just horrifying to Leo. He’s in a low-level denial mode every time he’s around Brad and it affects how he deals with him:)
Yes, macabre.
So…. is Tarantino uncanceled already? That was quick.
Yeah, regardless of the subject of the film, I don’t want to ever give him a penny.
Ehhh. I’m on the fence. It’s kind of macabre, but I’m also currently wearing a ring that was left to me by my grandmother. On the surface, wearing jewelry of a dead person isn’t really a huge issue. I think the fact that it’s something they’re profiting on is where the issue lies… but the alternative is what? Make some replicas? I mean, it’s not like that makes a HUGE difference (at least not to me).
Ultimately, I had no interest in this movie until I actually sat down and watched the trailer. It surprised me with how much it sucked me in.
It’s horrible what happened to Sharon, but there are SO many murders and atrocities that have movies made about them, that I’m not sure that this is really any different.
Erinn, you captured a lot of my thoughts on this too. I’m fascinated by old Hollywood and enjoy reading about the history (even if it’s remade some). I also enjoy listening to the “You Must Rememberers This” podcast, which I just discovered a couple of months ago based on someone’s recommendation here. Admittedly, I watch lots of true crime show on Discovery ID and Oxygen.
I’m very surprised that Sharon Tate’s sister Deborah gave her approva! (and the jewelry) to this entire thing. I’ve seen her talk about her sister alot over the years, and I wouldn’t have expected her to be okay with it.
At first, she was totally against it. She changed her mind after talking to Tarantino. What could he possibly have said that swayed her, i wonder? Does she get money out of this study in ghoulishness? In any case, I doubt that she could have stopped this movie being made.
If Tarantino wanted to make a film about an actor and his stunt double, why didn’t he just do that? Why bring Sharon Tate into it? To be as sensationalist as possible and feed into the fascination people have with Manson? I would agree it’s creepy.
Escaped Convent—Actually, I read that Sharon’s sister Deborah did give the film her blessing and approval, but that she was offended, once she viewed the film, by the way that Sharon is portrayed. She’s supposedly just a nearly voiceless object of lust and beauty and competition for the men around her, and her character remains in embryo form straight through the film. She is portrayed as a peripheral, almost incidental figure, hardly talking, and Deborah was hurt by this superficial, flimsy depiction of her sister.Sharon fought most of her brief life as an actress NOT to just be a “pretty face”, another “sex symbol”, and yet that is apparently all that the always reliably sexist Tarantino reduced her to in this film. What a surprise.
I had an issue with the OJ Simpson show because it didn’t highlight the victims enough, but this I actually can get behind. A lot of people know Sharon Tate’s name, but so often she’s referred to as “Roman Polanski’s Wife” and she was so much more than that. This introduces her to a new audience and allows her memory to live on.
I also just don’t find it odd to wear the jewelry in the film. I think that was really generous and lovely of Deborah and I’m glad that Margot appreciated it.
I don’t find the jewelry thing creepy but I can’t stand Tarantino. Leo’s whole pussy-posse crap is a creepier turn off.
Exactly. Outta the three, Leo is the biggest reason I won’t be seeing this. I just can’t with him.
Veronice S, YES the the nth degree. Creepy, ghoulish and a money-maker.
I don’t think it’s macabre at all. Any more than when I wear jewelry that belonged to women in my family that have passed. That being said, I will only wear jewelry that belonged to relatives that I truly missed. The venomous ones had their stuff given away or pawned.
I think it’s kind of sweet? Still gonna pass on the movie.
I hope it flops hard.
Me too, but I doubt it will.
Does anyone have a more punchable face than Tarantino? These group interviews just highlight three aging, skeevy guys surrounding the preternaturally beautiful Margot Robbie. It’s a lot of ick.
Yeah, Brad is more chill, Leo not so much. Margot finally doesn’t look like Barbie doll.
She’s really just a mediocre actress. One or two good films doesn’t make you exceptional. Especially when all the others have been flops.
I don’t think it’s creepy at all. I think it’s a respectful homage for an actress whose body of work has been eclipsed completely by the circumstances of her murder. I like that Margot got the pieces from ST’s sister. I think it’s respectful.
Super excited to see this! I don’t get why people hate it.. looks awesome.
Margot Robbie is so beautiful. I was always fascinated about Sharon Tate because of Valley of the Dolls and what happened to her. I read Helter Skelter and I was just terrified and horrified. I want to see the movie just to honor Sharon Tate.
This movie is a hard pass for me I hope it flops too but it won’t. People will watch it because the whole thing is macabre and most involved in making it seem icky. Wearing something passed down from your grandma is one thing, wearing something from a murder victim is something else entirely.
Thank you, elsbeth. Very interesting. This fits with the impressions I always got about Deborah. I also doubt the movie would have got the Tate approval if her mother were still living.
I always was fascinated with the Cielo Drive house. I never saw it in person. The canyons are so beautiful and quiet—it’s unimaginable what savagery happened there.
One more thought about the house: I’ve heard so many differing versions of what happened to the house after the murders. I heard that it was left vacant for years and years. That people would rent it for a short time, then turn right around and flee. But the owner, Rudy Altobelli, said in an interview that he lived there himself for years. He said he wasn’t afraid to live there and didn’t think it was haunted. I’m curious and fascinated, but Sharon and her baby and her friends break my heart.
Oh, and your post up above is great and very thoughtful.
A local columnist wrote a negative review about this film and the Tarantino fanboys are dissing the man to pieces, even wishing him to be fired, how dare anyone criticize such genius? Cattle all the way.
I wonder how the critics will review this film. I don’t think Tarantino’s films have ever gotten poor reviews except for maybe Grindhouse, but even that I think was liked by critics but no one actually went to see it in theaters. I hated Hateful 8 and critics loved it. But it feels like maybe this is a different moment in Hollywood? We’ll see….
It has 92% on RT from critics already.