Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[miriam]

Bruce Dern and Emile Hirsch had previously starred together in 2018's Freaks.

[kenneth]

The cast features a number of actors from actor families: Margaret Qualley is Andie MacDowell's daughter, Dakota Fanning is Elle Fanning's sister, Bruce Dern is Laura Dern's father, Maya Hawke is Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke's daughter, Harley Quinn Smith is Kevin Smith's daughter, Rumer Willis is Bruce Willis and Demi Moore's daughter, Spencer Garrett is the son of Kathleen Nolan, Kurt Russell is the father of Wyatt Russell, and Michael Madsen is the brother of Virginia Madsen.

[jim]

Initially Leonardo DiCaprio was scheduled to sing either "Green Door" (a 1956 hit for radio personality Jim Lowe), or Cole Porter's "Don't Fence Me In" (popularized by singing cowboy Roy Rogers). They went with "Green Door" in the end.

[kim]

Is set to cost a reported $100 million.

[gerald]

Brad Pitt ad-libbed the line, "You're Rick fucking Dalton! Don't you forget that.". Pitt based that line on an actor who told him the same thing when he was a budding actor in the early nineties.

[michele]

In one scene, Roman Polanski walks to his car sporting a blue velour suit with ruffled white cravat. Django wears almost the exact same outfit in Tarantino's earlier film Django Unchained (2012).

[morris]

This is Damon Harriman's first Leonardo DiCaprio movie since J. Edgar (2011).

[morris]

The movie can be seen as revisionist fiction, with several made-up characters interacting with existing ones, thereby changing the course of real-life history. In this case, the infamous Sharon Tate murders by members of Charles Manson's 'Family' are disrupted by the presence of Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). The film accurately shows Charles Manson (Damon Herriman) visiting Tate's house early in the film, looking for music producer Terry Melcher (the previous renter) because he felt that Melcher owed him the record deal that he was once promised. Frustrated that Melcher no longer lived there, Manson instructed four of his followers to go to the house six months later, to incite a slaughter. The four indeed drove over there, briefly parked on the driveway to cut the phonelines to Tate's house, then proceeded to park the car at the bottom of the hill, went back to the house on foot and killed five people (Tate, three of her friends who happened to be at the house, and one friend who just came visiting). Probably the first significant point of divergence between the real and fictional account is the fact that Dalton notices the four as they are parked on the driveway. He gets out, verbally abuses them and sends them away. This angers Tex (Austin Butler) and the three women to the point where they decide to come back and invade Dalton's house instead. This incident also causes the woman called Flower Child (Maya Hawke) to get cold feet, and leave with the car (in real-life, this was Linda Kasabian, who accompanied the others all the way but did not participate in the killings). In the end, the fatal mistake on the part of the killers is invading Dalton's house, not counting on the resistance of Booth and his dog, and Dalton himself.

[liam]

DIRECTOR'S TRADEMARK: female bare feet prominently featured in a shot. Twice. One when Sharon Tate watches herself in the theatre and the other when Pussycat hitches a ride with Cliff.

[charlie]

The party sequence at the Playboy Mansion was actually filmed there, Tarantino having been a guest of Hugh Hefner on a number of occasions.

[marc]

This is the first of Quentin Tarantino's films in which Michael Madsen plays a character who doesn't die. Madsen claimed that after filming The Hateful Eight (2015) he jokingly complained to Tarantino about how every character he has him play ends up dying. Tarantino gave him a brief cameo in this film as a response.

[cassandra]

The final version of the film is slightly longer than the cut that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Most notably, the scene where Rick Dalton appears in a clip from The Great Escape (1963) (which required the use of digital effects and thus could not be completed in time for Cannes) and the mid-credits Red Apple commercial were absent at the world premiere.

[mathew]

When Sharon goes to the Bruin theatre to see the film she is in, a poster of "The Mercenary" can be seen. "The Mercenary" starred Franco Nero who sat alongside Jamie Foxx at the bartop in Django Unchained. Franco Nero was the original Django.

[javier]

The scenes of Di Caprio's character in the The Great Escape (1963) digitally inserted. Tarantino is not known to be a lover of CGI effects but this was the only practical way to accomplish this iconic scene as there was no realistic way to recreate it due to the age of the film and death of all the original actors in the scene.

[kristen]

Leonardo DiCaprio has said that he was starstruck to be on-set with one of his teenage idols Luke Perry, a star he'd felt, at the time, was the new embodiment of James Dean. Leo was particularly delighted to be able to reminisce with Luke about the Hollywood of his youth and about where their career paths had taken each of them.

[amber]

At the film's world premiere screening at the Cannes film festival, the scene where Brad Pitt, 55, takes off his shirt to show off his still muscular stuntman physique, drew gasps and spontaneous applause from the audience, as reported by the BBC and Indiewire.

[riley]

Cameo (Perla Haney-Jardine): The hippie who sells Cliff an acid-dipped cigarette. She previously appeared as B.B. in Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004).

[jesse]

Cinematographer Robert Richardson has previously worked on three films starring actor Leonardo DiCaprio. The Aviator (2004), Shutter Island (2010), Django Unchained (2012). The former two were directed by Martin Scorsese, while the latter and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood are films by Quentin Tarantino.

[nora]

Pan American Airlines is featured multiple times during the film. Leonardo DiCaprio previously played Frank Abagnale, a fraud artist who posed as a Pan Am pilot, in Catch Me If You Can (2002). Margot Robbie played a flight attendant in the 2011 television series Pan Am (2011).

[richard]

Rumours have circulated that Jennifer Lawrence was being considered for the role of Manson Family member Susan Atkins. In 2014, Quentin Tarantino considered Lawrence for the role of Daisy Domergue in The Hateful Eight (2015), which ultimately went to Jennifer Jason Leigh. In interviews around that film's release date, Tarantino described Daisy as "a Manson girl out West, like Susan Atkins or something," suggesting that Tarantino has had Lawrence in mind for a part like this for some time.