When Tarantino yelled at Brad Pitt on the set of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood

“Never again in your life will you turn off my camera or I’ll burn you in the business!”

Even between old accomplices, tension can sometimes rise on a plateau. And obviously, Quentin Tarantino doesn’t like people touching his camera.

The anecdote was told by Bruce Dern in an interview with People on the occasion of the presentation of the documentary in Cannes Dernsiededicated to his career.

The actor returns to an unexpected moment of friction between Tarantino and Brad Pitt during the filming of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.

The scene concerned an exchange between the two actors in which Bruce Dern improvised a little additional line: “When Brad Pitt wakes me up in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, I’m in bed, a little groggy, and I just improvise: “I’m not really sure what’s going on.” says Dern.

Except that this improvisation would have immediately pushed Brad Pitt to interrupt the take:

“Brad said ‘Cut’ and stopped the camera. He literally cut the camera. And then Quentin’s face became extremely serious. He said to him, ‘Brad, what did you just do?“

According to Bruce Dern, Tarantino then reframed his star bluntly:

“Brad replied, ‘Well, I turned off the camera.’ And Quentin told him: ‘Never again in your life will you turn off my camera or I’ll burn you in the business! That’s my domain. We never interrupt the game!”

The tension would then quickly subside.

“Brad just replied: ‘Yes but what he said wasn’t in the script…’ And after that, we restarted the scene.”

Released in 2019, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood will still have allowed Brad Pitt to win the Oscar for best supporting role.