Defying Expectations

American Fiction & Once Upon a Time in...Hollywood

Hey everyone! It’s been awhile, a long while. It’s been a month and half since I last wrote. Did you forget about Charlie Don’t Surf? Honestly, I kind of forgot that I even had a Substack. It was a combination of being busy and being in a writer’s slump. The motivation just hasn’t been there to watch a movie and write about it. To be honest, I don’t even know what I’m going to write about today. I’m shooting from the hip and let’s see if I can hit a target….

I watched two movies in the past month. It was my first time watching both of them and so they were new experiences, American Fiction and Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood. Both are phenomenal films that I very much enjoyed. I also had a few pre-conceived notions going into both movies, but walked away with something different.

Let’s start with American Fiction, a 2023 movie with a few Oscar nominations to its name including for the two actors we’ll be discussing below. This movie marketed itself as a commentary on race, and it definitely is and it is an important message, but the story is much more personal than that. The commentary on race is really in the background of Thelonius “Monk” Ellison’s personal development. Jeffrey Wright, on of my favorite actors, plays Monk. The video below is part of a conversation between Monk and his brother, Clifford, played by Sterling K. Brown. It’s a moving part of the film as both men try to reconcile family trauma, expectations, grief, personal pain, and identity. Clifford tells his brother, “People want to love you, Monk. I personally don’t know what they see in you, but they want to love you. You should let them love all of you.” Man, that hits home hard.

Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film. As I laid in bed last night, I was trying to think about who “my guy” is. What does “my guy” mean? “My guy” is your go-to director, the person who you’ve seen all of their films and their artwork resonates with you more than everyone else’s. The term can apply to female directors too (shout out Greta Gerwig). For example, I know someone who is really into David Fincher. He’s reading a book about Fincher’s movies and he’s going back to watch every one. He loves to talk about Fincher’s art. The host of The Ringer’s Big Picture Podcast, Sean Fennessy’s guy is Paul Thomas Anderson. I’m not going to belabor about who “my guy” potentially could be because that might be a future thing to write about, but Tarantino is “my guy” for a lot of people. Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Inglorious Basterds to name a few of his films…..

*Side note: Inglorious Basterds is one of the most brilliant movies I’ve ever seen

I honestly thought Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood was going to be a buddy cop film with Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt getting into shenanigans around Hollywood and it would end with the Manson Family’s brutal murder of Sharon Tate. Boy, was I wrong. Leo and Brad probably spend more screen time separate than together. Leo’s character is a television star named Rick Dalton who is trying to grapple with being a Hollywood has-been past his prime at…..34. He’s a prima donna. Brad is Leo’s former stunt double who now serves as his gofer. The Manson Family/Sharon Tate story runs parallel to theirs. It pays homage to old Hollywood and is a beautifully shot and fun film. Check out the scene below that ends with a really cool sequence of the neon lights around the town being turned on.

So, I guess the theme of today’s Substack is expectations? I didn’t expect to write about these two movies together and I didn’t even get out of them what I expected when I pushed play. Like, just the other day I found out that one of my friends went to film school a long time ago. She mentioned it in a meeting and we ended up talking about her career and one of our favorite films, Moonlight. Now, we might collaborate on some creative work at our job. Not something that I expected would happen. How cool is that? Movies are cool. Life is cool.