Quentin Tarantino Butted Heads With Brad Pitt While Filming ‘Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood’: ‘You’ll Be Dead in This Business’

Although Quentin Tarantino and Brad Pitt are close collaborators, they allegedly had one moment where they disagreed while filming 2019’s “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.”

The anecdote comes via co-star Bruce Dern, who spoke with People while celebrating a new documentary about him debuting at Cannes Film Festival named “Dernsie.” A “Dernsie” is the name given to little lines or moments Dern has improvised in order to enhance his onscreen performances.

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One of these came up while Dern was shooting a scene with Pitt for “Hollywood,” and he described what happened when he improvised.

“When Brad Pitt wakes me up in ‘Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,’ I’m in the bed and I get up and I’m a little groggy and stuff and I just say, ‘I’m not really sure what’s going on,'” Dern said. “I’m looking at him. [Pitt] cut the camera. He cut the camera. The look on Quentin’s face — I mean, he was insanely grave — and he said, ‘Brad, what did you just do?'”

“He said, ‘Well, I cut the camera.’ He said, ‘Never again in your life will you ever cut a camera or you’ll be dead in this business. That’s my domain. Don’t stop behavior,'” Dern said. “So then we went on and did the scene and all Brad did was say to him, ‘Well, that wasn’t in the script what he said.'”

“Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” was a critical and commercial hit which ended up being nominated for 10 Academy Awards and winning two, including a supporting actor trophy for Pitt.

Variety has reached out to Pitt and Tarantino’s camps for comment.