Book Review: ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD--A NOVEL

 

Has any other film director written a novel based on one of his movies? Someone might have done it before...(one must realize that even though George Lucas is credited as the author of the novelization of STAR WARS, the book was actually written by Alan Dean Foster). 

When I wrote a blog post on ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, the movie, I mentioned that Quentin Tarantino probably would have wanted to spend hours more in showing the two main characters of the story, Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth, meandering around Los Angeles. In a way, Tarantino does that with this novel. 

The book isn't so much a straight written adaptation of the film as it is a collection of interior monologues by the main characters. There's no slam-bang action scenes, and a number of major sequences in the film are barely referenced at all. The novel is something of an alternate version of the movie, showing it from different angles and perspectives. 

The book gives us greater insight into Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth. It is revealed that Booth is a WWII hero (I assumed that he had fought in either Korea or maybe Vietnam). The reader finds out what really happened between Booth and his wife (the incident as related here is quite disturbing). Rick Dalton is shown to be bipolar, and not exactly the sharpest tool in the drawer. The relationship between Dalton and his young female costar on the pilot of LANCER is expanded upon, and much more is also made of Dalton's drinking habits in this novel. 

Tarantino's quirky storytelling style is in full evidence here. Much of the book is written in the present tense, and there are several flashbacks, and even flash-forwards (we find out a little bit of what Rick Dalton was doing in the 1970s). Tarantino wanders off every so often to cover a number of things, such as inside info on how American TV shows of the 1960s were made, and the working lives of French pimps. A couple of chapters relate the plot of the episode of LANCER that Rick is working on as if it is a hard-boiled Western pulp story. As expected, the language is rather salty, and politically incorrect. 

I think ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is one of Tarantino's best films, so I naturally enjoyed this unique take on it. I think you have to be a fan of Tarantino's, or at least the film in  particular, to enjoy this novel. I don't see any reason why someone would read this book if they haven't seen the film, or if they disliked it. The film and the book complement each other. 

One thing I love about this book is how it's designed to look like a paperback novel from 1969. It's also very affordable--I got it from Amazon for $8. You just know if some "trending" director like Rian Johnson wrote a book, it would be released in hardcover and the list price would be $35. 

I realize that Quentin Tarantino's work is not for all tastes, but this novel is intriguing, funny, surprising, and filled with all sorts of movie geek references. Tarantino could have easily just written a knock-off of his film, but he went out of his way to create something that stands on its own, and is entertaining in its own way.