13 Behind-The-Scenes Stories From 'Once Upon A Time In Hollywood'
- Photo: Georges Biard / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0122 VOTES
Sony Gave Tarantino A Deal That Few Directors Would Receive
It's good to be Quentin Tarantino. There are not many Hollywood movies that can be both artistic and box-office giants. The auteur has not had to make many sacrifices that threatened his vision in the name of the bottom line.
Tarantino made his first eight films with Miramax Films/The Weinstein Company. However, that relationship folded with the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault conviction.
Sony stepped in and made an offer that few, if any, modern-day directors would receive. According to The Hollywood Reporter, in exchange for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood's worldwide rights, Sony gave Tarantino a "$95 million budget, final cut, and extraordinary creative controls."
The deal also included 25% of first-dollar gross. Additionally, the rights will go back to Tarantino after 10 to 20 years.
- Photo: Sony Pictures Releasing217 VOTES
Tarantino Used His Hollywood Clout To Shut Down LA's Busy Freeways
Sure, Los Angeles is known for its glitz and Hollywood glamour, but it's also known for its intense traffic. Tarantino is a lifelong resident of the area. He needed his clout in order to shut down the busy city's freeways.
In many ways, Tarantino's ninth film is a love letter to his hometown. There are several scenes of stuntman Booth cruising the city streets of La La Land in his blue Volkswagen Karmann and Dalton's cream-colored 1966 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. When Booth is out and about driving around in the period movie, he can't be filmed with modern-day cars passing along the highway next to him or street signs advertising Apple iPhones or Tesla cars.
These cruising scenes meant that the production design team led by Barbara Ling had to essentially change the entire landscape of Los Angeles without the use of CGI. As she explains:
We did it all practically, which is not done much anymore. That’s why it stands out, because it’s not footage, and it's not CGI. [...] Not only period cars but period services: ads for diapers, plumbers that you saw in commercials, the buses with the TV ads, which is what LA is all about. Sometimes on set you’re racing to do things, and until you see it all together in the end you’re like, Wow, I hope this works. And it did. We really captured the feeling of driving on freeways in California in 1969.
It also meant shutting down the city's congested freeways and then adding over a hundred period-appropriate vehicles.
The results of the production team's recreation were so effective that some spectators could not believe that Tarantino did not use special effects. Location manager Rick Schuler explains:
With the cooperation of the city, the permitting office, Caltrans and the California Highway Patrol, we were able to secure a window of time during the day that saw over a hundred period automobiles and trucks travel in both directions on the 101 Freeway. [...] I’d say more than anything else, the sight of this really pulled me back in time. [...] At a recent showing of the movie, Quentin had to dissuade some viewers of the fact that the scene was not the result of visual effects.
- Photo: Sony Pictures Releasing39 VOTES
Tarantino Has Thought A Lot About What Happens To Rick Dalton After He Helps Save The Day
The screen fades to black, and the story is over. But when you're a master storyteller like Tarantino, the saga never ends (at least not in his own brain).
One of the reasons why Tarantino is such a successful filmmaker is because his characters feel like three-dimensional beings, not just cardboard caricature cut-outs. They are real to the audience because they are real to the writer.
After production wrapped on his 2019 comedy-drama, Tarantino was still thinking about his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood characters. He even wondered what would become of Rick Dalton after the movie's twist revisionist happy ending.
Tarantino explains in great detail how he thinks playing the hero helped Dalton's movie career:
The whole incident with the flamethrower and the hippies got a lot of play. No one quite knows what a big deal that was, but it was still a big deal. And it’s a big deal that he killed 'em with the flamethrower, with the prop from one of his most popular movies. So he starts becoming in demand again. I mean, not in demand like Michael Sarrazin at that time was in demand, but he’s got some publicity and now all of a sudden The 14 Fists of McCluskey is playing more on Channel 5 during Combat Week and stuff. And so he gets offered a couple of features - low-budget ones, but studio ones.
But the thing is, on the episodic-TV circuit, he’s a bigger name now. He’s not quite Darren McGavin, all right? Darren McGavin would get paid the highest you could get paid as a guest star back in that time. But Rick’s about where John Saxon was, maybe just a little bit higher. So he’s getting good money and doing the best shows. And the episodes are all built around him.
So as opposed to doing Land of the Giants and Bingo Martin, now he’s the bad guy on Mission: Impossible, and it’s his episode.
Oh, and he does a Vince Edwards show, Matt Lincoln. Or a Glenn Ford show, Cade’s County. And that’s a big deal, 'cause he did Hell-Fire Texas with Glenn Ford and they didn’t really get along. But now they bury the hatchet and they make a big deal about the two guys doing it together. And then he does a couple of Paul Wendkos' TV movies.
And you know, he’s doing OK.
Tarantino even submitted Dalton's filmography to IMDb. However, they would not publish it.
- Photo: Sony Pictures Releasing49 VOTES
Tarantino Plans To Write And Direct All Five Episodes Of 'Bounty Law'
Leonardo DiCaprio's Rick Dalton plays Jake Cahill on the fictional TV series Bounty Law. Cahill is a nomadic bounty hunter in the Old West. The character is Dalton's claim to fame and most famous role.
Tarantino doesn't have plans to direct another feature film. However, he has already written all five made-for-television episodes of the fictional TV series Bounty Law, which he also plans to direct.
The auteur revealed some of the details for the half-hour series:
This is not about Rick Dalton playing Jake Cahill. It’s about Jake Cahill. Where all this came from was, I ended up watching a bunch of Wanted, Dead or Alive, and The Rifleman, and Tales of Wells Fargo, these half-hour shows to get in the mindset of Bounty Law, the kind of show Rick was on. I’d liked them before, but I got really into them. The concept of telling a dramatic story in half an hour. You watch and think, wow, there’s a helluva lot of storytelling going on in 22 minutes. I thought, I wonder if I can do that? I ended up writing five half-hour episodes. So I’ll do them, and I will direct all of them.
- Photo: Sony Pictures Releasing59 VOTES
Cliff Booth And Rick Dalton’s Relationship Was Inspired By Burt Reynolds And Hal Needham
There are needy Hollywood actors, and then there is Rick Dalton. Thankfully for the Western star, he has his trusty BFF. Cliff Booth is everything to Dalton: best friend, stunt double, driver, and drinking buddy.
Tarantino based their bromance on the relationship shared by Burt Reynolds and his stunt double buddy Hal Needham. The veteran stuntman turned into a behind-the-scenes legend in Hollywood. He worked as a stuntman in 4,500 TV episodes and 310 films. He also clearly did not mind sacrificing his body because he reportedly broke over 50 bones throughout his stuntman career.
The daredevil and the mustachioed sex symbol met in 1959 when Reynolds was acting in the television series Riverboat. The pair became quick pals and even lived together for five years. Eventually, Needham retired from being a stuntman and went on to write and direct two of Reynolds's most financially successful movies, Smokey and the Bandit and The Cannonball Run.
Reynolds spoke about his longtime friend to The Hollywood Reporter after Needham passed at the age of 82. "Knowing Hal, he not only was amazing in so many ways, but he had a tremendous ego, which I loved,” Reynolds said. He added that they were “two guys that thought that the other one was great and at the same time we were happy just to have a mirror there."
- Photo: Sony Pictures Releasing616 VOTES
If A Crew Member Got Caught Using A Cellphone On Set, They Would Be Fired Immediately
During an appearance on Rich Eisen's radio show, Timothy Olyphant said that cellphones were not allowed on the set of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. In fact, if anyone got caught using their cell, the penalty was severe.
"You're fired. Cellphone out? Done," said Olyphant, who played real-life actor James Stacy in the film. "No warning, nothing, you're going home."
The no-phones-on-set policy is one that Tarantino has used before. His reasoning makes perfect sense: He wants his cast and crew to work on the movie, not get sidetracked by a cellphone. Olyphant added:
I think it's about creating an environment where, while we're all here, making this thing, that's what we're all going to do. [...] We're not going to be over there doing some other thing, Instagramming, or working on your next script, or talking to your agent. No. We're here, and this is what we're doing.
The director isn't a total dictator. He did set up a designated area where someone could make a call if necessary.
- Photo: Joan Hernandez Mir / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY 2.0714 VOTES
To Avoid Another Script Leak, Tarantino Made The Actors Come To His House To Read The Screenplay
In 2014, the first draft of The Hateful Eight got leaked online. Tarantino was so upset about the leak that he threatened not to proceed with making the movie.
Fast forward a few years later, and the writer-director was not going to let that happen again. Tarantino took several elaborate steps to make sure the script stayed unseen. In fact, he did not even let his cinematographer Robert Richardson see the finished script until the movie was already in production.
“While we were in the production office, we went in a room with the ending,” Richardson said. “It was taken from a safe and they handed it to only those people who require it to be able to perform their tasks that are necessary.”
The three main actors in the movie - Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Margot Robbie - even had to go to Tarantino's house to read the lone script that he had printed out.
- Photo: Sony Pictures Releasing814 VOTES
The Production Design Crew Had To Completely Recreate Four Blocks Of Hollywood Boulevard To Look Like The 1960s
Tarantino may be an A-list director, but he likes to keep his budgets within reason. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood came in at close to a $100 million budget, which is typically more than Tarantino requires.
However, for his 2019 period movie, the director needed to make Hollywood look like it did in the 1960s. For example, there are several scenes in the film that feature Cliff Booth cruising down Hollywood Boulevard. Tarantino became tasked with completely recreating four blocks of the famous strip to look like the '60s.
The recreation project included building fake storefronts and completely reconstructing a fake marquis for the Pussycat theater.
The crew also had to figure out how to keep the tourists out of the shot. Production Designer Barbara Ling explained why they could only film one side of the strip at a time:
It would’ve stopped traffic in the middle of the city if we had tried to close down all of it. Hollywood Boulevard is 24 hours of tourism, every day of the week. I kept thinking, Don’t these kids go to school? There’s so much tourism that you can’t stop it, we just had to separate it. You always had to have people watching the tourists and making sure nobody hit them on the head with a ladder.
- Photo: Sony Pictures Releasing915 VOTES
That's Not The Real Maltese Falcon
Want to make a movie that is an homage to Old Hollywood? Why not include the Maltese Falcon from John Huston's film noir of the same name starring Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade?
The Maltese Falcon statue has a long history of disappearing and reappearing. However, in 2010, Leonardo DiCaprio reportedly purchased the famous 1941 movie prop at an auction for $325,000.
The original rumor was that since DiCaprio owned the Maltese Falcon, that he lent it to Tarantino for the scene when Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) goes to a bookstore. However, the director set the record straight during a June 2021 interview with Marc Maron.
He said that the rumor was not true and that he did in fact use a fake movie prop. He explained that the actual Maltese Falcon isn't completely black, like the one in his movie. Tarantino did wonder why he didn't ask his leading man if he could borrow the celebrated statue.
- Photo: Harper Perennial1023 VOTES
Tarantino Spent Five Years Writing 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' As A Novel
Quentin Tarantino is a complete filmmaker. He writes and directs all of his feature films. The former video store clerk even has two Academy Awards for best original screenplay for Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained.
The writer-director originally planned for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to be a novel. After five years of work, he turned it into a screenplay. “I let it become what it wanted to become,” he said. “For a long time, I didn’t want to accept it. Then I did.”
However, Tarantino fans looking for the director to branch out as a novelist are in luck. In November 2020, Tarantino signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins. His Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novel hit bookshelves on June 29, 2021, and officially became the director's first work of fiction.
A week prior to the book's debut, Tarantino opted to take a cinematic promotional approach and released a book trailer. The book trailer even features previously unseen footage from the Academy Award-winning source material. Additionally, The Hateful Eight actress Jennifer Jason Leigh narrates the novel's audiobook.
- Photo: Sony Pictures Releasing1123 VOTES
Tarantino Refused To Edit The Film For Chinese Audiences After They Were Upset With How He Depicted Bruce Lee
There aren't many bigger Chinese stars than Bruce Lee. The martial arts expert turned Hollywood movie star remains one of the country's most sacred names, but Tarantino's depiction of Lee in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is less than heroic.
Lee (Mike Moh) shows up for a cameo in the film. While taking a break from filming his television series The Green Hornet, Lee starts boisterously bragging that he can defeat then-heavyweight boxing champion, Muhammad Ali.
Lee engages Cliff Booth in a brawl after declaring that he can take the stuntman down without much of a fight. However, Booth quickly wins the battle by embarrassingly tossing Lee into a car.
Lee's daughter Shannon Lee did not enjoy the fictional scene:
While I understand that the mechanism in the story is to make Brad Pitt’s character out to be such a bad*ss that he can beat up Bruce Lee, the script treatment of my father as this arrogant, egotistical punching bag was really disheartening - and, I feel, unnecessary.
China wanted the made-up scene completely edited out of the movie. However, Tarantino was not just going to cut the scene because of anyone's hurt feelings. The country banned the film and millions of dollars of revenue were lost.
Despite the financial blow, the studio totally backed Tarantino's decision. He said:
They absolutely backed me, 100%. They were all disappointed, and so was I. Partly because we had Chinese co-producers and we wanted to do well by them. But there is a certain line you cannot cross. If it was just, "Ok, Cliff slams Katie’s face into the fireplace four times... can we make it two times?" Ok, I could do that.
- 1211 VOTES
Burt Reynolds Was Originally Cast To Play George Spahn
Tarantino originally cast Burt Reynolds for the role of real-life ranch owner George Spahn. Spahn’s Los Angles ranch is where Charles Manson and several of his followers lived. However, just weeks prior to the start of filming Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Reynolds passed at the age of 82 from a heart attack.
“My uncle was looking forward to working with Quentin Tarantino, and the amazing cast that was assembled,” Reynolds's niece Nancy Lee Hess said after her uncle’s passing.
Producers later hired Bruce Dern to take on the old rancher who is almost blind and spends most of the day in bed. The Spahn Ranch was used as the set for several old television shows and B-movies. Spahn allowed Manson and his followers to live rent-free on his land in return for labor.
- Photo: Dollface/Hulu1311 VOTES
Macaulay Culkin Called His Audition For The Movie 'A Disaster'
Tarantino has a habit of revitalizing stalled Hollywood careers. Just ask John Travolta and Harvey Keitel.
Macaulay Culkin could have possibly been another Travolta-like success story. However, the Home Alone actor's audition for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood did not go well.
“It was a disaster,” Culkin admitted. “I wouldn’t have hired me. I’m terrible at auditioning anyway, and this was my first audition in like eight years.”
Culkin did not reveal which part he auditioned for.
