Much of the action in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time In Hollywood unfolds at the Spahn Movie Ranch. George Spahn was the real-life ranch owner who rented his land to studios for Western locations and, for a time, to Charles Manson and the Family. But while the real location wasn't available for Tarantino's film, the director, speaking exclusively to Empire, reveals that recreating it was one of his favourite parts of the production – and that the set isn't so far removed from the genuine ranch as you might expect.
“Along with the sets in Kill Bill, and Minnie's Haberdashery (from The Hateful Eight), the Spahn Ranch is one of my favourites," says QT. "Barbara Ling, our production designer, just did a great job with it."
“We had to build it from scratch," he continues. "There's a church group who owns the land that Spahn Ranch was on now, and they don't let anyone do anything. But about as close to the ranch as you can possibly get is a park, and so we rented the park from the city and were able to just build it. If you're driving on the road to get there it's about 20 minutes away from the ranch, but if you had a machete and you could hack through the brush you could get there in five minutes. So as far as just actual metres and feet, we were only five minutes away from the actual Spahn Ranch.”
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is out now. Head this way for theEmpirereview.