Quentin Tarantino is expanding on the Rick Dalton lore in the memory of the late (and made up) movie star.
The ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ author announced on May 19 that Dalton, played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2019 film, has died at the age of 90. ”, during which Dalton saves Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) from the would-be serial killers of the Manson family.
During the recent entry of Tarantino and “Pulp Fiction” co-writer Roger Avary into the “Video archive podcasts,” Tarantino recalled the late fictional action star.
“Dalton was loved by fans of ‘Bounty Law,’ where he played bounty hunter Jake Cahill for five seasons and also for his iconic role as Eddie Karpinski, the flamethrower-wielding vigilante in ‘The Fireman,’ ‘The Fireman Part 2’, and ‘The Fireman 3: CIA Crackdown’,” Tarantino said. “But he was so much more, with a career spanning over 20 years. In this episode of the Video Archives Podcast, we invite you to remember Rick Dalton.
For Tarantino, Booth directed “The Fireman Part 2” after “The Warriors” director Walter Hill turned down the project. Actor Dalton was also turned down for the role of Garry in John Carpenter’s “The Thing” before Donald Moffat got the part.
“Something also happened to him in the late 60s where three hippies were breaking into his house, and they were tripping, and they had guns with them, and his stunt double basically blew the brains out of two of them. , and Rick set the other one on fire with the flamethrower from ‘The 14 Fists of McCluskey,'” Tarantino said. “So he got invited, like, to the Republican Convention, okay, because it became this thing for, like, Nixon’s silent majority. And he’s a lifelong Democrat, but he went and they screwed him. Rick was very happy to be dug. But then they put him on Johnny Carson and he was a big hit on Johnny’s show Carson, and then all of a sudden, because of the notoriety, he started doing better TV shows He went from ‘Land of the Giants’ and ‘Green Hornet’ to ‘Mission: Impossible’.
Tarantino added that he conducted an interview with Dalton in 1999 for a Q&A event after his 1997 film “Jackie Brown.”
The ‘Inglourious Basterds’ director previously detailed Dalton’s backstory in the ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ novel.
Tarantino said during the “Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith” podcast in 2021 who wrote “The Films of Rick Dalton” as a book.
“It’s written as if Rick were real. You know, they have ‘The Films of Charles Bronson’ and ‘The Films of Anthony Quinn’, well, that’s it, with synopses and then some critical quotes from the era,” Tarantino said, “and the book goes through each one of Rick’s movies that he’s done, leading up to the end of his career in 1988, I think, and all of his episodic television shows.
The official Twitter page of the Video Archives podcast tweeted last week: “We are saddened to hear of the passing of actor Rick Dalton, best known for his roles in the hit TV series ‘Bounty Law’ and ‘The Fireman’ trilogy. Rick passed away peacefully at his home in Hawaii and was survived by his wife Francesca. Rip Rick Dalton 1933-2023.
