Meanwhile, young people with a less reverent approach to their elders are dealt with swiftly and efficiently, with the kind of sound design that emphasises the crunch of righteous fist into puny, snickering hippy jaws. A scene in which an awestruck child whispers to Rick: “That was the best acting I have ever seen” is milked for manly tears. And you suspect that Tarantino himself is not immune to it.
#ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD CAST MOVIE#
That fear of no longer being current, no longer getting the calls is something that infects everyone who works in the movie industry to some degree or another. Their fates are linked: “More than a buddy, less than a wife,” is how the film’s narration puts it. Their friendship is a constant in an uncertain world.
![once upon a time in hollywood cast once upon a time in hollywood cast](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kfyVvx7UDHc/maxresdefault.jpg)
Wet-eyed with self-pity after a straight-talking producer lays out a road map for his irrelevance, Rick hides behind the sunglasses of his confidant and former stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). As a guest on new shows, he allows himself to be bested each episode by the actors who are positioned as his replacements.
#ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD CAST TV#
Formerly the lead in a wild west vigilante TV series, by 1969 Rick has already started the slow slide into bad guy bit-parts and bourbon bloat. Actor Rick Dalton ( Leonardo DiCaprio, signposting the character’s vulnerability with a slight stutter) knows this, but that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow. It’s an industry with a vampiric appetite for fresh blood.
![once upon a time in hollywood cast once upon a time in hollywood cast](https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/fce/5af/38b0cc4fd3253a008b5bb0c510e4745a5f-leonardo-dicaprio-ty-hardin.h467.w700.jpg)
Success in Hollywood comes with built-in obsolescence.
![once upon a time in hollywood cast once upon a time in hollywood cast](https://s2.r29static.com/bin/entry/9ca/x,80/2232646/image.jpg)
But if it’s a love letter, it’s the kind tinged with the grasping anguish and stab of bitterness that comes from knowing that the object of affection is almost certainly eyeing up a new favourite. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a film that is as much about the movie industry as it is about the Manson family crimes that rocked it, is a work of infatuation, certainly. And Tarantino is a man who clearly relishes the concept of revenge. Who has been more vocal about his passion for the movies, in all their glorious (and inglourious) variety, than Tarantino? And who has been more promiscuous with his affections, flirting with everything from grindhouse and exploitation flicks to martial arts, westerns and second world war adventures?īut cinema is a notoriously fickle mistress. I t’s hardly surprising that this, perhaps the most “Tarantino-esque” of all Quentin Tarantino’s movies to date, is a love letter to Hollywood.