By Quillbilly in Book Excerpt — 25 Sep 2025

Book Excerpt — The Making of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood

Book Excerpt:

The Making of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
By Jay Glennie
Published by Insight Editions
Hardcover

“Rick, how are you doing with getting Hollywood Boulevard for me?” Quentin asked his location manager, Rick Schuler.
“I’m doing well,” Schuler replied.

Quentin looked at his first assistant director, Bill Clark, and looked at Schuler. “Doing well” was not going to cut it. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was a Los Angeles story, a Hollywood story, and it needed to be filmed in Los Angeles. It needed Hollywood as a backdrop. He wanted to convert Los Angeles back to 1969 — “You know, literally street by street, block by block.”

Schuler had been in discussion with the California Film Commission for weeks. Under Quentin’s gaze, he admitted, “Well, I think I’m 80 percent there.”

“Rick, if there’s anything I can do to help you out, I’ll be willing to do that,” Quentin replied.

Production designer Barbara Ling was also anxious to know what it was she was going to be working with. Schuler had been asking the Hollywood powers that be, responsible for the economic success of their city, to shut down eight blocks.

“They had been, like, ‘Eight blocks? No way!’ and had said no a hundred times,” Ling recalls. “I also remember, eight blocks was freaking out the producers budget-wise.”

Schuler had an idea how he could utilize the filmmaker’s extraordinary enthusiasm and will to best use. He had an idea he wanted to run by Bill Clark: Schuler had a meeting with the Hollywood neighborhood council. Would Quentin be willing to address them — just talk about the project? Talk about the movie, what Hollywood meant to him? It could help get things over the line.

The day of the meeting, Schuler sprung it on Quentin and Clark that he wanted to make the filmmaker the surprise star act of his pitch and have him come in at the end. Nobody on the council would know he was there beforehand.

“For whatever reason, Rick thought it would be best if he kept Quentin a surprise to the council members,” Clark says.

But what was Schuler to do with Quentin in the meantime? Of course, you hide a two-time Oscar-winning writer-director in a windowless broom closet with his trusted first A.D. It is going to be only for a few minutes, right?

Quentin took one seat, Clark the other. “I tried to keep QT entertained as best I could so he wouldn’t become irritated by sitting in this little room for so long,” Clark recalls. In the main hall, Schuler was trying to work out when he would be seen.

When his turn on the agenda finally arrived, after he’d had a chance to warm up the panel and explain the needs of the production, Schuler said there was somebody else who wished to say a few words. “When Quentin walked in, their jaws just went straight to the floor,” Schuler recalled. “He had been hiding in the closet for nearly an hour, and I had no idea if he was going to be pissed at me! But he looked at me and I nodded, and he started talking. Without notes, he explained to them that he was brought up in Hollywood. He now owned a theater in the neighborhood. He is doing a movie about Hollywood and celebrating Hollywood and needed their backing and support.”

The 15-strong panel’s mouths were still agape as Quentin took his leave, followed by Clark and Schuler. Summoned back later in the day, Schuler received the news he had been hoping for: unanimous approval to shut down Hollywood Boulevard. Quentin’s petition had won the day.

Barbara Ling and her production design team could now go about transforming Hollywood back to how it was in 1969. During their early exploratory chats, a line from Quentin resonated with her: “Imagine an 8-year-old boy lying in the back of his parents’ car. Well, the movie is his point of view.” It was this line, sparse in creative detail but evocative, that spurred her on to bring Quentin’s vision to the screen. The race was on.

To re-create the Hollywood Boulevard of his youth, Quentin wanted realism as far as the eye could see. Movie star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), had to drive a length and take the viewer back to ’69. Eight blocks would see them fine. However, for eight blocks, a discussion was needed.

At all times, Quentin wanted for his partners — those who have financed the movie — to make back their investment. It is a matter of pride that he brings his movies in on time and on budget. And so, when producer David Heyman broached the idea of cutting back from eight blocks to a financially manageable three, he was expecting pushback from an auteur director who would stop at nothing to have his vision brought to the screen unimpeded.

“But, do you know what?” Heyman says. “He was dreamy, just dreamy. There were challenging moments — some bits were not easy — but he was like a teddy bear. I wish all directors were like Quentin.”

Taking over city blocks, whether three or eight of them, comes at a cost, and liaising with the various business owners did not come cheap. “There was a feeling that if you mentioned Quentin’s name, then everybody would open up, give you access,” Schuler says. “But these locations see Quentin’s name and Sony as the studio, and then you have Leo and Brad driving down Hollywood Boulevard, and their thinking is there is money in the pot. It always comes down to money. That caused friction with the budget.”

“It was a location-heavy show, I know, but the money leaving the production offices was huge,” production manager Georgia Kacandes adds. “The fees had to be negotiated down.”

Like Quentin, Barbara Ling was a child of the city. She got it. Ling was older than Quentin. She had used fake IDs to enter many of the clubs and bars Quentin had written about. She had hitchhiked along the winding streets of L.A. She was an Angeleno. Her excitement matched that of Quentin, who could not wait to get going. He wanted to smell the Hollywood of 1969. From the get-go, Ling knew that Quentin wanted to replicate 1969 for real — none of this fake digital nonsense, it had to be all in camera. If Rick, Cliff and Sharon were there, you’d best believe that they were really there. “I don’t ever want to be standing in front of a greenscreen or a bluescreen ever, Barbara!”

“Good!”

This chimed with Ling, who had come from a world of theater. You had to be able to touch it. Yes, she got it.

“But the sad thing with Los Angeles is that they just can’t stop ripping things down!” she laments. “L.A.’s just a very nonpreservation town, unfortunately. But the exciting thing with Quentin is, he wanted the locations practical. Look, he had no problem with using visual effects to erase something that was not in keeping with the era. CGI helps you create downward: You can make a street go longer, but when it comes to close-up, I just think it fails.”

“Ultimately, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was so well-received, and a lot of that was due to everything being practical,” Ling says. “Careers were dumbed down a bit by CGI — particularly, CGI in foreground. You can just tell you can’t touch that building. You can walk by it, but you can’t touch it.”

Leonardo DiCaprio was transported back in time. “I have driven up and down Sunset Boulevard my whole life,” he says. “To go to school, my mom would drive me, and I saw the changing of Los Angeles. During the late ’70s, I would deliver comic books with my dad on Sunset. We’d go to head shops — bong shops — and this kind of thing. People were wearing tie-dye.

“Well, what Quentin did was so spectacular,” the actor adds, marveling. “He redressed those blocks. I mean, that was a monumental moment and a great historic cinematic memory for me. No CGI — every fucking storefront was transformed. It was like I was a kid again.”

DiCaprio, knowing that his dad would get a kick out of seeing Hollywood transformed, invited him and his wife down for the day. “My dad has long white-gray hair and is still a hippie, right?” he says. “So I told him and his Sikh wife to come down: ‘Just wear your normal clothes — you’ll fit right in.’“

Pulling onto Sunset, Rick’s mood is not lifted at the sight of the town he calls home being overrun by swarms of “fucking hippies!” Pitt, driving, brought the car to a stop at the junction.

“That’s my dad right there — my dad and my stepmom,” DiCaprio told him. Pitt laughed, and they waited to get the nod to pull out onto Hollywood Boulevard. DiCaprio looked at a smiling Pitt and said, “No, no, that is my dad.”