I actually bothered to see this film a second time to try to figure out what I might have missed. The answer: even more dullness, more emptiness than my first look at it. Maybe because in August 1969 I was preparing to move from New York to Paris and the Manson murders, however awful, had no mythical or historical or sociological significance for me, unlike (say) Woodstock. I still find them devoid of much interest, especially for someone like QT who has no curiosity about them. Ergo, I’m inclined to think that those who assume otherwise, like those who keep harping reductively on 9/11, are simply looking deperately for ways to substitute sound-bites for thought,  or cheap journalism for life. This time, Tarantino wants to arouse our reverence and nostalgia for musical and cinematic crap along with journalistic crap—in short, all forms of media crap, mysteriously reconfigured as Our Sistine Chapel—and, like Trump, accept him as something other than a redneck
in spite of all his redneck tastes and values, the same way that Sharon Tate accepts Dalton. The eagerness of the public to embrace this abject plea for affection and respect continues to baffle me.