The Rick Dalton Meltdown

From Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.

How much does a great scene depend on the writer? How much does it depend on the genius of the director and the actors? Which is more important?

On the one hand you can cite brilliant improvisational comedies like Caddyshack, Animal House and Spinal Tap to say it’s all in the moment. On the other hand you have the taut, stylish writing of people like David Mamet and Quentin Tarantino.

When you’ve got a scene like the Marcellus Wallace monolog in Pulp Fiction, you don’t argue with it. You say the words.

Or the intro to No Country for Old Men.

When you’re given poetry, you don’t mess with it. You just say the words.

But not everything is best expressed in poetry. As much as I’d like to claim that the genius comes solely from the writer, it’s not true. The genius is where the writing meets the moment, especially in a performance medium like film. Especially for a scene like the one we’re looking at today.

The setup is that Rick Dalton, an actor on the downside of his career, has just given a pretty mediocre performance on a TV shoot because he was drunk the night before. Now he’s very upset with himself, but he’s got to go back out there and finish the rest of the day. Does he throw in the towel and resign himself to mediocrity? It’s a reasonable choice. An earlier scene with the T.V. director has cast the whole thing in a clownish light. After all, it’s just another cowboy show in the 60’s. It’s probably going to suck anyway, right?

When Quentin Tarantino wrote Once Upon a Time in Hollywood he purposefully didn’t write this scene He left it loose because he wanted to capture a certain kind of energy from the performance. Here he is talking about how he went about it.

For what it’s worth, I think I write pretty good dialog. But whenever I shoot or record something, I’m always willing to let it evolve in the performance. I’m always looking for some kind of magic on the day. I’m a nobody, so not only can I not afford to let my ego get in the way, there’s also not much of it to wrestle with. Well, on the good days.

I have come to think of the job of a writer as laying the a good foundation on which, everyone else can confidently build and improvise. Like the backline of a good band. You could think of this scene as Leonardo DiCaprio taking a solo. If the drums and the bass aren’t tight — if the rest of the band isn’t in the pocket — no matter how amazing the solo might be, it will all come free of its moorings and sound like shit.

This scene captures an essential moment in the creative process that isn’t talked about enough because it’s humiliating. Hitting rock bottom with yourself.

The forces of self-sabotage lie within us all. The greater the work you attempt, the more powerful these forces become. In his tremendous book, the War of Art, Steven Pressfield named these forces of self-sabotage “Resistance.”

> Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. resistance is the enemy within.

> Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill. Its target is the epicenter of our being: our genius, our soul, the unique and priceless gift we were put on earth to give and that no one else has. Resistance means business. When we fight it, we are in a war to the death.

Rick is in a fight in this scene. That he is fighting himself doesn’t change the stakes.

It’s a little embarrassing to say that I lived this scene with How to Succeed in Evil. When I was first putting it up as a podcast, I kept making stupid technical errors and getting files kicked back and breaking the RSS feed. I kept making stupid typos in metadata, had trouble focusing proofing the book. Getting the art to be the right size. It was terrible. It was like I was cursed. Except, there was no one else to blame.

I remember the exact stoplight I was at when I looked into the rear view mirror and said to myself, “I don’t know what you think you are doing, but I’m not going to quit. As many times as you want to screw this thing up, I’ll fix it. So if you want to stop me, you’re going to have to kill me.”

I persevered. The book went on to sell a lot of copies and win an award. And to this date, I have not managed to kill myself in spite of writing 11 more books after that. The struggle is real. It can be won.

Subjectivity and Criticism

There is something to be said here about the response to art being subjective. Does this scene work better for me because of my experience? Of course. But just because something is subjective, doesn’t mean it’s not universal. Because we all share in the human condition, our subjective experiences overlap a lot. That’s why stories work.

This is fundamental to my approach to criticism. It’s an idea I got from Harold Bloom and he got from Samuel Johnson. Bloom said his criticism was reading deeply, paying close attention to what happened to him as he read and reporting the experience. That’s as subjective as it gets. But when you do that faithfully, the subjective experience somehow becomes universal. And sharing your enjoyment, helps other people deepen their enjoyment.

It’s Not About the Result

What’s also interesting is that the scene doesn’t turn on the thing that Rick cares most about. We don’t need to see him crush his performance for the scene to be complete. It all turns on his commitment. When he walks out of the trailer to do the next scene he’s going to be great or die trying. In the end, none of us can really command greatness. All we can do is put in the effort that demonstrates we are worthy of doing great work.

This is a humble way of looking at it. And it’s not new. The ancients believed in the Muses, goddesses that would, sometimes, descend on an artist while he was at work. And then, with divine inspiration, the artist would produce greatness.

It’s basically, the “sometimes the magic works” theory with one exception. It takes the responsibility for genius off of the person doing the work. It suggest that your greatest work isn’t within your direct control. It is the result of something divine that only comes to you while you are working. So the only thing within your control is if you to work diligently, or not.

Stephen Pressfield summed up this implication perfectly when he wrote, “The Muse loves a working stiff.”

In a scientific sense, I don’t believe in the Muses. But pragmatically, this theory is one of the truest and sanest things I know. If you are working at your highest capacity on the most important thing, parts of it will be a religious experience. And you will look back on whatever you’ve done and marvel at the best of it while admitting, perhaps only to yourself, that you can’t do that. As they say, you were playing out of your head.

But to do that, you have to defeat your demons. Or at least chase them off the field for long enough to get your work done. That's what this scene captures brilliantly for me. And I know of no other scene like it.