Once Upon A Time In Hollywood Roundtable: Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie
by Billy Ingram
As a TV aficionado, I enjoy almost all genres - sitcoms, action, detective, sci-fi, and yes, westerns. Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time In Hollywood captured that era beautifully with a richness of detail and an authenticity rarely captured on film.
Many of the locations, like Casa Vega and El Coyote Mexican restaurants in West Hollywood (where I've enjoyed many a meal), Musso & Frank Grill, and Cinerama Dome were actual places that still exist today that celebrities would often patronize back in the 1960s.
In this feature for Entertainment Weekly, costars Margot Robbie (Sharon Tate), Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, along with director Tarantino, discuss filming what will go down in history as not only one of the greatest motion pictures about Hollywood ever lensed but also a true big, wet kiss to the 1960s.
Tarantino on the time period: "I grew up in Los Angeles, I love it, I love it the way... the only people who truly love it are the people who love it the right way, who grew up here and know it.
"When it came to 1969, I was like between 6 or 7 years old, and so the film became a big memory piece. And a big part of my memory of Los Angeles at that time is being in the car with my step-father, being in the car with my mom and driving around and listening to the radio playing all the time, and how we listened to the radio back then, which is different to the way you listen to the radio now. Where you kept it on one station, you didn't move around looking for songs, and then when the commercials played... you played the radio really loud and when the commercials came on you didn't turn the radio down, you just talked over it, over the already loud radio."
Anyone who grew up in the sixties knows that's true!
DiCaprio on his character Rick Dalton: "It was interesting to play this sort of guy that uh, has in a way reached this expiration date. Culturally and, the sixties have come along and, as Quentin eloquently puts it in the movie, he's an actor that has spent his career combing hair and creating a pompadour his whole life, that's what he knows and he's not making that transition into this new era of Hollywood. And he's also feeling sorry for himself.
"He's a working actor but he kind of missed out on that television to film transition that guys like Steve McQueen did, that were able to make that jump and have these sort of amazing careers. He's stuck in this rut and... you know, what's so interesting is, Quentin puts all of this in this 2 day timespan. And he gave this amazing back story to all of this but so much of these characters and what they're going through emotionally and this transition Rick Dalton is going through, accepting this sort of fate but also realizing if he gives a little more and tries a little harder and stops feeling so damn sorry for himself, there are some possibilities out there."
In fact, DiCaprio's Rick Dalton most resembles Steve McQueen, with a bit of Clint Eastwood thrown in, if they had never become movie stars.
Here's the entire round table discussion:
Want more? DiCaprio & Tarantino Break Down 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'
In this interview for Vanity Fair, Leonardo DiCaprio & Quentin Tarantino Break Down Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Main Character Rick Dalton.
