Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, the new dynamic duo of Hollywood
They work together for the first time in 'Once upon a time ... in Hollywood', the new Tarantino film.
Rick Dalton lives in a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, on prestigious Cielo Drive. After having achieved fame with his starring role in the western series Bounty Law, he has now been pigeonholed as an actor who only plays villains, always defeated by the protagonist on duty. His neighbors on Cielo Drive are Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski, who just shot one of the most successful horror movies ever, 'Rosemary's Baby', and his wife, the beautiful and sought-after actress Sharon Tate. .
His stunt double and best friend is Cliff Booth, who now spends his days assisting Dalton and being his host, since for several years he has not been called to work in film or television. Yet he is one of the few men on the planet who can say that he made the cut in a fight against Bruce Lee, the martial arts legend. Booth lives with his dog Brandy in a trailer next to a drive-in movie theater.
Dalton and Booth are neighbors of the cinema, either in its most glamorous version - next to one of the most acclaimed directors of the moment - or in its most popular level - listening to the sounds of the projections and the reactions of the drive-in moviegoers. . However, the big screen always seems to avoid them, close the door. The two are the main characters in 'Once upon a time ... in Hollywood' (as it is called in Latin America), the new film by Quentin Tarantino, which opens tomorrow in Colombia.
This duo of characters brings together for the first time on stage two of the most talented and popular actors of recent decades: Leonardo DiCaprio (Dalton) and Brad Pitt (Booth). They are the fuel of a story that combines the glamor of 1969 Los Angeles, the nostalgia for a way of making film and television erased by time and the tension that the psychopath Charles Manson and his legion of followers print (three of them massacred to Tate, who was pregnant, and to her friends, on August 9 of that year).
“I'm a huge fan of Hollywood movies and Tarantino's take on that was very unique. And he loved the perspective of the outsiders, this voyeuristic gaze of two hardworking types who were pushed aside by culture, and industry as well. Rick Dalton is a product of the 50s; with his pompadour he belongs to this kind of cheesy protagonist. Now the era of the director is coming and there are androgynous models and hippies; there is also experimentation, and he does not know how to fit into this new period. That affects his best friend and his stunt double, Cliff, "says DiCaprio in Los Angeles, at an international media meeting, including EL TIEMPO.
And even though this is their first time sharing credits, the chemistry between DiCaprio and Pitt is evident, each with very different paths to go in the film. Dalton is balancing between finally finding the fame and respect of the industry or falling into complete failure (this is where the relationship with another iconic Tarantino character, Jackie Brown, who is at a breaking point after having wasted most of of their life).
Booth, on the other hand, is a war hero haunted by bad boy fame and a disturbing rumor, but who is happy with his near-anonymous life as a stuntman or, at this stage, driver of his friend.
“It was really good to go back and see the relationship that the actors and their stuntmen had, like Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham, or Steve McQueen and Bud Ekins. I knew Bud before he passed away. They really trusted each other and the director also trusted twice as much to come up with sequences; there was a real partnership, which we have in other ways with our old friends and other people on the film crew. Also, I liked seeing people fighting for a job, on the set of a movie there are a hundred people, there are probably 300 in the production, and even so they are fighting for work, always thinking about what the next job is going to be, "he says. Pitt.
That is precisely what DiCaprio was referring to, that look of the outsiders, an English term that could be applied to Spanish as those characters outside the circles of power. To emphasize that approach, Tarantino devised a three-day structure, in which cameras follow the lives of Dalton, Booth and Tate, who is played by Australian actress Margot Robbie. "I loved that aspect of them living next door to that kind of neighbor's castle that Polanski and Sharon Tate live in, and that Hollywood that they never really belong to but are trying to get into," says DiCaprio.
When he appears in the story, Dalton has changed the confidence of the success of his stage of 'Bounty Law', by the insecurity of an actor who does not find a place and who is being called by the siren songs of the spaghetti western industry in Italy - the suggestion to travel to Europe is made by agent Marvin Schwarz, who the legendary actor Al Pacino interprets with the delight that only an actor of his stature can provide.
To build this character, DiCaprio enlisted the advice of Tarantino, who has a collection of self-taught postgraduate programs on popular culture (his entire filmography is a celebration of music, classic cinema and TV series of the 50s and 60s). In these investigations, the actor claims to have learned about actors such as Eddie Byrne, Ty Hardin, Ralph Meeker, who were the inspiration for Dalton.
“When you talk about an actor like Ralph Micker, which you may or may not know, he is literally one of Tarantino's favorite actors all the time, and he is an actor that I have never heard of. And we go through his catalog, his film, television resume, and you say, 'Wow, this guy has historically disappeared,' but you feel an emotional shock seeing his work in that kind of b-series genre of film or television to those who it had never been exposed. It was an incredible learning, a historical process, and part of the connection Quentin is trying to make with his love of this city and the industry is with all those actors who may not have had the career we all talk about, but who did. his own very significant artistic contribution, ”DiCaprio argues.
For Pitt, one of the fundamental aspects of the story is that change that Hollywood underwent at that time, since the cinema began to belong to the authors and was detached from being an exercise that only belonged to the large production houses, a theory in the That fits with DiCaprio, but that also applies to other moments in history.
“Leo was describing it, the studios were struggling and movies like 'Bonnie and Clyde' and 'Easy Rider' came along, which changed things. If you look back in the 90s, we kind of hit a wall with the Stallone and Schwarzenegger movies, and this Tarantino guy comes along and suddenly this independent cinema starts running. And now there are changes, the great cinema experiences have been reduced to films from big franchises, but we have the explosion of streaming services, there is a wave of talent that is having opportunities and new materials are being produced, ”explains Pitt.
The bible on the set
Before 'Once upon a time ... in Hollywood', the two actors had debuted under the baton of Tarantino, who in a 25-year career has created classics such as 'Pulp Fiction', 'Kill Bill' and 'Reserve Dogs' and who has already made public that he will retire after his tenth film, that is, the next.
DiCaprio, who in 2013 was in the cinema firmament (he only lacked the Oscar he won in 2016 for 'The Revenant'), accepted for the first time a supporting role and a villain in 'Django without chains', a film in which He played Calvin Candie, the spoiled and arrogant slave plantation owner - his monologue in which he defends white supremacy, opening the skull of a slave, is a lesson in evil.
Pitt had already played a Tarantino story, he had a small role in the film True Romance, directed by Tony Scott, but it was in 2009 when he first starred in a film by the filmmaker: Inglorious Basterds, in which he played Lieutenant Aldo Raine. , the leader of a commando that in World War II arrives in France disguised as civilians to fulfill a single mission: to kill Nazis.
"First of all it's Quentin, when he calls we're all going to show up," says Pitt, after warning Tarantino that he's going to flatter him a bit. He's carved his own language into his contribution to film, and he's a lot of fun for us, because he has some of the best dialogue you're going to be able to deliver. And it is the joy of the process, of course there is the end result, which we all yearn for, but I find that the process and the way you experience it, dedicating months of your life to a project, is just as important. And this one did not disappoint either.
But it is not an easy process, because the filmmaker has production methods that seem to be taken from 1969. For example, he does not allow cell phones on his sets (the actors have to hand them in before entering), he still records with tape, when the general rule it is to do it in digital, and it does not use special effects.
To emphasize that style, Pitt tells an anecdote from this shoot, just before filming the fight between Booth and Bruce Lee. "It was a great fight scene that we had choreographed and Quentin came in and said, 'We're going to do it in one take.' I replied, "Yes, great, but you can fix it later in case it doesn't work." And he replied: "No, if it's only one, it has to be only one." Which means the pressure was on me, ”he recalls.
DiCaprio agrees that that Tarantino libretto, that written choreography that has to be executed with precision and daring, is a kind of bible in all his shoots, through which a very particular energy runs. "Everyone feels that they have to measure up and do something at least interesting, that's what is very unique," concludes the actor.
