A new book has seen Leonardo DiCaprio shed light on the making of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood’s most memorable scene.
DiCaprio starred alongside Brad Pitt in the Oscar-winning 2019 movie, directed by Quentin Tarantino.
In the book The Making of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood by Jay Glennie, DiCaprio, Tarantino and and other members of the cast and crew reveal fresh details about the film’s production.
An excerpt published by Rolling Stone addresses one of the most widely celebrated scenes in the film: the sequence in which 1960s actor Rick Dalton (DiCaprio), enraged by his inability to remember his lines, breaks down in his trailer.
Tarantino, who also wrote the screenplay, had initially written the sequence differently, without Dalton’s breakdown and with more focus on Lancer, the western series Dalton was filming.
The director said: “My recollection was of Leo approaching me saying, ‘You know, I just wish I had a little more to do in the film – to do a scene or something.’ So I went away and wrote another Lancer scene.
“That didn’t solve Leo’s problem,” he added. “It didn’t necessarily make him happy.”
Instead, DiCaprio wanted “to turn it into a full-on acting mess,” the filmmaker added.
“Yes, to me, I wanted Rick to encounter the worst fear an actor can encounter,” DiCaprio said. “And the worst fear you have as an actor is that you don’t know your lines, then you just blank and everyone is staring at you. It’s like going to school in your underwear. It’s the ultimate nightmare.”
DiCaprio and Tarantino initially disagreed over the change, with Tarantino insisting on sticking to the original.
“Look, I didn’t have Rick playing Caleb having a freakout in the middle of the scene because I liked my scene,” Tarantino said. “There was a whole third act to that scene, and I wanted it to be my third Western [after Django Unchained and The Hateful 8], right smack dab in the middle of Once Upon a Time in . . . Hollywood, so I wanted the scene to carry on playing out.”
Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 day
New subscribers only. £9.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled.
Try for free
ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.
Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 day
New subscribers only. £9.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled.
Try for free
ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.
Tarantino conceded that DiCaprio was making “just perfect f***ing sense, but it wasn’t what I wanted”, he added. “I was almost f***ing annoyed that it was making sense because that wasn’t what I wanted. What I really wanted was to have my Lancer [scenes] coexisting with the rest of the film. I was frustrated. I was almost f***ing annoyed that it was making sense.”
Ultimately, DiCaprio was able to sway him, and Tarantino changed the script – and, unusually, allowed DiCaprio to improvise much of the scene himself.
DiCaprio said he was “just improvising for a few hours, and then Quentin spliced it together in a very creative way. Normally, you hold Quentin’s dialogue as modern-day Shakespeare, but here, I had the leniency to be able to go off and try things.”
The final scene was widely praised by audiences and critics. In the new book, Pitt says: “Let me tell you, what Leo did in that scene was one of the great pieces of acting ever committed to film. He is so smart. I’ve said it before – it is one of the greatest breakdown scenes I have seen.”
The Making of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is published on 11 November.
