We went to see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood not long ago. Been a while since I’d seen a new movie, or a Quentin Tarantino movie, for that matter. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’d ever seen one of his movies in the theater — everything’s been on tape or DVD or demand, to list formats chronologically.

I left Once Upon a Time wondering how old Tarantino is. I knew next to nothing about him, except for his fondness for putting ultraviolence in his movies. From the way he depicted the period of the movie, 1969, I got the sense that he remembered it, but not as an adult. Like me.

Sure enough, he was born in 1963. That makes us contemporaries. Later he must have filled in some of the gaps his own memory might not have retained, as one does. I can’t imagine, for instance, that a six-year-old would have paid much attention to Sharon Tate or any of the movies she was in, least of all a bomb like The Wrecking Crew. (Matt Helm movies are best forgotten.) On the other hand, Tarantino probably saw old TV westerns on reruns or shows like the FBI or Mannix in the early ’70s, just as I did.

Yuriko came away baffled by many of the references. She’d come to see Brad Pitt, whom she enjoyed seeing — he had a good part — but it isn’t a past she shares. Neither of our daughters went, but come to think of it, most of the references probably would have been strange to them as well.

Despite including the Manson family and some other unsavory aspects of the period, the movie was an exercise in nostalgia — of a kid who watched American movies and TV beginning in the late 1960s. For a time when Americans watched roughly the same TV shows and movies, because options were much more limited than they are now.

What will be the basis of pop-culture nostalgia for the 2010s in 50 years, if there’s any? I’d think it would be as fractured as entertainment is now. Well, so what? Can’t say that I care. Not my circus, not my monkeys.

Pitt, as stuntman Cliff Booth, had my favorite line in the movie. In a flashback, Booth was on the set of The Green Hornet with Bruce Lee, who is characterized as a preening, vain fellow, and they’re rehearsing a fight scene.

Bruce Lee: My hands are registered as lethal weapons. We get into a fight, I accidentally kill you? I go to jail.

Cliff Booth: Anybody accidentally kills anybody in a fight, they go to jail. It’s called manslaughter.