Quentin Tarantino had quite a surprise in store on Friday night.
The filmmaker made an appearance at AFI Fest in Los Angeles for a screening of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, sitting down for a Q&A afterward about his hit movie. But just as the night seemed to be wrapping up, Tarantino surprised the crowd at the TCL Chinese Theater with a first look at The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, showing off the first 17 minutes of the follow-up film.
Tarantino wrote the script for Cliff Booth, with David Fincher stepping in to direct this time around. The new project sees Brad Pitt reprise his Oscar-winning role as stunt double Booth, and is set in 1977, eight years after the events of Once Upon a Time.
Before showing off the footage — which saw Booth working as a cinema projectionist while handling some more unsavory business on the side — Tarantino explained his decision to revisit the character in the first place.
“I tend to not remember good reviews of mine in quotes; I kind of remember the bad reviews in quotes, but I don’t really remember good reviews of mine in quotes. But one quote that I do remember somebody writing about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, it was like, ‘This seems like the first world Quentin Tarantino has ever created that he would like to live in,’ and there is that aspect,” he told the crowd. “I loved the Cliff Booth character, I loved the way that Brad played him, and there was this aspect of him as sort of like a paperback hero. I could see like a series of paperbacks with Cliff Booth getting involved with this adventure or that adventure or something like that.”
Tarantino continued, “As time went on, I just thought about coming up with a different adventure, getting him into a misadventure. I wanted to see what would happen with that.” He also noted how immersed he has become in the film’s world — having also written a Once Upon a Time novel — and explained, “I’ve got nothing to do but just invest in this mythology. I invested in it before I did the movie, and then I invested in it in the years since I’ve done the movie, just so I know the mythology. The audience doesn’t need to know everything, but it’s kind of nice that I know everything, and you can trust me that I know it.”
During the conversation Tarantino also revealed that “if I’m going to watch any of my movies, it would be this one,” and it’s a film that he can watch again and again. He added, “Don’t get me wrong, I love my stories. I really, really love my stories and I invest in my stories. But I kind of like that this doesn’t really have a story. I like that you’re just hanging out with them.”
About to head into rehearsals for his upcoming play, Tarantino explained his current mindset is of being a writer first, as was put into action with opting not to direct Cliff Booth. “As I’m getting older, being a man of letters is more my thing,” he noted, “so screenplays and books and plays — everything except poetry.”
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth is releasing in Imax on Nov. 25 and streaming Dec. 23 on Netflix.