"Once Upon A Time In Hollywood" as mentioned before is Quentin Tarantino's latest film and I had mixed feelings leaving this picture until I had my shower revelation. This won't be a review of the film but rather an explanation of it and what my revelation was in general and how it'll impact me moving forward. So "OUATH" as I'll call it now tells the story of fictional characters Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth, an actor and his stunt man as Rick realizes that his career is coming to an end and copes with the idea that he may no longer be relevant. Rick lives next door to Sharon Tate a real person and up and coming actress. For those of you who know your Hollywood trivia knows that Sharon Tate was, unfortunately, the victim of Charles Manson's family members in a brutal murder and this is essentially the film's backdrop.
The film meanders a lot just showing us Rick's life and his struggles as an actor, a person, and his outlook on the world, it focuses on the friendship between he and Cliff and doesn't really seem to have a plot until the very end of the film or as I call it "The Punchline". At the end of the film the infamous murder is about to occur until Rick Dalton orders the group to (in no uncertain terms) buzz off, the group recognizes Rick as a character from the famous fictional TV show "Bounty Law" and decide to kill Rick instead, as the group goes to do the deed they find Cliff, Rick and his wife more than capable and they defend themselves against The Manson Family resulting in the deaths of the perpetrators. By the end of the film, Sharon Tate sees the commotion and invites Rick inside her home possibly relaunching his career, and thus Sharon Tate and her friends are saved. We know from history this is NOT what happened...and that's the point, that's "The Punchline" this film has been building to. To steal from a prominent YouTuber LET. ME. EXPLAIN.
The whole point of fiction is to tell a story, stories are so prevalent in our culture that even Jesus Christ Himself told stories featuring fictional characters, very often nameless and usually meant to represent an ideology but a story is a story nonetheless, and here begins my shower revelation. All fictional basically presents a "What if..." scenario and that's what I realized. Not exactly a big deal BUT for someone like me who isn't into historical fiction, the revelation that ALL fiction is a "What if..." scenario is a HUGE one. As a writer I try to make my fiction as far removed from reality as possible, I dictate the world to have it's own universe and the set the parameters of what that universe contains, but introducing fiction into the real world...that's a no go for me. Now I may use a real-world event or establish that a lot of the same events that occurred in the real world happened in mine just for the sake of simplicity but the worlds I create are NEVER the real world only an imitation thereof.
Quentin Tarantino however, confined himself to the real world and inserted 2 fictional characters in it and thus an entirely new world had to be created. By that I mean had Rick and Cliff actually existed and had the life they had Sharon Tate would still be alive and Quentin proved why that would be. I'm reminded of the famous poem "The Nail", if you're unfamiliar with it, it's basically a poem in which seemingly innocuous omissions have unforeseen and very grave consequences, in this case, Quentin managed to show how lives can be saved by just inserting a few characters into the real world. This isn't the first time he did it and he's not the first person to do it, many have done it with Hitler and Quentin did so as well in "Inglorious Basterds" but this was the first time I understood the sheer power of fiction being beyond the fantastical.
I hardly ground what I'm writing in reality, or at least my reality, certain events are altered or may have never occurred just for the sake convenience, for example, zombie movies do not exist in the universe of "The Walking Dead", otherwise they would know what they're dealing with which means figures such as George A. Romero do not exist or did something else with their film career and that means Michael Jackson's "Thriller" may have never happened (as Michael is featured as a zombie in the video). All references to "the living dead" do not exist in the world of "The Walking Dead". And that's the joke, how far do you think about fiction and its impact on the real world? A perfect example of this is "Forrest Gump" where a fictional character is inserted into real-world events and he doesn't have the same impact as saving the life of someone who in our reality is dead but you get the point.
To expand even further, let's look at "The Boondocks". Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in "The Boondocks" but killed, no. Therefore our timelines would line up, Martin Luther King Jr. was absent, alive but absent and therefore had no bearings on life as we know it and "The Boondocks" continued with that timeline until King come out of his coma and that's where the fiction begins. By altering one aspect of King's life, Aaron McGruder managed to change history while keeping it familiar for us to grasp the gravity of the situation. However, he didn't insert fictional characters in his life to do it.
I'm not a fan of historical fiction, I'm really not and I'm not exactly a fan of altering the lives of real people, it's a pet peeve for me, however, I'm okay with inserting a fictional character into the life of a real person for a cameo as it were, ala Elvis Presley in "Forrest Gump" where Forrest turned out to be the inspiration behind Elvis's dance moves. But this goes above and beyond historical fiction and moves right into the realm of an alternate reality. And thinking of all fiction as an alternate reality (which isn't quite a revelation but still) made me realize the full scope of fiction in all its facets and genres. All fiction is just an altered version of our own reality, some altered to be familiar and other altered to be completely foreign but its an alternate reality nonetheless where we (the writers) have complete control over. If you've ever tried to make your own language, then you understand just how complicated such a process is, imagine constructing an entire universe.
Whether or not you think "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood" is a good movie or not (me personally, I like the movie but it's not a GREAT movie in my opinion) the fact is you can't deny that Quentin has thought long and hard about his universe and the world that he's built. If we're to believe that every Tarantino movie takes place within the same universe and Quentin has made that clear with Vincent Vega from "Pulp Fiction" being related to Victor Vega from "Reservoir Dogs" and Sgt. Donowitz from "Inglourious Basterds" being the ancestor of Donowitz from "True Romance" and so on, it's safe to say that the Tarantinoverse is an alternate reality from our own in which Sharon Tate lived to make more movies, WWII was won thanks to The Basterds, a French girl with a grudge and a Nazi turncoat, that there was a slave named Django who became a bounty hunter and so on. This encouraged me to think more about my universe and just exactly are the what-ifs present within and I hope it does the same for you. Until next time, catch ya later!
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