Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, released in 2019, is set in Los Angeles between February and August 1969. It follows actor Rick Dalton, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his longtime stunt double and friend Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt. Dalton has built a career playing villains in television westerns but worries that his leading man days are ending. After producer Marvin Schwarz advises him to work in Italian westerns, Dalton accepts a role in Rome. Booth meanwhile works around Dalton’s house and drives him to jobs. His own reputation is damaged by rumors that he killed his wife on a boat, a point the film leaves deliberately ambiguous. The film intertwines their fictional lives with real Hollywood figures. Sharon Tate, portrayed by Margot Robbie, lives next door with director Roman Polanski. Tate visits the Bruin Theater to watch herself in The Wrecking Crew, a real 1968 film in which she performed her own stunts. Dalton appears in the fictional television series Lancer, filmed at the Western Street set. He meets child actor Trudi Fraser, whose confidence helps him recover from a humiliating scene in which he forgets his lines. Tarantino’s reconstruction of 1969 includes real locations, period advertising, radio music, and references to contemporary productions such as The Green Hornet and The Great Escape. Dalton’s first major challenge is guest-starring on the Western series Lancer, where director Sam Wanamaker, played by Nicholas Hammond, pushes him through repeated takes. Afterward, Dalton delivers an unexpectedly intense performance in his trailer, then memorizes his dialogue. This sequence captures the film’s interest in professional craft: Dalton’s insecurity does not disappear, but disciplined preparation lets him produce convincing work. The historical menace is Charles Manson’s cult, although Manson himself appears only briefly and is not the film’s central antagonist. Members of the family arrive at Tate and Polanski’s Cielo Drive home on August 8, 1969, intending to murder its occupants; in reality, the attack killed Tate and four others. Tarantino changes that history. In the film, Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian approach Dalton’s house instead, but Dalton’s earlier outburst with a flamethrower has made them reconsider their chosen target. The attackers turn on Dalton and Booth. Booth fights them with startling brutality, while Dalton retrieves a flamethrower from a previous film and burns Susan. The violence is deliberately fantastical: it replaces the murders with a Hollywood revenge ending, while Tate survives and encounters Dalton as a neighbor.