In 1969
Los Angeles, actor Rick Dalton, the former star of the
Western television series
Bounty Law, finds his career faltering due to ongoing
alcoholism issues. Dalton dwindles into a drawling functional binge alongside Cliff Booth, his best friend and
stunt double, lamenting that his career is over. By contrast, Booth, a
Vietnam War veteran who lives in a derelict trailer next to a
drive-in in Van Nuys, seems happy and satisfied. Booth is rumored to have murdered his wife and gotten away with it.
Booth participates in a fists-meets-martial-arts duel on the set of
The Green Hornet with
Bruce Lee and wins. Later, Dalton, playing a black-hatted villain on a new series called
Lancer, gets into a philosophical chat about acting with his 8-year-old costar, a budding feminist and
method actress.
Meanwhile,
Sharon Tate and her husband,
Roman Polanski, have rented their new home next to Dalton's at
10050 Cielo Drive. At a party at the
Playboy Mansion, fellow actor
Steve McQueen fills in Dalton on the backstory of Tate, Polanski, and their friend
Jay Sebring, a hairdresser who is in love with Tate and, according to McQueen, is hanging around to bide his time and wait for Polanski to sabotage his marriage.
After his performance in
Lancer receives positive reviews, casting agent
Marvin Schwarzs offers Dalton the opportunity to shoot a
Spaghetti Western in
Rome. The prospect fills Dalton with despair; he thinks Spaghetti Westerns are the bottom rung of the entertainment totem pole. Dalton takes Booth to the six month shoot in Rome, making several films while eventually marrying an Italian crew member, Francesca Cappucci.
Back in Los Angeles, while escorting a flirtatious young woman named Pussycat to the
Spahn Movie Ranch, Booth learns she is a member of the
Manson Family led by cult leader
Charles Manson. Suspiciously, Booth and Dalton meet up at the ranch and discover a
murder plot, as the Manson Family have taken hostages, having kidnapped Tate, Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and others from Rick's house, with the intent to brutally murder them for the agenda of their cult. Bruce Lee arrives onto the scene unannounced, ready to fight, saying he had been observing the family for days and suspected them of possible violence. Tate is freed, and begins dispatching members of the Manson family herself in a brutal fashion, with moves she learned from Lee in private lessons. Together, Dalton, Booth, Tate and Lee brutally defeat the Family in a shoot-out/kung-fu showdown. Manson arrives to briefly check in on the family, stunned that his murder plot was thwarted, but is abruptly killed by Booth before he has a chance to react to the change of events. Tate and the others are saved, but Booth dies from fatal injuries sustained in the fight. Despite his career having not amounted to his ambition, Dalton acknowledges that it is the end of the 1960s, and the Hollywood spirit will live on.
