Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) on Netflix
R20192h 42mComedyDramaThriller
Los Angeles, 1969. Fading Western TV star Rick Dalton leans on stunt double Cliff Booth while his agent pushes him toward Italian Westerns. Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski live next door.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.6/10978,693 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes85%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1969 Los Angeles, Rick Dalton, who once starred in the Western series Bounty Law, now makes guest appearances as a villain on other people's shows. His agent, Marvin Schwarz, tells him his future may lie in Italian Westerns, which Rick considers beneath him. At his side is stunt double Cliff Booth, a World War II veteran who lives in a trailer with Brandy, his pit bull, and has trouble finding stunt work. Rick, who has not met them, knows that actress Sharon Tate and her husband, the director Roman Polanski, are his neighbors, and he would like to know them. Cliff offers a lift to a hitchhiker called Pussycat and drives her to Spahn Ranch, an old Western set where hippies have moved in, and checks on George Spahn, the nearly blind owner of the property.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Burt Reynolds was cast as George Spahn in May 2018 but died in September before filming his scenes, so Bruce Dern replaced him; Reynolds's rehearsal and script reading became his last performance.
- Quentin Tarantino kept the only copy of the third act of the script in a safe so it would not leak. Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie, and Brad Pitt were the only others who read the full script, and Pitt said Tarantino burned the only other copy.
- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was Quentin Tarantino's first film made without producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein. Tarantino ended his partnership with the brothers after the sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein.
- After a bidding war, Sony Pictures won distribution rights by meeting Quentin Tarantino's demands: a $95 million budget, final cut privilege, 25% of first-dollar gross, and rights reverting to him after 10 to 20 years.
- Quentin Tarantino approached Jennifer Lawrence to play Manson Family member Squeaky Fromme, but she said she was interested and something didn't work out. Lawrence later blamed online vitriol, including Tate's sister Debra calling her 'not pretty enough', for not taking the role.
- For Once Upon a Time in Hollywood's practical effects, Leonardo DiCaprio was allowed to set stunt coordinators on fire while shooting scenes with a flamethrower.
- Spahn Ranch was recreated in detail over about three months. Because a wildfire completely destroyed the real ranch in 1970, the film's scenes were shot at nearby Corriganville Movie Ranch in Simi Valley, which was also once a movie ranch.
- The Tate-Polanski house scenes were not filmed at Cielo Drive, where the 3,200-square-foot house once stood. That house was razed in 1994 and replaced by a mansion nearly six times larger, so the film used three Los Angeles-area locations for interior, exterior, and driveway scenes.
