‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ Teaser: First Look Trailer At Quentin Tarantino Film

After two days of poster teases, Sony has dropped a real teaser — a short trailer — for Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and nothing in the posters suggested the surprising tone of the video. We’re talking comedy, or at least a surprising lightheartedness. About Hollywood in the Manson era. Even Damon Herriman, as the lunatic killer, smiles and waves at the camera.

Then again, nothing is ever quite what it seems in a Tarantino film. What we can confidently take away from the teaser: Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt display a loose, best-buddy chemistry as their respective TV star and stuntman characters are interviewed — newsreel-style — and discuss what exactly a stunt double does. “Carryin’ his load?” Pitt’s Cliff Booth answers dryly. “Yeah, that’s about right.”

Here’s the official logline: Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood visits 1969 Los Angeles, where everything is changing, as TV star Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt) make their way around an industry they hardly recognize anymore. The ninth film from the writer-director features a large ensemble cast and multiple storylines in a tribute to the final moments of Hollywood’s golden age.

During the teaser, we also see brief clips of Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate, some scene-setting shots of ’60s-era LA (a cinema marquee boasts The Night They Raided Minsky’s, putting us, at that moment, in 1968 or, depending on how long Minsky’s has been playing, maybe ’69), a Playboy club, maybe the Sunset Strip and, with hints of the danger to come, a group of hippie girls at what we can reasonably assume is Spahn Ranch, ground zero for Manson’s family of lost kids and killers. Bruce Dern plays the old and ailing Spahn.

Oh, and we also get a great look at Mike Moh playing Bruce Lee as Kato on The Green Hornet.

Earlier this week, Sony released character posters for the film. See them here and here.

Written and Directed by Tarantino, produced by David Heyman, Shannon McIntosh and Quentin Tarantino, the film hits theaters July 26. Check out the teaser above.

And here is the same teaser trailer tweeted by DiCaprio this morning, with a statement that’s obvious but no less true “Experience a version of 1969 that could only happen” in this movie, by this director: