Tarantino’s walk on wild sid

The celebrated writer-director’s latest movie pays homage to the end of an era in Tinseltown. Michael Idato reports.

Quentin Tarantino remembers holding his mother’s hand while walking down Hollywood Boulevard at the height of its architectural and social decay, when it was crawling with ‘‘hippies, street hustlers and weirdos’’. He was about 7 years old.

‘‘It was kind of terrifying for me,’’ Tarantino says now. ‘‘It was really scary. I had never seen that much nightlife going on. I never saw that many sketchy characters. And there was a bit of danger. It was sort of like, whatever you do, don’t let go of your mum’s hand.

‘‘The idea of being lost out there was beyond terror,’’ Tarantino adds. ‘‘Like being lost in a foreign country. It was thrilling but kind of scary. I’ll never forget that walk and I’m glad I had that walk. I have a memory of what it was like.’’

That street, and in many respects Tarantino’s deeply felt impressions of it, are the centrepiece of what will probably be the 56-year-old Tennesseeborn film-maker’s second-to-last movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

A comedy-drama set in the 1960s, it explores the lives of a famous, ageing television actor and his stunt double, and how they intersect, fictionally, with a number of historic turning points in the city, notably the rise to prominence of cult leader Charles Manson.

Described as ‘‘a modern fairytale tribute to the final moments of Hollywood’s golden age’’, it stars Leonardo DiCaprio as western star Rick Dalton, Brad Pitt as Dalton’s best friend and stunt double Cliff Booth, and Margot Robbie as actor Sharon Tate, who was at the time married to director Roman Polanski. A heavily pregnant Tate and three friends were subsequently murdered by members of the Manson family in 1969.

As Tarantino assembled the film’s story – a blend of fiction and history – he says it became a statement on the class system that permeates Hollywood, with the key players clinging to their respective rungs on the industry’s ladder.

‘‘The Sharon Tate character is living the high life of Hollywood, while Rick Dalton, whose time has passed, is a little bit yesterday’s news.

‘‘And his stunt double, Cliff, who’s the guy who has attached his horse to the guy who’s going down, represents a whole bunch of people who have worked in Hollywood their whole career and have absolutely nothing to show for it,’’ Tarantino says.

What makes it such a Hollywood story, Tarantino adds, is that Los Angeles is one of the few towns in the world where those people ‘‘can all live right next to each other [and] in this case, figuratively and literally’’.

‘‘It was the idea of exploring that time and that era of Los Angeles and that era of Hollywood with these three characters and then it became, ‘OK, now what story do I want to attach them to?’ ’’ Tarantino says.

He tried to approach the story from a couple of angles, but eventually decided it should be ‘‘a day in the life, or three days in the life, as [the characters] move about Los Angeles and the noose of the story gets a little tighter’’.

As with much of Tarantino’s writing, it is as deeply comic as it is emotional. The story also illuminates how America, born in its rejection of the British class system, fell short of delivering the promised egalitarian society and instead created its own alternate class systems.

‘‘Hollywood has always had a class system. You could be a Brooklyn kind of guy and if you become a big movie star, well, you’re at the top of the class and everyone’s catering to you,’’ Tarantino says.

‘‘But particularly at this time, the class system itself got shook up like a snow globe – and the snow is kind of falling.

‘‘You have movie stars but the movie stars start fading, they’re still working but they’re not as hot as they were,’’ Tarantino says. ‘‘Then there’s TV actors, you see them at the Golden Globes every year but it takes them 45 minutes to get up on stage because they’re at the back of the room.’’

Tarantino claims he is not inclined to nostalgia, but he confesses that he does periodically return to the streets of his own childhood to rekindle memories that he holds dear.

The son of Tony and Connie Tarantino, his family moved to the working-class LA suburb of Alhambra after he was born, but Tarantino was raised in El Segundo and the South Bay.

‘‘Every year and a half, or two years I spend all day down there and I just kind of drive around my old haunts,’’ Tarantino says. ‘‘I’ll go to an old restaurant that I used to like, or a couple of bars that I liked, I will drive all my old routes. I spend the whole day and into the night there and just see what else is open.’’

What awaits him on that journey, aside from the physical, Tarantino says, is a chance to hold onto the artefacts of his childhood, in a city which – perhaps more than any other US city – has little regard for its history.

‘‘It’s kind of a drag about Los Angeles that the whole city is transient,’’ he says. ‘‘You could live anywhere, you can live in a place for eight years, every f...ing day, and after eight years you move. And if you go back eight months later you’re shocked at how different it is. That’s just the constant churning to me of Los Angeles.’’

And yet, seemingly unchanged despite the

onward creep of gentrification, is Hollywood Boulevard’s strange amalgam of Tinseltown history and seedy grime.

That two-mile stretch of road that haunted Tarantino’s childhood is renewed and unchanged, having evolved from the genuine epicentre of the entertainment business to a wretched slum and, finally, a tourist mecca.

‘‘When a place has had the makeover that Hollywood Boulevard or Times Square has, on one hand it’s prettier and it’s nicer and it’s definitely a lot safer than it was,’’ Tarantino says. ‘‘But then you notice nobody who lives here goes there any more. It is just given over to the tourists. It’s like an A-ticket in Disneyland.’’

‘‘Truthfully, just like the way the denizens of New York will kind of shed a tear for the Times Square theatres closing and the sleaze of Times Square, I do miss Hollyweird,’’ Tarantino adds. ‘‘Because I remember. Little do you know what you’re missing until it’s gone.’’

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is scheduled to open in cinemas on August 15.

‘‘It should be a day in the life, or three days in the life, as [the characters] move about Los Angeles and the noose of the story gets a little tighter.’’

Quentin Tarantino on the roles of Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, above, and Margot Robbie, inset.