ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD I Tarantino heads for the hills for his ninth feature film, with DiCaprio, Pitt and Robbie along for the ride…
It’s a sunny May day up in Beverly Hills, and – to nobody’s surprise – Quentin Tarantino’s ninth feature film has just been announced as a last-minute contender for the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious competition. But while it stars two of cinema’s biggest A-listers, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio – whose presence at a top-secret photoshoot has already somehow attracted the paparazzi – Once Upon A Time In Hollywood still has everybody guessing at to what to expect.
Today, there are only two things we know for sure. One is that the setting is Los Angeles in 1969, when California was rocked by a spate of murders apparently carried out by followers of guru Charles Manson. The second is that there are three characters at the heart of the film: fading TV star Rick Dalton (DiCaprio), his stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt), and Rick’s neighbour Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), the rising starlet and wife of director Roman Polanski, who was among those murdered by Manson’s minions.
How the three stories interact, though, Tarantino refuses to say.
Is he still smarting about the fate of the script for The Hateful Eight, which found its way on to the internet before he’d even had a chance to finish it?
“Nah,” he says flatly when Teasers sits down for a chat with him. “With everyone’s eyes on it, trying to know where I’m coming from and where I’m going, even if that hadn’t have happened, this would be the one to be top secret about.”
This story is from the June 2019 edition of Total Film.
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This story is from the June 2019 edition of Total Film.
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