Mapel says, "Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Hollywood. A few
months before we started shooting, Quentin and Leo went to Cin-
emaCon (an exhibitors' convention) in Las Vegas to start generat-
ing some buzz for the movie. Quentin proclaimed in front of all
these theater owners: 'The film takes place in 1969 at the height of
the counterculture hippie revolution and New Hollywood. Street
by street, block by block, we will transform Los Angeles into the
Hollywood of 1969.'
"At that point, we knew we had our work cut out for us." Once
Upon a Time … in Hollywood is a very realistic portrayal of Holly-
wood in the late 1960s. The art department did extensive research
and had a great deal of historical reference. In many instances,
Quentin knew where he wanted to shoot, and it was a matter of
taking these locations back in time to the way they looked in 1969."
"Hollywood Boulevard is a tourist attraction 24-7, 12 months a
year," Ling says. "It's nonstop people. It was a big deal to get all
the shop owners to agree to let us put facades over their windows
or put full marquees back on a building that no longer had a mar-
quee. That was one of the biggest feats of what Rick and his team
had to achieve. We had a very short prep because we couldn't
impact the stores and restaurants."
IMAGINE A HOT NIGHT IN LATE JULY 2018
DiCaprio and Pitt are driving down Hollywood Boulevard. They
pass the Pussycat Theatre, the Vogue Theatre, Larry Edmunds
Bookshop and Musso & Frank. The panorama looks almost ex-
actly like 1969—except for one element. Standing on a five-block
stretch of sidewalks behind bicycle barricades are masses of lo-
cals and tourists.
Recalling the excitement and chaos, Mapel says, "It was one of the
busiest tourist weeks of the year in Los Angeles. We closed about
five blocks of Hollywood Boulevard down to vehicle traffic for two
days but had to leave "off-camera" sidewalks on the Walk of Fame
open to pedestrians. Within a couple hours of our call time on our
first shooting day, word got out and hundreds (if not thousands)
of people showed up to watch what we were doing. They were just
a couple car-lengths away from two of the biggest movie stars in
the world. All of the tourists from overseas got a rare close-up look
at Hollywood moviemaking on those nights."
