It’s 1969, Hollywood, and Rick Dalton, an aging, washed-up, alcoholic actor, is looking for work - and finds it, playing the villain (he used to play heroes when he was younger), on a new cowboy TV show. Joining Rick on his slide down from the top is his best friend and stuntman stand-in (when Rick needed it), Cliff Booth. Together they navigate a strange path through a changing film industry and encounter up-and-coming actors, uppity agents, and hippies - hippies are everywhere. And some of them, like spurned wannabe rock star Charlie Manson, are gonna take out their frustrations on the unwitting residents of the Hollywood Hills…
Quentin Tarantino’s debut novel, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is, like his films, a banger! It’s such a fun read. The dialogue is sparkling and the characters are so memorable - aside from child actor Trudi’s surname (it’s Frazer), I didn’t need to look up any of the characters’ full names; they’re so well realised and seared into my mind that I could easily recall all of them. And that’s rare in most books, even for the good ones. Tarantino is a consummate storyteller and he excels at this regardless of the medium.
Rick in particular is such an amazing character. He’s dopey but lovable, and surprisingly smart at times, like when he shines on camera. He’s vulnerable - an alcoholic as a result of being undiagnosed bipolar - but also very arrogant and proud. Still, I was rooting for him every step of the way.
The movie has this over the book: Leo’s performance is far better than the novel Rick’s was. Rick going to town in a fit of self-loathing in the safety of his trailer, and the scene on the set of the western where he pulls off that stellar performance as Caleb the villain, are so good because of DiCaprio’s acting talent - we only get a whiff of that brilliance in the novel.
Cliff in the novel is a much darker person, especially as Tarantino sheds more light on the character’s murders, post-military. And yet we still like the guy and never see him as anything less than a good dude. It’s amazing how Tarantino creates such fully-developed characters. The child actor Trudi and the agent Marvin are also standouts for me.
The likeability of such flawed characters is due in large part to the playful tone of the story (“Once upon a time…”). A lot of dark things happen in this book but there’s plenty of upbeat, amusing episodes woven in amidst them too, so I found myself laughing a bunch throughout.
There are also knowing nods to Tarantino’s movies, like the appearance of Red Apple Cigarettes, and Cliff being dubbed “Mr Blond” by one of the Manson girls. And a specific namecheck by the author regarding future movies young Trudi grows up to feature in, which is a fun easter egg.
Tarantino does tend to be overly descriptive though. He can’t ever just tell you characters go to a bar - he has to describe every single detail of the bar. Like in the Drinker’s Hall of Fame chapter, where he tells you every photo on the wall and whether they’re signed or not. Numerous passages, and a fair number of chapters, are like this - giving you too much information that doesn’t really make a difference, one way or the other to the story, which can be annoying at times.
And then there’s the story itself which is murky at best. Tarantino rarely gets out of third gear and ambles his way through the novel from beginning to end. It’s very slow going at times - if you’re a story-driven reader. If you’re all about the characters, then you’re not going to mind. And since this is about the characters, and they’re written so damn perfectly, then it didn’t bother me much. Still, a tighter, more focused, more driven narrative would’ve made this a much better novel, I think.
I’m gonna pause here and bid adieu to those of you who haven’t read this yet and are going to - even those who’ve seen the movie before and intend to read this - so this is the end of my non-spoilery review: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is my favourite novel I’ve read this year, it’s really entertaining and I recommend it. If you saw the movie and wanted to know more about the characters, this novel provides that. It’s also, surprisingly, not a straight retelling of the movie, which, in a way, makes it somewhat new - novel, even - and more intriguing for Tarantino fans.
Here on out: SPOILERS! You’ll see why when you read the book.
Okey dokey artichokey?
Right.
One of the fantastic, and unexpected, aspects of the novel is that it mimics the movie’s subversion of audience expectations - in a completely new way. To those of us who knew about the Tate/LaBianca murders, we thought we knew what to expect once Charlie Manson and the Family were introduced and a pregnant Sharon Tate showed up. Uh oh. Poor Sharon. That bastard Charlie. And then the ending of the movie flipped those expectations as the Family wound up at Sharon’s fictional neighbour’s house instead, where Rick, Cliff, and Cliff’s dog Brandy, brutally thwarted their murderous plans, thus giving the movie a surprising and upbeat (albeit extremely violent) ending.
Tarantino’s novel of his movie’s story is different in a number of ways, the most surprising being that, about a quarter of the way into the novel, the movie’s conclusion gets tossed off in a page or so; the book’s conclusion is instead a much more lo-fi scene where Rick and Trudi go over the following day’s scenes on the phone.
And I think that’s not just brilliant but also a strong selling point of this book: even if you’ve seen the movie, this novel isn’t that. It’s not a straightforward retelling of the movie - it’s a similar story but told differently, which, in a way, makes it a new kind of beast.
There’s a lot more on the characters in general. We get the story of how Cliff got his dog Brandy; the story of Cliff murdering his wife; there’s a lot more on Charlie Manson, who basically had a walk-on in the movie, but figures more prominently here; there’s more background on actors “tagging” stuntmen (where an actor accidentally - or not - hits a stuntman) which explains why Cliff came to fight Bruce Lee in a studio backlot; and a great deal more on the story of the TV show Lancer, which Rick is shooting.
There’s also scenes here that were filmed but got cut out of the movie and, as far as I know, haven’t been released yet as extras, or possibly incorporated into a future director’s cut of the movie. Like the amusing scene with Raymond, Jay Sebring’s English butler, which was filmed with Mr Orange himself, Tim Roth, as the butler, and the final scene of this book, with Rick and Trudi on the phone. If you’re interested in seeing how those scenes played out, then they’re all here in this book. That’s the beauty of the novel: Tarantino doesn’t have to cut anything to fit a 2.5 hour playing time - he can include them all. But, as I said above, that also does make for a sometimes plodding read (there’s a reason they were cut to begin with).
Which remains my main criticism of this book: there’s a wee bit too much here. And this is why I called spoilers above. In the movie, it makes sense to have scenes with Sharon Tate and the Manson Family. We’re expecting this to culminate in the real life tragedy of Sharon’s bloody death and Tarantino happily leads us to that supposed conclusion only to hoodwink us at the end.
In this book, because that conclusion is dealt with so briskly and so early in the narrative, never to be revisited, it makes all of the scenes featuring Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski, and the Manson Family, completely pointless. This book has nothing to do with the Manson Family Murders and doesn’t even pretend to be - so why have anything related to that here?
I suppose the Manson Family stuff is mostly interesting - and Cliff going to the spooky Spahn Ranch to visit the blind George Spahn, in thrall to the Family, remains a great scene - but the Sharon and Roman parts really weren’t. And could’ve been an easy cut.
Because, instead of the Manson Family’s would-be murderousness, the novel is really about the celebration of actors - particularly lesser known actors - and the even less well-known people behind the camera, like stuntmen. Hence the main characters being a washed up TV star and his dubious stuntman, and why seemingly irrelevant chapters like the one about tragic real life actor Aldo Ray, who became a full blown alcoholic and fell from making studio features to appearing in smaller and sleazier movies over the course of his life, are included.
It’s why Cliff fights Bruce Lee - and wipes the floor with him. Cliff represents the little guy - the guy who helps make the movies happen but doesn’t get the adulation that international movie stars like Bruce Lee do. To Tarantino, the unknown stuntman is cooler than the movie star, famous to millions, and this fight symbolises that succinctly. It’s also why he included so many lesser known actors to modern audiences in his movies like David Carradine and Pam Grier, and, later on, stunt people like Zoe Bell.
This story is also a poignant love letter to filmmaking and filmmakers. The sheer mass of film detail Tarantino rattles off effortlessly throughout speaks to the author’s passion for the medium. And it’s poignant too given that Tarantino is one movie away from retirement (he says he’ll only make ten movies and then quit - he counts Kill Bill as one movie, by the by) and will soon be walking away from this business that’s been so good to him, and he’s done so much good for.
I say “retirement” - he’s really transitioning careers from movies to books; he’ll continue telling his stories but this is going to be his chosen medium going forward. And, if this novel is an indication, he’ll be equally as successful in the world of books as he was in the movies. Regardless of my criticisms, this is a great book, I had a lot of fun reading it, and I look forward to many more in the years to come. And we’ll still get Tarantino movies too in a way - I’m sure the film rights to the books will be bought and adapted by other directors.
“Once Upon a Time…” stories tend to close with “The End” but this one is a beginning - and a very promising one it is too.
(And yes, I’m aware that my criticism of verbosity is ironic given that this review turned out to be my longest in quite some time!)
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