In a 7.31 interview with Indiewire‘s Kate Erbland, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood costar Margaret Qualley explains her preparation for playing “Pussycat,” a Manson family member. The 24 year-old actress tells Erbland that director-screenwriter Quentin Tarantino “loaded [her] up with some rare Manson Family documentaries — ‘very strange ones that you can’t find yourself’ — from his own DVD collection.”
Then comes the stunner: In a parenthetical, Erbland states that “Qualley had to buy a DVD player just to watch them.”
First, who would buy a DVD player? The thing to get, obviously, would be a Bluray player (they all play DVDs) with streaming options. But the bigger question is, who doesn’t own a player of some kind to begin with?
I understand an actress in her mid 20s not owning physical media and just streaming this or that when the mood strikes. But everybody in the world has a remote player that streams stuff…right? Yes, I realize that most 1080 and 4K TVs come with streaming apps but only a couple…right? And they don’t allow users to add apps, or so I understand.
It just seems weird that an actress wouldn’t own a disc player of some kind. Role preparation these days always involves looking at classic or cult films with stand-out performances, and that almost always means watching DVDs or Blurays that a director has urged an actor to watch.
For this reason alone, an actor not owning a disc player is almost like a baseball player not owning a mitt. Not to mention the Movie Catholicism aspect. If you’re an actor of any sincerity you have to be a believer in the Church of Cinema, which means you have to care enough about image quality and having the right film-fanatic apps (Criterion Channel) and the freedom and wherewithal to pop in an occasional classic disc. If you’re an Orthodox Jew you keep a yamaka (or kippa) in your bedroom bureau. It goes with the faith.
