8 things you should know about Quentin Tarantino’s book, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”

When Quentin Tarantino is writing his films, he is obsessed with the kind of details that may never make it to the screen, concretizing detailed backstories for tertiary characters and sometimes creating drafts whole scripts for fictional television programs that exist in the world of film. His latest film, 2019 Once upon a time in Hollywood, shows some of that footwork, digressing repeatedly in voice-over recapitulations about the acting career of protagonist Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and tracing the arc of Rick’s fictional filmography with IMDb-like specificity. Hollywood is a heartfelt hangout film set in a fairytale iteration of the Los Angeles Tarantino that Tarantino grew up in, and the director takes time to explore every nook and cranny, from his bromance to his cars to his cinemas . Still, the film hints at an entire iceberg of character backstories and a revamped Hollywood story beneath its surface, so it was only a matter of time before Tarantino found an excuse to talk to Rick and his deputy and best friend Cliff ( Brad Pitt) just a little longer.

Tarantino’s first novel that looked like a mass market paperback from the 1970s – the book version of Once upon a time in Hollywood – tells the same basic story as the movie as it expands in all directions. It makes room for new backstories, plunges him into historical rabbit holes, both real and fictional, and contrasts Rick and Cliff’s adventures with the darker corners of actual Hollywood history. Since Tarantino is Tarantino, he also takes the opportunity to revisit some of the more provocative moments in the film and further point out an alleged fetish of his. Below are eight takeaways from the book available June 29th.

[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for both the book and film version of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.]

1. The book is a remix of the film

In front OUATIH

In 2019, the question of how Tarantino would deal with the historical aspects of his historical play came over the release of the film. Given his predilection for exploit cinema, was there a chance to tell the story of the Charles Manson murders with respect or sensitivity? And how would he portray Sharon Tate? The film plays with this fear, counting to the night of the murders before pulling the carpet from under the audience’s feet and falling into happy madness while Rick and Cliff kill the invading hippies. Since moviegoers have already spoiled that twist, the book gets rid of it early on, stating that Rick’s hippie-burning battle with Manson’s supporters made him a hero among Nixon’s “silent majority” – a role he played on the late night talk show -Circuit.

Elsewhere, Tarantino has an intimate understanding of how and where various sequences are translated onto the page. Cliff’s visit to the Spahn Ranch, for example, remains pretty much unchanged during scenes from the Western TV show Lancer are haphazardly scattered throughout the book and are written in the style of pulp western novels Rick reads on the set.

2. It’s pulp fiction (sorry)

Tarantino adapted Elmore Leonards Rum punch in his third film, Jackie Brown, and Leonard’s influence is great over the rest of his work. Based on Leonard’s prose, the story in the third person of the novel gets straight to the point and often mimics the vulgar, pseudo-retro speech of the characters. (This occasionally leads to hilariously exaggerated clunkers. For example, “Cliff didn’t dig” Jules and Jimbecause he didn’t dig up the chick. And it’s the kind of movie if you don’t dig the chick, you won’t dig the strip. “)

3. Cliff Booth, mass murderer?

Tarantino almost made it. He almost gave the world the hottest, most personable character of Brad Pitt – a worker-everyone who loves his dog, takes off his shirt unnecessarily to do manual labor, and wants nothing more than to make his insecure friend happy. Cliff is all of those things, but he’s also an alleged wife killer, an ambiguity the book likes to dispense with and make it clear that Cliff actually shot his wife with a harpoon.

Overall, it is much less important to the book than to the film whether the audience likes Cliff. Tarantino’s book makes him an invincible killer who mowed down dozen of enemy soldiers, earned two medals of bravery, and inspired a film (an actual Paul Wendkos film called Battle in the Coral Sea). Cliff looks at women too, and his car ride with the underage Manson family member, Pussycat, is portrayed as a real temptation than in the movie, with Cliff paying extra attention – what else? – the size of their feet.

4. Brandy, world champion in aerial combat

As if freed from the medium to make Cliff’s backstory as screwed up as possible, Tarantino explains that when the stuntman first acquired Brandy the pit bull, he engaged them in dogfights – which, to be fair, would explain how she got so good at fighting. Cliff later proves he’s still the same softie from the movie. After Brandy is injured, he refuses to get into another fight with her, and so does he Murders

a staff member who suggests deliberately getting her into a losing battle and betting on the other dog.

5. A history lesson

As with film, one of the book’s better tricks is to use Tarantino’s knowledge of film history to create a plausible, insanely detailed career arc for Rick Dalton. While the fictional story is impressive, the book also contains a plethora of anecdotes from current Hollywood history that are stranger than fictional, like the story of Walter Wanger, a producer who suspected his then-wife, actress Joan Bennett, to sleep with her agent. Wanger shot the agent in the groin, pleading for temporary insanity, serving a four-month prison sentence, and then returning to making high-profile films such as 1963 Cleopatra. While some of the story is redundant in telling the book, much of it (including long digressions about Charles Manson) proves that actual Hollywood history is far more garish than the fictional stories bobbing around in Tarantino’s head.

6. Hot movie footage

At the beginning of the book, Tarantino Cliffs devotes an entire chapter to cinema habits, consisting of weekly viewings of the latest art house offerings from around the world. As a war veteran who has experienced the extremes of humanity, Cliff has little patience with unimaginative American films, and he has a particular fondness for Akira Kurosawa’s films. (The book even lists his five best Kurosawa films.) Sometimes the chapter invites the question of whether Tarantino uses Cliff as h is mouthpiece to fire off hot takes: Only the early Fellini is good, Truffaut is boring, Antonioni was one “Fraud.” It is the most lenient chapter of the novel and perhaps offers an early glimpse into Tarantinos next book

: Cinema speculation, a non-fiction book “dive deeply” into the films of the 70s.

7. It’s still personal

Sometimes the book reads as if Tarantino were just taking off their children’s gloves and leaning on his base impulses as a storyteller, because who should stop him? This is cynical at times – for example, the book’s brutal portrayal of Cliff murdering his wife feels designed to test the reader’s affection for the character. Fortunately, Tarantino also knows when to return to the warmth and nostalgia at the heart of the film. He ends the book with a nightly phone call between Rick and his 8-year-old Lancer Co-star Trudi Fraser, who is also a tearful ode to the magic of Hollywood. (This scene was cut from the movie, but a current trailer for the book provides an insight.)

As if to reiterate how personal the movie was to him, Tarantino inscribes himself in the book as well, revealing that Trudi will become an Oscar-nominated actress who will give her third nod to a Tarantino-directed remake of John Sayles’ screenplay for 1979s The lady in red. Perhaps more notably, the filmmaker includes his own stepfather Curt Zastoupil as a late-appearing character. As a bar musician to whom Tarantino partly ascribes his early love for films, Zastoupil charms Rick in the book with a few performances of his son’s favorite songs. In return, Rick signs a cocktail napkin and addresses it to “Quentin”. It’s a refreshingly personal passage and the kind of sentimental touch that ultimately prevents the book from straying too far from the warmth that anchors the film.

8. Can Tarantino write a novel?

In one of his many acts of self-mythologizing, Tarantino suggested he will retire from filmmaking after making 10 films. (Tells OUATIH as his ninth.) If that proves to be true, then the novella gives a glimpse into his future as a creative work on a smaller scale and offers contributions every few years that expand his existing work without claiming the status of a Tarantino film. Like most of his work, the book is best appreciated as an amalgamation of highbrow and lowbrow cultures. His crude prose sometimes follows despicable characters through a landscape ranging from Kurosawa to Tom Jones’ “What’s New Pussycat?” touched everything.

The book doesn’t stand all on its own, but that’s part of the point: Tarantino wants readers to imagine that it is imagining itself like any other novelty movie they might have bought on a whim from a 7-Eleven in 1978 His merit surpasses these ambitions, especially in moments when the infectious sentimentality of the film is regained. Mileage may vary on some of the more shocking revelations about beloved characters from the film, but the low stakes nature of the book offers its own answer: who cares? It’s just a novella.