Quentin Tarantino on naming son Leo: ‘He was our little lion’

Quentin Tarantino on naming son Leo: 'He was our little lion'
UPI

June 23 (UPI) — Quentin Tarantino discussed why he named is infant son Leo and the history of film novelizations while appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Tarantino shares 15-month-old son Leo with his wife Daniella. The film director said on Tuesday that his son was not named after actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

“We almost didn’t name him that because people would assume that I named him after Leonardo DiCaprio. Nothing wrong with that, but I didn’t,” Tarantino said.

“He’s named after my wife’s grandfather, but also because just in our hearts, he was our little lion. So he’s a lion, that’s how we thought about him,” he continued.

Tarantino’s novelization of his 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood will be released on Tuesday. The release marks Tarantino’s first novel. DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie starred in the 1969-based film, which follows a popular television cowboy and his stunt double as they try to remain relevant in the film industry.

The 58-year-old talked about his love of film novelizations and how they would sometimes differ from the movie due to being based on a shooting draft of the script that would go through changes during production.

Tarantino also highlighted how the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novel contains ads for other film novelizations including Serpico, which starred Al Pacino.

“The back of paperbacks always had about four pages that were just ads for other novels,” Tarantino said.

“My pre-text with this is that it’s a novelization printed in 1978. So we wanted to have it look and feel like that. Those [the ads] are actually books that are in the Harper catalogue that you could get in 1978,” he continued.

Tarantino ended his appearance by playing a movie guessing game with Kimmel. Tarantino was blindfolded and attempted to match old movies to their VHS box descriptions Kimmel read out loud. The filmmaker was able to get two answers right.

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