Brad Pitt has been hot on the comeback trail for the last decade, and by comeback trail, we mean attempting to generate enough good press to paper over the very bad press from his divorce from Angelina Jolie. Part of that effort was Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino’s masterful fantasy about 1969 Los Angeles, in which Pitt plays the stunt double to a fading star. The movie netted Pitt an Oscar and an upcoming sequel, but according to Bruce Dern, it was also the movie that nearly killed his career at the hands of Quentin Tarantino.
Speaking to People at Cannes, where the documentary about his life, Dernsie, premiered, Dern recalled shooting the scene at Spahn Ranch, where Pitt’s character, Cliff Booth, investigates the Manson family. In the scene, he asks to speak to an elderly George Spahn, the proprietor of the movie ranch, who has taken in the family, particularly its den mother, Squeaky Fromme (Dakota Fanning). “When Brad Pitt wakes me up in Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood,’ I’m in the bed, and I get up and I’m a little groggy and stuff and I just say, ‘I’m not really sure what’s going on,'” Dern said. “I’m looking at him. [Pitt] cut the camera. He cut the camera. The look on Quentin’s face—I mean, he was insanely grave—and he said, ‘Brad, what did you just do?'”
“He said, ‘Well, I cut the camera.’ He said, ‘Never again in your life will you ever cut a camera or you’ll be dead in this business. That’s my domain. Don’t stop behavior,'” Dern said. “So then we went on and did the scene and all Brad did was say to him, ‘Well, that wasn’t in the script what he said.'”
Obviously, Pitt’s not one for improv, unlike Dern, who reportedly improvised the final line of the scene: “I don’t know who you are, but you touched me today. You came to visit me, now I gotta go back to sleep.”
Cliff Booth will return in The Adventures Of Cliff Booth, which just secured an IMAX release, this summer.
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