Tarantino filming Pitt and DiCaprio at Casa Vega.
Bring 1969 to 2019. Or rather, find 1969 in 2019. That was the goal of the entire production team of Once upon a time in Hollywood, responding to the wishes of Quentin Tarantino, a screenwriter, a director, an author who imagines everything in detail, whose scripts are more than skeletons of his films, they are bibles for the actors and for the technical team, where they find from the past of the characters or the colors that most dress the titles of the films that must be seen on the posters of each cinema that appears in the background.
"Quentin wants everything on camera, he doesn't want special effects, the art department had to transform the streets, places, dress it how it should be then”, explains producer David Heyman. “We transformed many places around Los Angeles: Westwood as it was in 1969, Hollywood Boulevard, the Aquarius Theatre, we created Pandora's Box…”, He adds next to him, Shannon McIntosh, producer of Tarantino for two decades.
Tarantino calls Once Upon a Time in Hollywood his most personal film, a tribute to the Los Angeles of his childhood, explored through three characters representing three classes in Hollywood: Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), at that time, royalty; Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), the past actor with some opportunity, which is a bit of yesterday; Y Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), double of Dalton, the working class of the industry.
Margot Robbie/Sharon Tate walking around Hollywood.
Following the three, we tour for three days a 1969 Los Angeles that is as real and accurate as the director's memory is, He was six years old at the time. “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is not a documentary, it is the story of Quentin, he wants it to resemble what he remembers, the things that were important to him as a child, the movies that were in those theaters at that particular time of year,” Heyman continues. And so, This will not be a nostalgic porn tour, but a rediscovery of a city that has been breathing and making us breathe cinema for many decades.
"Once upon a time in Hollywood is for me what Rome it is for Alfonso Cuarón”, Tarantino summed up in May, sitting in a hotel in Beverly Hills. "Because I lived here, I remember what they put on television, in theaters, on the radio... I learned to read with the street billboards."
And all that, everything, everything, has been reproduced in his ninth film (the penultimate to be released in theaters) and the most similar to the most adored, Pulp Fiction. Why? Because it returns to Los Angeles, because Los Angeles is once again a character through which the protagonists run, meeting other characters.
Pacino, DiCaprio and Pitt at Musso & Frank Grill.
Was it very difficult to find in the Los Angeles of 2019 the Los Angeles of Tarantin's memory of 1969? Yes. "First, we had to find places that still exist as they were then and if they didn't exist, find others that wouldn't take us long to transform them into how they were then," explains the director himself. “On the one hand, that was difficult. But, on the other hand, there are still places, quite a few places. You pick up an apple in Hollywood and there are quite a few things that stick. The most fascinating thing was to see that, thank God, we shot it at that time (between June and November 2018), I can't guarantee that if we had made this movie two years from now, we could have made it: as we shot, they were destroying buildings behind us… It was a race against time to shoot it the way it was before it was gone forever."
Thank god that they were quick and that now, at least, we will have their film, but **there are still some of the main locations, like these, which you will surely visit on your next trip to Los Angeles. **
Sharon Tate/Robbie at a party at the Playboy Mansion.
Casa Vega (13301 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks): the classic 1956 diner where Cliff (Pitt) and Rick (DiCaprio) meet. they sit at table 5, in one of those red leather booths. He is a Mexican that Tarantino adores and, for this reason, they have dedicated his own drink to him: The Tarantino.
Musso & Frank Grill (6667 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood): The oldest restaurant in Hollywood, 100 years old, precisely this year. They have passed through there from Chaplin to Tarantino himself, another regular. Here is the scene in which Al Pacino, an industry boss, offers Rick (DiCaprio) a new opportunity in the spaghetti western.
Chili John's (2018 W Burbank Blvd., Burbank): Another Quentin favorite. At his U-shaped bar, amid its chili dog smell, sit Cliff and Pussycat, one of Manson's (Margaret Qualley) girls.
Corriganville Park became the legendary Spahn Ranch.
The Coyote (7312 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles): Another classic Mexican diner, which opened in 1931 and has been in the same place since 1951. Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski and Abigail Folger ate here for the last time on that fateful August 8, 1969.
Hollywood theaters: in the background or foreground. As they advance in their cars along Hollywood Boulevard and surrounding streets, some of the most mythical cinemas and theaters pass in front of our others. As the Cinerama Dome (still open) , The Bruin and Villages Theater (where Margot Robbie, as Sharon Tate, goes to see her own movie, also open today), Pussycat Theater (closed, a classic of erotic cinema), Vine Theater, Vogue Theater, Chinese Theater, Aquarius Theater and of course the New Beverly Cinema, the cinema owned by Tarantino to see double sessions always in 35mm. In addition, the Paramount Drive-In they make him pass for the disappeared Van-Nuys Drive-In, where Cliff (Pitt) has almost parked his caravan house.
The conversion of Hollywood Boulevard.
Playboy Mansion: Today, a private residence, owned by Daren Metropoulos (although available for rent), Hugh Hefner's mythical mansion serves as the setting for one of the parties in which the soul of the film, Sharon Tate, dances surrounded by friends from the cinema.
Corriganville Park (7001 Smith Rd., Simi Valley): Spahn Ranch It was the name of the home where Charles Manson and his family settled, a place that was also the setting for Western movies. Owner George Spahn would let them live there in exchange for management and sexual favors from them. It was consumed in a fire and they wanted to forget their dark past, so Tarantino could not shoot there, but they found this other space nearby that also served at the time to shoot the Wild West.
Los Angeles, 1969, according to Tarantino.