Quentin Tarantino's latest film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is a hall of mirrors.
Cliff Booth is Rick Dalton's stunt double. Cliff is played by Brad Pitt, and Rick is played by Leonardo DiCaprio. In the opening credits the actors' names appear on screen at the same time, but DiCaprio's name is superimposed over the back of Pitt's head, and vice versa.
Rick is from Missouri, like Pitt. And Rick is like John Travolta, Pam Grier, Robert Forster, David Carradine, Michael Parks, or any other actor whose career has seen better days and hopes that a director like Tarantino can remind people of their screen presence; in Rick's case, he hopes his new neighbor, Roman Polanski, "the hottest director in town," will take notice of him.
In what could be called a fantasy sequence, we see Rick inserted into a scene from The Great Escape (1963), replacing Steve McQueen in the role that cemented his status as a movie star, but Rick's career already mirrors McQueen's in the way that McQueen spent three seasons playing a bounty hunter on the TV series Wanted Dead or Alive (1958-'61) while starring in films like Never So Few (1959) and The Magnificent Seven (1960) prior to his breakout lead role—yes, pun intended—in The Great Escape.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a movie in which certain actors are playing real people, creating more doubles. Margot Robbie plays Sharon Tate, and in one scene Tate goes to a movie theater showing The Wrecking Crew (1969) and watches herself on-screen, except in this case Robbie-as-Tate is watching the actual Sharon Tate in scenes from the actual movie; the double is watching the real thing. At the Playboy Mansion, Steve McQueen, played by Damian Lewis, points out to a fellow partygoer that Roman Polanski and Jay Sebring, Tate's respective husband and ex-fiancé, are physically similar—both are short—because that's her type.
Tate is shown snoring in bed. Later, we see Rick's new bride, Francesca (Lorenza Izzo), snoring on a plane. (Yes, there are multiple shots of women's feet, including Robbie-as-Tate's, but I'll leave that Tarantino trademark to others.)
The ending of the movie mirrors that of the one Tarantino made ten years earlier, Inglourious Basterds, in that it plays with historical events and outcomes, and a clip from Rick's movie "The 14 Fists of McCluskey" is reminiscent of Basterds's ending as well. (The title may be another instance of doubling: could the 14 fists of McCluskey include those of the six fellow soldiers of his unit, a la The Dirty Dozen, one of Tarantino's influences for Basterds?)
Uma Thurman's daughter, Robin Hawke, and Bruce Willis's oldest daughter, Rumer, make brief appearances in Once Upon a Time, reminding viewers on a subconscious level of Tarantino's era-defining Pulp Fiction (1994), which features Thurman and Willis as part of its ensemble cast; in addition, Andie MacDowell's daughter, Margaret Qualley, plays Pussycat, the hitchhiker and Manson cult member who catches Cliff's eye, adding to the overall paranoia about "the younger generation" that no longer includes Rick—and, by extension, Tarantino.
Burt Reynolds was set to play George Spahn, the owner of the ranch where the Manson "family" squatted in Los Angeles, until he died in September of last year (Bruce Dern replaced him in the role). His longtime stunt double, Hal Needham, directed him in several movies, including Hooper (1978), in which Reynolds plays a stuntman.
And Roman Polanski, as previously mentioned, is the hottest director in Hollywood in '69 the way Tarantino was the hottest director in Hollywood in '96. John Travolta, after experiencing a career comeback with Pulp Fiction, was set to star in "The Double," directed by Polanski, in '96, but quit a few days before shooting was to begin, presumably because of creative differences. (Did Variety announce Travolta's exit with a headline like "'Double' Down"? If not, their loss.)
