The movie Al Pacino would have happily made for free: “How do I do this without being paid?”
Whether you love him or hate him, Quentin Tarantino certainly knows how to make an entrance, and the release of his 2019 film Once Upon A Time in Hollywood was no different. With a star-studded cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, the film reconvened all of Tarantino’s old favourites for what was marketed as his final project. Maybe he just likes attention, because the director shortly announced what would actually be his final film, but nonetheless, he pulled all the stops out, with Al Pacino even offering to take an unpaid role.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood follows the intertwining lives of the people in tinsel town during the summer of 1969, showing the struggles of an ageing actor and his stunt man during a period of change in the film industry, with the likes of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski living right next door to them. But more than anything, the film is an ode to friendship and filmmaking, a dazzling portrait of Los Angeles during a tumultuous time that changed the entire business of making movies.
The film was Pacino’s first collaboration with Tarantino, playing Martin Schwarz, the agent of Rick Dalton. Despite only being in a two-minute-long scene, the actor revealed that the scene had been 21 pages long but was significantly cut in post-production, with his co-star Leonardo DiCaprio learning a lengthy monologue that they’d meticulously rehearsed together. But much like Hollywood, everything can change in a flash.
However, Pacino was simply grateful for the experience of starring in the project, saying it made him “famous in a different way, not so much because of the work I’m doing, but through my associations with various people and my appearing in certain things, and from living in Hollywood”.
He added: “I got lucky. I was in three films in a row that in different ways made a real impact, starting with ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.’ I didn’t get paid the big bucks for it, but I was working with Quentin Tarantino, Leo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie, and I did like the part. That’s why I did it, but I said to my lawyer, ‘How do I do this without being paid?’”
The project was a labour of love from everyone involved, and the film oozes with reverence for what was described as the ‘golden era of Hollywood’. But Tarantino chooses to share this era from the perspective of someone who was being pushed out of the club, someone desperate to hold onto their fame and stay in the Golden times before they faded away completely.
Many mark the murder of Sharon Tate as the ending of an era. However, Tarantino is known for his historical revisionism, and the film ends with Tate very much alive and well. Perhaps the director is imagining a world in which it continued, that even when you think you’ve reached the end, the Hollywood machine still has more to give; something that is mirrored in his decision to make another film, despite his previous statements that he’d never do so again.
There have been loose discussions around Tarantino’s ‘final’ film, with it allegedly following the life of infamous film critic Pauline Kael. Whether or not this film is made, we can safely say that with Tarantino, the end is never truly the end, and for someone who loves movies so much, filmmaking is evidently a tough habit to shake.
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