Once Upon A Time in Hollywood: the novel by Tarantino.

I am a huge fan of Quentin Tarantino’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD. It just might be the best film of the past decade, and just about my favorite one, though QT is always an easy sell with me. So of course I was going to buy and read his novel based on the film. Tarantino has never actually written and published a book before, so for us fans it was a big deal. Was it worth the price? Did it live up to expectations? Is Tarantino as good of a storyteller on the printed page as he is on the movie screen? I think every fan may have a different answer, for this book is very much written for the fans. If you haven’t seen the movie, you are really going to be in over your head reading it. This book, like the film, is definitely not plot driven, we simply hang with a set of characters for a set period of time in the Hollywood of 1969, get to know them, and wait for the inevitable conclusion when a certain group of hippie killers collide with a has-been TV western star and his loyal stuntman friend. Only in the book, that ending of the film is just mentioned in passing about halfway, for this is not a straight screen to page novelization of the film, but mainly a companion piece to it where the author/director fills in some back stories, and elaborates on what was happening behind the scenes.

In the book, we again meet up with Rick Dalton, the former star of Bounty Law, now reduced to guest spots on other actor’s shows and contemplating traveling to Italy and Spain to make spaghetti westerns for Sergio Corbucci, which Rick sees as the ultimate degradation, and Cliff Booth, a hero of WWII and veteran stuntman with some unsavory incidents in his past. We also spend some time with Sharon Tate, the beautiful starlet on the verge of major stardom, and married to the very hot director, thanks to Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski. And lurking around is Charles Manson, the leader of a hippie “family” made up of cast off and runway kids, the epitome of the counter culture, who in reality, just badly wanted to be a rock star, if only the powers that be wouldn’t keep brushing him off. We learn a lot about Rick’s early days in TV westerns and how the industry worked in those days, and Cliff’s background is fleshed out, and the question of whether he murdered his wife is answered. We meet up with Sharon in a flashback that poignantly recounts her journey from Texas to Los Angeles to seek her fortune in the movie business, and later on her visit to the movie theater where the Matt Helm film where she was a featured player is playing. There are some interesting anecdotes on TV in the ‘60s told by Rick that is clearly Tarantino just riffing on the past, and the same with a section where Cliff muses on his favorite foreign films that is clearly the author speaking. There are long passages where the pilot script of the western TV series Lancer is gone into in great detail, which makes it sound much more dramatic and interesting than a show that came in on the tail end of the TV western fad in the late ‘60s and soon faded into obscurity. Lots of now obscure names are dropped, everybody from George Maharis to George Peppard to Ty Hardin to Kaz Garas, and if you haven’t heard of them, they were big deals for a very short time in Hollywood long ago. There was a section on the excessive drinking habits of some famous actors of the time that is interesting if true. Tarantino often touches on how fleeting fame is in a cruel business that uses talent and throws it away. This is made plain in a sad encounter Cliff has in Spain with the wreck that was once Aldo Ray. Fame, attention, adoration and the wealth and sex that came with it was the measure that everyone was judged against, and once you’d obtained it, you were never free of the fear of losing it. And if you felt it slipping away, you scrambled and grabbed at anything which would get it back. In 1969, guys who wore pompadours and were big deals when Kennedy was President, now had to put on hippie wigs and fake moustaches in order to try and fit in among the long hairs and denims of a new Hollywood.

Though many readers have complained that parts of this book are indulgent, while other parts are just a wallow in a past that they know nothing about, I’m not among them. I totally dug the vibe of this book, and happily went along for the ride, trusting in where Tarantino was taking me. I like that Tarantino really has genuine affection for this time and place, and the people who made it so unique—the rising stars, the has-beens, and the never-weres. He doesn’t judge them, except for the truly evil Manson, he just asks us to take them as they were, and the stories their lives told. Other writers on this period would be quick to condemn the casual sexism, racism, homophobia, and “toxic masculinity,” of 1969, but Tarantino, never one to parade his virtue, lets the time and place speak for itself, and the reader take from it what they will. There’s a part of me that hopes he is not completely done with Rick and Cliff yet. Maybe a sequel that gives us a hint at what happened in the years ahead. Does the fame that would come after dispatching a gang of hippie killers lead Rick to a comeback? Does Cliff find a new career as a director of ‘70s action films?

And I really liked it that the book was produced like a mass market paperback from the era, always thought it was a mistake for the publishing industry to get away from that model. Like 1969, one more thing that came and went, and is fondly remembered.

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