Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

• 1. A Secret In A Safe

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  Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a 2019 film by Quentin Tarantino, and its ending was guarded like a state secret. Tarantino kept the only copy of the third act locked in a safe. Besides Tarantino himself, only Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt ever read the whole script. In an interview with Adam Sandler, Pitt revealed that Tarantino had burned the one other copy. The film is set in Los Angeles in 1969. It follows a fading television actor and his stunt double as their industry changes around them, with a real-life tragedy looming over the story. Why did a story built from real people demand this much secrecy? Where did the idea come from, and who among the characters actually lived? And why does the finale still divide the people who watch it?

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• 2. Seeds Of A Story

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  Roughly ten years before the film, Tarantino was shooting Death Proof in 2007 with Kurt Russell, who had worked with the same stunt double, John Casino, for several years. There was only a small bit for Casino to do, yet Tarantino was asked to use him and agreed. The partnership fascinated him. Casino may have been the perfect double for Russell years earlier, but Tarantino sensed that this was maybe the last or second-to-last thing the pair would do together. That observation became the centerpiece of a film about Hollywood.

  Tarantino built the stuntman first. He named him Cliff Booth and gave him a massive backstory. Next he invented the actor Booth would double for, Rick Dalton. Then he made the two men next-door neighbors of Sharon Tate in 1969. For the first time in his career, he fixed the ending first and wrote backward from there.

  For its first five years, the project lived as a novel, which Tarantino treated as a way of exploring the story before deciding whether it was a screenplay. An early scene between Dalton and his agent, Marvin Schwarz, began life as a one-act play. He briefly imagined an Elmore Leonard-style plot. In the end he trusted his characters enough to let them carry a day in the life of Booth, Dalton and Tate.

  The action would come from scenes of Dalton's own movies and shows. Tarantino borrowed that idea from Richard Rush's 1980 film The Stunt Man, which used footage from the First World War movie being shot inside it. To get inside Dalton's head, Tarantino wrote five episodes of Bounty Law, the fictional Western Dalton had starred in. He had become fascinated by how much story 1950s Westerns packed into half an hour. Throughout, he knew the title would evoke a fairy tale, though in public he called the whole project Magnum opus.

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• 3. A New Home For Tarantino

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  On the 11th of July 2017, reports surfaced that Tarantino's next film would be about the Manson murders. At that point Harvey and Bob Weinstein were expected to be involved, although nobody knew whether their company would distribute it. Tarantino wanted to cast the film before sending a package to studios. He approached Brad Pitt and Jennifer Lawrence, and Margot Robbie was under consideration for Sharon Tate.

  Then came the sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein. Tarantino had worked with the Weinsteins for his entire career, but he cut ties and went looking for another distributor. That makes this his first film without Bob and Harvey Weinstein. Studios began to bid for it. David Heyman joined as a producer alongside Tarantino and Shannon McIntosh.

  On the 11th of November 2017, Sony Pictures announced it would distribute the film. It had beaten Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Annapurna Pictures and Lionsgate. Tarantino's demands were steep. He asked for a $95 million budget, final cut privilege and what he called extraordinary creative controls. He also wanted 25% of the first-dollar gross and a clause returning the rights to him after 10 to 20 years. Sony met those demands. The finished film became a co-production between the United States, the United Kingdom and China, with Bona Film Group, Heyday Films and Visiona Romantica joining Columbia Pictures.

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• 4. Casting The Era

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  DiCaprio signed on in January 2018, accepting a lower salary than usual so he could work with Tarantino again. On the 28th of February 2018 the film received its title, and Pitt was confirmed as Cliff Booth. DiCaprio and Pitt were each paid $10 million. Robbie, who had said she wanted to work with Tarantino, signed on as Sharon Tate in March. Zoë Bell confirmed she would appear. Tim Roth, Kurt Russell and Michael Madsen followed in May, and Luke Perry joined in June among a long list of names. Damon Herriman was cast as Charles Manson in August.

  The auditions produced their own stories. Austin Butler was told he was reading for a villain or a hero on the Western series Lancer. The part was in fact Tex Watson. Maya Hawke rehearsed with her father, Ethan Hawke, and later described a callback process unlike anything she had been through, except perhaps auditioning for drama school. Sydney Sweeney said the actors in her session all read for the same character, then were offered extra credit. She wrote a letter in character.

  Some roles never came together. Tarantino approached Jennifer Lawrence about playing the Manson follower Squeaky Fromme, but, in his words, something just didn't work out. Lawrence later pointed to online abuse about her looks. Tom Cruise was considered for Cliff Booth. Macaulay Culkin called his audition a disaster, partly because it was his first in eight years.

  The saddest casting story belongs to Burt Reynolds, who was hired in May 2018 to play the ranch owner George Spahn. He did a rehearsal and script reading, but died in September before filming his scenes, and Bruce Dern replaced him. Perry also died before the release, on the 4th of March 2019, and the film is dedicated to him. Reynolds spent his last working hours running lines with his assistant. He had also given Tarantino a piece of advice: someone has to tell Booth, "You're pretty for a stunt guy." The line is spoken to Booth in the film by Bruce Lee.

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• 5. Rebuilding Los Angeles

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  Tarantino wanted 1969 to be seen through a child's eyes. His starting point was a memory of himself at six years old, sitting in the passenger seat of his stepfather's Karmann Ghia, looking up at the signs along the road. Principal photography ran from the 18th of June 2018 to the 1st of November 2018 around Los Angeles. His instruction was to turn the Los Angeles of 2018 into the city of 1969 without computer-generated imagery. The crew still needed more than 75 digital effects shots, from Luma Pictures and Lola VFX, mainly to hide modern billboards and erase buildings that did not exist in the 1960s.

  Production designer Barbara Ling carried most of the burden. At the Pussycat Theater, her team covered the LED signage and rebuilt the iconic neon letters. For Larry Edmunds Bookshop, she reproduced the original storefront sign and recreated period book covers. Her crew also restored the Bruin and Fox Village theaters and their marquees, and gave Stan's Donuts a complete makeover. For some driving scenes, the Hollywood Freeway and Marina Freeway were shut down for hours so vintage cars could fill them.

  Some locations were real and some were stand-ins. The Playboy Mansion party was shot at the actual mansion, after long negotiations with its new owner, who was in the middle of renovations. Playboy did not acquire the mansion until 1971, so the scene contains an obvious anachronism. Cielo Drive, where the Tate-Polanski house once stood, was not used. That house was razed in 1994 and replaced by a mansion nearly six times its size, so three different Los Angeles locations stood in for it. A wildfire destroyed Spahn Ranch in 1970, so the crew rebuilt it at Corriganville Movie Ranch in Simi Valley. Tarantino kept dogs moving through every shot there, copying the way Francis Ford Coppola used helicopters in Apocalypse Now.

  Cinematographer Robert Richardson shot on Kodak 35 mm film with Panavision cameras. Bounty Law was filmed in black and white, and brief sequences used Super 8 and 16 mm Ektachrome. Tarantino told him to make the picture feel retro but contemporary. One of the film's best-known moments was not scripted at all. DiCaprio came up with Dalton flubbing his lines on the Lancer set while shooting, and Tarantino then wrote the trailer breakdown, citing Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. DiCaprio improvised the whole scene.

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• 6. Borrowed Lives

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  Cliff Booth is a composite of many stuntmen and screen heroes. Tarantino and Pitt modeled him on Tom Laughlin's Billy Jack, and Booth wears a denim outfit like Billy Jack's. Other sources include Gary Kent, a stuntman on a film made at Spahn Ranch while the Manson Family lived there, and Gene LeBell, a stuntman, wrestler and two-time national judo champion. Pitt channeled Bud Ekins, who was Steve McQueen's stunt double. Tarantino also described a real stuntman, the closest equivalent to Kurt Russell's Stuntman Mike in Death Proof, who supposedly killed his wife on a boat and got away with it.

  Rick Dalton's old series, Bounty Law, echoes the real McQueen series Wanted Dead or Alive. The child actor Trudi Fraser draws on Jodie Foster. Marvin Schwarz was a role that Tarantino wrote specifically for Al Pacino. Francesca Capucci combines the looks of 1960s Italian screen sex symbols, including Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale. Several people play versions of their own jobs, such as Zoë Bell as a stunt coordinator and Heba Thorisdottir as a makeup artist.

  History crowds in everywhere. Sam Wanamaker directed the real Lancer pilot, as he does in the film. He had been blacklisted from Hollywood in the 1950s and moved to London, where he led the recreation of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. In the film he compares Dalton's role to Hamlet. Lada St. Edmund, a go-go dancer on the Hullabaloo set, later became the highest paid stuntwoman in Hollywood history. The bookshop owner who sells Sharon Tate a copy of Tess of the d'Urbervilles is Milton Luboviski, the real proprietor, played by Clu Gulager. Tarantino took the dialogue of the acid-selling hippie from the 1968 documentary Revolution.

  The Manson Family largely arrive under their nicknames. Spahn gave Charles Watson the name Tex because of his Texas accent. Susan Atkins carried a fake ID reading Sadie Mae Glutz. Patricia Krenwinkel's name came from her own fake ID, and Linda Kasabian becomes Flowerchild. Dianne Lake was Snake, because she rolled in the grass pretending to be one. Pussycat is a composite, based mostly on Ruth Ann Moorehouse, whom Manson sent into the city to lure men with money back to the ranch. Tarantino has said that because the Tate murders never happen in this film's universe, neither do the LaBianca murders.

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• 7. The Last Night

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  The film's plot begins in February 1969, with Rick Dalton coping with a stalled career. His agent suggests spaghetti Westerns in Italy, which Rick considers beneath him. Cliff, meanwhile, struggles to find stunt work because of a past altercation with Bruce Lee and rumors that he murdered his wife. On the Lancer set, Rick has an emotional breakdown over his lines, then delivers a powerful performance that restores his confidence. He goes to Italy for a six-month shoot, makes three more films and marries Francesca Capucci. Before they return, he tells Cliff he can no longer afford his salary.

  The pair land back in Los Angeles on the 8th of August 1969. Over a night of drinking, Cliff smokes an acid-laced cigarette and walks his dog Brandy. Four Manson followers arrive, bound for the house next door, but Rick orders them off the street over their loud muffler. Sadie argues that television shows like Rick's have taught them to murder, so they turn on his house instead. Cliff recognizes them from Spahn Ranch and sets Brandy on them. Rick finishes off Sadie with a flamethrower from one of his old movies. Afterward, Jay Sebring and Tate invite Rick over for a drink.

  Critics have argued for years about what that ending means. The theologian David Bentley Hart, who remembered the Manson Family as the first monsters who truly terrified him as a child, praised how the film veered into a dreamlike, better world. Av Sinensky pointed out that Tarantino puts the words of his own critics into a Manson murderer's mouth. David G. Hughes read the same scene as Tarantino separating cruel real violence from cathartic fantasy violence.

  Others doubt that the night happens at all. Steven Hyden of Uproxx suggested the finale is Cliff's acid-fueled vision, which lets him stay employed and lets Rick be a hero. Kyle Anderson argued it is a dream shared by both men. Several critics also noted that when Cliff remembers fighting Bruce Lee, the crowd watching the fight vanishes in seconds, which suggests a false memory.

  The death of Cliff's wife Billie is deliberately left unseen. Anna Swanson compared it to the unexplained gunshot that kills Marvin in Pulp Fiction. A viewer who sees an accident and a viewer who sees murder will watch the rest of the film very differently, she wrote. In Tarantino's 2021 novelization, there is no ambiguity. Cliff killed Billie with a speargun, immediately regretted it, and had killed three other people too, including another stuntman.

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• 8. Reception And Afterlife

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  On the 21st of May 2019, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, exactly 25 years after Pulp Fiction premiered there. It had originally been scheduled for the 9th of August 2019, the 50th anniversary of the Tate-LaBianca murders, but opened in the United States on the 26th of July and in the United Kingdom on the 14th of August. The studio spent around $110 million on marketing. An extended cut with four additional scenes reached theaters on the 25th of October 2019.

  It opened to $41.1 million in the United States and Canada, Tarantino's largest opening, finishing second behind The Lion King. Comscore found that 47% of the audience came because of the director, compared with a typical 7%. Its worldwide total reached $393.9 million, made up of $142.5 million at home and $251.4 million elsewhere. Estimates of its break-even point ranged from around $250 million to around $400 million.

  Most critics were warm, though the praise was uneven. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called the 2 hours and 40 minutes long for some viewers, yet wrote, "I wouldn't change a frame." Katie Rife of The A.V. Club saw the friendship between Rick and Cliff as the emotional heart of the film. Others were harsher. Richard Brody of The New Yorker called it an "obscenely regressive vision of the sixties." Owen Gleiberman of Variety found it engrossing but not a masterpiece.

  The film earned 10 nominations at the 92nd Academy Awards and won two, Best Supporting Actor for Pitt and Best Production Design. It also took the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy. The Writers Guild of America ranked its screenplay the 22nd-greatest of the 21st century. Tarantino has called it his favorite of his own films.

  The story is not finished. A sequel called The Adventures of Cliff Booth, written by Tarantino and directed by David Fincher with Pitt in the lead role, was scheduled for release in 2026.

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