Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: A Novel

Quentin Tarantino has made a novel from the screenplay of his Oscar winning movie ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ and it is, frankly, wonderful. It is such a good book everyone interested in film and cinema should buy it and read it. If I could give it 6 stars, I would. Novelisation has fallen out of fashion but what QT has done is a tad different: in the book-of-the-film we are showing the extensive back stories of the principal characters which Tarantino had already written before filming, like any good novelist would do *and* he gives a number of ‘lectures’ on the history of film. And you might think that ‘lecture’ would mean dull, plodding exposition and you’d be wrong. It is a total delight, erudite and profoundly understood (he probably wrote most of it from memory because he really is Mastermind Champion on movies, especially westerns). Since devouring this book I’ve found a YouTube interview between QT and a US television news channel; in it he lets the world know three things: 1 he intends to do more novels based on his screenplays (I can’t wait to read Inglorius Basterds – the novel) 2 he’s written a stage play but won’t say what about – given his terrific dialogue writing skills that’s going to be one to watch 3 his movie-making career is likely to come to an end – he’s always said he’ll only make ten pictures and OUATIH was his ninth – afterwards he intends to become ‘a man of letters (his own words). The novel of OUATIH is covers the same general ground as the movie but with many extensions and expansions, and the scenes in a different order. Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) the stunt double for fading actor Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) gets the lion’s share of the novel and develops into a fascinating character study. Buy it.

Tarantino can write beautiful, perfect scripts. His films (for the most part) are borderline genius and he will forever be considered as one of "the greats" even if you aren't a fan of the films yourself. He has worked his way up from the bottom and made most actors want to work with him. Unfortunately, he is not a novelist. The sentences are clunky in places, to the point of being distracting and I just could not get on with the "present day tense" he utilised. "Rick walks into the room." "Marvin answers his phone." It's like he has taken the directions from the script and thrown it into this book and just called it a novel. Give it a go if you want but, this was not for me at all and if present tense would bother you (in quite a thick book with small font) then you might want to swerve it. A shame.

The first work of written fiction by Quentin Tarantino is, to all intents and purposes, a novelisation of his movie “Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood”. And, thank the Gods, it is exactly what you would expect a Tarantino movie to be like…but in word form. The physical appearance of the book is important - it is meant to resemble a 1970s-era mass-market paperback, the sort of cheap book you used to find in an American supermarket (and possibly still do for all I know). It looks and feels like a cheap book - which is what it’s meant to be. Pulp fiction, to coin a phrase. For those who have seen it, the book version of a washed-up TV star differs from the film in several ways, which I won’t spoil, but there is a new, terrifying scene involving one of Charles Manson’s cronies. Elsewhere, QT digs deep into Manson’s failed but weirdly promising music career and stuntman Cliff Booth’s backstory is filled in. Also, Tarantino indulges himself with excellent passages about acting, B movies, sex scenes in films, foreign movies etc. You can tell he enjoyed writing this book. Tarantino is not out to impress us with the intricacy of his sentences or the nuance of his psychological insights - he is not out to endear himself to Guardian readers. This is grossly funny and often violent book, and Tarantino writes (and films) some of the best/worst violence out there. It is sophisticated but rough. If he’d written it better, he’d have written it worse. It’s a mass-market paperback that reeks of mass-market paperbacks, and is all the better for it. Better than the film? Possibly. It certainly doesn’t defame it by existing. It expands the story in a way that does it visceral justice. Tarantino has defied expectations (mine included) by writing a page-turner that is brutally titillating, shockingly salacious and quite, quite brilliant.

Tarantino once said that screenplays are a form of literature. This novel is a form of cinema. It’s a layered story set in a universe that’s set in a Los Angeles that’s part what it once was, part as it is today, and part as it could only exist in Tarantino’s imagined memories. The writing is pure Tarantino, every word choice, every turn of phrase is cut from the same cloth as his cinematic universe. This is at once novelization and expansion of the film. As a debut novel from a seasoned filmmaker, it is uniquely weathered and wise yet young and exuberant. And most importantly, it’s a joy from beginning to end.

Man I was let down. For QT's entire career I've been waiting for him to write prose, that is, something OTHER than screenplays because he's teased many times, the last time when Kill Bill came out, that he was going to transition one of his stories into prose form... But this book is written like a script (without the character names or the INT/EXT stuff of course)... For example, paraphrasing here: Instead of "Rick Dalton walked down the street" it's "Rick Dalton walks down the street" which is how scripts are written, for the moment you're in, the moment you are watching as a viewer what's going on on the screen, and that the writing is conveying for that very moment... which really isn't writing, but watching in written form... So the book just feels lazy, rushed. He even adds parts not in the film, like when Manson looks at Cliff when Cliff's on the roof. In the movie nothing happens between them and it's mysterious; in the book, Manson does what QT describes as his usual "Ooga Booga" dance... That is, QT, the author, doesn't describe Manson as a character/person in the book that we're learning about, but instead like someone from pop culture the reader should know about already... There are other changes, completely unnecessary... Rick doesn't meet the agent in the bar, but in his office, and a lot of other things just... well... In the case of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, don't wait for the book... Rewatch the movie.