60 pages gone: David Fincher trimmed Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Cliff Booth’ script before filming

When David Fincher first sat down with Quentin Tarantino’s script for The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, he found a 230-page behemoth that read like two films stitched together. Before cameras rolled, Fincher carved out roughly 60 pages — not to chase plot points, but to focus the movie ’s rhythm and character drift through late-’70s Hollywood.

“The first draft I read was 230 pages. It was essentially two movies. ”

He added, “It wasn’t about the plot,” in an interview with Empire, describing a story that plays out like tales traded around a bonfire. Fincher talked about a Venn diagram of interests shared by himself, Tarantino and Brad Pitt, which helped narrow what to chase — and what to leave on the cutting-room floor — into a roughly two-hour-and-twenty-minute feature.

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The film is set in 1977 , eight years after Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. Cliff Booth is no longer just a stuntman; he’s working as a fixer in the back alleys of a changing industry. Pitt returns to the role that won him an Oscar, with Tarantino writing the screenplay but choosing not to direct this time.

Pitt — who has a long history with Fincher on Se7en, Fight Club and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — helped get the pairing in place. And Tarantino, for his part, recently called Fincher his favorite director on The Church of Tarantino podcast, saying he’s into the idea of great filmmakers adapting his work. He’s finished the script for what he’s billed as his tenth and final movie, but is staging a play, The Popinjay Cavalier starring Sacha Baron Cohen, first.

Release plan

• IMAX limited run: two weeks starting November 25
• Streaming: lands on Netflix December 23

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