Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: A Novel and a New Appreciation of Quentin Tarantino's Story
Over the past few years, discourse over Quentin Tarantino’s career has been dominated by the idea of his swan song. Will his career capping picture be a Star Trek adventure? Will it be the auteur’s first foray into the horror genre? Yet amongst all this, no one could’ve predicted that a novel, based on his 2019 Oscar nominated picture Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, would be the next artifact to arrive in the auteur’s prolific career. And yet, Tarantino’s literary debut is stronger than even I could’ve expected, not only because it encapsulates the wonderful world of the film, but also due to its subdued exploration of how the writing of long-form fiction and screenplays vary, whether it be the outlining of its characters or the staging of its three-act structure.
The novel begins in the same vein of the film. We are introduced to washed-up actor Rick Dalton (played in the film by Leonardo DiCaprio) and his reliable stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt’s character). The duo are conversing with casting agent Marvin Schwartz (Al Pacino), who is trying to convince Dalton, who rose to fame by leading the television western Bounty Law, that he should begin work on Italian-produced westerns (think Sergio Corbucci and Sergio Leone). This is a troubling notion for Dalton, who finds spaghetti-westerns to be less-than movies that no one actually likes. Dalton is also riddled with crippling anxiety, for which he uses the solutions of drinking himself into a stupor every night and chain-smoking throughout the day to assist his decaying mental health.
This is all taking place in the 1960s, and just like the movie, we also see other characters and events weave in and out of the tale, such as Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski’s careers and relationship, Charles Mason and the Family, as well as, of course, Dalton’s trusty sidekick Cliff Booth, one of my favorite movie characters of all Tarantino lore. To my delight, this novel takes Booth’s moments and broadens them in a manner only the written word can do: putting us in the mind of a character. Booth, in the novel, is a lover of foreign cinema. He loves Kurosawa, and specifically mentions being blown away by Throne of Blood (although he cannot let it usurp the likes of Seven Samurai or Ikiru).
In fact, this goes into film history considerably deeply for a mainstream novel, so much so that it’s possible that the average reader might not find it accessible reading. That said, it’s difficult to imagine someone picking up a book titled Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino and expecting any less. As someone who loves modern movies like Tarantino’s as well as studying film history, yet also loves reading actual books more than almost anything, it’s so refreshing to get a novel like this; something that references movies and Hollywood and directors and producers, actors and westerns and filming sets. It’s all enough to make any cinephile fall in love, if you weren’t already in love with Booth and Dalton.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the script, was already such a good story in general, but there are certain elements that Tarantino incorporates into this spinning of it that vastly differentiates from its cinematic counterpart, which had me in so much euphoric joy. The biggest surprise comes nearly a hundred pages in, where Tarantino takes the film’s violent and bloody crescendo and describes it in about the length of a single page. For some reason, it didn’t click for me that that was all the Manson Family scene would be until the final twenty or so pages. Then, the realization kicks in: that isn’t the story Tarantino is trying to tell. Even in the film, there’s more than two hours before the Manson invasion even occurs (and I would even argue those two hours are when it’s at its absolute best), and that is, overall, the heart of the story. Here, he abandons the finale as a throwaway just-another-adventure in the life and story of Cliff Boothe (and believe me, we get even more of those stories that are sure to satisfy any fan of the movie). It’s an amazing turn, something that makes this book stand out among the majority of movie novelizations that prefer to follow the screenplays they’re based on beat for beat.
From there, it only gets better. We’re given much more of Sharon Tate, the behind-the-scenes of Roman Polanski’s career, the character and career of Charles Manson (to a somewhat troubling degree), the tragic history of Booth’s fan-favorite canine, Brandy, and even a touching amplification of the relationship between Dalton and eight-year old actor (“not actress,” as she stresses), Trudi Fraser. It all culminates to an ending that I found to be a true proper ending to this story, which of course, never really ends. This is a story destined to go on, through the seventies, and the eighties, and so on, and Tarantino’s willingness to give us such a beautiful non-ending is one of the best choices he could’ve made for this tale. I couldn’t put it down, and I can’t wait to read it again.
