Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood could’ve easily coasted on the fact that it was the first movie to star both Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. But the iconic writer-director gave them each a compelling character to bring to bat.
DiCaprio plays Rick Dalton, an actor on the downslide of his career, consumed by insecurities, while Pitt plays Cliff Booth, his reckless, violent, happy-go-lucky stunt double, who drifts through life in search of a good time. They’re both terrific characters, and they share a fascinating dynamic. Here is Once Upon A Time In Hollywood: The 5 Best Rick Quotes (& 5 Best Cliff Quotes).
Rick: “It’s official, old buddy. I’m a has-been.”
In his meeting with Marvin Schwarz, Rick Dalton is told that his upcoming guest spots on various Western TV shows — which he’d previously been looking forward to — are an attempt by the networks to paint him as a villain and subtly turn the TV-viewing public against him so that they can let his career end.
So, Rick isn’t feeling too great when he comes out of the restaurant and waits for his car with Cliff. He tells his stunt double and close friend, “It’s official, old buddy. I’m a has-been.” Rick’s worst fears have finally come to fruition and he can’t handle it.
Cliff: “Hey! You’re Rick f****n’ Dalton. Don’t you forget it.”
In the final moments of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, as Cliff is about to be taken away in an ambulance, Rick tells him with a smile, “You’re a good friend, Cliff,” to which Cliff replies, “I try.” A lot of this movie plays around with ambiguity, but one thing that’s clear is that Cliff really is a good friend.
When he drops off Rick at the set of Lancer, he doesn’t just send him on his way and take his cool car for a spin. He tells him, “Hey! You’re Rick f****n’ Dalton. Don’t you forget it.” He gives Rick the confidence boost that he desperately needs.
Rick: “Take this mechanical ae and get it off my fg street!”
When the Manson Family killers drive up the street to scope out Sharon Tate’s house, Rick hears them from his kitchen. He continually expresses his disdain for hippies throughout the movie, so it’s no surprise that when a bunch of them show up on his street, he’s furious.
Marching out of the house in his bathrobe, carrying a blender full of margaritas that he intermittently sips from, Rick chastises the hippies, who he thinks are there to smoke pot on a secluded road. They try to calm him down, but he keeps insulting them (and their car, the aforementioned “mechanical a*****e”) until they leave and decide to kill him instead.
Cliff: “Anybody accidentally kills anybody in a fight, they go to jail. It’s called manslaughter.”
The portrayal of Bruce Lee in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has been met with controversy for making him look like a jerk, but if you separate this skewed character from the icon he’s based on, it’s a pretty funny scene. As Cliff makes fun of Bruce Lee for showing off, Lee confronts him.
He tells Cliff, “My hands are registered as lethal weapons. That means, we get into a fight, I accidentally kill you? I go to jail.” But as Cliff dryly points out, “Anybody accidentally kills anybody in a fight, they go to jail. It’s called manslaughter.” This leads to a fight between the two that makes hilarious use of slapstick.
Rick: “You embarrassed yourself like that in front of all those g*****n people!”
In Quentin Tarantino’s original script for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the shooting of Rick Dalton’s guest spot on Lancer went smoothly. It was Leonardo DiCaprio who suggested to Tarantino that Rick should start messing up his lines towards the end of the scene to dramatize it a little and break the fourth wall.
This leads to a meltdown in Rick’s trailer that was entirely improvised by DiCaprio: “Dammit, Rick, you screwed up the fg lines! You embarrassed yourself like that in front of all those gn people!” As he calms down, Rick becomes determined to prove himself as an actor and triumphantly returns to the set.
Cliff: “Lucky for you, he’s got a spare. Fix it.”
Cliff’s visit to Spahn Ranch is one of the tensest scenes in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Even though George Spahn turns out to be all right after Cliff suspects foul play, the hippies surround Cliff like the titular winged menaces in The Birds. When he returns to his car — which is really Rick’s car, as he’s been chauffeuring him around since he lost his license — he finds that one of the tires has been slashed.
He identifies the culprit and tells him, “If something were to happen to my boss’ car, well, I’d get in trouble. Lucky for you, he’s got a spare. Fix it.” At first, the hippie refuses to change the tire, so Cliff punches him until he does it.
Rick: “Anybody order fried sauerkraut!?”
Rick technically speaks this line in character as Sgt. Mike Lewis in a Paul Wendkos-directed World War II action movie called The 14 Fists of McCluskey. One of the best recurring gags in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood involves cutting to fictional movies that Rick Dalton has appeared in. Sometimes, this entails editing Leonardo DiCaprio into existing Eurospy movies and TV episodes. Other times, it’s entirely new footage.
This clip from The 14 Fists of McCluskey is an example of the latter, as Sgt. Lewis bursts into a Nazi summit with a flamethrower and cries out, “Anybody order fried sauerkraut!? Burn, you Nazi b*****ds! Ha, ha, ha!”
Cliff: “Don’t cry in front of the Mexicans.”
Definitely one of the most unusual lines from the movie, “Don’t cry in front of the Mexicans” has become one of Cliff Booth’s identifying quotes. It’s even been the source of a few memes. Cliff says it to Rick outside the restaurant in the movie’s opening act.
They’re waiting for the valets — the “Mexicans” in question — to bring the car around, and as Rick comes to terms with the end of his career, he breaks down crying on Cliff’s shoulder. Cliff tells him not to cry in front of the Mexicans, so he doesn’t remove the barrier between famous TV star and valet. We’d hope that these characters wouldn’t talk with this blatant casual racism today, but the humor comes from the fact that in this time period, Cliff has no idea how awful he sounds and thinks he’s just being a good friend.
Rick: “I burnt her ass to a crisp.”
In Quentin Tarantino’s skewed version of August 8, 1969, the Manson Family murderers decide against killing Sharon Tate and instead go for Rick Dalton, reasoning that his violent TV show Bounty Law taught them to murder. So, there’s a thematic resonance in the fact that Rick kills one of his would-be attackers with a prop from one of his violent action movies.
After all the commotion is over, Jay Sebring comes down from Tate’s house to speak to him at the gate. He asks what happened and Rick explains, “I torched the last one.” Confused, Jay says, “Torched?,” and Rick, still coming to terms with the snap decision he made, chuckles, “Yeah, I burnt her ass to a crisp.”
Cliff: “I ain’t gonna die. It’s not my time yet, man.”
There’s a delicate poetry to Cliff’s final words in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — and possibly his final words altogether, as Tarantino leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not Cliff survived the night. During the fight in which he and Brandy (to use Charles Manson’s words) “totally destroy” the Manson Family members, Cliff is stabbed and knocked unconscious.
As he’s being loaded into an ambulance, he seems at peace as he tells Rick, “Hey, I’m not gonna die. I may get a limp, but I ain’t gonna die. It’s not my time yet, man.” And then, he disappears off into the night, like a dream.
