The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth | Official Trailer #2

Directed by David Fincher and written by Quentin Tarantino, Cliff Booth situates us eight years after the events of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. Brad Pitt’s stuntman now works the less glamorous corners of the entertainment industry as a “Hollywood fixer”—and where you find Tarantino’s involvement, violence is sure to follow. This second trailer gives Cliff a musical introduction that hits the mark: Kool & the Gang’s “Hollywood Swinging.” It provides the upbeat audiovisual counterpoint to onscreen violence that’s a Tarantino signature, it’s contemporaneous with the setting, and, as a nice bonus, it’s about Hollywood—you can almost hear the music supervisor say, “What’s not to like?”

The song first appeared on Wild and Peaceful in 1973, a scant four years before the film’s 1977 setting. We first hear it over a shot of Brad Pitt/Cliff in bed at 0:07, and it follows him as he gets up for the day. It carries us into the next sequence: at 0:18, Cliff is at a projector; at 0:20, we look across an auditorium toward its screen. Popcorn and a beer tap follow. Cliff keeps the theatre humming along with the song’s steady groove.

Around 0:38, talent agent Karen Crosby (Elizabeth Debicki) introduces herself and her client, TV star Charlie Peters (Scott Caan), for a potential job. Photographic portraits briefly fill the centre of the frame; television footage and a magazine cover follow. Set inside the trailer’s wider frame, these images resemble samples from an actor’s press kit. “Hollywood Swinging” continues—the life is inviting, if not glamorous. The words “Hollywood Swinging” keep returning throughout the trailer, as a kind of refrain.

However, the trade in images turns nastier around 1:23: a gunman appears on television as Charlie talks about the people he has killed on screen. Then Charlie brings up Cliff’s experience of real killing. Set against the same song, Cliff’s capacity for violence becomes just another part of Hollywood’s everyday business. When Cliff asks why an actor who does his own stunts needs him, the answer at 1:38 is blunt: “This ain’t about stunt work.” At 1:40, we see Cliff’s violence unfold alongside a disorienting musical break of brass and gang vocals before the full groove resumes.

At 2:04, Cliff describes a possible television series to Charlie’s wife, Toni (Carla Gugino), who stands above him on a staircase. Its premise involves an actor, his stunt double, and some gangsters—suspiciously close to the predicament we have just watched develop. Cliff’s pitch then cuts to driving and violence. “Hollywood Swinging” also accompanies this later action, cut up with isolated and repeated vocals. Despite these rearrangements, the track stays close to the original recording, drawing its effect from repetition.

After the title card, we return to the staircase for Toni’s verdict, the turn phrase, around 2:32: “That’s an interesting idea.” Fincher has described the film as an “LA story”—the trailer finds that city through its mix of serious business and entertainment, thoroughly blurring the lines between them. “Hollywood Swinging” makes it all seem like a good time, despite the violence Cliff engages in to earn a living. It’s the kind of unflinching, wry look at life’s dirtier corners that Tarantino has built a career on. The music carries that idea through: the daily routine and the violence move to the same groove. It’s a choice that works, and the insistence on a single idea only adds to its allure.

The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth opens for an exclusive two-week run in IMAX on November 25, 2026, and arrives on Netflix December 23.

— Curtis Perry