ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD
Unbeatable access to Quentin Tarantino’s latest epic, from the set to the Cannes Film Festival. Accept no substitutes.
Quentin Tarantino’s sprawling opus is set in Tinseltown in 1969, and follows a washed-up actor and his stunt double against the backdrop of an era-defining crime. Total Film has full access to Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood to find out why Tarantino’s penultimate film is his most personal yet.
It’s a week to Halloween in the last stretch of his ninth film, Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, but Quentin Tarantino has anything but blood, guts or horror on his mind. Although his story is rumoured to climax in August 1969, when drug-addled hippies butchered five people at a movie star’s mansion, the inspiration in his head couldn’t be more surprising. “I guess the closest outside influence, even though I’m doing it my own way, might be Claude Lelouch,” he ventures. There’s one of director Lelouch’s films in particular – 1970’s Le Voyou (aka The Crook), which is, in his own words, “Pulp Fiction before Pulp Fiction.” There’s a dizzying timeline, a twist, and, for a film about the kidnapping of a little boy, it’s oddly moving, funny and really quite sweet. There’s even a recurring film-within-a-film – a dazzling, glamorous balletic musical in which a ’20s-style mobster hoofs it up with his molls. Surprisingly, Tarantino hadn’t seen it until just a few years ago. Disappointingly, there’s nothing very glamorous about tonight’s
location, which overlooks an empty drive-in in the city of Paramount, a scuzzy, muddy little area surrounded by rickety, long-abandoned tin buildings with broken windows. There’s a motor home that looks like it might have been left here a long time ago, but its current occupant is one of the biggest stars on the planet. This is the home of Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), stunt double of Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), a TV star who had the smarts to buy a place up in the hills when he was still a struggling actor. There’s a motorbike outside, a battered blue car, and Cliff’s gentle giant of a dog Brandy, an American pitbull, is sniffing around.
It’s already past midnight, and Pitt is sitting with a can of beer on the top of his trailer. There’s a deckchair on the roof, which overlooks a movie screen showing a scene from Gordon Douglas’ 1968 film Lady In Cement, the second in the Tony Rome trilogy. It’s the first encounter between Frank Sinatra’s crumpled detective and Raquel Welch’s beautiful, rich and possibly deadly party
girl Kit Forrest. Pitt finishes his beer, throws it drunkenly into the distance, and makes his way down the ladder. “That Raquel Welch,” he murmurs. “It seems like she makes 12 movies a year. If she keeps up that pace, in another 15 years or so, I might just start getting sick of her.” The scene won’t make it into the finished movie, but Tarantino is pleased with it anyway. “Cut,” he shouts.
Once Upon A Time… sounds like a project that Tarantino’s had in mind his whole life, but, surprisingly, it only came to him “a bit over five or six years ago”, possibly before he’d started shooting Django Unchained. “At first I started writing it as a novel,” he recalls. “I wrote a few chapters that way, and that kind of derailed me for a little while, because when I decided to turn it into a screenplay I kept trying to save everything I had for the novel and it didn’t work. But I kept thinking this would be a real big deal, so I wasn’t in any real kind of hurry. I figured I’d just kinda push the rock up the hill, see how far I got, and then I’d leave it, And then all of the sudden I was like, ‘Holy shit. I’m doing this!’ I finished the script about… when did I finish it? About a little over a year ago.”
Tarantino won’t say who or when, but the inspiration for Rick and Cliff came from real life. “I’ve met a couple of actors that have had their own stunt guys for, like, 10 or 15 years,” he says, “and it’s an interesting dynamic that they have. A lot of stunt guys, that’s their dream – they hook up with a hot actor and become their go-to guy. Then they go on every movie with them, and they maybe become buddies, and they’ve got employment set up for themselves. And that works when it works. And, y’know, it worked for Rick and Cliff for a while.”
But now, it seems, the wheels are coming off. “What’s going on with Rick and Cliff is that part of the problem is that Rick’s career is on a downward trajectory. Now, he and Cliff started working with each other when Rick was doing his big TV show, and so when he started doing movies he took Cliff with him. But, now, it’s a situation where Rick isn’t in the position to demand that his stunt double be used. And Cliff is kind of persona non grata in the stunt community. So, he’s hitched his horse to Rick and now Rick is going in the opposite direction. Cliff has kind of de facto become his assistant. Also, Rick lost his driver’s licence from too many drunk driving tickets, so actually Cliff literally needs to drive him all over town because Rick can’t drive himself.”
The script has changed a lot in those five or six years. “But the basic idea is the same,” he insists. “The ending is the same, and some of the aspects of it are definitely the same. But for the first few years it was a little bit more… melodramatic, all right? But then I kind
‘I had Sharon Tate from the beginning, before I had Rick and Cliff. I just wanted to tell her story’ quentin Tarantino
‘It’s nice not having all the responsibility to carry a film. It kind of lightens the load and makes it easier’ Brad Pitt
of nailed the characters and then I started to explore a few different ways to deal with these characters. And then once I kind of really nailed the characters I was like, ‘OK, I’ve got these characters – what story do I want to tell with them?’ Then I kind of realised that instead of coming up with some melodramatic, plotty kind of thing to put Rick and Cliff through, I just decided to make it a day in the life. Or a couple of days in the life.”
Tarantino insists that the setting was always going to be 1969, and it seems fair to assume that this might have something to do with his fascination for the year 1970 and the birth of “new” Hollywood in the wake of the success of Easy Rider. Indeed, in 2016, Tarantino programmed an entire season of films for the Lumière film festival in France, comprising films by Robert Altman, Russ Meyer, Dario Argento and more. But no. “It always took place in ’69,” he states flatly. “I don’t really give a damn about ’69. I’m more into 1970. That’s a cinema thing, but that had nothing to do with this. Everyone thought it has something to do with this, but it had literally nothing to do with this at all.” So it isn’t a kind of prequel to 1970? “No, no, Sharon Tate died in ’69 so I’m in ’69. Right from the beginning, I had Sharon Tate before I had Rick and Cliff. I just wanted to tell her story.”
Tate, who married Rosemary’s Baby director Roman Polanski in 1968, has held a bizarre fascination in the film world, and, until now, for all the wrong reasons. She is synonymous with the year 1969 simply because at her Hollywood home, on 9 August, she and four others were murdered by members of a hippie collective led by the charismatic Charles Manson, who lived on Spahn Ranch, an old western movie set out in Chatsworth. But Tarantino associates her with 1969 because, in February, that’s when her breakout movie The Wrecking Crew came out, pitting her in a spy caper alongside Rat Pack crooner Dean Martin. “I saw The Wrecking Crew when it came out,” he says. “So I knew who she was, even though I didn’t know her by name. I knew who she was before the murders – because of that film. And I thought she was great in that movie when I was a little kid. I thought she was very funny. I think she’s very funny now when I watch it. I mean, I don’t like the movie, but I thought she was hysterical when I was a little kid because she’s playing the klutz. And so did the whole audience. She brought the house down.”
As a child, did he know about Charles Manson? “Yeah, but I was too young to understand it. I heard his name bandied about. I remember asking my stepfather and he goes, ‘Nah, you don’t need to know about that.’”
Tarantino steadfastly refuses to explain how Sharon Tate’s story interacts with that of Rick and Cliff, hinting that it may just be a matter of geography. “Rick lives next door to Sharon and Roman, and there’s this aspect to it about the fact that Roman’s probably the most famous superstar director in the world right then. Y’know, he and Sharon are at the top of the game in Hollywood, and Rick’s in a different place, even though they live right next door to each other.”
Other than that, Tarantino affects no interest in the Manson family, except the fact that they were of their time – a time he remembers vividly. “I was six, but I remember it very, very well,” he says. “Just, like, what was on TV at that time, what was on local stations in Los Angeles at that time, what the radio was like at that time, what did the bus stops look like at that time – the pop culture of the time, I still remember what was on the reruns and the local stations. I remember the newscasters of the local stations. I remember what was
on Saturday morning. I remember the local kid shows, the local TV shows, the local celebrities…”
He points to the beat-up blue car that Cliff Booth drives. “My stepfather had that car. Yeah, that’s the little car that I whizzed around Los Angeles in 1969 in.”
So is this an autobiographical film in any way? “Yeah. Very much so. In fact, there was one point where I even had a little boy who represented me, but I took the little boy out.” Why? “I just did. It was a scene with a family – my mother and my stepfather and me. I didn’t call him Quentin, but he represented me. My feeling was that anybody who was in Los Angeles County in 1969 can be in this movie.”
Partners in crime “Do you see the paparazzi?” Producer Shannon McIntosh shields her eyes and squints out into the distance. Six months after Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood wrapped, we’re in a private house in Beverly Hills, where random props and pieces of furniture from the film have been assembled for a photoshoot. Cliff’s trailer is here, and so is Rick’s Cadillac, and a bar has been installed inside the den so that Pitt and DiCaprio, in full evening dress, can attend a mock premiere for Rick Dalton’s spaghetti
western Nebraska Jim. It’s taken a while, but finally the stars’ presence – minus Tarantino, who has quite spectacularly gone missing en route – has attracted the press. In fact, in a street above and across the way, there’s a snapper who’s dented the roof of his car by standing on it, just to get a clearer picture.
“We’re having so many flashbacks to the movie,” laughs McIntosh, “because we have so much of our furniture here, and we’ve got paparazzi in the hills!” She calls out to DiCaprio. “Leo, you missed the scenes when we were shooting in the hills of Chatsworth – we had to go and find people under rocks up there.
It was quite something.”
Today’s photoshoot is a full-on Hollywood affair, with racks of designer clothes meticulously matched and colour-coded to Cliff and Rick. Pitt and DiCaprio handle it all tirelessly, and their on-screen roles seem to have rubbed off on them: they handle their interviews jointly, and routinely finish each other’s sentences. Their rapport is such that it seems strange they’ve never worked together before. “It was good fun,” says Pitt. “Easy-peasy. I mean, for one thing, it’s nice not having all the responsibility to carry a film. [With Leo] I know I’ve got a partner who’s adept at carrying things himself, so it kind of lightens the load and makes it nicer and easier, and then
we just have fun scenes where we get to bounce off each other and have a laugh, no real drama.”
“Brad’s the consummate professional,” nods DiCaprio. “We’re there, we’re prepared, we’re there to do our jobs. But what I thought was interesting is that our characters are kinda like two sides of the same coin. Quentin gave us these wonderful back stories for both of us, so we felt like there was this massive, loaded history, which was a comfort. Y’know, when you’re with your best friend, or somebody who’s been your partner in crime for that long, there’s just a real comfort in that.” “Yeah,” says Pitt. “There’s real ease to it.”
Unsurprisingly, the year 1969 has different meanings for Pitt, aged 55, and DiCaprio. DiCaprio, born in 1974, feigns ignorance and laughs. “But, y’know,” he says, “in a weird way my parents – certainly my father – are still sort of stuck in that time!” (Seriously, google his father.) “It was a massively transitional year, in every way. Politically, culturally – music, art – everything really changed, certainly from the 1950s. How it impacted our country was amazing – we still sort of harken back to that time. But what was fascinating to me about this movie was the way we really got, as actors, to immerse ourselves in that time period. I mean, it was visceral for us and it was tangible. It was tactile because Quentin doesn’t really like to do much CGI work – if any. Actually, I’ll correct myself: none. So we were in ’69 in a lot of situations.”
“That didn’t sound good,” drawls Pitt. “You’re right!” laughs DiCaprio, catching on. “I’ll clarify that – in the
year 1969. But there were set-pieces that we had where he transformed iconic Hollywood Boulevard, many blocks of it.”
“To such detail that you’ll never even see,” adds Pitt. “Like little pamphlets and posters inside the store windows and bus stops. I mean, he did an amazing job. It was really fun to see Hollywood Boulevard transform. And he did that on every corner we were at. Rick’s home is especially beautiful – beautifully period.”
For DiCaprio, Tarantino’s film is a story about change, and paying homage to the people that paved the way without necessarily getting their star on the Walk of Fame. “There have been many iterations of Hollywood,” he says. “From the silent era to the talkies, there have always been these transitions. Like VHS, television, and, for God’s sake, even radio. I mean, we’re in a transition right now, with streaming. But this is really Quentin’s love story about the industry. It’s really, like, celebrating those guys that maybe we don’t talk about historically in the same way as the major stars, but who did a lot of great work and maybe it wasn’t with the top directors. But it’s a real celebration of the Hollywood film industry and the work and the talent that’s been put into it.”
Once again, the subject of Tate comes up. How, exactly, does her story fit in with Rick and Cliff? Pitt looks to DiCaprio for help. “We should look at our contracts,” suggests DiCaprio. “Well,” says Pitt, “it’s weaved in only as Quentin can do it, weaved right in. But I think it’s fair to say that she’s Rick’s neighbour.” “Yeah,” says DiCaprio, “and she and Roman represent a Hollywood that Rick and Cliff don’t belong to. Sharon and Roman’s story unfolds in close proximity to us, but we’re not really connected to them. We’re sort of the voyeurs of their world.”
Three weeks later, the team are in Cannes, adding some much-needed
‘Our characters are kinda like two sides of the same coin… there was this massive, loaded history’ leonardo dicaprio
A-list pizazz. The film, which receives Tarantino’s best reviews since Pulp Fiction debuted here 25 years ago, gets a seven-minute standing ovation, and then the champagne flows at a rooftop after-party, where Tarantino sits in the VIP area chatting with his old friend Robert Rodriguez. The film won’t win the Palme D’Or – or, more surprisingly, anything at all – but it does win the Palm Dog for Cliff’s dog Brandy, who is praised by the judges for “the most memorable movie meal since My Dinner With André”.
But the moment that goes viral is a snippet from the press conference, when a journalist questions Tarantino’s decision not to give Tate the kind of snappy delivery he’s known for. Instead of one-liners, Robbie gets to put the character across with her sheer physicality – with a gesture, a groovy dance (there’s lots of that),
or just a sweet smile. “Obviously I do have dialogue in the film,” says Robbie, when we finally meet in her hotel room at the Carlton, “but for the most part I’m kind of going through my day and I’m on my own and so the dialogue is limited in that respect. But there’s quite a lot of time on screen just being with her, whether she’s driving, walking or watching a movie.”
Lighting up To find the character, Robbie spoke to people who knew Sharon: her sister Debra, her friends, even her hairdresser. “Just everyone pretty much says the same thing,” she recalls, “that she was just the most lovely, delightful, ray of light. And that’s what I honed in on: this idea of her being this light, bright, ethereal presence. And, strangely enough, it was hard work to embody that lightness.
I found that much harder than going dark. I find it a lot easier to go dark, to yell, to scream, to cry, to find the conflicts. But to let any level of stress or angst or doubt dissipate from my body and walk onto set and convey lightness and brightness was such an interesting acting exercise – and strangely hard to do. It’s so much easier for me to convey who my character is with words.”
Did Tarantino help with that? “Well, he helped me on the page,” she decides. “You could see when you were reading the script – he’s spending so much time with her on the page, even while she’s just doing her daily errands – that he adored her. Like everyone I spoke to, he just adored her and thought she was this angelic figure, this beautiful presence, this generous spirit and open heart.”
Robbie still pinches herself when she looks back, and she can’t quite believe that, out of all the actresses in the world, Tarantino chose her. “I was very aware that he’d said he was only going to do 10 projects in his career,” she says, “and I was very aware that my time was running out to achieve this life goal of mine.”
It is a clock, however, that is still very much ticking, and that tenth movie is now perilously close. It’s hard to imagine a world not just without another Tarantino movie, but without another Tarantino set, one where the crew are like family and every 100 reels of film are toasted with a party. (The night Total Film visits, the party’s theme is Halloween, and the sight of Tarantino in a cape and plastic fangs, twisting idly to ‘Monster Mash’, is not easily forgotten.) So, is retirement still the aim? And how exactly will it end – with an original idea or perhaps the much-mooted Star Trek movie?
“Y’know, I’m just kind of getting sick both of people asking me about it,” he says, “and then I’m also getting sick of people complaining that I’m talking about it – which is because I’m being asked about it all the time! Maybe I asked for that, but, nevertheless, I’m just saying anything now, so people will stop paying attention to me. If I just say a different thing with each new reporter, you’ll eventually stop asking me. I could tell one person I might work till I’m 90. I’ll tell this person that Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood is my last movie. I’ll tell this person I am doing Star Trek, tell that person I’m not doing Star Trek…”
Could Star Trek be number 10? “There’s a few things I could do. But I really don’t know what film number 10 will be. And I kind of like the fact that I don’t know. Uma and I have talked about doing a third Kill Bill movie – that could be an interesting last movie. That’s the only, like, existing project that could happen. But other than that, I don’t know what it is. It’s just kind of deep inside me, and it’ll eventually reveal itself. I have literally no idea. If it’s not Kill Bill or it’s not
Star Trek, I have no clue what it is.”
ONCE UPON A TIME… IN hOllywOOd OPENS ON 14 AUGUST.
‘She was just the most lovely ray of light’ margot robbie