If you’ve read reviews of Tarantino’s ninth feature-length piece of work—Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood—then you need to be redirected to something else that is awesome and related—Danger God. They’re both worth picking up as stocking stuffers.
Cliff Booth, the stuntman played by Brad Pitt, draws at least some inspiration as a character from Gary Kent, who happens to be O’Connell’s documentary subject, and who also had a confrontation with the now infamous Charles Manson Family at their Spahn Ranch. At the time, Kent was knee deep in his legendary career which comprised burning, falling, fighting, jumping and getting broken in real life for over a 100 movies that came out in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
Kent’s mother’s timely recognition of her son’s daredevil mentality in Walla Walla, Washington, led to him being able to perfect the veritable art of colliding with solid things at breakneck speeds while on the football team in high school. That said, he was also a theater buff, and with that interest intact, he was led to Corpus Christi, Texas after serving in the military. That’s when he met Joyce, his first wife and the mother of his children.
With zero prospects on the horizon, he nevertheless announced to the young family his intentions of relocating to Hollywood in search of acting jobs. All he found though, were stunt and extra work, and he did these while simultaneously acting in plays and taking drama classes. He eventually divorced Joyce, later saying, “staggering home is no way to conduct a marriage.” After that, he married a co-star.
Before landing directing gigs and lead parts, Kent played a role where he rode a chopper as one of the Hells Angels, despite never having ridden a bike before that. Needless to say, he crashed and broke a rib, and Dick Clark, the producer, drove him to the hospital. Kent describes the Spahn Movie Ranch in such a way that Tarantino’s depiction comes off as spot-on. Hippie girls really stood around watching stuntmen and actors work on the property which was in Simi Valley, after which they begged for craft services lunches.
Kent tells of an incident which inspired one of the more prominent scenes included in Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood. In the latter, Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth finds a tire which is evidently purposely flattened, and then proceeds to threateningly order a male hippie to repair it. In real life, it was a dune buggy that had broken down, and Patricia Krenwinkel at the time offered up Manson, a “great mechanic” in her words, as the person for the job. He was given $70 in advance, but when the buggy had still not been repaired the next day when the crew arrived, Manson was ordered to repair it just like in the movie. The only difference is that Charlie got right to it.
The Danger God subject, and his contemporaries and admirers, bring plenty to the table in terms of uplifting, entertaining, jaw-dropping, enlightening, and heartbreaking stories. There have been serious health scares recently, but despite those, 86-year-old Kent is well and kicking while this story is being printed. And despite the warts-and-all portrait O’Connell paints, his abiding respect for Kent is not so easily masked.