Tarantino meets "They All Laughed" (1981)

Rating: 9/10 (27 July 2019)

Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" is an homage to cinema as a whole, as well as the 1960's, the Manson family, the battle between the big & the small screen, the auteur's early life, among many other things. I saw an interview with him on youtube where he compared this film to Alfonso Cauron's "Roma," in the sense that it's a cinematic memory piece. While he's certainly correct about the similarity (the period piece setting, long takes, sun-soaked cinematography, etc) even made me think of it too honestly, there's an even more specific film that Tarantino's film subconsciously borrows much from, and it's Peter Bogdonavich's "They All Laughed" (1981), which not so coincidentally is a vocal favorite of his, much as "Rio Bravo", "The Great Escape", and anything Sergio Leone (or Corbucci, who's even mentioned in the third act at length) has ever made, and makes obvious references to in its 162-minute length.
Both "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" and "They All Laughed" carry a joie de vivre tone that's contrasted by a sense of melancholy; doom even. In "They All Laughed", it's the tragic fate of Dorothy Stratten that preceded the film's release date that gave it this nearly unexplainable feeling, and in Quentin's film, it's Sharon Tate who carries this same exact energy for precisely the same reasons as Bogdonavich's 1981 misfire did. It's a beautiful blonde white starlet that the director clearly loves, who edits her footage as lovingly as possible, knowing that in the real world, she suffered a fate much more brutal and dehumanizing than she deserved. Audiences can feel it, but they'll never truly understand the pain behind making these cuts behind the scenes. All you know is they want her to be remembered as lovingly as possible.
This similarity is even more striking when you ruminate the parallel plot structures: three groups of people, off on their own adventures in a very limited set of time (one weekend) in a famous American city (LA vs NYC), but a crucial one nonetheless, as these characters not only take us through their usual routine while spouting catchy dialogue and making friends with almost any stranger that crosses their rose-colored paths, but the intersection of these various characters' lives, and the more we get to know them and spend time with them, the more we care about the mundane tasks they do throughout the day, just like you and I do.
Similar to Tarantino's magnum opus, "Inglourious Basterds", this film toys around with history in ways that are both entertaining as hell, if you're completely willing to suspend disbelief-but pity to those who can't during one of his movies-and fascinating, as a potential timeline to how the world could've been different onwards (and that's a movie you gotta make in your own mind, as I'm assuming Tarantino wants you to do anyway). In the 2009 film we see Hitler's face get shot into hamburger meat. In this film, we see....well don't let me spoil it for you. But it's equally satisfying if you get my drift.
He's never referenced "They All Laughed" as an influence, but if you've seen the Bogdonavich film and read his Sight & Sound Top 10 from 2002 (it's on the list), it's not a stretch to say that film had some impact on this film's final result. Both movies are from the perspective of directors who experienced early success, had some failures along the way, and felt severe loss. The 1981 film had the misfortune of shooting his star-crossed starlet not knowing she will die soon, while Tarantino shot his film knowing his starlet has died, but still gives her a chance to live again-not just on the big screen as only few personally had known, but for a whole new generation of moviegoers who may have never heard of her, her infamous murder, or even "Valley of the Dolls" or "The Fearless Vampire Killers" (or so help me, Roman Polanski). But what both films do successfully is give us a sweet little time capsule with these significant pop culture figures and show us what life was like before the luckiest of human beings experienced their darkest of times.