Centered around the murder of Sharon Tate at the home she shared with Roman Polanski, Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is known for its revisionist version of Tate’s tragic death. But a Tarantino storyline is rarely simple, and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is no different.
Tarantino is known for littering his work with pop culture references, as well as throwbacks to his own filmography. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, in particular, is famous for its Easter eggs and subtle movie references, as well as the homages to the filmmakers who inspired it. Take a look at the wealth of directors Tarantino draws influence from and pays tribute to in his ode to the golden age of American cinema.
Sergio Leone
Tarantino is famously obsessed with Spaghetti Westerns - Western movies made by Italian directors - and Sergio Leone is arguably the master of the subgenre. The film title directly references Leone’s trilogy of Once Upon A Time movies, showing the level of reverence Tarantino has for the Italian director.
Leone also directed the Man With No Name trilogy, which spawned Clint Eastwood’s career and has amassed a cult following since its release. His extensive back catalog is a great place to start when exploring directors who influenced Tarantino.
Sam Peckinpah
Sam Peckinpah is known for his revisionist takes, particularly in the Western genre. Many of Tarantino’s recent films - including Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood - revise history to give the villains their comeuppance.
Like Tarantino and Corbucci, Peckinpah’s Westerns are intensely violent. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a particular example of the director’s violent vision, executed with intensity, and is seen as a precursor to the vengeful violence of Tarantino’s hit pictures.
Kathryn Bigelow
Like Tarantino and Peckinpah, Kathryn Bigelow is known for making gritty, violent films. Perhaps best known for becoming the first female director to win an Oscar, she’s better known for her war films than Westerns.
But while The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty are arguably Bigelow’s most well-known films, she has also dabbled in the Western genre. Near Dark, Bigelow’s directorial debut, was conceived as a Western, and subsequently combined with elements of vampire fantasy in line with cinema trends of the time.
Sam Wanamaker
Fact and fiction is mixed so thoroughly in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood that it can be difficult to decipher which is which. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton is cast in Lancer, which was a real show whose pilot was directed by Sam Wanamaker. Real Lancer actors James Stacy and Wayne Maunder also feature in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
Wanamaker’s fame also stems from his non-film work. He’s credited with helping to save the Rose Theater in London, which would later be remodeled as Shakespeare’s Globe. It’s easy to see why Tarantino, who still shoots on 35mm film rather than digitally, would be inspired by a man so dedicated to preserving artistic history.
Sergio Corbucci
Rick Dalton is cast in Nebraska Jim, a fictional film (although the real-life Western Savage Gringo was released under this title in some countries) by director Sergio Corbucci. Corbucci, another virtuoso of the Spaghetti Western, was renowned for making particularly dark, violent films.
Tarantino himself wrote that Corbucci’s “West was the most violent, surreal and pitiless landscape of any director in the history of the genre.” Like Corbucci, Tarantino never shies away from gore or brutality - and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is no exception.
Dorothy Arzner
Dorothy Arzner was one of few female film directors to endure the flux state of Hollywood from the 1920s through to the 1940s. Many of Arzner’s films subvert the subject matter on which they’re based - something Tarantino strives to do in all his revisionist films.
Dance, Girl, Dance, Arzner’s penultimate film, explores contemporary showbusiness from the female perspective - an experience which Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate also portrays. Though Tarantino was criticized for the lack of lines he gave Robbie, she depicted Tate’s experience expertly - particularly in the theater scene, in which Tate revels in making the audience laugh throughout her performance.
David Lynch
David Lynch is one of Hollywood’s foremost modern-day filmmakers. Like Tarantino, Lynch has a penchant for a non-linear plot and a violent twist. His films tend to be dour and perplexing, with a dark, offbeat sense of humor.
While Lynch's films are stylistically more surrealist than Tarantino’s, many of his movies are thematically similar to Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Mulholland Drive, for instance, follows a number of storylines set in Hollywood, particularly focusing on the downfall of a young actress.
Regina King
One Night In Miami, Regina King’s 2020 hit picture, has a similar form to Tarantino’s film. The resemblance between the titles' format is coincidental - King's is derived from the 2013 stage play of the same name, well before Once Upon A Time In Hollywood was made - but like Tarantino’s film, it creates a fictional narrative around historical figures and events that took place in the 1960s.
The figures in question are Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke; and through their fictionalized relationships, the film explores what it means to be an eminent Black voice in a prejudiced society.
Jesse Moss
It’s well-documented that the earnest friendship between Rick Dalton and his stuntman Cliff Booth (played by Brad Pitt) is based on the relationship between Burt Reynolds and his longtime stuntman Hal Needham.
Jesse Moss’s documentary The Bandit explores this relationship in depth - from their long-held mutual respect to the undertones of resentment felt by the stuntman towards his more famous friend. While The Bandit is stylistically very different from Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, it provides a lot of background to Tarantino’s character influences in this film.
Dennis Hopper
Rick Dalton’s distaste for New Hollywood - and hippies - is succinctly summed up when he describes Tex Watson as “Dennis Hopper.” Hopper was a prolific Hollywood actor and director whose success continued into the New Hollywood era. In fact, Hopper’s film Easy Rider paved the way for independent arthouse films (a movement which, ironically, Tarantino would become a part of with the later release of Reservoir Dogs).
With the Manson Family lurking nearby, the mention of “hippies” in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood has an ominous tone. In the film, at least, it’s lucky that Dalton and Booth are waiting in the wings to serve justice.
