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'Once upon a time in ... Hollywood', now in book version

2021-06-29T21:10:32.873Z


In the tradition of novelizing films, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino publishes his first novel, based on his 2019 feature film Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood, which goes on sale Tuesday. 'Babelia' advances its first pages


Rick Dalton's 1964 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, with Cliff Booth at the wheel, pulls out of the William Morris Building's underground parking lot onto Charleville, and after a block turns onto Wilshire Boulevard.

As the vintage Cadillac and the two vintage guys roll down the busy street, the hippy subculture that has invaded the city like a swarm of locusts parades the sidewalks in their blankets, long dresses, and dirty bare feet.

A nervous Rick Dalton, who has yet to share the reason for his anxiety with his colleague Cliff, glances out of the car window and indulges in a disgusted comment about hippie passersby:

"Look at all those fucking weirdos."

This city was a fucking nice place to live.

Look at it now.

And then he says with fascist disdain, "I swear they would have to put them all against a wall and shoot them."

They leave busy Wilshire and make their way back to Rick's house on Cielo Drive through quieter residential streets.

Rick yanks a cigarette out of the Capitol W pack, shoves it into his mouth, lights it with his Zippo, and snaps the silver lid shut with his tough-guy gestures.

While consuming a quarter of a cigarette in a puff, he tells the driver:

- Anyway, it's official, colleague.

He sucks his snot noisily.

I'm done.

Cliff tries to comfort his boss:

-Come on, partner, what do you say?

What did that guy say to you?

"He told me the bloody truth, that's what he told me!"

Rick snaps.

"What has upset you so much?"

Cliff asks.

Rick turns his head in the direction of his friend.

"Well look, face the fact that I've flushed my whole bloody run down the toilet, that's what fucking upset me!"

"But what happened?"

Cliff asks.

Did that guy turn you down?

Rick takes another long drag on his cigarette.

- No, he wants to help me get into Italian cinema.

Cliff's reply is quick: "So what's the problem?"

"I have to make damn Italian films!"

Rick yells.

That's the fucking problem!

Cliff decides to keep driving and let Rick vent.

The actor swallows another puff of smoke as he indulges in self-pity.

As soon as he releases the smoke, he resumes his chronicle:

-Five years of promotion, ten years staying afloat, and now, down at full speed.

As he makes his way through Los Angeles traffic, Cliff offers a little perspective:

-Let's see, to be honest, I've never had a great career, so it's hard for me to understand how you feel.

-But what are you saying?

Rick interrupts.

You are my stunt double.

Cliff answers frankly:

"Rick, I'm your driver."

Ever since you did

The Green Hornet

and your driver's license was taken away, I'm just that, your messenger.

And I'm not complaining.

I like to take you to the sites.

To casting tests.

To the meetings and those rolls.

I like to take care of your Hollywood Hills house when you are away.

But it's been a long time since I've been a full-time stuntman.

So, from my point of view, going to Rome to star in movies doesn't seem like the living death you're talking about.

Rick replies immediately: "Have you ever seen an Italian western?"

–And she answers her own question–: They are horrible!

They are a fucking sham.

-Oh yeah?

Cliff wonders.

How many have you seen?

One?

Two?

"I've seen enough!"

Rick says in an authoritative tone.

Nobody likes spaghetti westerns.

Cliff says under his breath:

–Surely there are Italians who like them.

Look, Rick says, I grew up watching Hopalong Cassidy and Hoot Gibson.

Seeing a shitty Italian western, directed by Bernardino Merdolino and starring Mario Bananano, is not exactly going to strike a chord with me.

And he ends his tirade about Italy by throwing his cigarette out of the car window.

Get it, I'm still pissed off to have seen that Italian juggernaut Dean Martin in

Rio Bravo

.

And let's not talk about the fucking Frankie Avalon dying at the fucking Alamo.

"I repeat," Cliff ventures, "I'm not you."

But it seems to me that it can be a pretty cool life experience.

-What do you mean?

Rick asks with genuine curiosity.

–Well, spend the day surrounded by photographers.

Drink cocktails at tables overlooking the Colosseum.

Eat the best pasta and pizza in the world.

Fuck Italian girls, Cliff guesses.

If you ask me, it's better than staying in Burbank losing fights to Bingo Martin.

Rick lets out a laugh.

-Well, you are right on that.

Then they both laugh, and very soon Rick begins to smile.

The fact that Cliff is always putting out fires for Rick has been an essential part of his dynamic since the two teamed up.

Sometimes they are figurative fires, like the one right now.

The fire that forged their friendship, on the other hand, was a literal fire.

Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood', by Quentin Tarantino.

It happened during the third season of

Law and Reward

(the 61-62 season). Cliff Booth had been called in to double as the show's protagonist. Right off the bat, Rick didn't like Cliff. And for one excellent reason: Cliff was too handsome to be a stuntman. And

law and reward

It was Rick's harem. He did not need any pimp, who also had a better wardrobe than him, taking advantage of all that reserve of women. But then he began to hear stories of Cliff's exploits during World War II. He learned that he was no mere hero. He was one of the greatest heroes of the Second World War. He had won the Medal of Valor twice: the first time, for killing Italians in Sicily; and the second time he had been awarded that distinguished honor for many reasons. But the main one was that, except for the guys who had dropped the Hiroshima bomb, no other American soldier had killed more confirmed Japanese enemy soldiers than Sergeant Clifford Booth.

Rick would have been willing to jump from his kitchen chair to the floor for months if it would have given him flat feet and exempted himself from the military (especially in wartime).

Still, he admired the men who had served their country and served their country with honor.

The fire that had forged the bond between the two men took place when Cliff had been in

Law and Reward

for about a month.

. One of the directors of the series, Virgil Vogel, came up with the idea that the main character of the series, Jake Cahill, would wear a voluminous winter coat and that that same coat would be dyed white nurse's shoe polish. In real life it would have looked ridiculous, but in a black and white movie it would look good. The problem was that the costume designers took so long to prepare the jacket that it was impossible to have it ready for the Vogel episode. So the producers just saved it for the next episode. And, at the end of the next episode, Jack Cahill was set on fire. Everyone thought it would be a good way to use that huge winter jacket they had spent so much time preparing.

Cliff was ready and willing to shoot the fire scene.

But after the risks involved were explained to Rick, the actor decided to try making it himself.

So they poured flammable liquid on the back of his huge white coat, well away from his face and hair.

However, what the team and the costume designers did not know (because they had had the jacket dyed out) was that the white dye they had used had a 65 percent alcohol content.

They did not know, and had not been told because in the episode for which the white garment was originally intended there was no scene with fire.

So when a flame was applied to the back of Jake's coat, with Rick in it, the garment instantly turned into a torch.

When Rick heard the roar of the flames from his coat, his panic was fueled to the same extent as that flammable garment.

Immediately he felt flames pass over his shoulders and dance and crackle around his head.

At that moment he was almost on the verge of doing the worst thing he could have done in this situation: run in blind panic.

But just before losing his mind, Rick heard Cliff Booth calmly say to him:

"Rick, you're in a puddle."

Drop to the ground.

And he obeyed and the flames were extinguished immediately, before they could cause any damage.

And that's when Rick and Cliff became Rick and Cliff's team.

The other really cool credential Cliff Booth had brought to the party: besides being a good friend, stuntman, and war hero, in this fantasy world, Cliff had actually killed. On his television series alone, Rick had killed about two hundred and forty-two people. Not counting all the Indians and outlaws he had killed in his Western movies, not counting the 150 in

McCluskey's Fourteen Fists

. Playing

Jigsaw Jane's

twisted, leather-gloved psychopathic killer

, he'd dispatched most of his victims with a gleaming silver stiletto.

Rick remembered a day when he and his stunt double had been drinking and arguing about his

Jigsaw Jane

character

at the bar inside the Smoke House off Riverside Drive.

As they talked and drank, Rick asked Cliff if he had ever killed an enemy soldier with a knife.

"Many," Cliff replied.

-To much?

Rick repeated, surprised.

How many are many?

-How?

Cliff asked.

Do you want me to start counting them now?

"Well yeah," Rick said.

"Well, let's see…" Cliff thought.

He silently counted to himself on his fingers, until his fingers ran out and he had to start another lap of the circuit.

At last he stopped and said, "Sixteen."

If at that moment Rick had been drinking his whiskey sour, he would have been close to starring in a comical scene where he spat it out.

"Did you kill sixteen bastards with a knife?"

He asked incredulously.

"Sixteen Japs in the war," Cliff pointed out.

Yes.

Rick was silent, leaned forward and asked his friend, "And how did you do it?"

"You mean how was I able to do it mentally and emotionally?"

Cliff asked.

Or how did I do it physically and in practical terms?

Wow, good question, Rick thought.

"Well, I guess how you did it in the first place."

–Well, not always, but most of the time I approached from behind a clown and caught him by surprise.

The guy gets a stone in his shoe;

so he lags behind his company to take off his shoes and remove the stone.

I come up behind him, stick the knife in his ribs, cover his mouth with my hand, and twist the knife until I feel my palm.

Damn, Rick thought.

"Now," Cliff said, indexing up, "it's clear I killed him."

But did he die because of me or did he die because a stone got into his shoe?

Cliff philosophized.

-Let's see if I understand then.

Do you stab a Japanese man in the ribs, "Rick clarified," cover his mouth with your hand to stifle the scream and then hold him for all his bloody agony, until he dies in your arms?

Cliff took a sip from his highball glass filled with room temperature Wild Turkey and said, "Right there."

–Wow!

Rick exclaimed, as he drank a portion of his cold whiskey sour.

Cliff Booth smiled to himself as he watched his boss try to assimilate that idea and then asked in a provocative tone:

"Do you want to know how one feels?"

Rick looked up and looked at Cliff.

-What do you mean?

Cliff repeated in a low voice and in a slow and deliberate tone:

"I ask you if you want to know how one feels."

And then he added, shrugging, "You know, for your character."

Rick didn't say anything for a moment.

The bar seemed silent and finally Rick Dalton let out a very low "yes".

Cliff smiled at his friend and boss, took a long gulp of his drink, slapped the heavy glass down on the bar and said with a shrug:

"Well, kill a pig."

What? Rick thought.

-What?

Rick said aloud.

-Bush.

Yet.

Pig, ”Cliff repeated in a sinister tone.

After a moment of silence, during which the words "kill a pig" hung in the air, Cliff explained:

"You buy yourself a very fat pig."

You take it to the home garden.

Then you get to his side on your knees.

You hug it, you touch it, you feel its life, you smell it and you hear it growl and snore.

And then, with the other arm, you stick a butcher knife in the side and wait, bro.

Sitting on the bar stool, Rick listened to Cliff, mesmerized.

"He'll scream like a bastard and bleed like a son of a bitch."

And he will fight.

But you have a good grip on him with one arm while you keep sticking the knife into him with the other hand.

And, although it seems like an eternity has passed, at some point in the first minute you will notice how it dies in your arms.

And that will be the moment when you really feel death.

Life is a pig that bleeds, screams and kicks violently in your arms.

And death is you, hugging a pile of still and heavy meat.

Cliff described step by step the slaughter of the imaginary pig, Rick became more and more pale, imagining that he carried out those instructions in his garden.

Cliff realized that he had his audience by the neck, so he launched himself to slaughter:

"If you want to experience what it feels like to kill a man, killing a pig is the closest thing to doing legally.

Rick swallowed hard as he tried to imagine if he would be able to do such a thing.

"Then you take the pig to the butcher shop and ask them to cut it up for you."

Bacon ... chops ... shoulders ... pork feet.

And you eat the whole animal.

This is how you show your respect for the death of that beast.

Rick took another drink of the whiskey sour.

"I don't know if I would be capable of something like that."

"Oh, you can," Cliff assured him.

You may not want to do it, but you are capable.

In fact, it could be argued that if you're not capable, you don't deserve to eat pork.

After a moment, Rick clapped his hands on the bar and said:

"Okay, damn it, I'm going to do it."

Let's go find a pig.

Of course, Rick didn't.

The experiment posed so many obstacles that Rick quickly lost his momentum.

Where do I buy a pig?

How do I clean all the blood from the pool patio?

How do I get the dead pig out of the garden?

It sure weighs a ton.

What if the bastard bites me?

But even though Rick never did, he did think about it.

And that already amounted to cold-blooded premeditated murder, akin to

Jigsaw Jane's

black-gloved killer

.

'Once upon a time in Hollywood'

Quentin Tarantino.


Translation by Javier Calvo.


Reservoir Books, 2021. 400 pages.

19.90 euros.

Look for it in your bookstore


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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-06-29

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