Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon A Time in Hollywood' is in the race for 92nd Academy Awards for Best Film, Best Screenplay and Best Director, among others, in this year’s Oscars. Brad Pitt, who stars in the film as stunt man Cliff Booth, has been nominated for Best Supporting Actor for the role, and is the favourite for many to win the coveted trophy.
This year’s Oscars will be broadcast live at 5:30 am on February 10 on Star Movies, with repeat telecasts later.
In the film, set in 1969, Pitt’s Booth is the stunt man to Leonardo Di Caprio’s Rick Dalton, a fading Hollywood star. Describing the relationship between the pair in a to-be aired interview on Star Movies, Pitt said, “They come from this era, when an actor and a stunt man had a greater partnership and had more say in what was going to be in the film. And at this point, we are on the tail end, I say ‘we’ because I’m on his coattails. I have a job if Rick Dalton has a job and if Rick Dalton doesn’t have a job then I probably don’t, and he’s kindly hired me to work on odd jobs. I’m doing whatever he needs.”
When asked if he had any trepidations about taking on a role like this, the now veteran actor answered, “Hell no man, you know that you don’t have to carry, you know, the whole thing because you got these great people who are the best of the best and are going to help carry that load and it’s actually a relief and so much was automatic for us, just having experienced many of the same things. This story itself that Quentin has created, it just was an immediate comfort.”
Describing the character further, Pitt said, “Cliff is just this guy who’s really in the moment, so much so that he doesn’t think about where his next meal is going to come from and it’s almost like he’s this pre-hippie or beatnik. And it’s this Zen Buddhist era that Quentin wrote into Cliff. It’s no hassle in the castle man. He’s just um ‘we’ll figure it out as we go along’.”
This is the 56-year-old actor’s second time working with Tarantino. “He [Tarantino] has such verve for the filmmaking process. He knows he’s not going to be there, but for 10 films, so it’s not going to be indefinite. He has such reverence for filming and for film that, he makes a party out of it,” said Pitt, adding, “He loves a story. If we’re in the middle of a good story, the take is going to wait. We’ll get to the take and it’s going to be good, but we’re going to finish the story.”