Anybody Order Fried Sauerkraut!?: 10 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino’s latest opus, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, has been given 10 nominations at this year’s Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Leonardo DiCaprio, Best Supporting Actor for Brad Pitt, and Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Tarantino. The intertwining tales of Rick Dalton, Cliff Booth, and Sharon Tate came together to create one of the year’s best movies.

Since this is a story about how movies get made, it’s appropriate that the story of how Once Upon a Time in Hollywood came to fruition itself is pretty interesting. So, here are 10 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

10 Margot Robbie wears some of Sharon Tate’s actual jewelry

When Debra Tate first heard that Quentin Tarantino was making a movie about the murder of her sister, Sharon Tate, she immediately objected to it. Knowing the director’s style, she expected it to be a slick, stylized, ultraviolent revenge thriller.

However, after Tarantino sent her the script, Tate realized that this was a different kind of Tarantino movie, and it did honor her sister’s memory. She even provided the production with a few pieces of her sister’s jewelry for Margot Robbie’s portrayal . So, some of the jewelry that Robbie wears was actually owned by the real Sharon Tate.

9 Only Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt got to see the full script

Only Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt got to see the full script for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Everyone else in the cast only got to read their own scenes. And Tarantino was so worried about spoilers (following The Hateful Eight’s script leak) that, for a while, there was only one physical copy, kept at the director’s house. If DiCaprio or Pitt wanted to read it, they had to go over to Tarantino's home.

This is the first movie that DiCaprio and Pitt ever made together, but they had such a blast working on it that they’ve already said they’d love to make another movie together. Tarantino called the duo the most dynamic on-screen pairing since Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

8 Burt Reynolds was originally cast to play George Spahn

George Spahn only appears briefly in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, when Cliff arrives on his ranch and wades through a crowd of dissenting hippies to visit him, but it’s a memorable scene. Originally, Burt Reynolds had been cast to play Spahn in the movie. Unfortunately, Reynolds died of a heart attack on September 6, 2018, before any of his scenes had been shot.

He was replaced by Bruce Dern, a Tarantino regular who played a minor role in Django Unchained and a major role in The Hateful Eight, and did a terrific job with the role of Spahn.

7 Some Hollywood Boulevard businesses asked to keep their ‘60s-style facades

The producers of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood had a tough time convincing all the businesses on Hollywood Boulevard to allow them to dress their storefronts with ‘60s-style facades for the duration of the shoot.

However, after the filming on Hollywood Boulevard was complete and the crew came to remove the facades from the storefronts, a lot of the business owners asked them if they could leave their facades up, because they’d come to prefer the period look over their original design. It’s ironic that a movie about the death of ‘60s Hollywood brought the ‘60s back to a part of Hollywood.

6 The script was originally going to have an Elmore Leonard-style plot

Quentin Tarantino has said that his screenplay for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is perhaps his most personal. The script doesn’t necessarily follow a traditional plot, instead following the characters around as they simply live their lives.

Tarantino was originally going to come up with an Elmore Leonard-style story, but after he wrote out lengthy backstories for Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth, he realized he’d created characters that were interesting enough to carry the film without a plot. So, the film became a sort of character study, with most of it depicting an average day in the life of its main characters.

5 Charlie Day was asked to audition to play Charles Manson

When the casting team was searching for the perfect Charles Manson to appear in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, they asked It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Charlie Day to audition for the part. On Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, Day explained his reason for not auditioning: “I don’t want to see myself as Charles Manson. It’s going to take me out [of the movie].”

Manson only appears briefly in the film, but it’s a standout moment because he’s super creepy. In the end, he was played by Damon Herriman, who also played Manson in the Netflix crime series Mindhunter.

4 The assembly cut was over four hours long

The final cut of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood clocks in at 160 minutes, just over two-and-a-half hours. And although every moment of it is a cinematic treat, since there’s not much of a real plot, 160 minutes is plenty.

But according to reports, editor Fred Raskin’s assembly cut (the first cut of a movie ⁠— very rough, just something that resembles a movie to shape and fine-tune during the post-production process) came in at four hours and 20 minutes, or 260 minutes. Tarantino has teased a director’s cut, or miniseries, that would reinsert the 100 minutes that got cut.

3 Tom Cruise was up for a role

Quentin Tarantino always saw Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt as his dream casting for the roles of Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth. However, since they’re possibly the two biggest movie stars in the world, there was a chance that he couldn’t book them. And there was also a chance that they wouldn’t respond to the material and actually want to play the characters.

So, the director had backups in mind, and one who came close to actually getting a role ⁠— even meeting with Tarantino ⁠— was Tom Cruise. It’s unclear what role Cruise was going to get, but since he does his own stunts in all of his movies, it would make sense for him to be considered for Cliff.

2 Quentin Tarantino spent five years writing Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as a novel

In an interview with Esquire, Quentin Tarantino revealed that he spent five years writing Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as a novel before it morphed into a movie. Apparently, the material just kept crying out to become a screenplay: “I let it become what it wanted to become. For a long time, I didn’t want to accept it. Then I did.”

He went on to describe this movie as his Roma, in a sense: “I think of it like my memory piece. Alfonso [Cuarón] had Roma and Mexico City, 1970. I had L.A. and 1969. This is me. This is the year that formed me. I was six years old then. This is my world. And this is my love letter to L.A.”

1 Leonardo DiCaprio improvised Rick Dalton’s trailer meltdown

The crux of Rick Dalton’s dramatic arc in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood arrives when he has a meltdown in his trailer, then returns to the set of Lancer to show them all what “Rick f****n’ Dalton” can do. But this scene wasn’t in the script. Originally, Rick’s Lancer shoot went smoothly. But Leonardo DiCaprio found it difficult to play Rick’s roles as Rick would play them, not how he would play them.

To help him stay in character as Rick, DiCaprio suggested that he start fluffing his lines in the middle of the scene. Tarantino liked the idea, and they came up with the subsequent scene of Rick’s breakdown in his trailer. DiCaprio improvised this whole meltdown, while cinematographer Robert Richardson just left the cameras roll.

NEXT: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood: The 5 Best Rick Quotes (& 5 Best Cliff Quotes)

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