Once Upon a Hollywood Player: A Tale of 2 Filmmakers

Well recently I picked up Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in 4K and I had heard good things about the 4K disc so I wanted to see it for myself and to my surprise and delight I really enjoyed it, the film plays really well in the home environment maybe better than it did in the cinema environment as watching it on my TV allowed to take in much more the dialogue setpiece/short story structure that is similar to Pulp Fiction while also throwing in a dash of Inglorious Basterds as well.

But while I was rewatching it another movie that is similar but different to it started to come to mind and that film was the Player from 1992 by Robert Altman and I began to think that they would make an interesting double bill at a specialist cinema one day, but why did that feeling come to mind.

Well both movies came at an interesting point in each of their respective directors careers, firstly with the Player Mr Altman was at a point in his career where it had stalled to some extent having had some success in the 1970s and then Popeye in 1980 really setting back his ability to work within the changing studio environment and while he did do some smaller scale work during the 80s the Player was his grand return to mainstream success and that then allowed him to make the movie he tried to make before the Player called Short Cuts.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood meanwhile was Quentin Tarantino for the first time since Reservoir Dogs working without the Hutt esque Weinstein brothers though going back to one of previous studio homes Sony/Columbia who had distributed Django Unchained in 2013 and when watching this movie the freedom flows through each scene as it really feels like Tarantino is able to do his thing while also having a studio that will finally push back to some extent on some of his decisions.

And also both the Player and Once Upon a Time craft something of a fictional narrative within their Hollywood narratives, the Player first and foremost while based off of a novel that Mr Altman helped adapt to the big screen there is a very fun murder mystery at the centre of that story that also allows for a whole lot of great cameos as well as poking fun at the studio executives that populate that story.

The Tarantino film has its element of fiction with its 2 leads Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth played in career best form by Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt as they try to navigate a changing Hollywood landscape while also telling the story of Sharon Tate a real life person played by Margot Robbie very well which is done in a very interesting direction.

And so that was that column, it was an idea that came to my mind and I decided to write it down in a blog post for everyone and maybe that double bill might happen one day, it would certainly create some interesting discussion if it goes down well enough.