Book Review: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: A Novel by Quentin Tarantino

I am normally not a fan of novelizations of films, but this one, after all, is written by Tarantino himself, so I figured it was worth a read. It turns out that the book is not really a novelization; that is, it does not strictly follow the plot of the movie. In fact, the mind-blowing violent climax of the movie is presented as a flash-forward of a couple of pages near the beginning of the book and is not mentioned again at the end. Instead, Tarantino uses the novel as an excuse to fill in back-stories for the book’s main characters, in particular Rick Dalton, played in the film by Leonardo DiCaprio; Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt; Sharon Tate, played by Margot Robbie; and Charles Manson, played by Damon Herriman. This provides Tarantino with an opportunity to expound on the Hollywood of the late 1960s and on films and filmmakers in general, and he takes full advantage of it. For example, in the novel he presents Cliff Booth as an aficionado of foreign films, and he uses this as an excuse to spend an entire chapter extolling on the talents of his favorite foreign actors and directors. He also delves much deeper than the film does into Manson’s dark past, his acquaintance with Dennis Wilson of the Beach boys and other major players in the Hollywood music scene, his unrequited desire to be a singer/songwriter, the gathering of his harem of vagabond hippie women, and the use of these women as sexual pawns to influence and control the aforementioned important people.

So don’t expect a carefully cadenced plot leading up to a resounding climax. What Tarantino presents, rather, is a disjointed info-dump of details that did not make it into the film. Let me emphasize, though, that they are fascinating details. As I mentioned above, I am not really interested in film novelizations. This, in fact, is something much better: a supplement that brings out nuances of the story and characters that Tarantino was unable to include in the finished film. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is already one of my favorite Tarantino films, and the added material presented in this book only increases my appreciation of it. I’ve already watched it several times, and I can’t wait to watch it again with the extra insights culled from this book in mind.

Tarantino is a very good writer, and the voice with which he presents the material here reminds me of his tone in his other recent book, Cinematic Speculations. He is casual and conversational but at the same time erudite and precise, and he draws on a lifetime of film study and appreciation that few others can match. What can I say more? If you are a fan of Tarantino’s films, you are sure to enjoy this book. I would appreciate it, in fact, if he would write similar treatments for some of his other films. Pulp Fiction, for instance, and Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. That would make for some good reading.

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I couldn’t help but re-watch the film after reading the book. As I did, the differences between the book and the film became even clearer. Tarantino’s main medium is film, of course, and in the length of a film (even a somewhat longer film of almost three hours like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) every moment of screen time is vital for the dissemination of information or advancement of the plot. This movie is set mainly in 1969, and to fully appreciate it you have to be aware of all the cultural inferences that Tarantino throws in – seemingly casually, but in fact all contributing to the buildup to the climax. The film, unlike the book, is a piece of alternate history, but we don’t really understand this until the end. (By the way, if you haven’t yet seen the film, some of that which follows may constitute spoilers.) The murder of Sharon Tate and her friends at the mansion she shared with her husband Roman Polanski (who was away at the time of the killings) was a horrendous deed that among others (such as the murder of a member of the audience by Hell’s Angels during the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont) signaled the end of the seemingly innocent and peaceful hippie era of the 1960s. The aura of love and joy that the hippies disseminated was shattered by the gruesome killings. One reason that I loved Once Upon a Time in Hollywood so much when I first saw it was that it offered a fairy tale-like alternative to what happened in the real world. In Tarantino’s alternate universe, Sharon Tate and the others are not murdered; instead, Manson’s followers are killed as they attempt to attack a mansion next door. I liked this. After all, they were obviously the crazed transgressors. The alternate history ending was similar, in a sense, to what happens at the end of Tarantino’s film Inglourious Basterds, in which Hitler and his main minions are all burned alive in a movie theater owned by a Jewish woman whose entire family was slaughtered by the Nazis. The stories in these two films, from the beginning to the end, lead up to a fantasy ending in which history itself is changed.

Now: back to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I grew up in the sixties; by 1969 I was sixteen years old. I was old enough to be appalled by the Manson killings when I read about them in the newspapers, and, like the characters in the film, I used to listen to those old pop songs on the radio. Tarantino nails the ambiance of the era; he’s spot on. However, if you are not familiar with this background, the book offers details that will increase your enjoyment of the film, and it also provides enhanced descriptions and explanations for the characters, films, TV shows, and so on that Tarantino refers to in the film. In a sense this blatantly brings out what a good filmmaker has to subtly do to provide verisimilitude in a movie. To get you to properly suspend your disbelief as you watch a film, a scriptwriter has to be aware of the details that Tarantino provides in the novel – even if they are only implied in the finished film. One casualty due to the long explanations in the novel, though, is the fairy tale ending, the “once upon a time” in the title.