Only about four and a half months away from release, it’s pretty safe to say Quentin Tarantino’s ninth movie, “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” is one of the most anticipated films of the year, bar none and maybe just Martin Scorsese. Starring two of the world’s biggest stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, who have never starred together in a movie before, “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” is a vintage throwback picture that takes Tarantino back to Los Angeles, but this time, in 1969.
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DiCaprio plays a faded TV actor and Pitt, his stunt double, as they strive to achieve fame and success in the film industry during the final years of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Of course, it all comes crashing down with the end of the flower power age too, coinciding with the death of actress Sharon Tate (played by Margot Robbie) at the hands of Charles Manson.
So, it sounds like a big sprawling epic and one that possibly takes him back to his roots of shaggy L.A. movies not big on plot ala “Pulp Fiction” and “Jackie Brown.” Everything that Tarantino’s made since 1997’s “Jackie Brown” has been, essentially, a Western-y story with revenge narrative roots (more or less), perhaps “Grindhouse” the exception to Western and “Hateful Eight” the exception to revenge. But ‘Once Upon A Time,’ is said to share more DNA with “Pulp Fiction,” which was of course character-driven and vignette-based (essentially three movies mashed into one).
It’s also said, given that DiCaprio plays a former Western TV star, that the movie will have Western dimensions as well. It’ possibly hard to tell what we’re going to get because, for the first time in years, Tarantino’s script hasn’t leaked in advance. Of course, today, we’re getting more with the first trailer that shows all kinds of elements of the movie including the different genres the filmmaker gets to dip into via all the various movies and roles that DiCaprio’s character stars in. Here’s what is as close to as an official synopsis has been released.
Tarantino describes it as “a story that takes place in Los Angeles in 1969, at the height of hippy Hollywood. The two lead characters are Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), former star of a western TV series, and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Both are struggling to make it in a Hollywood they don’t recognize anymore. But Rick has a very famous next-door neighbor…Sharon Tate.”
Obviously, it’s a reunion for the two stars; Pitt starred in “Inglorious Basterds” (2009) and DiCaprio co-starred in “Django Unchained” (2012). But there’s a huge ensemble cast in the movie too. Alongside the duo and Robbie is Al Pacino, Emile Hirsch, Bruce Dern, Damian Lewis (as Steve McQueen), Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Kurt Russell, Timothy Olyphant, James Marsden, James Remar, Dakota Fanning, Scoot McNairy, the late Luke Perry, Lena Dunham, Clifton Collins Jr., Mike Moh (as Bruce Lee), Margaret Qualley, Rumer Willis, and Damon Herriman as Charles Mason, who, ironically enough is also playing Charles Manson in David Fincher’s season two of his serial killer show “Mindhunter.” Polish theater actor Rafał Zawierucha is playing Polanski, and the cast features literally dozens of others, including 79-year-old Brenda Vacarro and 68-year-old Nicholas Hammond, who played Peter Parker and Spider-Man in the live-action “The Amazing Spider-Man” show that ran for two seasons in the late 1970s.
Now that the Weinstein Company are toast, Sony Pictures are releasing the film and, as you may remember, the movie was bumped from an August release to its new date of July 26, 2019.
“I’ve been working on this script for five years, as well as living in Los Angeles County most of my life, including in 1969, when I was seven years old,” Tarantino said when the movie was first announced. “I’m very excited to tell this story of an LA and a Hollywood that [doesn’t] exist anymore. And I couldn’t be happier about the dynamic teaming of DiCaprio & Pitt as Rick & Cliff.”
Let’s finally get a taste of what it’s all about.