Hollywood's power players packed the TCL Chinese Theatre on Friday for AFI Fest, and Quentin Tarantino delivered the ultimate insider treat: 17 minutes of a movie about a guy who makes their problems disappear.
The surprise preview of "The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth" — written by Tarantino, directed by David Fincher, bankrolled by Netflix — isn't just entertainment. It's a mirror. The film's own logline describes Cliff Booth as a "fixer — solving situations for Hollywood's great and, sometimes, not so good." Set in 1977, Booth works as a bartender and projectionist when he's not handling the extralegal dirty work that keeps the industry's machinery running. You almost can't script a better metaphor for how this town actually operates.
Tarantino told the crowd he wanted to revisit Booth because a critic once wrote that "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" was "the first world Quentin Tarantino has ever created that he would like to live in." He agreed. "I loved the Cliff Booth character," Tarantino said. "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."
The Hollywood Reporter noted that Tarantino added he likes that the new film "doesn't really have a story" — that "you're just hanging out with them." Hanging out. That's what AFI Fest is, at its core: Hollywood hanging out with Hollywood, celebrating Hollywood, in a theatre on a boulevard built on dreams and desperation. The same industry that uses its awards-season platform to tell working Americans they're the problem spends its Friday nights romanticizing a world where a stuntman-turned-enforcer handles the unsavory business the stars don't want to touch.
Variety described the film's opening as having "Tarantino's distinguished style of writing" while Fincher renders 1977 Hollywood as "gritty and dark." The cast includes Elizabeth Debicki as a talent agent, Scott Caan as a TV star, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as a football champion turned screen actor — agents, stars, and athletes, the exact class of people who fill the seats at these festivals.
Follow the money and the picture sharpens. Netflix is producing and distributing the film, hitting IMAX theaters Nov. 25 before streaming Dec. 23. The same company that spends billions programming audiences on identity politics and American self-flagellation is now selling nostalgia about a stuntman who beats up gangsters on behalf of Hollywood's elite. The dissonance would be funny if it weren't so profitable.
Tarantino told the crowd he's leaning into being "a man of letters" now — "screenplays and books and plays — everything except poetry." He's building mythology, investing in a world. And that world, as he freely admits, is one he'd like to live in. The question is why the rest of us should keep footing the bill.
