The crowd that filled the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on Friday night expected to see Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 hit “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” with a post-screening conversation with Tarantino. They got both of those things, but the writer-director gave the room a big surprise at the end of the Q&A when he said, “I could talk more about ‘The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth‘ or I could show you the first 17 minutes.”
He chose the later option, showing an alternately talky and explosive stretch of the film, which was written by Tarantino and directed by David Fincher, and which will be released by Netflix on Nov. 25.
Warning: Some minor spoilers ahead for “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth.”
In the footage, Brad Pitt returns to his Oscar-winning role as the title character, a stuntman and assistant to Leonardo DiCaprio’s movie and TV star Rick Dalton. Opening titles set the film in June 1977, eight years after the first film, with Cliff Booth having seemingly left his days as a stuntman behind. Instead, he works as a manager at the New Beverly Cinema, the iconic Los Angeles arthouse theater that Tarantino himself purchased in 2007.
The footage opens with an extended strip-club sequence from the movie that is playing at the New Bev: “Soul Brothers Die Hard,” featuring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Roderick “Hot Rod” Harrison. Cliff recites lines along with the movie as he mans the projection booth and refills RC Cola canisters for the theater. Cliff then calls his father, a pawn shop owner played by Peter Weller, to let him know he’s dedicated a song to him on a Los Angeles radio station.
(It’s an AM station, a nod to the world of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which features constant tunes played on a big L.A. AM station of the ’60s.)
A pair of men (one played by Karren Karagulian from “Anora,” the other by Corey Fogelmanis from “Girl Meets World”) watch from outside the theater before Cliff signals for them to come in. One of the men says, “I feel like I’ve seen you before somewhere,” to which Cliff responds, “I get that a lot.” The trio then enters the theater where Cliff pays them for stolen goods — including an Academy Award for Best Director, something neither Tarantino nor Fincher has won, despite three nominations each.)
Things erupt in Tarantino-like fashion from there, with gangsters, backmail and movies on the menu.
The film also features Scott Caan as a TV star and Elizabeth Debicki as an agent.
The beginning of this footage captured the hangout vibe of Tarantino’s Oscar-winning 2019 predecessor. After sitting to rewatch “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” with the crowd, Tarantino reiterated his opinion that it’s the film of his that he would most like to rewatch again and again specifically due to this more plot-light atmosphere — though he admitted that the AFI Fest screening was the first time he’d ever seen the movie in IMAX.
“I like that you’re just hanging out with them,” he said in the Q&A. “You’re hanging out with (Rick Dalton) on the set of ‘Lancer,’ and you kind of get caught up in that ‘Lancer’ story for a few seconds. You get caught up with (Cliff Booth) at Spahn Ranch. You get caught up with (Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate) tripping around Westwood. It’s not about a story, the fact that it’s just about this folklore that’s a mix of real things that happened back then and real people and a real industry, and then also this kind of fantastical version that I created.”
The audience did indeed get caught up. The crowd burst into applause a few times throughout the screening, such as after the performance Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton gives on “Lancer” (“That was the best acting I’ve ever seen in my whole life,” he’s told by his young scene partner, played by 10-year-old Julia Butters) and following Tarantino’s climactic reimagining of the Tate-LaBianca murders.
Though DiCaprio and Pitt got Oscars recognition for their parts, Tarantino specifically shouted out Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Sharon Tate — a role he hoped would overwrite some of the tragic history of the actress’ who was killed by the Manson family in 1969.
“For a very, very long time, Sharon Tate has been sort of defined by her demise,” Tarantino said. “Most people, when they think about her, they think about her death. They think about that bloody night. I did a lot of research on her, and she seemed like a really great person.”
Audiences have noted for years how many actors have gone on to successful careers following their early appearances in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”: Oscar winner Mikey Madison, Oscar nominee Austin Butler, Emmy and SAG nominee Margaret Qualley and Emmy nominee Sydney Sweeney, to name a few whose careers surged within a couple of years of Tarantino’s film.
Despite all of those young finds, however, Tarantino noted that the most meaningful casting in the film was the late Burt Reynolds, who was set to play George Spahn before Bruce Dern took over after his death.
“We did the script reading with him, so actually the last performance that Burt Reynolds ever gave was as George Spahn,” Tarantino shared.
It will be interesting to see this world Tarantino has created — one he noted he loves to continue living in through his novelization and sequel screenplay — in the hands of Fincher. Throughout the Q&A, Tarantino pointed out all of the ways that he dug into the backstory of his late-’60s Hollywood, choosing the books and posters that adorn Cliff Booth’s apartment and imagining a world in which Booth got his wardrobe after doubling for Tom Laughlin on the first “Billy Jack” movie, “The Born Losers,” in an emergency.
It seems that these are a few characters Tarantino can’t bear to let go.
“They took me down to look at Cliff Booth’s trailer, and I look at the trailer, and it was fine,” he said of the work of production designer Nancy Haigh, who won an Oscar for her work on the movie. “Nancy did a really good job on it. But the thing about it was, she did a fantastic job for an art director. But she doesn’t know Cliff Booth the way I do. I had to make it more personal, because I know the guy.”
“Cliff Booth” is set to premiere exclusively in IMAX theaters on Nov. 25. It will debut Dec. 23 on Netflix.
