DiCaprio Made Tarantino Ditch the Script on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — Here’s How
Leonardo DiCaprio did what almost no one can: he got Quentin Tarantino to ditch the page, pushing the famously meticulous director into rare improvisation on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Quentin Tarantino used Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to do something he clearly loves: slip himself onto the dusty backlot of a 60s TV western and play cowboy for real. The big swing was building out a full sequence from Lancer, the actual CBS western, as the centerpiece of Rick Dalton’s big day on set. And then Leonardo DiCaprio blew it up — on purpose — and the movie got better for it.
The plan: Tarantino wanted a mini-western inside the movie
Tarantino originally wrote the Lancer storyline to run like a full-blown western of his own, parked right in the middle of the film, complete with a third act. He had it meticulously mapped. Rick was playing Caleb, the heavy in that episode, and Tarantino wanted the scene to keep rolling, uninterrupted, so he could direct it the way he would have done a 1960s TV western. If you know Tarantino, you know the script is sacred and improv is basically a no-go.
The pitch: DiCaprio says let Rick choke
DiCaprio looked at the Lancer sequence and told Tarantino it needed a crack in the armor: Rick Dalton should forget his lines in the middle of the shoot, humiliate himself, and spiral. On paper, that suggestion ruins the director’s carefully built mini-western. Tarantino hated it — at first — because it would interrupt the pure western he wanted to stage. But then the annoying truth crept in: for Rick’s story, Leo’s idea made sense.
'OK, OK, I see what you mean, goddamn it... You are going to f**k up my little Western in the middle of my goddamn movie. But, yeah, you are not wrong.'
That was Tarantino, begrudgingly conceding the point to his star. He admits he was frustrated because the change worked for the character, but it wasn’t the version he’d dreamed up — the one where his Lancer scenes sat neatly alongside the rest of the film like a standalone western.
The payoff: one of the movie’s best scenes
Once the line-flub happens, Rick storms back to his trailer and detonates. Here’s the twist: Tarantino wouldn’t write any dialogue for that meltdown. He gave DiCaprio a handful of topics to rant about and let him rip, which is borderline heresy on a Tarantino set. The result is the howling, self-lacerating trailer tirade — a moment that, let’s be honest, probably locked in DiCaprio’s Best Actor nomination.
Where this all comes from
The whole behind-the-scenes push-pull — Tarantino’s dream of directing a pristine Lancer episode versus DiCaprio’s smarter, messier path for Rick — is detailed in the new book 'The Making of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.' It’s one of those stories that explains why the movie plays the way it does: Tarantino got to indulge his vintage-TV western obsession, and DiCaprio forced him to let the character crash through it.