Once Upon a Time in Hollywood | Quentin Tarantino

episode SUMMARY:

In this episode of the Books for Men podcast, host Douglas Vigliotti discusses Quentin Tarantino's novelization of his film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Vigliotti explains that Tarantino wrote the novel because he had so much material on the lead characters that he wanted to further explore and flesh out. He also mentions that the ending of the book is different from the film. Vigliotti discusses Tarantino's filmmaking style and his impact on the crime genre, as well as the influence of directors like Martin Scorsese (among many others) on Tarantino. He briefly summarizes the plot of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which combines two narratives in 1969: the story of an aging country western star dealing with the changing Hollywood industry, and the story of the Tate-LaBianca murders on Cielo Drive in the Hollywood Hills. Vigliotti praises Tarantino's conversational writing style and encourages listeners to share the episode and support the podcast. He also reminds the audience that he can be reached on Instagram @douglasvigliotti.

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Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. So. You might already recognize the title of this book Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. It was a major motion picture by none other than Quentin Tarantino. And yes, the novel is also written by Quentin Tarantino. And so it's a really fun book. For this reason, it's the first time ever on Books for Men that I'm featuring a novelization. So a novelization is the reverse of taking a book and moving it to film. It's taking a film and moving it into a book. You don't see many of them. I think the closest that we got on this podcast was Heat 2, which of course is not a novelization. It's a completely original story. This book is not that. This book, as I already mentioned, is a novelization.

(01:01)

But interestingly, if you are a Tarantino fan, he did have a book that came out earlier this year called Cinema Speculation, which is just his take on cinema and criticism of a lot of the works that inspired him. And he does talk a little bit about Heat in that book, specifically the books that inspired Heat or the author and characters I should say, as well as what he calls “not liking the moralistic ending,” which is funny because I know everybody has a take on that. I talk a little bit about it in the episode on Heat or Heat 2 and like that episode, one of the things that I point out is the book really delves deeper into the characters. I will say that that is very much a similarity with this novel Once Upon a Time in Hollywood because one of the things that Tarantino is always able to do is really flesh out these characters and include a lot of things that don't occur in the actual movie because cinema and film structure doesn't a lot for the depth that these characters actually have.

(02:05)

He basically said that the reason why he wrote the novel was because he had so much material on each of the lead characters that he wanted to continue to share it and to flesh that out. Otherwise, it just dies on the vine, so to speak. And this doesn't really surprise me because if you've read anything about Tarantino or know anything about Tarantino, he's kind of iconic, forego very deep into his characters before he starts production on any film. So if you're wondering if you're going to just get a retread of the actual movie or you're going to get more, you're going to get more. I will say the ending is completely different in the book than it is in the movie. It's worth noting something that I've said a bunch of times on the podcast before. Movies are a lot more by committee, not so much with a Tarantino project I would imagine because he's more of an auteur in that he is a true risk taker and he had a lot of success early in his career, which enabled him to kind of have the keys to the castle and create his movies in the Tarantino way.

(03:13)

Again, this doesn't happen for every filmmaker. I think that there's a lot of luck that has to do with something like this, and that's not taking anything away from Tarantino because I love him and I love his movies. Kill Bill is perhaps one of my favorite movies of all time, both volume one and volume two. But I'd be remiss if I didn't talk a little bit about luck because what happens if Reservoir Dogs doesn't get received the way that it got received? All of a sudden you don't have all these other Tarantino movies, at least not in the way that you have them, which is unbridled and raw. And I think that that style of filmmaking in his no-holds-bar technique or his brashness and edginess is really something that he might even be struggling with. Now, I've heard him talk about the difference between Hollywood and the difference in filmmaking, and he has said that he's only going to be making one more film his 10th and final film.

(04:07)

And I think that has a lot to do with the arc of the filmmaking industry and where we're at today with artistry and your ability to tell certain styles of stories and get funding and the intersection with technology and big corporate structures and streaming and all of that stuff plays into this idea of the homogeneous nature of the movies that are coming out and the styles of movies that are coming out or the lack of movies that are coming out, I should say. And I don't know, I'm not in the film industry, I just read about it. And of course, I've read a lot about Tarantino's thoughts on the film industry, both in the nonfiction book that came out earlier this year, Cinema Speculation. And just in my own interest, I watch a lot of videos on YouTube, or I've listened to him be interviewed a bunch of times on different podcasts and stuff like that.

(04:57)

So I mentioned before what would happen if Reservoir Dogs wasn't received in the way that it was. And I said, well, then you wouldn't have all these other Tarantino movies. The interesting thing about that is that you also probably wouldn't have had an entire genre of crime films that came in the nineties and two-thousands, which was this weird intersection of infusing humor into crime, right? So it's like the caper but in a more grotesque, upfront, violent way. And then, of course, Hollywood just tried to continue to stamp these types of movies out one after one after one until it became this watered-down genre. And of course, the thing that they miss is that the sensibility of the creator is the most important thing, or when you're inventing a new style, and I'm using air quotes because really what Tarantino is famous for is taking everybody else's scenes and styles and mashing them together the things that he loves the most, I guess.

(05:58)

And that is sort of his hallmark or something that at least in popular culture he's known for, his famous line is: “Great artists steal. They don't do homages.” And that goes hand in hand with what I had just mentioned. Funnily enough, that quote was actually in a past edition of The Books for Men Newsletter when I did the episode on the plot, because that book talks a lot about stealing ideas, and I included it as a quote at the end of the newsletter. By the way, you'll get a bunch of Tarantino quotes in the upcoming newsletter at the end of this month. The other thing that I just wanted to mention is I had said that Tarantino inspired a lot of the crime films that came after him, but it's important to remember there was a whole other style of crime film that was happening at the same time.

(06:47)

Martin Scorsese style or the Michael Mann style we had just mentioned, but perhaps Tarantino doesn't even get to where he is making these iconic, remarkable, very distinct films. If Scorsese doesn't make a film like Taxi Driver, say, which happened of course years and years earlier, something that Tarantino talks quite a bit about in his books, and I'm a speculation. So in a way, even though they are vastly different at the point in their career when Tarantino starts making movies, there's still a pretty big link to them. And it's worth noting that all art is just an iteration on top of each other. Something that I mentioned when we did the episode on, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow when the character Sam is talking about how nothing in art is original or he says there is no purity in art. And of course, what he means by that is just that art builds on top of each other.

(07:43)

And so inspiration comes generation after generation, and the originality is just in the fact that they made the game or Tarantino made the film or whoever makes anything, you are the original factor. And probably no one is a better exemplar of that than Tarantino. So I went this whole time, and of course, I didn't tell you anything about the story, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. So let me just do a little bit about that before we wrap this episode up. So the story combines two narratives, and the shock really comes at the expense of deviating from the truth. And I think that that is a really unique thing that Tarantino does in the movie, and it still shows a little bit in the novel. So basically the two narratives are Rick Dalton, who is an aging country western star, grappling with the fact that Hollywood is changing, and so is his career.

(08:35)

Something that I kind of alluded to earlier on about modern culture, but this takes place in 1969. And of course, the big thing that was happening then was Hollywood was moving away from all of these character actors into more of method acting, or in short, moving away from actors like John Wayne into like Steve McQueen or Paul Newman. And this of course was very hard to deal with if you were a John Wayne, Rick Dalton is kind of modeled after that character. And what are the struggles like for that individual in the movie? That character is played by Leonardo DiCaprio and his stunt double slash personal assistant is played by Brad Pitt. His name is Clint Booth. I think their relationship is probably best summed up with my favorite line from the entire movie or book. And it's where this amazing scene happens. Rick Dalton is kind of down on himself and he's worried about his performance and everything that I sort of alluded to just moments ago.

(09:41)

And so he gets dropped off for a day of shooting by Cliff, when Rick gets out of the car, he starts walking away and through the open window, Cliff yells: “Hey! You're Rick ‘fucking’ Dalton. Don't you forget it.” To me, this just sums up their relationship in such a big way because it's not just about the fact that he's a stunt double or his driver or whatever. It's almost like he's this ego support for his friend. And it's really just a meta way of saying that all of these people who look famous and are famous have these ego support networks that prop them up and keep them feeling good about themselves. Because behind these individuals are huge machines, of course. And so their income and their life rely on the fact that this person, Rick Dalton, is in a good mood and he's inspired and he's confident, and there's just so much humor and irony that is baked into that one line in this movie, as you might expect, does a really good job on giving you subtle commentary of Hollywood in a completely satirical or ironic way.

(10:58)

Now, I said that was only the first narrative. The second narrative follows the iconic Tate-LaBianca murderers on Cielo Drive at the hands of Manson family members and how these two stories intersect with each other. That is the basis of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And as I already alluded to, the big shock is that it comes at the expense of deviating from the truth. So that's where the surprise actually happens, which you might expect because Rick Dalton's not a real guy. And so how does he intersect with something that did actually happen? Well, that's what Tarantino does here, but I'm not going to share any more about the plot or the story because I don't want to ruin anything. Or as the tagline of the book says, “Hollywood 1969, you should have been there!” I love that. Anyway, I should just note one more thing about the actual style of how the is written, which is very conversational, and this is something that you should probably expect coming from the author who is notoriously fun and energetic and lively on the page.

(12:07)

People have said that reading his screenplays is like reading books, in general. They're that entertaining, which apparently isn't always the case, although I haven't read too many screenplays, admittedly. And if you're into novelizations, one other novelization that I read earlier this year was Paradise Alley, which I have to admit is written pretty poorly. In the author of course is Sylvester Stallone, who also stars in the movie. But what it does do is it really exemplifies Stallone's storytelling ability. And the only reason why I read this book was to tie it back to Tarantino. He makes mention of it in Cinema Speculation as a book that inspired him because the reason why he wanted to write a novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is because he loved reading novelizations as a young boy. Alright, so this episode is a wrap. I went on a little bit longer than I normally do, and believe it or not, I had to even trim this down even more because I can rant for a very long time about Quentin Tarantino as being one of my favorite storytellers for a lot of different reasons. He's someone who I have read so much about and watched all his movies, so it's just very easy for me to talk about him.

(13:20)

With that being said, I did want to remind you at this time if you enjoyed the episode, to please share it with a family, a friend, or someone who you think might enjoy it because word of mouth is everything when you're trying to spread awareness. This podcast specifically, it's to inspire more men to read. And if you want to double down on that support you can by liking, rating, reviewing, subscribing on whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on, because in doing that, you help more people find the show. And lastly, if you want more information, you can always visit BooksforMen.org where you can also get full transcripts for each of these episodes, as well as sign up for the newsletter, which is a monthly roundup of every episode that you hear on this podcast, complete with book and author information, all of the best quotes, plus additional quotes, something that I made mention to earlier in this episode. And there will be a lot in the upcoming newsletter at the end of this month. And the other thing that's in that newsletter is additional book recommendations, ones that you don't hear on the podcast. So if you're interested in signing up for that again, just visit BooksforMen.org.