Quentin Tarantino courts disaster by asking audiences not to spoil Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
Aux Features Film
There’s no easier way to be an anonymous asshole in this day and age than to be a spoiler guy. As we recently saw with Avengers: Endgame and Game Of Thrones, nothing tickles the egg avatars more than turning social media into a minefield for people who like enjoying things. Now, in a move that’s destined to spur these ghouls into action, Quentin Tarantino is politely asking those at the world premiere of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood to, well, keep it to themselves. Good luck with that, buddy.
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood will soon see its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where, for the first time, audiences will consume Tarantino’s panoramic 1969-set tale of Rick, a washed-up actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), Cliff, his stuntman (Brad Pitt), and the California milieu that played host to Charles Manson (Damon Herriman), Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis), and Bruce Lee (Mike Moh). How they all intersect is yet to be seen—and Tarantino would prefer you don’t hear about it secondhand.
“I love cinema. You love cinema. It’s the journey of discovering a story for the first time,” he wrote in a letter posted to the film’s Twitter account. “I’m thrilled to be here in Cannes to share Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood with the festival audience. The cast and crew have worked so hard to create something original, and I only ask that everyone avoids revealing anything that would prevent later audiences from experiencing the film in the same way.”
Tarantino’s succeeded at maintaining an air of mystery around the project, sharing only one brief teaser, some images, and a few posters for films-within-the-film. A recent Entertainment Weekly piece, though, offered a bit more context.
Producer David Heyman asserted that the film isn’t about the Manson cult so much as it is “the loss of innocence” that accompanied both the murderer and the changes the era brought to the industry. “It’s the three classes of Hollywood,” Heyman said. “There’s the high Hollywood of Sharon, the declining star of Rick, and there’s Cliff, who lives farther out and with more humble means.”
We’ll have a spoiler-free dispatch from our own A.A. Dowd following the premiere, though, in this day and age, even the vaguest of plot points can be considered as spoilers by some. Approach with caution and never, ever feed the trolls.
86 Comments
You can tell Tarantino loves movies because he calls it “cinema” whereas people who don’t call them “shows”!
he’s got a “let’s put on a cinema” attitude.
My mother-in-law does say stuff like “Sophie’s Choice? I loooove that show.” It sounds a little weird.
Scrolling up cinemas, you say?
Get your Flav-O-Fives here!
Only a filthy anteater would spoil a movie!
Whoa, huge slam on anteaters out of nowhere!
Stupid disgusting anteater
Please, call them “the pictures” or GTFO.
I do love the cineastes who call going to a movie a “screening.” Like they’ve been specifically invited as opposed to dropping $15 for a seat like the rest of us.
I call them the pick-a-chures!
Brad Pitt has sex with the Night King.
The Night King explodes as Pitt slides his dagger into him.
A dragonglass condom.
The Night King rides bareback.
Go on
Yada Yada… Milky White Explosion followed by relief.. Yada Yada…
Ironically, the headlines on my phone’s newsfeed “spoiled” that episode of Game of Thrones. I don’t watch Game of Thrones but still felt this obligation to avoid spoilers, in case I decided to watch the show one day. When I saw a bunch of unprefaced spoilers in my feed, I was kind of startled and then realized how dumb I was being. I’m never going to watch Game of Thrones. If I get around to it, it’ll be years from now, and the plot is probably going to be public knowledge by then.Then I realized that I also won’t be seeing Endgame anytime soon (Infinity War has been on the Netflix homepage for however many months and I haven’t even tried), so I started reading past those spoiler warnings. The movie’s plot sounds like one of those Very Special Episodes they gin up when an actor leaves a TV show, only it’s 150 minutes long. It’s been kind of liberating.
Two Men and A Starbucks Cup.
At least he does in the proposed season 8 reshoot.
Perhaps it’s a marketing ploy to emphasize that ‘you may THINK you know the story, but you don’t’? Because even the more obscure parts of the Manson story are fairly well-known thanks to books and documentaries and podcasts.
Are we going to have to rename the Streisand Effect to the Tarantino Effect?
No.Thanks, Betteridge Law of Headlines!
IT WERE THAT CHARLES MANSON WHAT DID IT!!!
Dude this isn’t ‘Endgame’. (in fact I keep forgetting this movie even exists)
It’ll be funny to see what the legacy of Endgame is going to be. Personally, I’ll be surprised if many people 5 or 10 years from now are willing to invest 330 minutes watching Infinity War and Endgame. It wouldn’t be unbelievable, just surprising. And since 7 of the 10 highest-grossing movies in history were released within the past 5 years, I doubt it’ll keep the “highest-grossing” distinction for very long.Tarantino’s movies may very well have more staying power, but I wouldn’t be surprised if his work gets a negative reappraisal as we move further and further away from Pulp Fiction.
I was speaking more in terms of people being so invested in seeing Endgame that there were instances where it got to the point of actual physical violence when they were spoiled. (I kinda doubt many people would really be bothered that much if Tarantino’s movie was spoiled to them)
There’s at least a couple dozen people here discussing a movie I’d only vaguely heard about before, so QT request of no spoilers made me slightly more aware of his film?
People will keep watching Infinity War because it’s a fun action adventure superhero movie. People will not keep watching Endgame because it’s a moody fart fest with stupid logic and bogus action scenes.
https://axleaddict.com/auto-repair/Mice-in-Your-Motor
You’re right, mice might get in your engine, but there’s no fucking way a giant rat is getting in a van, especially one that’s locked inside a storage unit, and has been kitted out to hold some of the most sophisticated technology ever created by man (and apparently runs on a power source that doesn’t expire even after being left on for FIVE YEARS). Remember how hard it was to get Hank Pym’s wife out of the quantum realm? All it took for Scott was the lucky push of a single button!But yeah, there’s plenty more stupid ass plot developments like that one. Tony figuring out time travel in two questions; the whole time-travel mumbo jumbo (why not just go back and get all the pym particles you need to unwind things methodically, and without risk of having to fight Thanos/earlier selves); Nebula magically and inadvertently communicating with herself telepathically from millions of miles away; staging a final battle that we’ve already seen the Avengers win (but for the full gauntlet); etc. Once all the fanboy wanking subsides, the movie will not age well.
Consider James Bond movies.
That’s fair, but James Bond movies are basically modular. You don’t have to see Dr No to enjoy Goldfinger, and you don’t have to see License to Kill to sit miserably through The World Is Not Enough. A couple of the Craig movies have been more serialized (ie, the less enjoyable ones).Also worth noting that the next Craig movie will be the 25th James Bond movie ever. The MCU is, what, 22 movies strong with 2-3 released per year?
Yeah. I mean, I think Endgame and Infinity War were cultural events. It was a shared moment in the public consciousness where a decade of engagement in a grand exercise of film making reached its apex point.
But in two decades, are we really going to have that many people ready to sit through 40 hours of film for the culminating payoff of Endgame?
people still watch the hell out of The Lord Of The Rings films, with the extended editions being more popular, and the marvel films are a lot easier casual watching than those.
This is true. For all the star power Tarantino’s assembled, his movie doesn’t have America’s ass.
I was going to argue for Margot Robbie’s magnificent behind, but then remembered she’s Australian. So yeah, nevermind.
SPOILER:Quentin Tarantino’s new movie will feature scenes of extreme violence set to incongruously cheerful era-appropriate pop songs.
And feet.
Also feet
Era appropriate feet?
Lots and lots of feet.
There will be dialogue that sounds like it came from a Tarantino movie and not normal human beings.
And swearing.
Don’t forget the N word
Tarantino never does.
This is disgusting. In the teaser, it’s called “Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood” but in his no spoilers post, he calls it “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”. Is this some sort of sick game to him?
I was told it would be called “Once Upon … a Time in Hollywood”. The whole thing is ruined now.
The Hollywood they were looking for was in their hearts the whole time.
Thus the sudden myocardial infarction
Whoa, buddy. There’s a new Quentin Tarantino movie coming out? Let’s put a spoiler tag in the title and get rid of that spoilery image that shows it’s been filmed, ok?
calling it now just as i called it a few months ago when the trailer dropped and i was dumb drunk.it’s gonna be a fusion of death proof and basterds/django. revenga revisionist. bruce lee is gonna beat the fuck out of charles manson.
All I did was mention offhand that avoiding GoT spoilers was virtually hopeless and some schmuck I didn’t know just slid right in and spoiled shit.It seems so long ago that people were able to keep a lid on Inglorious Basterds’ ending for three whole months.
It WAS twenty years ago that everyone kept a lid on the plot of The Crying Game. But it was only for movies that were heavily reliant on plot twists that people avoided spoiling. Then again, the internet as we know it wasn’t around either.
Or “QT confirms widespread internet theory that, like Inglourious Basterds, his new movie is a historical reimagining. Because historically accurate movies come with the inbuilt spoilers of being history. There by spoiling it for everyone who truly loves cinema.”
Given his films take place in a cinematic universe where everyone’s a big film geek, it’ll be interesting to see what his Hollywood looks like
So my guess of him having the awful Mason murder of Tate in the film may happen? Hmmm, someone on the comments section told me I was crazy and to relax. We will see. I hope I’m wrong.
Oh, it’s going to happen, and it’s going to be choreographed to some obnoxious song like the Streak or something.
Yup and the QT fan boys will defend him showing the graphic violence that really happened to Tate. I like a decent amount of his movies but I will pass on this one.
Yeah, I’m pretty worried about what he’s going to throw up there, but here’s hoping he has the sense not to go there. If there’s a lady begging for the life of her unborn baby in this movie, I’m decidedly OUT.
You’re crazy and need to relax anyway.
We will see. I may have been right and you may have been a troll. Well I maybe wrong and you still are a troll. I’m fine with that.
The fact that he’s so worried about spoilers makes me think things will not play out the way they did in real life. Someone may obliterate Manson’s face with a machine gun.
I would be happy with that.
And I’d like to sincerely ask Tarantino to stop making movies. He stinks. People really need to stop supporting this guy.
why do you think that
Dude’s evil.
oh
“Here’s your problem. Someone set this Tarantino to ‘evil’.”
Lol. Yeah….evil… Intelligent take.
I mean, I get his point but I am so fucking sick of this “spoiler” shit. Like there’s no acting, no visuals, no music in a movie, nothing but a plot, and if you hear some details about the plot beforehand then the entire movie is “spoiled.”
I think it’s endemic of this notion that film is a product to just be consumed.
Like, my parents would never re-watch a movie for any reason, and they always talk exclusively in terms of the plot. I find it to be pretty strange myself.
Wow. This was not where I was expecting Boba Fett to finally meet Wolverine, but . . . huh. Ok.
CHARLES MANSON WAS FRAMED!!!! THE PHIL SPECTOR CHARACTER IS REALLY AN UGLY WOMAN!!!!
The spoiler is that Sharon Tate’s husband isn’t as sympathetic a character as he first appears to be.
That’s rich coming from the guy that spoiled what happens in Pulp Fiction by having Vincent Vega killed halfway through the film.
Ha! I remember seeing this in theatres, Vinnie gets killed and I was thinking “hang on, there are scenes from the trailer Travolta is in that we haven’t seen yet! How can this be?!”
“Aurora? Invisible airplane? First strike capability? Idiots. Go fuck yourselves.”
If you can’t live without social media, then you have to live with the bad stuff that goes with it. It’s like…say you’re trying to lose weight, or stop smoking or stop drinking or whatever. You can’t ask other people to stop eating or smoking or drinking when you’re around. You either have to deal with it or don’t hang around with people who are eating, drinking and smoking. If you’re afraid of what you might find out from social media, STOP USING IT!Kinda simple when you think about it, isn’t it?
SPOILER:Tate dies at the end.
I’ve been pretty fortunate not getting spoiled for big films/TV shows lately, and without even putting in too much effort. The one exception was for ‘The Force Awakens’ when (SPOILERS, I guess) before seeing the film I googled Han Solo looking for something else and one of the suggested results was “Han Solo dies”.
I’m a Film School graduate. Spoilers are stupid to worry about outside of twist endings. There are studies that tell us knowing the ending can IMPROVE our watching experience. And I get it, you want to have it fresh, but making it such a big deal? I don’t get that. People get SO MAD and I’m like… if it matters so much it isn’t that hard to avoid, and watch that shit right away.
I went into classes where they went, “Hey, have you all seen this movie? Too bad if you haven’t we’re watching the ending and only the ending right now.” And it didn’t break my brain or make me dislike the movie.Marvel? Whatever, spoil it for me I’ll be fine. Memento? Please don’t! Totally different. Although if someone spoiled Memento for me now, I can’t be mad because if it mattered I should have watched it already.
Most of the convention feels silly to me. Like, disappointment? Sure. This bluster and anger and conspiracy, not so much.
Spoiler alert: Tate goes into labor, and the newborn emerges holding a Thompson and shoots Manson dead. Squeaky and Sadie gogo dance, barefoot in his blood. Smash cut to credits.