Quentin Tarantino. You’ve got to hand it to him, Crimeziners. He is a man obsessed. And the best thing is, he wants to tell you all about it. The surprise is, he has taken so long to get around to it. His pulptastic new novel, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is a glorious retrotastic indulgence, fatly crammed with out-take details, that the parental oversight and editorial control of studio overlords gave the cult cinema scamp the hard no to. This will prove an unmitigated delight to his legions of adoring fans, no doubt.
But here’s the thing, unfettered by editorial oversight this was never going to be a novel in the normal sense of the word. Like OUTH hero, Rick Dalton, Tarantino is a martyr to his own compulsions. Action hero Rick swills whiskey sours for breakfast, lunch, and supper, while Tarantino, left to his own literary devices, crams every available paragraph with stuff that he thinks is cool, regardless if the story needs it.
The fans are cheering him on from the matinee cheap seats, you can hear them roar. But what does the reader get? An approximation of the movie story, for sure. [It is de rigueur that you have seen the flick if you are going to attempt this book.] But we also get a bulging ball sack of other stuff too. And you better be taking notes, because Quentin name checks a dozen movies and actors on every single page, everyone from Gina Lollobrigida to Lee Marvin and a thousand more besides. Natch, we get gossip about directors too. One minute it’s Dino De Laurentis, the next it’s Otto Preminger, and a whole host of others. The reader should be warned, that a Quentinesque digression Kurosawa lasts forty pages or more, at least it seems that way. When slanderous anecdotes are thrown against the coffin lids of dead rivals, a wry chuckle is often the result. But when yet another italicized laundry list of action-hero acting greats swims into view, even the enthusiastic reader is tempted to skip past.
Profanity? Certainly. Not all the way through, but it is splashed around with school-boyish delight at every opportunity. In one instance the F-word appears close to thirty times in the space of a page. There is plenty of cartoonish misogyny to dilute the “shock” of the profanity. So sensitive readers are advised to stand at a safe distance once the blue touch paper has been ignited.
Then there is the style of writing. Third person, present tense, is a bold and striking choice. But it is also a difficult snake to wrestle, and Quentin has clear problems with it on a number of occasions. No matter. If it suits his purpose he will slip into omniscient asides, past tense, even second person if he feels like it. When this happens you can hear the less than spectral squeals of the ghost-writing community—hear the cheers of downtrodden authors the world over, as “publishing professionals” choke up their Cheerios into the Chicago Manual of Style. Yes, the style is impactful, but often distracting. There are, it must be mentioned, some unforgivable, sloppy around the edges, editing fails—repetition, often within the same paragraph or sentence for example. But the reader, especially one familiar with Tarantino’s enthusiastically pleasure gorged cinematic narrative, is inclined to forgive.
So how does this all turn out? Not as you might expect, you must be warned. Various aspects of the movie have been expanded, the background to Cliff Booth [Brad Pitt in the movie] is more shocking and unsympathetic. Rick Dalton’s [Leonardo DiCaprio’s] exchanges with child actor Trudi Frazer [Julia Butters] are investigated more fully. But spoiler-alert-shocker—as you approach page three hundred and fifty, you realize that the end of the novel is going to be completely different from the movie. For some this will be a disappointment, for others it will be a more natural segue into another book.
So will that happen? Crimezine can exclusively reveal that the answer to that question is yes. Quentin Tarantino has signed a two-book deal with Harper Collins. The upcoming book focuses in on the career of Rick Dalton, detailing his entire career. As with OUTH some of those acting gigs are entirely fictional, others depict Rick in real movies. Tarantino is currently working on a Bounty Law television series, featuring the Rick Dalton character, and word from the Hollyweird rumor mill is that long time Tarantino chum, Robert Rodriguez, may be considering a OUTH spinoff movie—Lancer. Hot? Of course it’s hot, Crimeziners, it’s a flamethrower, as Rick Dalton might say.
Crimezine 