LOS ANGELES — Once upon a time, not too far from Hollywood, two of the world’s biggest movie stars were talking about what it’s like to screw up on set.
“Messing up the lines in front of the entire cast and crew?” Leonardo DiCaprio said. “It’s the going to school in your underwear nightmare.”
“It’s awful,” Brad Pitt chimed in. “When a scene’s not working. When YOU’RE not working in a scene … It goes beyond not being able to get the lines. You have 100 people there who are all ready to get on with their day and get home.”
DiCaprio hasn’t exactly had to resort to dunking his head in ice water after a too-late and too-fun night out, as his actor character does in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood .”
But Pitt? “Oh I’ve done that,” he laughed.
The two actors, who skyrocketed to fame around the same time more than a quarter-century ago, have joined forces for the first time in a major motion picture to take on their own industry, their own town and even their own egos in a time of great change — 1969 Hollywood. Out nationwide Friday, it’s also reunited them with Quentin Tarantino.
Once known only as “Tarantino’s Manson Movie,” the actual film is something very different. Manson is a character, as are his most notorious followers. And of course, Sharon Tate is depicted too and played by Margot Robbie. But as with most Tarantino movies, it’s not exactly what you think.
“The best of what 1969 had to offer you kind of experience through Sharon,” Robbie said.
Like going to the Playboy Mansion with Mama Cass and go-go dancing the night away. Or rolling up to a movie theater to check out your latest matinee and getting a free ticket because you’re on the poster.
“She kind of represented the arms open, doors open sort of policy,” she added. “After 1969 and after her death, things kind of changed in Hollywood and people closed their doors and shut the gates.”
The light and the dark of the imminent end of the ’60s is the backdrop to what is otherwise a classic star-driven two-hander. “Once Upon a Time …” is awash in nostalgia, showbiz lore (and cameos), wistfulness and Tarantino wit that allows DiCaprio, as a past-his-prime television cowboy in a moment of crippling self-doubt, and Pitt, as his devoted stuntman, to do what they do best: Charm.
“I don’t think you can completely act that kind of dynamic,” Pitt said.
The change happening in Hollywood around 1969 led to many on-set discussions of what was going on at the time with the new batch of filmmakers upending the establishment and leaving room for the Coppolas and the Scorseses to break in.
“The ‘take and wait,’ ” Pitt said. “Like, we’ll get the take but we’re getting through this story.” Tarantino does that often.
It also made them all reflect on their own industry at the moment, where streaming is disrupting the old ways but once again ushering in new voices. As producers, Pitt, DiCaprio and Robbie all find it exciting.
“What’s incredible is this wealth of talent from writers to directors to actors that are getting opportunities now. It’s quite extraordinary,” Pitt said. “You see that we’re not so special.”
DiCaprio is even a little jealous to see some “out-of-the-box ideas” and “really ballsy storytelling” that he tried and failed to get made just a decade ago now not only being financed, but made at a high quality, too.
“There’s so many more opportunities,” Robbie added. “I’m very grateful to be playing roles in this day and age than perhaps when Sharon was.”
But it’s not lost on them that they all happen to be promoting “a big budget art piece like this,” as DiCaprio called it, from one of the major studios whose future is going to depend on people actually going to see films like “Once Upon a Time …” in a movie theater.
“Hopefully it becomes like a concert experience,” DiCaprio said.
