The deleted material extends Charles Manson’s visit to Cielo Drive. His interlocutor is Paul Barabuta, played by Danny Strong, and the scene changes the amount of time we spend watching Damon Herriman’s character.
Paul Barabuta, not Paul Revere
The deleted Once Upon a Time in Hollywood conversation brings together Damon Herriman’s Charles Manson with Paul Barabuta, played by Danny Strong. This is not an encounter with Paul Revere, the musician from Paul Revere & The Raiders. The shared name and the band’s presence in the film may encourage confusion, but the interlocutor belongs to a different role within the scene: he is the owner Manson addresses during his search for Terry Melcher.
The material expands a visit that does appear briefly in the released cut. Manson arrives at Cielo Drive and asks about people who no longer live there. The extended version follows him on to the guest house and allows us to hear a longer conversation. The journey ends by visually connecting him with Cliff Booth, who is working on the roof of Rick’s house. That spatial continuity belongs to the fiction constructed by Tarantino.
The filmed dialogue should not be presented as a historical transcript of an authenticated conversation. The scene uses names and places linked to real events, but organises them within a narrative that includes Rick and Cliff, two fictional characters. Distinguishing that condition makes it possible to analyse the performance without using it as documentary evidence for the exact words spoken by Manson during a real visit.
What Herriman’s performance gains
Damon Herriman explained in a 2026 interview that the guest house scene had been the one used for his audition and that it later appeared among the bonus materials. He also distinguished its tone from the imprisoned Manson he played in Mindhunter. That comment from the actor helps explain that Tarantino’s version has moments of comic discomfort as well as the threat audiences associate with the character’s name.
The conversation allows us to observe an ordinary frustration: Manson is looking for contact and does not get the answer he wants. The refusal interrupts the image of authority he can exert over his followers. Outside that circle, he has to ask, wait and accept limits imposed by others. The scene uses that reduction in scale to show an annoying presence rather than an all-powerful figure capable of dominating any space he enters.
Manson’s brief presence in the film cut creates a different effect. By giving him less time, the film allows much of the threatening weight to come from the audience’s prior knowledge. The deleted material adds behaviour, voice and a concrete interaction. The two options distribute attention differently: one keeps the appearance as an intrusion; the other lets us examine how the character tries to handle a social situation.
An extra that changes the balance of the visit
The visual encounter with Cliff links the historical visitor with one of the fictional leads. It is not proof that the two share a previous relationship, nor does it on its own prove that Cliff understands the importance of the man in front of him. The look creates a closeness that the viewer can invest with meaning because of what they know. That difference between audience knowledge and character knowledge is one of the sequence’s tools.
Watching the material separately makes it possible to appreciate the performance without assuming that its absence from the cut implies poor quality. A scene can work in its own right and still change the weight of a character too much within the whole. Here, extending the visit gives Manson an attention the release handled differently. The effect can be analysed, although a precise reason for its removal should not be attributed to the director without a statement confirming it.
The scene is also not equivalent to the additions in the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novel. The extra preserves an audiovisual performance; the book works through written narration. Comparing them requires respecting their versions and avoiding the idea that they all belong to a single secret film already assembled. What can be verified is more concrete: there is a filmed extension of the visit, its interlocutor is Barabuta, and the encounter lets us see a side of Herriman that the initial cut left out.
More context in the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood guide.