THE MAKING OF QUENTIN TARANTINO'S ONCE UPON A TIME... IN HOLLYWOOD

By Jay Glennie – Insight Editions, 2025

Review by John Larkin

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It’s no secret that we’re very pro Tarantino here at Films in Review. In turn, it’s no secret that Tarantino’s been very pro Films in Review himself. He’s spoken often about how much the original magazine meant to him, how he devoured it growing up, and how it shaped the way he thought about film criticism and movie history. On the Video Archives Podcast, he’s mentioned the publication multiple times with a kind of reverence that reminds you why we do what we do: to celebrate cinema as both an art form and an obsession.

So when a new Tarantino project appears, whether a film, book, or podcast, we pay attention. But even by those standards, THE MAKING OF QUENTIN TARANTINO'S ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD came as a surprise. I didn’t even know it was coming out until a few weeks ago. And what a book it is: a massive, beautifully bound hardcover published by Insight Editions, written by Jay Glennie, with a foreword from Tarantino himself. It’s nearly 500 pages of lavish design, photographs, production documents, and interviews—a film historian’s dream and a collector’s object in the truest sense.

A Love Letter to Process

This is no lightweight coffee-table souvenir. And to call it an exhaustive work would feel wrong, more like exhilarative. It’s both an archival deep dive into how ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD came together and a memoir-like documentation of Tarantino’s life in relation to the subject matter of the film. Glennie and Insight Editions have assembled an almost museum-grade record of the production: handwritten notes, costume sketches, shooting schedules, concept art, and brilliantly beautiful on-set photography that captures the singluar passionate vision of Tarantino’s world. The sheer materiality of it all, the texture of the paper, the full-bleed images, the reproduction of memos and call sheets, all of it pulls you into the filmmaking process. It’s as close as one may ever get to standing beside Tarantino at the monitors, watching the movie take shape.

Tarantino Curating His Own Legacy

There’s also a fascinating meta layer here. This is the first in a planned ten-volume series covering each of Tarantino’s films. In other words, Tarantino, with Jay Glennie are curating his own cinematic archive. ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD was his ninth film, and he’s long said he’ll stop at ten. That gives this book the feeling of a director taking stock of his career while still inside it.

The film itself was Tarantino’s elegy for the Hollywood he grew up on, a world of movie posters, backlot façades, and double features that shaped his DNA. This book extends that nostalgia into the tactile realm. We see how meticulously the art department recreated the neon glow of the Sunset Strip, how Barbara Ling’s production design revived long-gone storefronts and signage, and how Robert Richardson’s cinematography achieved that honey-gold hue that feels equal parts myth and memory.

Reading through it, I found myself remembering what I love about making-of storytelling in general. When done right, as it is here, it’s not just trivia. It’s the archaeology of imagination. Every memo, every frame, every anecdote is a brushstroke in the portrait of a filmmaker obsessed with the language of film itself.

I’ll admit, it stirred something personal in me. Documenting the process of creation, turning ideas into images, is deeply meaningful to me as a filmmaker. I spent five years and thousands of dollars of my own money crafting a documentary love letter to THE EXORCIST, a film that for me, lives in a separate, elevated realm of my cinematic fandom.

To see Tarantino’s process so richly chronicled, his own love letter to Los Angeles, 1969, sparked a dream of mine: to one day craft a true fly-on-the-wall documentary about the making of his final film. I would call it THE TENTH, an unprecedented filmic documentation of Tarantino’s creative process that also reflects on the other nine films in his canon. Quentin, if you’re reading this… I’m your guy.

As for the written documentation, Jay Glennie has instantly cemented himself as the foremost and most perfectly suited author for crafting memoir-style chronicles of Tarantino’s work. The idea that there will be nine more volumes like this is mind-blowingly exciting, even a little overwhelming, and I genuinely cannot wait.

THE MAKING OF QUENTIN TARANTINO'S ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is everything a behind-the-scenes chronicle should be: exhaustive, reverent, and visually stunning. It captures both the nuts and bolts of production and the mythic aura that surrounds Tarantino’s world. Whether you’re a die-hard Tarantino devotee, a film-school scholar, or someone who just loves the tactile romance of cinema history, this book deserves a place on your shelf. It's a beautiful reminder that filmmaking, at its best, is both craft and communion, a conversation between generations of movie lovers, critics, and creators. And in that sense, it feels perfectly at home here at Films in Review.