After months of teases, we have our first trailer for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, as we’re reminded it to be the ninth movie by Hollywood juggernaut filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.
Set squarely in 1969, Hollywood concerns itself with the backstage days and dramas of actors, filmworkers, Hollywood-types, and the West Coast underbelly brewing beneath the Summer of Love. It almost strikes me as having a Robert Altmanesque quality at this point, with the story seemingly going to be a number of random intersections rather than a single, driving goal.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt star as Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth, Dalton a working-class actor and Booth his longtime stunt-double. Fictional characters many of them, Tarantino is grounding his fantasy in reality, with Margot Robbie set to play Sharon Tate, the former wife of filmmaker Roman Polanski who was murdered in the summer of 1969 by members of the Manson Family. That in mind, you can’t help but wonder how QT will handle what can only be a drastic shift in tone from what we’re seeing here, and I think our guy is up to the challenge.
A laundry list of incredible actors support, with Al Pacino, Bruce Dern, Damian Lewis, and Dakota Fanning set to weasel and scheme their ways through the sunshine and stars when Once Upon a Time in Hollywood hits theaters July 27th.
