Film book
“The Making of Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once upon a Time… in Hollywood'”
By Jay Glennie.
Inside Editions, 488 pages
There is a rumor in Hollywood that Quentin Tarantino will make his ninth film. It will revolve around the film industry and take place in Los Angeles. 1969. The same year as the Manson murders…
Props, extras, film stars, photographers, graphic designers, costume designers, make-up artists, producers: everyone clears the calendars, cancels meetings, jumps on flights and buses and drives blindly to Hollywood: regardless of whether they are only allowed to stand in the corner of the picture or happen to have an old magazine or a belt that the director needs. It doesn’t matter if you risk millions of dollars on a board and let Sony Pictures go under. When Quentin shouts “Action!” says the whole city begins to teem with life.
That’s it anyway the picture painted in Jay Glennie’s lurid, mammoth work The Making of Quentin Tarantino’s Once upon a Time in Hollywood – 488 pages of delicious photos and lengthy interviews with everyone from Al Pacino to a sad prop man who neglected to decorate Brad Pitt’s trailer.
After two years of working with a huge ensemble and extreme scenographic challenges, no one can say a bad word about the director. Glennie seems to be caught up in the excitement himself – he plans to make equally mammoth works for each of Tarantino’s other eight features: “Bookshelves will tumble off the walls!” he explained happily in a recent interview.
It is now documented that one can hardly respond to the cult director’s famous steam locomotive enthusiasm with anything other than delight. And making a film about Hollywood, in the Hollywood that everyone has left, became almost a ritual act. Like a shared artificial respiration of a beloved myth.
Had they suffered mass psychosis? Would the film even work?
At the premiere in Cannes 2019 is a dizzying year for Sony Pictures CEO Tom Rothman. The one who greenlit the movie before any actors were involved, and even though everyone could see it was going to suck.
Did the enthusiastic crowd that gathered to see Tarantino, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie on the red carpet know that the film was a nearly three-hour, convoluted story about a retired Western actor and his aging stuntman? “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” wasn’t the all-out adrenaline rush they were used to. It was something different. And even more beautiful.
The film’s story begins twelve years earlier, during the filming of Death Proof, when Kurt Russell asks Tarantino to use his “own” stuntman for a day. “Can we give him a day’s work? I’d like to do him a favor.” A scene that repeats almost verbatim in the finished film, but with funny additions.
There was a “special atmosphere” surrounding this man, says Tarantino. “He didn’t work for me – he worked for Kurt. When Kurt was happy, he was happy.” Between takes, they sat in their respective director’s chairs and talked shit, dressed identically in black jeans and cheap turquoise jewelry, and Tarantino thought, “Oh man… Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?”
As soon as he was finished After reading the film, he got out his usual red and black pens and began writing: “It was never intended to be my next film. I just wrote to see what happened. I didn’t have a story. I just wanted to try to figure out who this guy was…”
Eleven years and three more films later (“Inglorious Basterds,” “Django Unchained” and “The Hateful Eight”), an unlikely collection of stars walk into production headquarters at Saul Bass’ old studios on Sunset Boulevard. It’s compilation time, and eight-year-old Julia Butters is the only one who isn’t dazzled by the celebrity at the table and doesn’t understand what a strange concoction Tarantino has put together. From Al Pacino to Burt Reynolds, from Brad Pitt and Dakota Fanning to “Luke Fucking Perry” (Tarantino’s words).
Also a fresh one A group of relatively new actors who don’t yet know that they are the stars of tomorrow: Austin Butler, Mikey Madison, Margaret Qualley, Maya Hawk and Sydney Sweeney, all unusually unbrushed and two of them with dirty, bare feet. They are the ones who will play the Manson family.
The beauty of the book is that Glennie gives the preparatory work as much space as Tarantino. In script discussions and financing, in finding the right teacup and the right font on neon signs, dog food cans and cigarette packs. You’ll learn why the costume designer chose to dress the “indestructible” Cliff Booth in a pair of soft moccasins and how Dakota Fanning learned not to blink.
One by one, selected actors were allowed to come and read the only existing copy of the script. Often in one of the crowded rooms in the director’s villa or by the pool. But only a select few were told how it ended.
The question vibrates in the air. Everyone has read about Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski driving to her house on Cielo Drive. But how far will he go? Tarantino is known for his graphic, brutal and darkly humorous violence, but this is a real tragedy. Does he know where the border is?
He himself hesitated for a long time, he says. Even though he knew early on that he would decide his own ending, as he has done with other “historical” films. It would still require extensive research, and did he even want Manson in his head?
“I was on the verge of giving up on the film altogether because I didn’t know if I wanted to stay in this world. I also understood that it could be perceived as tasteless or opportunistic. I knew that I had to earn my right to this story,” Tarantino says in the book.
But the more he heard and read about Sharon Tate, the more certain he became that she needed to exist on her own terms and not always be associated with her terrible death and her husband. Eli Roth, a close friend and early reader of the entire script (there were only a handful), read the ending with a rising pulse. “He gave Sharon Tate life! Eternal life! Oh my God, that was awesome!”
Glennie has previously written similar, comprehensive works on Michael Cimino’s Deer Hunter, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance – and it still seems a bit early for Once upon a time… in Hollywood to enter film history. It wasn’t long ago that it was shown in theaters, it’s widely streamed, and pictures of it are still circulating the internet. A few years ago it was also published as a novel. And in 2026 there will be the premiere of David Fincher’s Netflix film “The Adventures of Cliff Booth”, which follows the former stuntman in his new role as a fixer in Hollywood.
And yes, the time travel doesn’t appear in Glennie’s book and the interviews are a bit too fresh, unedited and repetitive – too many variations of “Oh my God, what a genius he is” make the actors seem stupider than they are.
On the other hand, you get Good insight into today’s industry. Precisely because Tarantino insists on making films the old way and has enough influence to enforce it. His love for the analogue and tactile radiates off to everyone involved. Scripts are only available in printed form. Photos should never be viewed on a phone or computer. There’s a lot of talk about how many rings the prop folders have and how shooting without a monitor allows everyone to concentrate better on what’s happening on set.
“I refuse to let them stand in front of a green screen,” says Tarantino, after which eight blocks of Hollywood Boulevard are shut down and reconstructed in detail; House by house, sign by sign, lamp by lamp. All so Cliff and Rick can drive down the road and talk about their declining careers. Or that Sharon can stand right in front of the Beverly Theater and admire her name on the illuminated sign.
When Tarantino wanted to build an entire outdoor theater only to have Cliff’s trailer parked behind it in a single scene, they managed to convince him to film a model. But for the most part they deliver what he asks, and somehow Tarantino almost always manages the impossible. His faithful assistant director Paul Clark explains the phenomenon: “God is a Tarantino fan.”
After reading the book the feeling of satiety turns into pleasure: When will we see the long cut-out half of the scene between Al Pacino and Leonardo DiCaprio in the restaurant? Why wasn’t more space given to Damien Lewis’ portrayal of Steve McQueen?
Was it good or bad that DiCaprio persuaded the director to write in the middle of filming the western? I would like to see both versions. More and longer versions.
What does he do to keep whetting that appetite? There is a purity to Tarantino’s filmmaking that can only be compared to… Coca-Cola. It always tastes the same, but it’s a unique taste and you just have to have it every now and then.
Brad Pitt, who won an Oscar for his role as Cliff Booth, offers perhaps the simplest explanation why no one can refuse to star in a Tarantino film:
– It’s all about the dialogues the man writes. You know the things you wish you said in a discussion, but you don’t remember them until you get home and say, “Shit, why didn’t I say that?” Every single line you get from Quentin is like that.
Read more:
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is Tarantino’s most beautiful film
1969 – the year that shook the film world from Hollywood to Cannes
