The writer surprised a ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ crowd with a first look at Brad Pitt’s return and explained why Cliff came back.
A month before The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth reaches IMAX theaters, Quentin Tarantino gave AFI Fest the first real look at what Brad Pitt‘s stuntman has been up to. After a Friday night screening of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, Tarantino surprised the crowd with the first 17 minutes of the follow-up, which he wrote and David Fincher directed.
The footage finds Cliff in 1977, eight years after the Manson-family showdown that closed the first film, working as a cinema projectionist while handling more unsavory business on the side. It is a fitting job for a character who has always lived just outside the frame of Hollywood, and an especially fitting reveal in a movie palace like the Chinese. Variety’s Jazz Tangcay was in the room and posted from the screening.
Why Cliff Came Back
Tarantino used the Q&A to explain why he kept returning to the character. He said he has always thought of Cliff as a kind of paperback hero, the type of man who could anchor a whole series of pulp adventures, and that the idea for a new misadventure grew from there. He also recalled one review of the 2019 film that said it seemed like the first world he had ever created that he would actually like to live in, and admitted that rings true. Of all his movies, he said, this is the one he rewatches, precisely because it is less about plot than about hanging out with its characters.
That world has kept growing. Tarantino wrote a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novel after the film, and he told the AFI crowd he has invested in the mythology both before and after making the movie, so he knows far more than any audience needs to.
A Writer First
Tarantino has been clear that handing the film to Fincher was a choice, not a compromise. He has said he did not want his final film as director to be a sequel, and on Friday he framed it as part of a larger shift: “As I’m getting older, being a man of letters is more my thing.”
He is living that out. Tarantino is heading into rehearsals for Popinjay Cavalier, his West End play with Sacha Baron Cohen, and he recently told Graham Norton that the script for his 10th and final film is finished, though he is in no hurry to shoot it.
The Release
The AFI preview is the latest step in a careful rollout. Netflix released new first look stills this week showing Cliff behind the wheel of a derby car and on a tennis court with Elizabeth Debicki, Scott Caan and Carla Gugino. The original film won Pitt his only acting Oscar, and the sequel puts him back in the best actor conversation before most people have seen a frame.
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth opens in IMAX for two weeks starting Nov. 25 and begins streaming on Netflix on Dec. 23. Watch the official trailer below.
