They call it the table read. In Hollywood, before shooting a movie, the cast sits at a big table and runs down the script line-by-line.

But this gathering, in the early summer of 2018, was no ordinary read-through. Not when the names around the table included Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Pacino, Margot Robbie, Kurt Russell and director Quentin Tarantino, who was especially excited because of another actor present, a man he'd felt a connection with since birth:

Burt Reynolds.

When Tarantino's new movie, the highly anticipated "Once Upon A Time in...Hollywood," comes out July 26, it may prove bittersweet for Reynolds' local fans and friends.

Reynolds' role wasn't meant to be huge in the film -- a sprawling panorama of late '60s Los Angeles covering everything from the film business to the Manson murders. But it was probably going to be his most attention-getting mainstream part since "Boogie Nights."

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Over the years, nobody practiced the art of the comeback like Burt Reynolds.

But this time, it wasn't meant to be.

On Sept. 6, just as he finished running lines for the movie at his Hobe Sound mansion, just a week before he was to leave for Los Angeles and start filming his scenes, the 82-year-old actor suffered a fatal heart attack.

'Everybody at the table was a big star'

In recent years, if Reynolds made a public appearance, his good friend and frequent on-stage interviewer Todd Vittum was probably nearby. He accompanied Reynolds to the table read for Tarantino's movie and was a first-hand witness to the outpouring of respect for the actor.

"It was much like any table read -- very business-like," Vittum said. "Except that everybody at the table was a big star."

Reynolds and Tarantino had "an amazing connection," Vittum said, and the director was effusive that day in his praise for Reynolds' career.

"He said, 'There's a guy down at the end of the table who I was named after because my mom loved 'Gunsmoke.' My mom was going to name me either Quentin or Burt." (Reynolds' blacksmith character on the iconic TV Western was called Quint.)

Vittum recalled that all the actors warmly greeted Reynolds after the read.

"Al Pacino came up and asked (Reynolds), 'Why haven't we done this before?'"

Nobody seemed to be more excited to work with Reynolds than Pitt, who plays the stunt double pal to DiCaprio's Western TV actor as their lives interconnect with Charles Manson and his young, murderous followers during that apocalyptic summer 50 years ago.

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"I’ll tell you one of the greatest moments I’ve had in these however many years we’ve been at it in this town: getting to spend two days with Burt Reynolds on this film," Pitt told Esquire magazine earlier this year.

Reynolds' role was as the blind, aging George Spahn, a real-life character whose Western movie ranch became the Manson cult's headquarters before their killing sprees.

Tarantino said "the last performance Burt Reynolds gave" was at the table read and an extra rehearsal day with Pitt.

"I found out from three different people that the last thing he did just before he died was run lines with his assistant," Tarantino told Esquire. "Then he went to the bathroom, and that’s when he had his heart attack."

That assistant was Vittum, who didn't talk much about it, other than to tell The Palm Beach Post that it "was poignant, for sure" that Reynolds' final day was spent pursuing the craft he loved. "He was still an actor at the top of his game. He was always preparing for a role."

Those two days in Los Angeles, however brief, confirmed for Pitt why he grew up loving Reynolds in his "Smokey and the Bandit" heyday.

"He was the guy," Pitt told Esquire. "Virile. Always had something sharp to say—funny as s***. A great dresser. Oh, man. And I had never met him...and getting to spend those days with him in rehearsal, I was really touched by him."

Adam Rifkin, his director for the well-regarded indie film "The Last Movie Star," told The Hollywood Reporter that Reynolds "was over the moon about Tarantino casting him. He thought he might have one last act in front of him."

Vittum agreed. "He was so looking forward to shooting it. It was such a complete shock (when he died). He'd passed the physical for it."

Perhaps alone among the cast, Reynolds had some unique insight into late '60s L.A., when he was working in Western films such as "100 Rifles" and "Sam Whiskey." He'd even shot some episodes of "Gunsmoke" on the Spahn ranch.

"He was very familiar with the guy who was in (TV) Westerns and trying to break into film," Vittum said, adding that the Pitt and DiCaprio roles were "a knowing nod" to Reynolds' close relationship with legendary stuntman and "Smokey" director Hal Needham.

After returning from the table read in Los Angeles, Reynolds was so pumped up that he made an unexpected stop at his Burt Reynolds Institute for Film and Theatre in North Palm Beach to tell the students about it.

"Hard to believe, but Burt was just as thrilled to meet Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt as (they) were to meet him," said institute managing director Donna Carbone.

"One of his students commented that none of those people were as talented or as big a celebrity. I remember how his entire posture changed and the utter humility in his voice when he said, 'Oh, no, I never accomplished what they have accomplished.' He even commented that one of the actors -- not sure if it was Pitt or DiCaprio -- was wearing the same shoes he was wearing. Burt might have been a big star to the world, but to himself he was just an actor who had gotten lucky."

Reynolds' scenes were supposed to be the last ones shot, and Vittum wonders what might have been if he'd been called in just a month or two earlier. The role is now played by Reynolds' good friend Bruce Dern, which Vittum sees as "karmic."

Nearly a year later, Vittum continues to process Reynolds' loss: "There's a surreality I still have driving down U.S. 1. He loved Palm Beach County and his stamp is everywhere."

And he thinks about how Reynolds had anticipated working with Tarantino, whose writing and characters he'd praised since seeing "Pulp Fiction."

"It would have been a great pairing," Vittum said.