Marvin Shwarz

Cliff Booth is the laid-back laissez-faire flipside to Rick Dalton's high-strung, high-anxiety basket case.

Nowhere is this more plainly on display than an early scene in the film, in which Cliff drives Rick to Musso and Frank for a lunch date with the producer Marvin Schwarz, played by Al Pacino.

Rick has a whiskey sour, and Cliff has a Bloody Mary, and Marvin shows up first to charm Rick by singing his praises for his roles in films like the Western Tanner and the World War II film The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey, in which we get a cutaway to a scene from that film where Rick ambushes a room full of Nazis with a flamethrower.

But Marvin is also there, not so much as the bearer of bad news, but as the bearer of the truth.

Now, we all know this is Charles Manson, even though it's not explicitly said.

And in fact, we've already gotten a glimpse of Manson earlier in the scene I mentioned where Cliff is fixing this antenna on Rick's roof.

He's watching as Manson pays a visit to the Polanski house, thinking that record producer Terry Melcher still lives there.

But much to Pussycat's chagrin, Charlie is not at the ranch that day.