Quentin Tarantino's ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD was full of wonderful moments, but one of the most touching was when Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) struggles to remember his dialogue for a guest appearance on Lancer and retreats to his trailer where he breaks down. During an interview with Deadline, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD director Quentin Tarantino revealed that the idea for this scene actually originated from Leonardo DiCaprio.
"Leo said, ‘I think I need to f*ck it up and forget the lines,'" Tarantino said. "I just wanted to do my Lancer scene, a way to do this Western through the back door. He said, 'I know I’m kind of f*cking up your scene, but I think that would be good for the character.' I saw it as him ruining my fun, basically, but I say, 'Fine. I’ll write a version, and we’ll do the Lancer scene straight, and with the f*ck-up,' knowing that in the editing room I was going to do what I wanted to. As soon as we did that second version, the take that is in the movie, I was like, ‘OK, OK, we’re obviously doing this now.’ He was right. It was terrific and it gave the whole thing an arc that worked wonderfully." Tarantino and DiCaprio also collaborated on the improvised scene where Rick Dalton trashes his trailer while breaking down, which set the stage for Dalton's comeback.
I said when you come back, maybe you’d been a bad actor, but now you’re going to be a slightly better bad actor who rises to the occasion. What it meant to the movie was, it became clear that his biggest enemy is himself. He’s not facing a bunch of bad guys in a Western anymore; his bad guys are his own demons. When he does that Wild Bunch walk to the Gilded Lily on the Lancer set, he’s facing his Mexican army, which is himself.
Leonardo DiCaprio added that this moment was a real turning point for Rick. "Here he is, face to face with the new hot sh*t swinging dick in Hollywood television who’s got his own show that Rick used to have. And Rick can’t get his lines out. He can’t do it," DiCaprio said. "What’s so amazing about Quentin is, you bring up one idea like that, and then this whole other Pandora’s Box of possibilities opens up. He makes it a Western, within a Western. He says, we have to have Rick re-preparing himself, and then walking down that Western set to do a shootout with his adversary, but the shootout is within the context of a scene…"