I FINALLY got around to watching Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood today. It hasn’t replaced Pulp Fiction in my mind, but sometimes, in these dispirited times, what you need to set the scales of morality straight is some good old-fashioned movie killing. The flamethrower worked for me.

Someday I need to write about the acting—Margot Robbie is both beautiful and gifted. Her trailer-park Tonya Harding in I, Tonya, was spot on and, of course, Tonya’s temperamental opposite is Robbie’s sunny Barbie. She is a joy to watch. Brad Pitt’s Cliff is explosively violent but has a moral compass that points True North. And Di Caprio’s Rick Dalton monologue, in the Western scene while holding the little girl, ten-year-old Julia Butters, at gunpoint, took my breath away.

In the scene before—he’s shooting a TV Western—DiCaprio’s Dalton, massively hungover from too many whiskey sours and trying to contain his Marlboro cough, blows his lines repeatedly. He retreats into his trailer and confronts himself in a furious episode of self-hatred. The scene was completely improvised.

I was once happy, in Titanic, to see Di Caprio’s Jack sink beneath the surface. He has changed my mind since then.

I should write someday about the cars (Sharon Tate’s Porsche 911, Polanski’s convertible MG, the Benedict Canyon guests’ yellow ’68 Pontiac Firebird, Dalton’s Cadillac, now hideous); the minor players (Band of Brothers’ Damian Lewis as Steve McQueen, Margaret Qualley, Andie McDowell’s daughter, as Pussycat) and the one-liners, including, and I apologize for this:

Don’t cry in front of the Mexicans.

I loved the dog. Our nephew, Brendan, has an American Bull Terrier that looks just like the one, Brandy, so devoted to Brad Pitt’s Cliff. In defense of her human, Brandy latched onto Tex Watson’s crotch (that was Austin Butler, Elvis. Tex Watson, as far as I know, is still in CMC.) in the break-in scene. She did not let go. Brendan’s dog, angelic and a happy volunteer pillow, is likewise devoted to their little girl.

This is Brandy, whose real name is Sayuri.

I read the prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s book, Helter-Skelter, many, many years ago, and it was the barking and the baying of the dogs on Camino Cielo as the murders got underway that kept me up that night. It was a stunning passage.

The address was 10050 Cielo Drive, in Benedict Canyon. The home, a low-slung amalgam of French Provincial and American Ranch, was lived in by Lilian Gish, Henry Fonda, Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon, among others. The home was razed, as was the address, after the five murders. Nevertheless, the lot’s neighbors, even today, claim to hear voices, rising in argument. Some of them hear screams.

I’m a little obsessive about Los Angeles history, thanks to detective novelist Raymond Chandler. I’m a little obsessive about that part of El Lay, because those hills produced such beautiful music—Manson thought himself a musician and songwriter—until that terrible, terrible night, the hottest night of 1969 in Los Angeles.

The murders destroyed this. This performance, from a Lady of the Canyon, is from 1969, too.

I had to look it up. El Coyote was the restaurant where Sharon Tate and her friends had their last meal. El Coyote was founded in 1931. In the scene that Tarantino shot, the actors sat in the same booth where Sharon—she ordered enchiladas with corn tortillas— and her friends sat that night in August 1969.

Shivers.

While it’s not my favorite Tarantino movie, he chose the music with such expertise, with such feeling for history, that it made the film, while not history, history as you wish it could have been, which was exactly his intent. We need a little history as we wish it could have been. Today.

Here are some examples of the music he chose.

I had forgotten how much I liked this Deep Purple song, so here’s the first tribute video I found on YouTube that I wanted to share.

Another tribute video. My favorite Mamas and Papas song.

And I can’t tell you how much I loved this Bob Seger song:

But maybe Tarantino’s best choice of songs was this one, from the Rolling Stones, made so poignant for its foreshadowing. Polanski, after all, had Chinatown ahead of him. Sharon Tate was twenty-six years old.

I am not an angeleno, but I loved the neon signs that even I could recognize, including an early Taco Bell. I spent many happy hours at SLO’s Taco Bell on Santa Rosa when I was in college.

I am seventy-two now, of course. This film reminded me of how much I enjoyed the music from “my” 1960s. Thank you, Quentin Tarantino, for two hours well spent.