[Warning: Major spoilers ahead]
“In Quentin Tarantino’s latest alt-history saga Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Brad Pitt, one of the most successful movie stars of the past 30 years, essentially plays a failure. As ‘60s stuntman Cliff Booth, his name is even worth less in the movie biz than his longtime stand-in/buddy Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), who’s been relegated to villain-of-the-week guest shots ever since his star-vehicle Western Bounty Law got cancelled and his brief movie career failed to make him shine. As Dalton tries to get back in Tinseltown’s good graces, Booth doesn’t even bother. Besides, ever since he got into it on a movie set with a cocky Bruce Lee (Mike Moh), Booth hasn’t exactly been welcome on Hollywood backlots. And there is that thing where people believe he allegedly killed his wife (a brief, bitchy Rebecca Gayheart) during a boat trip.
“When we first meet Booth, he’s serving as a driver/valet/lackey to Dalton, and it’s a role he’s not particularly complaining about. He’s mostly there to give Dalton the boost of confidence he occasionally needs. ‘Hey, you’re Rick Fucking Dalton, and don’t you forget it!’ he tells his pal after dropping him off to his latest gig. But while Dalton is off playing cowboys and Indians on some primetime oater, Booth stumbles upon some outlaw territory when he visits the Spahn Movie Ranch, after giving one of the Charles Manson-brainwashed minions (Margaret Qualley) who’ve infiltrated the place a lift. After making sure ranch owner and old mentor George Spahn (Bruce Dern) is OK amongst these shady youngins — Dakota Fanning is surprisingly menacing — he knocks the shit out of a crazy-ass fella who put a flat in one of his tires, immediately demanding that he replaces the tire before he goes.
“Yeah, there’s no need for anyone to remind him that he’s Cliff Fucking Booth. He already knows.
“When you think about it, Booth is the sort of character Pitt is a master at playing. While Pitt has always been positioned as a confident, indestructible leading man (check out last year’s Ad Astra if you wanna see Pitt all stiff, emotionally constipated and drained of life — aka the complete opposite of who he is here), Pitt has always enjoyed doing roles that let audiences know there are a lot of kinks in his armor. He’s an ace at playing smart-asses who can kick your ass and maybe bang your girl afterwards. As Mike D’Angelo astutely put it in a 2005 Esquire piece, ‘...Hollywood still doesn’t understand that Pitt is a brilliant goofball prankster trapped in the body of a Greek god. As Achilles, he’s a magnificently sculpted statue, beautiful and boring. But turn him into a Waspy analogue to the young Elliott Gould—the shambling, apathetic buffoon—and he’d be funnier than Sandler and Ferrell combined.’
“And just like Gould used to do back in his heyday (particularly in Robert Altman movies), Pitt excels when he’s playing the cucumber-cool second fiddle to a dashing matinee idol: Tom Cruise in Interview with the Vampire, Robert Redford in Spy Game, George Clooney in the Ocean’s movies. Even when he did his star turn in Fight Club, literally playing co-star Edward Norton’s chiseled, clobbering id, Pitt was all madcap swagger, funny and seductive even when he was doing the most destructive shit.
“Of course, that can also describe Booth, a good ol’ boy who speeds through the streets of LA (man, between him and Matt Damon in Ford v Ferrari, 2019 was a great year for Ocean’s castmates driving recklessly on-screen), listening to KHJ-AM ‘Boss Radio’ (whose DJs included Harvey ‘Humble Harve’ Miller, who went to jail for killing his wife in 1971), just to get back to his trailer — conveniently located next to a drive-in — where his beloved pit bull Brandy is waiting for him. And, like most valiant cowboys, he has a strict moral code. He’s the type of dude who’ll politely decline a blow-job invite from a possibly underaged hippie girl, but isn’t above bashing the head of one of those flower children (albeit in an acid-laced cigarette-induced haze) when they barge into his friend’s home and threaten to kill him.
“As Dalton tells an interviewer at the top of the movie, Booth is there to help carry the load, which he does right up until he’s taken away in an ambulance, suffering injuries after he and Brandy viciously took down some killer hippies, unwittingly thwarting the notorious murder of next-door neighbor Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and her friends. (Dalton also did some damage, courtesy of the trusty flamethrower he still had from his WWII thriller The 14 Fists of
McCluskey.) Ever the stuntman, Booth downplays his injuries and tells his pal to swing by the hospital tomorrow (‘Bring bagels!’ he tells him). Moments later, Dalton virtually gets a hero’s welcome as he’s invited into Tate’s home, ready to tell his neighbors about the crazy night he just had and possibly opening the door for work for both him and his good friend in the future. And this is all thanks to Booth, once again making his BFF look like one bad motherfucker.
“Certain people were upset that Pitt was constantly nominated for Best Supporting Actor awards (awards that he well-deservedly picked up one after the other) for his performance. But even though he shared top billing with DiCaprio, I wasn’t miffed about it. After all, he basically played a supporting actor — and, gotdammit, he was the best at it.” ~ Craig D. Lindsey
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