Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2021)

Rarely have I known a movie that sowed so many different opinions as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I went to see the film in the theater with 2 other people, and one of them thought it was a mediocre Tarantino, and the other thought it was the worst Tarantino in his entire oeuvre. I, on the other hand, was more on the positive side and thought it was one of his best films since he directed Inglourious Basterds. Of these three people, I was actually the only one who was somewhat interested in the book that Tarantino published in 2021. No idea what to expect, but I started with a lot of expectation.

The interesting thing about this whole release is that it's not just a one-to-one translation of the film. There are elements that come back of course (Cliff Booth's visit to the western ranch where the Manson Family is hiding is recounted), but the majority is a sort of extension of the film. This time you get a lot more background about Cliff Booth. You get (among other things) an answer to whether Cliff has killed his wife or not. Weirdly enough, the climax is also not at all the - already legendary - final scene from the movie in which Rick Dalton takes on a bunch of hippies with a flamethrower. The only problem is that this mostly feels like a book that mainly originated from a number of things that Tarantino deleted from his film script. Stuff that for some reason didn't make the final cut of the movie and is then collected in this book. 

This makes it of course great to read if you are a fan of Tarantino's film and just can't get enough of the universe he has created. The best thing you can do is read this in English because you can just hear Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt say these dialogues. That being said, it still is weird that other aspects of the movie are not included in this book. That makes it a sometimes weird hybrid between script and novelization. Did the number of pages had something to do with that choice? With 400 pages this is not a quick read, but even then it's a shame that this version just doesn't seem to have an end. 

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2021)
Written By: Quentin Tarantino
Published By: Harper Perennial
Number of Pages: 400

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