The next major event on the year’s cinema calendar belongs to Quentin Tarantino, as he readies his latest effort Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for theatrical release. First, however, the public will get a chance to bone up for another typically allusion-heavy project from the magpie-master.
Tarantino has taken to the small screen, programming a series of films for the Sony Movie Channel that act as a sort of primer to the swinging ’60s as depicted in his upcoming feature. Starting on 5 August, nine titles hand-picked by the living encyclopedia himself will explore the counterculture and other social upheavals of the era – a key theme in QT’s vision of retro Los Angeles.
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The titles include Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, Paul Mazursky’s portrait of marital shakeups in the era of free love; Gene Saks’ French-influenced sex farce Cactus Flower; Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper‘s psychedelic poem of life on the open road; and Jacques Demy‘s tender, emotionally bruising drama Model Shop.
Also in the mix is Sharon Tate vehicle The Wrecking Crew, which plays a significant role in Tarantino’s fantasyland; the hard-nosed espionage flick Hammerhead; Getting Straight, a treatise on the rise of college campus activism; blackhearted Western deep cut Gunman’s Walk; and the oater Arizona Raiders, precisely the sort of rough-and-tumble film Tarantino’s protagonist Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) would have appeared in.
The selections will air nightly until the 14th of August, some running as double features. It’s an appropriately old-fashioned way to get people ready for a movie unabashedly enamored of the past, and it’s inspired us at Little White Lies to make a few suggestions of our own for additional viewing.
For those audiences hungry for even more fringe, tie-dye, and denim, allow us to recommend 1967’s The Born Losers, a bikesploitation B‑movie that stumbled into the zeitgeist by inadvertently capturing currents of change among the angry, rebellious youth. For good measure, go online and look up a few episode of Laugh-In, a variety show with which Tarantino’s fictitious Hullabaloo (an in-universe TV production that gets Rick a guest-starring gig) shares plenty of DNA.
So flash the peace sign, do your best Watusi, and light up another LSD-dipped cigarette – 1969 is here again.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is released in the US on 26 July and the UK on 14 August.
