Brad Pitt On Tarantino And How Once Upon A Time Came To Life: "It's A Love Letter To LA, But Also To Our Childhood"
Jake Millar 2 July 2019
We
meet the star of Quentin Tarantino’s latest cinematic masterpiece, an
epic adventure into an iconic era of Hollywood that might just be the
biggest, best, most ambitious film of the year.
The audience at the Cannes Film Festival, not known for hiding its
judgement, delivered a standing ovation as the credits rolled on
Quentin Tarantino’s hugely anticipated epic
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood.
With his latest film, Tarantino had won over the festival’s notoriously
picky critics, just as he did 25 years ago, when Pulp Fiction scooped
the coveted Palme D’Or.
Then came the reviews. Five stars from
The Guardian, which called
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood “shocking, gripping, dazzlingly shot”.
High praise also from
Time Magazine, the
LA Times and even publications as far as China and Russia. “What was entirely unexpected was that
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood would be such a moving film,” wrote The New York Times, “at once a love letter – and a dream – of the Hollywood that was.”
And it is. Since it was first rumoured to be in the works some two years ago, the film has been spoken about in hushed tones.
Until very recently, the only real detail anyone had heard was that
it would star Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, and feature Margot Robbie
in a supporting role. Beyond that, and the fact it would somehow
address the ‘Manson Family’ killings, little was known.
Ahead of the Cannes premiere, Robbie even took to social media to
post a type- written note from Tarantino, pleading against revealing
spoilers.
“The cast and crew have worked so hard to create some- thing
original,” it read. “I only ask that everyone avoids revealing anything
that would prevent later audiences from experiencing the lm in the same
way.”
But at risk of spoiling nothing, the gist is this. The film takes
place over three days in 1969: February 8 and 9, and crucially, for
reasons that we’ll get to in a bit, August 8. This is a different
Hollywood, a changing Hollywood. The Golden Age – the Hollywood of Cary
Grant and Errol Flynn and James Dean in
Rebel Without a Cause – has peaked, and is starting to fade.
It’s in this Hollywood that Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) finds
himself. A one- time big star, Dalton is now cast adrift in a shifting
industry, as he struggles to make the transition from a famous TV actor
into the film game.
“Now I’m gonna talk straight to ya,” his agent, Marvin Schwarz (Al
Pacino), tells him, as he tries to convince Dalton to move to Italy and
jump on the Spaghetti Western bandwagon, “I’m not in the has-been
business.”
Dalton takes guest spots. He drinks too much. He fluffs his lines.
But all the time accompanied by his longtime stuntman-cum-best buddy
Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), as trusty and faithful as a Labrador.
“Well, ultimately,” says Pitt, when we speak a couple of weeks before
the Cannes premiere, “what draws me, and what draws us all, is working
with Quentin. He’s such an original voice in the lexicon of film and his
sets are just full of enthusiasm and delight. That’s why we’re there.”
For someone who’s been one of the most famous people on Earth for the
best part of two decades, there are still a couple of things that
surprise you about Brad Pitt.
Firstly, that lazy Oklahoma drawl of his that you forget he’s been
hiding on screen all these years, and, secondly, he’s a movie buff who
says things like “in the lexicon of film”. He’s also extremely polite,
but that’s probably not such a revelation.
“Both times I’ve worked with him, it’s been an immediate ‘yes’,”
continues Pitt, who first teamed up with Tarantino 10 years ago, on
Inglourious Basterds, “and I would think that’s true for all of us. You
know you’re in great hands. And you know you’re gonna get to chew on
some of the best dialogue you’ll ever get.
“I always describe his dialogue as like, if you’re in an altercation
or you stick your foot in your mouth, you’re driving home and you think:
Fuck, I wish I’d said that! His dialogue is always the thing you wish
you’d said.”
Dalton and Booth’s relationship is a special one. Not only are they
great friends, but the Hollywood of the ’50s and ’60s was a different
time, when actors would team up with one stuntman for a whole series of
pictures.
There was John Wayne and Chuck Roberson, Burt Reynolds and Hal
Needham, and Steve McQueen and Bud Ekins, who performed the motorcycle
jump in
The Great Escape.
“They would often design a lot of the stunts, and they would go on
together from movie to movie to movie, from television project, to
television project,” says Pitt. “Today, it’s more transitory. And, yes, I
did rely on my stuntman in this movie, playing a stuntman. So I really
had to hit the gym for this one.”
This dynamic is central to the film, but it’s one of a few that, at first glance, seem unrelated, but come to meet and separate.
The two fictional leads are joined by rising starlet Sharon Tate
(Margot Robbie) and her husband, director of the moment Roman Polanski
(Polish actor Rafal Zawierucha), who move next door to Dalton on Cielo
Drive in Beverly Hills.
Then there’s superstar and Dalton rival, Steve McQueen (Damian
Lewis), and the crazed, sinister figure of Charles Manson (Aussie Damon
Herriman).
This is the stage that Tarantino has set for a Hollywood in the midst
of a revolution. Counterculture is in full swing. Rock ’n’ roll. Sex.
Drugs. Hippies. And the traditional system with its old-school studios
and macho movie stars will soon be gone. And so, too, will Sharon Tate
and four other guests staying at 10050 Cielo Drive on a fateful evening
in August, 1969, brutally murdered by Manson devotees.
“Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the ’60s ended abruptly on Aug. 9, 1969,” wrote the essayist Joan Didion in
The White Album,
“ended the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive
travelled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is
true.”
It’s a turning point. And in the years that follow, the New Hollywood era will sweep through cinema, led by hits like
Bonnie and Clyde and
Easy Rider
that celebrated antiheroes, those who bucked the trend of what a movie
star looked like and what a movie looked like, altogether. This is also
the Hollywood that
Quentin Tarantino, then six years old, would come to inherit.
***
Tarantino was named after Burt Reynolds’ character in ’60s western
series Gunsmoke, Quint Asper, and he was always meant to be a cinema
legend. “I wanted a name that would fill up the whole screen,” his
mother, Connie Zastoupil, told Vanity Fair in a 1994 profile of the
director. “It’s a big name and I expected him to be important. Why would
I want an unimportant baby?”
As a child, Tarantino’s parents would take him to film screenings,
and for most of his life, or perhaps all of it, he has been obsessed
with cinema. He litters his films with cinematic references, collecting
and depositing them through his work, like a magpie. Today, there are
whole areas of the internet dedicated to spotting, compiling and
relishing these Tarantino-isms.
There are the suits and ties worn in Reservoir Dogs, a tribute to
John Woo classic A Better Tomorrow II. There’s the strain of heroin,
Bava, that Lance offers to Vincent in Pulp Fiction, a tribute to
legendary Italian filmmaker Mario Bava. The tracksuit The Bride wears in
the Kill Bill films, which closely resembles Bruce Lee’s in Game of
Death. And then there’s the very title of his latest film, a direct
reference to Sergio Leone’s epics Once Upon a Time in the West and Once
Upon a Time in America.
“I’ve been working on it, off and on, for at least six years,” says
Tarantino of the film. “Not writing it fulltime, obviously, but in
between projects. I would work on it a little bit more and a bit more,
and push the rock up the hill each time. Then, finally, I go, ‘Hey, I
think I’m going to finish it’.”
He might have been writing it for five or six years, but that’s
hardly the full story. It is, after all, a film about films, set in the
Golden Age of Hollywood. In other words, this is peak Tarantino.
“I’ve kind of spent my whole life researching it,” he says. “I’ve
spent my whole life knowing this world. So now I can finally do
something with everything that I’ve been filling my brain with for the
last 56 years.”
With his rapid-fire speech, which darts around from film reference to
film reference, talking to Tarantino about movies is a bit like
saddling up on a rodeo bull. For the most part, if you really try hard
enough, you can manage to hold on, but you know at some point, he’s
going to shake you loose.
“I’m not expecting most of the audience to get every name or every
reference that I make,” he says, of his tendency to hide cinematic gems
in his work, “but I like movies that take you inside of a world, and
then you get to understand that world a little bit more, by the time the
movie’s over. They don’t do it by talking down to you, they talk
slightly over your head. And over the course of time, you kind of get
it.
“So you don’t need to know everything I’m saying,” he continues, “you
just need to know I know what I’m saying. I want it to be obvious that I
know what I’m talking about. You know you’re in good hands.”
The film is important for another reason. Tarantino has made no
secret of the fact that he’s got his eye on the finish line. This is his
ninth film and, if everything works out, he will finish exactly one more
feature after this. Ten films. That’s all he’s going to make. Which
means this is his second-last chance to prove he’s the world’s greatest fimmaker.
“I think when it comes to theatrical movies, I’ve come to the end of
the road,” he says. “I see myself writing film books and starting to write
theatre, so I’ll still be creative. I just think I’ve given all I have
to give to movies.”
“No, I don’t think he’s bluffing at all,” says Pitt, when we put this
to him. “I think he’s dead serious. And I kind of openly lament that to
him, but he understands the math of when he feels like directors start
falling off their game. But he has other plans and we’re not going to
have to say goodbye for a long time.”
There are rumours Tarantino is working on a new Star Trek instalment. But all of this raises a question. If
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
is peak Tarantino, a movie about movies, set in the years that came to
define Tarantino as a filmmaker, if this is his big masterpiece, why not
finish on this one?
“Well, um,” says Tarantino, thinking it over for a second, “if it’s
really well received, maybe I won’t go to 10. Maybe I’ll stop right now!
Maybe I’ll stop while I’m ahead. We’ll see.”
“Hold on,” says Pitt. We’re
speaking over the phone, as he makes his way home in LA and some guy – a
guy who’s about to have a story he can dine out on for years – is
blocking traffic. “What are you doing?” asks Pitt, giving the horn a
couple of short pumps. Then two more, longer this time. “Oh you know,
I’m just taking care of business,” he says, when we ask what the
reaction is to Brad Pitt honking someone on a sunny LA afternoon. “But
he might have a story that Brad Pitt just honked at him, and said to get
the fuck out of the way.”
Pitt is a star in a way that few Hollywood actors are. Not just
famous but such a part of the culture that it feels surreal anyone could
cross paths with him in the regular world of supermarkets and grocery
aisles, or even on the road. He’s a star in the way they used to make
them in Hollywood.
“I thought he would be terrific in this character because it needs a
terrific actor,” explains Tarantino of the choice for Pitt to play
Booth. “But it also needs a movie star, and particularly a movie star
like Mr Pitt, a movie star that I think audiences like watching. Like a
Steve McQueen or some- one – you like watching him. You like watching
the way he moves, you like watching the way he drives. This cool,
masculine quality that a movie star can have – he has it. And he’s had
it for this whole last generation of actors.”
There was only one copy of the script, so Pitt and DiCaprio would go
to Tarantino’s place in LA to read it, and maybe watch some films.
Tarantino tells a story of how one day Pitt was due to come over, so he
loaded his projector with an old 35mm print of a movie he wanted to
discuss with him, a reference he thought Pitt could draw on for Booth.
The film was 1971 classic Billy Jack, which stars Tom Laughlin in the
title role, as an ex-Green Beret martial arts expert and all-round good
guy. It turned out Pitt had also brought something to watch – the same
film. “Neither of us talked about it before, but we both saw the Tom
Laughlin connection,” recounts Tarantino. “We kinda blew each other’s
minds.”
After that, Tarantino knew Pitt was the man for the job. “I knew I
made the right call before that, but that definitely emphasised it,” he
says. “Me and Brad are around the same age, so it was actually fun
making the movie with him because I bring things up and he remembers
them because he was around the same age I was in 1969.”
“It feels like a confluence of all his films,” adds Pitt. “There’s no
doubt it is a love letter to storytelling, it’s a love letter to LA,
but it’s also a love letter to our childhood – we were weaned on the
same television shows, the same movies, the same box of Kraft macaroni
and cheese.”
The film marks another interesting mile-stone in that it’s the first
time Pitt and DiCaprio have shared a screen. The pair both appeared on
’80s TV series Growing Pains, Pitt as a guest star and DiCaprio as a
regular, though never in the same episodes.
“We kind of popped at the same time,” says Pitt. “This is a guy who’s
really giving and really goes for it, so you know it’s great fun being
able to spar with that calibre of actor. And he’s just great fun.”
The rest of the cast is equally impressive. Besides Robbie (“She’s a
sweetheart,” says Pitt, drawing out the sweet for what feels like a full
minute), the cast also includes Dakota Fanning, Kurt Russell, Bruce
Dern, Rumer Willis, Austin Butler, and Lena Dunham, who plays one of
Manson’s disciples.
“Well Quentin’s going to do that,” says Pitt of the impressive cast. “We’re all going to show up.”
The film was also set to feature Burt Reynolds as George Spahn, owner
of the ranch on which the ‘Manson Family’ lived. He made it to set, but
he didn’t get to film any scenes before he passed away in September
last year.
“I did get to meet Burt Reynolds and that was really moving for me
because I grew up with Burt Reynolds’ films,” says Pitt. “We had two
days of rehearsal with him and just to sit and talk film and he was
just... you know, they say don’t meet your heroes but he was just so
gracious and kind. And still just funny as fuck.”
Hollywood underwent a revolution in 1969, and it’s not hard to see
it’s undergoing one now. The aftershocks of the MeToo movement, the
anti-Hollywood sentiment in Trump’s election, the rise of streaming
services that have shifted people away from cinemas and back into their
homes, all while sequels and franchises become more and more dominant at
the box office. It feels like a place in which a movie star like Pitt
has precious few options for a good old-fashioned original screenplay.
“I’m behind the camera on the producing side and I enjoy that a lot,”
says Pitt, of his recent output. “But I keep doing less and less. I
really believe that overall it’s a younger man’s game – not that there
aren’t substantial parts for older characters – I just feel, the game
itself, it’ll move on naturally. There will be a natural selection to it
all.
“But I’m curious to see what the future of film is, what shape it
takes. I really appreciate the streaming services because we’re seeing
more and more quality projects being made. We’re seeing more writers and
directors and actors getting a shot. It just tells you how many
talented people are out there.
“I like to think there’s room for both,” he says, taking a while to
mull it over. “But I could be a dinosaur and not even know it, man. And
the comet could be on the way.”
It’s hard not to look at those shots of Brad and Leo and Quentin on
the red carpet at Cannes and get the sense this film is something big,
something iconic. Because it sounds like a cliché to say it, but it’s
easy to find yourself thinking they don’t make movies like this anymore,
and they don’t make movie stars like these anymore, and maybe they
never will again.
