Even Quentin Tarantino is not immune to the red pen. David Fincher has revealed he cut 60 pages from Tarantino’s script for “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth,” the “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” follow-up starring Brad Pitt — because the first draft was, in Fincher’s words, “essentially two movies.”
“The first draft I read was 230 pages,” Fincher told Empire in a joint interview with Tarantino. The director had to find the overlap between three massive creative visions: “Somewhere in there was the Venn diagram of what Brad wanted to do, what I want to do, what Quentin wanted to do. Not ‘want to do,’ but the areas we would focus on.”
Brad Pitt as Cliff Booth (Credits: Deadline)
Two Movies’ Worth of Cliff Booth
A 230-page first draft is enormous by any standard — most finished screenplays land around 110 to 120 pages. Tarantino, famous for writing long, is no stranger to doorstop scripts, but Fincher clearly decided the film needed a tighter shape. Trimming nearly a quarter of the draft was the price of turning two movies’ worth of material into one.
It is a fascinating collision of two of cinema’s most distinct voices. Tarantino writes with sprawling, dialogue-driven maximalism; Fincher is Hollywood’s great precision instrument, a director who storyboards obsessively and shoots take after take until every frame clicks. Somewhere in that Venn diagram sits Cliff Booth — the stuntman character that won Pitt an Academy Award in the original film.
What We Know About the Film
Fincher directs from Tarantino’s script, with Pitt reprising the role that earned him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. A trailer has already given fans their first look at Booth’s return, and the premise alone — one of Tarantino’s most beloved creations handed to one of his generation’s most meticulous directors — has made it one of the most anticipated films on the calendar.
The project also marks a rare moment of Tarantino handing his own writing to another filmmaker. The director has long talked about retiring after his tenth film, and letting Fincher take the reins on a story born from his own universe suggests a passing of the torch — or at least a very public experiment in shared authorship.
The Cut That Had to Happen
Sixty pages is a lot of Tarantino dialogue left on the cutting-room floor — or, more likely, never filmed at all. But if the finished film captures the sweet spot where Fincher’s control meets Tarantino’s voice meets Pitt’s lived-in charisma, the sacrifice will have been worth it. Cliff Booth is back, leaner than his creator first imagined — and that might be exactly what the character needed.
Also Read: Tarantino Has a Script for His 10th and Final Film — But He Wants to “Live First” Roger Deakins Admits He ‘Still Can’t Answer’ What a Cinematographer Is in Rare Candid Interview
Source: Deadline — read the full story there.
