OUR HOMAGE TO HIPPY HOLLYWOOD

Brad Pitt, Leo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie take us behind the scenes on Tarantino’s darkly nostalgic new movie

Hollywood, 1969. The cars are cool, the skirts are flirtily short or dreamily long and the old guard of great movie stars – the shoot-’em-up cowboys, the hardboiled detectives – are fading from glory to be replaced by a more sensitive breed of actor. Authority is being questioned and free love is in the air. At least it is until one fateful night in August when four followers of cult leader Charles Manson break into a house in the Hollywood Hills and murder rising starlet Sharon Tate, just 26 and heavily pregnant, and four other people who happen to be visiting at the time. Hollywood and the rest of the world reels at the horror of the cold-blooded crime, and almost before it has begun, the era of peace and love is over.

Set against this backdrop – just before the Manson gang strike – ageing star of TV Westerns Rick Dalton is holed up in his swish pad in LA’s fashionable Benedict Canyon, drowning his sorrows as he contemplates his waning career. With him is his best buddy and stuntman Cliff Booth, who, despite his less luxurious lifestyle and a dark tragedy in his own past, remains resolutely upbeat in contrast to his employer. Just one house up the hill lives Sharon and her movie- director husband Roman Polanski in what appears, for now, to be an unendingly glamorous whirl of beautiful friends and all-star parties at the Playboy Mansion.

And away we go into Quentin Tarantino’s latest film Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood. It’s an irresistible mix of nostalgia, Hollywood history, dark humour and the occasional surprise, with Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick, Brad Pitt as Cliff and Margot Robbie as Sharon leading us on an unforgettable journey through a few days in a year that changed Hollywood forever. Tarantino re- creates the era to a T with references to the films, TV shows and fashions of the time, and there are some brilliant turns by the likes of Damian Lewis (as a stoned Steve McQueen), Al Pacino, Kurt Russell and Dakota Fanning.

‘It was a special time in Hollywood,’ says Tarantino of the late 60s when we meet in Beverly Hills. ‘It was the explosion of hippy Hollywood. There’s a book by Mark Harris called Pictures At A Revolution which makes the point that things started to change around the time they gave out the Oscars for 1967. That was the first time films were honoured that were unlike those that had gone before, films like The Graduate and Bonnie And Clyde. People weren’t aware of it at the time,

but by the end of that awards ceremony the Old Guard had gone and the New Hollywood had come in.’

He says that for the part of Rick, the 1950s tough-guy actor desperately trying to reinvent himself, he had many intense conversations with Leonardo. ‘I showed him a bunch of TV stars of the time, including an actor called Pete Duel who was on the hit TV show Alias Smith And Jones and shot himself in 1971. You might wonder what this guy had to be depressed about, but I’d talked to people who knew him and I realised he was probably undiagnosed bipolar, and because he didn’t understand he had a medical condition he just drank to self-medicate. When I told Leo this, he said, “We don’t need to spell it out in the film, but that gives Rick a reason to be the way he is, the mood swings, the drinking too much.”’

Leo adds. ‘I immediately connected with Rick. My career has taken a different course to his, but he’s intrinsically somebody I knew growing up in this industry. Rick is realising the industry has sort of passed him by.

So we go on this journey of discovery with him because he’s slowly realising he may vanish. I understand that in him.’

For Quentin, the casting of two actors portraying lifetime friends had to be just right. Although he had directed both Leo and Brad before – in Django Unchained and Inglourious Basterds respectively – the two had never worked with each other. Nevertheless, says Leo, he and Brad hit it off immediately. ‘We talked a lot to Quentin before we started filming, and he gave us both an amazing catalogue of experiences our characters had had together,’ says Leo. ‘The films we’d done, Brad, Margot and Leo at the LA premiere of Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood. Inset: Tarantino

the encounters we’d shared. So as soon as we stepped on set it was like we were those guys.’

‘We didn’t become friends,’ shrugs Brad, ever the joker. ‘I think he’s overrated.’ Then he turns serious. ‘No, I have a lot of respect for him because there’s a lot of pressure in holding up that end of the table. We understand each other because we both popped up about the same time, we’ve both seen this is a business that can chew you up and spit you out, and we’ve both lost that freedom of privacy, which is an instant reference point for each of us.’

LA kid Leo’s father George, a noted underground comic-book publisher, is precisely the sort of ‘damned hippy’ Rick rails against in the movie, and he and his second wife Peggy were drafted in as extras. ‘There’s a scene where Rick and Cliff are driving down Hollywood Boulevard, and there are hundreds of hippies around,’ explains Leo. ‘I pointed to a guy and said, “That’s my dad.” And Brad said, “Yeah, right.” But I said, “No, really, that’s my dad, with the sandals and the Hawaiian shirt, and that’s his wife with him wearing the turban.” He said, “Oh, that’s cool that they dressed them up.” I said, “No, that’s how they look every day!”’

Floating through this world is Margot as Sharon Tate, a free spirit just starting to make her name. ‘I don’t think Sharon had reached legitimacy as an actress before she passed on,’ says Quentin. ‘But that could have changed if she’d lived. Warren Beatty told me he considered her for Bonnie in Bonnie And Clyde. So you never know.’

For Margot, the chance to inhabit the soul of Sharon was special. ‘I spent some time with her sister Debra, who told me a lot about Sharon, about her kindness and her sense of humour. It’s impossible not to fall in love with her. She just exuded joie de vivre. We had Sharon dressing in a lot of bright colours. For a scene where she goes to a party at the Playboy Mansion I wore an outfit by Ossie Clark, a designer Sharon wore a lot of, a yellow top and shorts. I was having a boogie round the changing room. It just felt so happy!’

It’s no spoiler to say the film includes a spectacular twist that divided critics in America when it was released there last month, but as the Mail’s Brian Viner wrote in his glowing five-star review, it’s one helluva ride getting there.

Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood is in cinemas from Wednesday.

‘My dad was a hippy extra – in his usual clothes’ LEO