Check Out This 'Once Upon A Time In... Hollywood' Online Magazine Before You Watch The Film
There are still two weeks to go until Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time In... Hollywood opens in the UK, and if you're gasping for a bit more context but are terrified of wading into the Wikipedia page and accidentally ruining it for yourself, there's an answer.
Most of the promo stuff around films is a bit samey, but Once Upon A Time has its own online magazine which Tarantino recommends reading before you head into a screening.
You can read the whole thing here. It begins with a short editor's letter from Tarantino: "These pages step back into 1969, the year Easy Rider and The Wild Bunch were released, the year of Woodstock and the moon landing, a year of peace, love, tragedy and war. Before you experience Once Upon A Time In... Hollywood, take the time to immerse yourself in Rick Dalton's world. Enjoy."
This edition of the Once Upon A Time In... Hollywood mag is dated July 1969, and features a big interview with Leo DiCaprio's Rick Dalton, star of Bounty Law, as he attempts to make the jump to Hollywood superstardom. He's fresh from the promo for his "uber-violent 'guys-on-a-mission' movie" The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey with, among others, then-current Batman Adam West and "his signature weapon: a giant Nazi-killing flamethrower".
"You don't want to be on the wrong side of that thing," Dalton explains. "I was terrified of it. Even after practicing three hours a day for two weeks I thought that damn dragon was going to barbecue me alive."
You get a bit more background on how Rick wants to make the jump to films like fellow TV graduates Steve McQueen and Jim Garner. Of worries about being typecast, he says: "That's what we all thought about Clint Eastwood 'til he put out Hang 'Em High."
Elsewhere, there's ads for Tarantino's ever-present Red Apple cigarettes, and backstory for Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth. He was a Green Beret before becoming a stuntman, observing that it "turns out pretending to fight and blow stuff up is pretty similar to the real thing".
Then there's a guide to the music that runs throughout Once Upon A Time, which is extremely handy for working out which of the hottest jams of 1969 to add to your monster barbecue playlist, plus a few nuggets for Tarantino buffs squirrelled away.
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