Europe — began to take over. Rick represents the forces on the
way out. On the posters for Once Upon A Time In... Hollywood,
Rick looks cool and collected, a slick player in a brown leather
jacket. In fact, he’s a self-pitying mess, reduced to guest-starring
on cowboy TV series Lancer (a real show, which Tarantino
bought the rights to, beginning his shoot with a two-weeks-long,
painstaking recreation). Depressed, desperate and scared he’ll
end up doing Spaghetti Westerns in Italy, at one point Rick has
the mother of all meltdowns in his Lancer trailer, a sequence
both brutal and laugh-out-loud funny. “He’s having a real tough
time making the transition psychologically,” DiCaprio says.
“The era of the cowboy actor is gone, and he and Cliff are really
on the outskirts of the industry: ‘I once had the crown and now
I’m visiting sets and getting beaten up by the new hot-shot
swinging dick.’”
Tarantino’s movies have frequently alluded to cinema
and TV, from Mia Wallace’s failed pilot in Pulp Fiction to the
picturehouse-inferno climax of Inglourious Basterds. But his
new one has allowed the ultimate celluloid junkie to reshape
Hollywood history. On the wall of his cutting room are fake
posters, including one for a Western called Nebraska Jim,
directed by Sergio Corbucci and starring Rick Dalton (the
real Corbucci film is called Navajo Joe and stars Burt Reynolds).
And we’re shown a brief snippet from Dalton’s World War II
epic The Fourteen Fists Of McCluskey, which boasts
flamethrower-roasted Nazis and a hilarious kiss-off line.
“That was the biggest movie he did during his movie time,”
Tarantino reveals. “But he’s only the third lead. Rod Taylor is
McClusky, Virna Lisi is the Italian partisan girl fighting with
them, and Rick is like the second lieutenant guy.” So deep has
he dived into Dalton’s fictional career, which intertwines with
real actors and directors, that he’s contemplating writing an
IMDb page for the character for fans to enjoy.
While Rick isn’t based on anyone in particular, Cliff was
inspired by tales Tarantino has been told over the years about
a real-life stuntman with a fearsome reputation. “Like a lot of
dangerous guys, he was usually real nice and everything, but
there was just a powerline sizzle that came off the guy,” the
director says. “I never met him — he passed away some time in
the ’70s — but I was really fascinated by him, for three reasons.
One, he killed his wife and got away with it. I’m not saying he
murdered her, though! Two, he was indestructible. He just
couldn’t be hurt. And three, because he was a guy who scared
even stunt people. If you made him mad, he could kill you.
And he had the temperament to do that.”
All three of those things are in play with Cliff, a mellow but
lethal ex-commando, in the movie. Having hitched his cart to the
wrong movie-star horse, he’s even more on the skids than his
buddy. “Cliff eats if Rick eats,” says Pitt. “And if Rick’s going
hungry, Cliff ’s definitely going hungry.” Once Upon A Time In...
Hollywood will follow their adventures both together, as they
cruise LA in Rick’s yellow Cadillac, and solo. For Cliff, the latter
will involve a visit to a certain ranch up north in Chatsworth.
And an encounter with a peculiar man named Charlie.ACK IN 1998, IN AN INTERVIEW with Empire
for his third feature film, Jackie Brown, Quentin
Tarantino listed some things that scare him. “I fear
a guy in an alley with a baseball bat, I fear the
Manson Family bursting into my house, I fear
a rabid dog walking down the street,” he said, “but I don’t
fear anything artistic.”
Twenty-one years on, he’s yet to release a film about a rabid
dog (though we’d watch a Tarantino reboot of Cujo), but his
new one does feature the murderous Manson Family — andClockwise from above: The low-maintenance Cliff kicks back with a beer; Marvin Schwarz
(Al Pacino), Rick’s agent and enthusiast of Spaghetti Westerns; Rick works the phone.
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