Last night the 40th annual AFI Fest held a special screening of “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” at the Chinese Theatre with Quentin Tarantino in attendance. For the 900 or so Tarantino fans who packed the house, just seeing the director’s 2019 crowd-pleaser on the huge Chinese screen followed by a lively Tarantino Q&A would have been enough — but then Quentin had a surprise for the audience.
At the end of the post-screening discussion with moderator Jacqueline Coley, Coley asked Tarantino about “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth,” the highly anticipated holiday release that picks up on “Once Upon a Time” stuntman Cliff’s (Brad Pitt) life in Hollywood in the 1970s. Tarantino wrote the script but isn’t directing this time out, having handed the script off to frequent Pitt collaborator David Fincher. Tarantino responded to Coley’s question about the new film with an answer that immediately sent the audience at the Chinese into a state of cinephilic ecstasy.
Related Stories
“I could talk a little bit about ‘The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth,'” Tarantino said. “Or…I could show you the first 17 minutes.” With that, the crowd went insane, the lights went out, and the attendees at AFI Fest got to be the first audience to get a substantive look at Tarantino and Fincher’s new opus.
Based on the footage screened, “Cliff Booth” finds Tarantino returning to his roots; like “True Romance,” “Reservoir Dogs,” and “Pulp Fiction,” it’s a crime movie heavily influenced by novelists like Elmore Leonard (who Tarantino adapted for one of his best films, “Jackie Brown”) and Raymond Chandler. It also presents a darker Cliff Booth than the one we saw in “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood,” a version closer to the more cold-blooded, almost sociopathic Booth introduced in Tarantino’s novelization of “Once Upon a Time” than the amiable (albeit wife-murdering) fellow from the movie.
When we left Cliff Booth at the end of “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood,” he was coming off of a sojourn in Italy to double his pal Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio); as the new film begins in June 1977, his primary connection to the film industry is a job as a projectionist at the New Beverly Cinema. (A fun in-joke that got a big laugh from the AFI Fest audience, most of whom were probably well aware that Tarantino now owns that theater.) Booth’s real profession seems to be as a kind of shady bag man and fixer, though the 17 minutes we saw at the Chinese wasn’t enough to give a strong sense of where the plot will go.
What it did give was some choice Tarantino dialogue, particularly in “Soul Brothers Die Hard,” a Blaxploitation film-within-the-film starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (and presumably unrelated to the 1973 movie “Brother on the Run,” which was released in some markets under the alternate title of “Soul Brothers Die Hard,” though with Tarantino you never know what kind of subterranean connection might exist). There’s also a promising relationship between Cliff and his father, a pawn shop proprietor played by Peter Weller, and enough period-accurate production design and pop culture references to assure the audience that “Cliff Booth” will be as rich in nostalgic pleasures of the late 1970s as “Once Upon a Time” was for the late 1960s.
The Q&A with Tarantino that preceded the “Cliff Booth” footage didn’t have much new information (especially for anyone who has read Jay Glennie’s doorstop of a coffee table book, “The Making of ‘Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood'”) but was fun nevertheless, thanks to Tarantino’s typical loquacity and Coley’s thoughtful line of questioning. Tarantino revealed the most personally meaningful piece of casting in a film filled with great performances — including supporting turns by multiple actors (Austin Butler, Mikey Madison, Sydney Sweeney) who have blown up in the seven years since.
“The casting that to me was the most meaningful ended up not being in the movie,” Tarantino said, recalling that Burt Reynolds was originally cast in the role of George Spahn. “He said yes, and we became friendly, but he passed away before we could make the film. But we did get to rehearse with him and do the script reading with him, so actually, the last performance Burt Reynolds ever gave was as George Spahn in the script reading.” (Bruce Dern would ultimately play the role in the finished film.)
Tarantino also referenced some of the many Easter eggs in the film, like the fact that the voice of the Pan Am flight attendant who waits on Rick Dalton on his flight back to Italy was Margot Robbie — a nod to her early work on the short-lived television series Pan Am. Tarantino also provided an extensive history of the “Canadian tuxedo” worn by Brad Pitt, a look often recognized as a tribute to Tom Laughlin in “Billy Jack.” According to Tarantino, however, the reference goes way deeper.
”It doesn’t just look like Billy Jack’s outfit; it is Billy Jack’s outfit,” Tarantino said, explaining that in the mythology he created for “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood,” Cliff was working as a double for actor Jeff Cooper on “Born Losers,” the first film in which Tom Laughlin appeared as Billy Jack. In Tarantino’s backstory, Laughlin’s stunt double twisted his ankle, and Cliff took his place for the last week of the shoot — and for his work, he was given Billy Jack’s outfit that he wore in the movie, plus 25 bucks.
It was clear from Tarantino’s deep dive into the thinking behind elements like this costume and the set decoration in Cliff’s trailer (much of which, like many other items in the film, came from the director’s own personal collection), that behind every detail there’s a wealth of creation that never makes its way to the screen.
“The thing is, I’ve got nothing to do but invest in this mythology,” Tarantino said. “I invested in it before I did the movie, and I’ve invested in it in the years since I’ve done the movie. The audience doesn’t need to know everything. But it’s nice if I know everything.”
AFI Fest runs through Sunday night in Hollywood. “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth” opens theatrically from Netflix on November 25.