Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood (2019) Script Review | #22 WGA 101 Greatest Scripts of the 21st Century
Quentin Tarantino writes a love letter to 1960s Hollywood in the guise of a fairytale, as it can only be told by Tarantino.
Logline: A faded television actor and his stunt double strive to achieve fame and success in the final years of Hollywood’s Golden Age in 1969 Los Angeles.
Written by: Quentin Tarantino
SCRIPT UNAVAILABLE!
Amazingly, there is no screenplay available online for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Perhaps this is because Quentin Tarantino published the story as a novel and didn’t want copies of the script floating around to clash with it. Still, it’s a shame because the eventual film, a love letter to the end of 1960s Hollywood, is a doozy— even by Tarantino standards. It would have been fantastic to read it as a screenplay.
For starters, this is perhaps the rare Tarantino feature to have a linear narrative. The story is split into three parts, one for each Act. Each Act covers a day in the life of three people: fading television actor, Rick Dalton; his stunt double, Cliff Booth; and Dalton’s new neighbor, Sharon Tate. Act 1 spans the day of 8th February 1969; Act 2 covers the following day, 9th February 1969; and Act 3 jumps six months ahead to 8th August 1969. Those who know a little bit about film history may recognize the latter date: it’s the day that the real-life Sharon Tate, her unborn child, and four others were brutally murdered by Charles Manson’s followers. That choice of date is no coincidence.
The three main characters— Dalton, Booth, and Tate—represent three social strata of Hollywood at the time. Dalton is an almost-famous actor who was never able to quite attain the leading star status he craves; Tate, on the other hand, is the up-and-coming new star who will eclipse the Daltons of Hollywood; and Booth? He’s the lowest in the hierarchy, a stunt man living in a trailer with his dog. Yet, he’s also the happiest simply because he’s glad to be there.
The story unfolds as follows:
Act 1. 8th February. Dalton is in a dilemma, one spelt out clearly by agent Rick Schwarz: His days are numbered. Once the lead on the hit series Bounty Law, Dalton is now only able to book guest roles as the ‘heavy’ on new TV shows; from an optics point-of-view, it allows the new generation of actors to triumph over the old. But Schwarz has an offer for Dalton, the chance to star in some Italian movies. Although Dalton balks, he thinks it over while preparing for his guest role the next day for the pilot of Lancer (a real TV series, by the way). Meanwhile, Booth returns to Panorama City where his trailer is parked, while Tate and her husband, Roman Polanski, attend a party held at the Playboy Mansion.
Act 2. 9th February. Booth drops Dalton off at the Lancer set, returns to fix Rick’s TV antenna, and ends up offering a ride to flower-girl hippie Pussycat. But when Booth learns that she lives at Spahn Ranch with other people, he goes to check in on the owner with whom he’s acquainted. The other people, by the way, turn out to be Manson followers, and Booth has an encounter with one Manson follower who gets a little too smart with him. Meanwhile, Dalton initially flubs his lines but forces himself to deliver a performance that impresses director Sam Wanamaker and the young co-star, Trudi Frazer. During all this, Tate goes shopping for a present to give Polanski before sneaking into a theater to watch her own performance in The Wrecking Crew. This section is the longest section, as per the requirements of all second acts, and the scenes at Spahn Ranch are the closest to a horror movie that Tarantino has come to writing since penning From Dusk till Dawn. As the day draws to an end, Dalton and Booth settle down to watch the former play a villain on the TV show, F.B.I.
Act 3. 8th August. A lot has happened in the six-month gap. Dalton accepted Schwarz’s offer to star in some Italian movies, and returns to America with his new wife, Francesca Capucci. However, this new change in life means he’s planning to dial down the acting and maybe even return home; meaning that he and Booth will be parting ways. To celebrate the end of a long partnership, the two men decide to get properly drunk; later, Booth gets high smoking an LSD-laced cigarette. A heavily-pregnant Tate is trying to enjoy herself with her friends, despite the heat and what appears to be pregnancy-related blues. As the time creeps slowly to midnight, three Manson followers— Tex, Sadie, and Katie— arrive to carry out an attack on the Polanski household… until an unexpected encounter with a drunken Dalton prompts them to attack him instead— only to find themselves dealing with Booth!
It’s at this point the fairy tale-esque title becomes more apparent. It’s not just an homage to Sergio Leone titles— Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America— or a tribute to a Hollywood that exists in Tarantino’s memory; nor is it just a tribute to the people of his generation. It is an almost-wistful rewriting of a horrifying chapter in Hollywood’s history, one in which Tate lives and the Manson followers are brutally dispatched by Booth instead. In Tarantino’s revision of history, the Manson followers made a fatal error in trying to kill Booth, who may have possibly killed his own wife years ago.
Not since Inglourious Basterds has Tarantino developed a project that wears its adoration for the movies—and TV— so openly. In interviews, he states that American pop culture (Hollywood, cinema, Los Angeles, and TV) is the closest thing that the United States has to their own mythology. What he does is weave a story about a friendship around it. His inspiration for the story arose from his observations of an older actor and his stunt double—rumored to be Kurt Russell and John Casino respectively—and wondering what their friendship was like. (Another popular friendship between an actor and his stunt double would be Daniel Radcliffe and David Holmes, captured in the documentary David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived.)
Intriguingly, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood began life as a novel that Tarantino worked on for five years until he let the story “become what it wanted to become.” The earliest indication of the story’s existence can be traced to the time when Tarantino was in London doing press rounds for Death Proof; one day, he sat down and wrote an opening chapter titled, ‘The Man Who Would Be McQueen.’ (Great title, in my opinion!) Dalton, the man referenced in the title, was a composite of actors such as George Maharis, Edd Byrnes, Vince Edwards, and Ty Hardin, to name a few; actors who, like Dalton, were famous at one point, but have fallen into obscurity.
The story took a long time to actually reach the point when it worked more as a screenplay. During this time, Tarantino was experimenting with the universe he was creating and folding in different bits and pieces to make it work. For instance, Dalton meeting Schwarz in Act 1 originated as a one-act play that he claims was part of a series of ‘exploratory writing activities’ to help him. He even wrote five actual episodes of the fictitious show that Dalton starred in, Bounty Law. Excessive? Perhaps, but nobody can deny that this process has led Tarantino to create an alternate reality that has verisimilitude. It feels real. When he calls Once Upon a Time in Hollywood his most personal project, and the one that comes closes to Pulp Fiction, I agree with him. This is some of his best work yet, and different to what he has written before.
It's worth pausing to talk about the Booth character. In Tarantino’s scripts, the people aren’t exactly the nicest. But even though he’s given us Jules, Vince, Mr. Pink, Mr. White, the Bride, and Aldo Raine, he’s never created a wife-killer who got away with murder (the novel confirms that Booth did kill his wife… and about two other people, too!). Although Booth is presented as a likable character, it’s a little hard to stomach rooting for such a person— even though his dispatching of the Manson followers is undeniably satisfying.
Something that Tarantino does well is to reveal his characters by putting them under pressure. From Rick trying and failing to remember his lines, to Booth refusing to leave Spahn Ranch until he’s made sure the owner is not being fleeced, we get to see sides of these characters that would not otherwise be revealed. Although some complained that Tate is hardly there in the story, I think Tarantino has done well in presenting Tate as a human person enjoying her life. (I can’t say the same for his portrayal of Bruce Lee, though—it comes off more mocking than tribute).
Tarantino has claimed that he plans to retire after making 10 films. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is his ninth; and it’s a more mature feature that he’s ever written. A passion project and a nostalgic trip down a memory lane that exists more likely in imagination, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a fun and even elegiac affair. Using a simple framework to present the stories of a fading actor, his stunt double, and a real-life actress, it takes on a life of its own. It’s unlike most of the things Tarantino has written; perhaps that’s why it’s one of his best.
Notes:
Fleming Jr., Mike (July 17, 2019) | Quentin Tarantino On ‘Once Upon A Time’, His Vision Of ‘Star Trek’ As ‘Pulp Fiction’ In Space, And Hopes To Turn Leo DiCaprio ’50s Western ‘Bounty Law’ Into Series (Deadline)
Hainey, Michael (May 21, 2019) | Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt, and Leonardo DiCaprio Take You Inside 'Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood' (Esquire)
O’Connor, James (January 19, 2020) | Quentin Tarantino Reveals Inspiration Behind Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (Gamespot)
Thompson, Anne (May 23, 2019) | Quentin Tarantino Says He May Recut ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ to Make it Longer (Indiewire)
Morgan, Kim (September 10, 2019) | Tarantino on Hollywood (Beverly Cinema)
Hirschberg, Lynn (October 13, 2021) | Quentin Tarantino Hopes You Blur Reality With His Fiction (W Magazine)
Hemphill, Jim (March 18, 2020) | “We Kept the Third Act in a Safe”: Tarantino’s Assistant Director William Paul Clark on Kill Bill, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Improvisational Logistics (Filmmaker Magazine)