![]() ![]() I would too, as Rosemary’s Baby is one of the all-time great horror movies. After seeing Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) arrive, Rick laments that the director of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) lives next door. ![]() Rick’s car is a Cadillac Coupe, the same model in fact that Vic Vega drives in Reservor Dogs (1992). It is based on a collection of sci-fi short stories written by Ray Bradbury. As they are pulling into Rick’s driveway, the radio has an ad for Jack Smight’s 1969 adaptation of The Illustrated Man, an eerie tale of a man whose tattoos come alive, each with a story of their own. Cielo Drive is of course the infamous street where… well, you know what happened. The best villains on that series have endured in pop culture 50 years on. He also laughs at Rick starring on Batman, the Adam West series that ran from 1966 to ’69, but that ain’t no joke. That was of course the spymania show that rode on 007’s coattails from ’64 to ’68 (it is also responsible for Archer and Kingsman’s obsession with spy agencies hiding in clothing stores/dry cleaners). Marvin jokes if Rick isn’t careful he’ll be playing the heavy who loses the fight of the week on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. He would go on to gladly put on the white hat for Leone in 1968’s Once Upon a Time in the West, which similarly reinvigorated The Magnificent Seven actor’s career. It ultimately led to Eastwood being a movie star by the time he and Leone completed what became “The Dollars Trilogy.” That role was originally offered to Charles Bronson, another TV actor who turned up his nose at the idea of doing an Italian Western. Clint went to Italy to star in Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964) when he was primarily an unhappy TV star on the Western Rawhide (1959-1965). Rick, however, resists the opportunity, clearly not learning the lessons of Eastwood. As a struggling TV actor this would let him be the lead of a movie. Speaking of Eastwood, Marvin is trying to lure Rick into Spaghetti Westerns. When Rick meets Al Pacino’s Marvin Schwarz, the latter compliments Rick on a film called, I believe, “14 Fists of McClusky.” While such a title evokes The Guns of Navarone (1961) in my head, the snippet of movie we see is most decidedly inspired by Where Eagles Dare (1968), a British production that for 138 minutes was a glorified “Killin’ Nazis” adventure starring Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood… Before becoming a movie star, she led ABC’s short-lived Pan Am, a ’60s-based slice of network nostalgia in 2011. While Pan Am was the premiere airline of 1960s America–much to Howard Hughes’ chagrin, which Leonardo DiCaprio undoubtedly has thoughts about–one wonders if this is a wink to Robbie’s own early TV work. During the opening credits, we see Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) getting her groove on during a Pan Am flight. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Budd in Kill Bill (2003, ’04). On Bounty Law, we also see Michael Madsen, who is of course a mainstay of Quentin Tarantino movies after playing Mr. Thank you to commenter Cheryl Long Shultz bringing this series to our attention. ![]() This seems apt given how much of Rick Dalton’s career mirrors McQueen, from missing Great Escape to doing “Nebraska Jim” (more on that below). There is also a strongly likelihood that Bounty Law is based on Wanted: Dead or Alive, a 1958 TV series about a bounty hunter starring Steve McQueen. It also made a star of James Garner, who’d go on to appear in The Great Escape (1963), but more on that later. Most famous of such would be Gunsmoke, which premiered in 1955, but given the dynamic of Rick playing a lawman who goes town to town, it better resembles Maverick, which ran from 1957 to 1962 and focused on two gamblers who got in scrapes in different towns each week. The series itself is a fictitious creation, however it is obviously based on a variety of 1950s and ‘60s shows. The film opens on Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) doing an interview for a late 1950s television series named Bounty Law. So without further ado, ramblers, let’s get rambling. We are sure there is more that we missed and are happy to take any suggestions for nods we overlooked. So below we have compiled just a sampling of the references and easter eggs we caught on now two viewings of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Still, cast all that aside, and what remains is a heartfelt love letter to 1960s Hollywood and all the groovy things we’ve lost from that time of flower power, straight hair, and every exec in LA suddenly wearing a leather jacket and growing a moustache. ![]()
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