Usually, when literature and cinema try to make an appointment, it only takes place in the end on one side.
Sometimes significant literary works come to the big screen, such as the stories of the Bible or Harry Potter, and then the cinematic adaptation is perfumed in the aura of the original's prestige, and is left to be sheltered in its shadow.
Sometimes mediocre books, such as "The Godfather," get a brilliant cinematic adaptation, and then the latter quickly disconnects from the verbal mother spaceship and makes it redundant.
Even when driving in the opposite direction it is clear who is at the wheel. When Ari Pullman adapted the film "Waltz with Bashir" into a comic book, it was clear that the latter had no existence of its own. Similar to the successful picture books that have always accompanied Disney movies, cinema is a first fiddle and literary adaptation is Maxo Piccolo.
The working assumption in any literary-cinematic dialogue is that no two kings can be used in one crown. In a cinematic adaptation to create literature, or in a literary adaptation of an important film, it is necessary to define who is singing first and who is second, who is the sun and who is the moon. Quentin Tarantino now seeks to challenge this hierarchy. His book "There Were Times in Hollywood" (a more accurate translation should have been "was was in Hollywood"), is an attempt to create a universe in which the two celestial bodies illuminate together.
This is a pretentious task, but not surprising when it is performed by someone who has already evoked plot conventions from scratch, challenged traditional narrative structures and proved that even in cinema there is not necessarily an early and late.
In "There Were Times in Hollywood," the book and the film, cinema and literature complement each other.
While the 2019 film focused on the plot, the book is based on an in-depth examination of the characters.
Trentino used the camera to document the characters' actions.
He devotes his writing to a thorough close-up of what is going on in their minds.
The plot of "There Were Times in Hollywood" was and remains limited.
At its center are TV actor Rick Dalton and colleague Cliff Booth, who provide him with driving services and a listening ear.
In the years when Rick was a minor success, Chris served as his stunt double, but in February '69 - the year in which "there were times in Hollywood" - Rick was forced to come to terms with his deteriorating status in Hollywood and the vague professional future that does not bode well for his friend.
A description of the duo's mid-life crisis is occasionally interrupted in favor of a look at what is happening in their Hollywood environment. In addition to the fictional protagonists, we get to know what is happening in the homes and minds of the neighbors in the houses next door, headed by director Roman Polanski and his new wife, actress Sharon Tate. Not far away lives another "family" made up of feeble-minded virgins collected and hypnotized by the failed and devilish musician Charles Manson. Side by side, in the late 1960s, all the light and all the darkness takes place, and by the end of the summer one hand will be on top.
The writer Trentino is no different in character from the filmmaker Tarantino. At first it seems that his style of writing does not lead to the realms of piyyut, but is based on descriptions that seem laconic and unsophisticated. Event chases event, act chases act: "The sharp and brutal sincerity in the agent's words strikes Brick Dalton just as if Marvin slapped him in the face with all his might, with a hand dripping water. But from Marvin's point of view all this is good news ... so you can understand why he's confused When he notices tears streaming down Rick Dulton's cheeks. "
Tracing the ongoing chain of events better clarifies the book's trend.
Like the tough detective books of the mid-20th century, the raw prose here also matches the rough and gnarled nature of the protagonists. Like Rick and Chris, she is not prone to emotional outbursts and prefers the understatement instead. Instead of focusing on itself, prose captures a groundbreaking historical-cultural moment, in which the 1960s gave way to the horrors that followed. She sees the great social changes as the inevitable result of the acts committed by individuals, and since this is Trentino, the reference is mainly to the actions of toxic men.
This is the true greatness of the book, which manages to be both an epic historical work and a very personal work. It's hard not to see in Brick and Cliff, in Hero and Duplicate, two sides of the same masculine identity. Rick, the actor, has a softer side, and he ranges from humanity to neurotic distress. Caliph, however, has no neuroses. If they were, he killed them long ago, as he had killed his wife, countless Japanese soldiers and a few other Americans who came to him not well. The whole male spectrum, on its worse and less screwed-up sides, is politely presented by the two, and the set of events unfolding by the two-voice piece leads them to the crossroads where they will have to decide exactly what material they are made of.
The disassembly and reassembly of the troubled male psyche is placed, as expected, in Trentino, in Hollywood, the factory responsible for producing good-loving legends alongside absurd masculine images. As a devout believer in the religion of cinema, Trentino seeks, and not for the first time, to correct through corrupt reality through cinema. The alternative version he outlines to the violent occurrences of August 1969 is his way of protesting against the injustice of the world. As a filmmaker and writer he uses his ability to offer an alternative version of the bloody events of the sad years, and at the same time, offers the flawed men responsible for them a possible path of repentance.
The belief that as long as the camera is on can be repaired, fits in with other Jewish points in the film.
Through art, Trentino repeatedly seeks to correct the disgrace of the Holocaust: in "Disrespectful Bastards," he seeks to turn Jews in the 1940s from persecutors to persecutors, and in "There Were Times in Hollywood," he seeks to lead Roman Polanski, a Holocaust survivor, to rest and exile.
For American Jews trying to change their name from "Schwarz" to "Schwarz" he mocks at the beginning of the book, preferring over them characters who are learning to come to terms with their identity, their past and their ability and duty to change.
It is hard not to identify with the novel's deep humanism, with the optimism that emanates through the prickly descriptions, with the condemnation of any expression of value nihilism and with the demand for the existence of a personal moral code.
The blatant language does not hide the great heart of the book's director, who offers readers, viewers and himself to believe in the sole power to change, and in the power of art to help society change direction.
In the first days of the year, there is no more encouraging news.
There were times in Hollywood / Quentin Tarantino
from English: Guy Harling; Crown, 366 pages