Austin Butler's Once Upon A Time In Hollywood Role, Explained
Jessica Cortez Austin Butler is almost unrecognizable in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, playing one of the movie's final antagonists.
Before Austin Butler gained international recognition for his lead role in Elvis, he appeared in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Quentin Tarantino's movie takes place in 1969, at the peak of Hollywood's golden era, and follows two men who are the opposite of each other trying to survive in the ever-changing film industry: Rich Dalton, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is a movie star falling to oblivion, while Cliff Booth is an ill-tempered stuntman who acts as Dalton's chauffeur. Parallel to their story, their neighbor Sharon Tate, played by Margot Robbie, is rising to stardom.
What Once Upon a Time in Hollywood does best is play with the idiosyncrasies of a decade through characters both fictional and real. Rick Dalton is based on many real-life actors of that decade, while Sharon Tate, an iconic real-life actress, represents kindness and innocence in times ravaged by violence and war. The decay of humanity in the face of change is represented by Charles Manson's cult, a hopeless group of people who try to find meaning in their naivety, and that's when Austin Butler comes in.
Austin Butler Plays Tex Watson
In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Austin Butler portrays "Manson Family" member Tex Watson, first appearing in the movie's Spahn Ranch scene. When Cliff gives a ride to a hitchhiker (Margaret Qualley) staying at the ranch, where he worked as a stuntman for Rick, he finds the place swarmed with hippies. He immediately suspects they're taking advantage of the ranch's owner, the elderly, nearly blind George Spahn (Bruce Dern, who replaced Burt Reynolds). Enraged, Cliff beats up one of the hippies after discovering the guy punctured one of his tires. This causes the hippies to call for Tex, who arrives as Cliff is driving away.
Tex Watson was one of the Manson followers involved in the murders of Sharon Tate and friends, plus her unborn child, in cold blood at her home in Benedict Canyon. In the movie, Tex is one of the four cult members sent to murder the inhabitants of Tate's home, which happens to be next door to Rick's. Tex and the others recognize Cliff there and decide to attack him instead. Although Tex is holding a pistol, Cliff gets the upper hand over the younger man, killing him and the other cult members with the help of Rick.
Tarantino Alters History With Watson's Fate In The Movie
Austin Butler's Tex is clearly a fictional version of Tex Watson. Although he gets Manson's cult and the attack right, Tarantino alters history by changing Sharon Tate's fate. In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the attackers never kill anyone because they're stopped by Cliff and Rick, indirectly saving Sharon, her baby, and all her friends from their unfair fate. It is not the first time that Tarantino used fiction to fix what got wrong in reality: in Inglorious Basterds, a character kills Adolf Hitler and many other prominent Nazis in a movie theater.
It's easy to miss Butler on a first watch because he is pretty much unrecognizable as Tex. Different from his sophisticated role as Elvis Presley, he looks dirty and unkempt. Tex is a small role, but Butler takes the assignment seriously, delivering a great performance by capturing the fear in Tex's eyes: although the words he spits out are threatening, his lack of experience is perceptible in every movement. With this character, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood highlights the cowardly and thoughtless nature of the Manson family as they try to prove something that they didn't even believe.
