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

Same story, different take

Review

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is not, strictly speaking, a "novelization" of the film Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood.* The back cover of the book describes it as "The new novel based on the film," and that's an accurate description. Based on. The novel includes many scenes from the film, but it tells the story its own way -- leaving some things out, adding others, and indulging in digressions into Hollywood lore at even greater lengths. I'm going to assume that you've already seen the movie and won't worry about spoilers.

Like the movie, the novel follows events in the lives of TV actor Rick Dalton and his stuntman Clint Booth in the summer of 1969. The year is important because the entertainment business is changing. Rick has made a reasonably successful career of acting -- in manly, heroic roles -- in westerns and World War II movies. But, as the 70s approach, those kinds of movies and those kinds of roles are giving way to the influences of the counterculture. Bounty Law, the popular TV western in which Rick once starred, has been off the air for a few years, and he has been reduced to villainous guest-star roles on other TV shows. Thus, the novel opens with an agent encouraging Rick to takes roles in Italian "spaghetti" westerns to regain his status as a leading man. Again, as in the movie, Rick's worries over his fading status in Hollywood are an underlying current throughout the novel. Rick's interior monologue, as he ruminates on the recent past, gives Tarantino ample grist for digressions on movies, directors, and actors. While these digressions are interesting in themselves, they seriously impede the forward motion of the narrative, stalling it out at times to the point that you forget what's happening. 

Rick's guest-star role on Lancer (a real-life TV show from the late 60s) is expanded upon in the novel to the point that it becomes a more-or-less fully fleshed western within the greater novel. No such episode ever existed, but it would have been a marvel if it had -- a Tarantino movie in the context of a 60s TV western! The real-life actor James Stacy, who played Johnny Madrid/Johnny Lancer on the show was portrayed by Timothy Oliphant in the movie and becomes a more fully developed character in the novel. (As an aside, I recommend the Wikipedia article on James Stacy if you'd like to learn more about his strange, tragic life and death.) 

Besides the Lancer western, the other main story line in the novel -- as in the movie -- is that of Charles Manson, the Family, and the events that led toward the fatal night in August at the home of Roman Polansky and Sharon Tate. We also learn more about Cliff, his past as a war hero, and the fact that he's a three-time murderer. (Yes, he killed his wife; that was no boating accident.) Cliff's meeting with the Manson girls and his trip to the Spahn Movie Ranch play out fairly closely to the way they are depicted in the film. Perhaps the most surprising divergence from the movie is that the novel does not end with the hyper-violent, blood-soaked battle with the Manson Family in Rick's home that we saw at the end of the movie. Early in the novel we're told that it happened, and that it made Rick a cultural hero among right-wingers who hated "dirty hippies." Blink and you'll miss it, though, because the novel never circles back around to that melee.

The novel, instead, ends with Rick having a late-night conversation with his young co-star on the Lancer show, going over their lines, getting ready for their big scene together the next day. It's a much more reflective fade out that avoids the suspenseful buildup and final, explosive release that we have come to expect from Tarantino's films. (I'll also note, as another aside, that Tarantino inserts his own step-father into the story near the end and has him tell Rick that his son Quentin is a big fan.) I enjoyed reading this book, but I'm not entirely sure it works on its own as a novel. It really functions as a companion piece to the movie and as an amusing extra for die-hard Tarantino fans. If you fall into that camp, I recommend it. Otherwise, you'll probably want to pass. 

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*Note that the posters for the movie read Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood, whereas all official copy related to the film reads Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood. Maybe it's because I'm a former editor, but this sort of inconsistency drives me nuts. The title of the novel foregoes the ellipsis altogether.