Some two years after Tarantino’s feature wowed and bored in equal measures (there are some who simply cannot stand Tarantino films) and this novel expounds on the exploits of Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt).
It could be argued that Booth was the more interesting character in the first place. And here in QT’s writings, it is also apparent that the writer sees much of Cliff in himself...or the other way around. His favorite actor is Toshiro Mifune. He adores Kurosawa (his favorite flicks being Seven Samurai and Ikiru) but he (Cliff not Tarantino) thinks Bergman is boring and Truffaut is simply a drag. Fellini on the other hand is just okay.
In the film version, Cliff is rumoured to have murdered his wife, a scene shows Booth pointing at her with a harpoon gun as a heated argument comes to an end. Tarantino goes some way to answering this fascinating point but still allows for the intention to be mysterious. We won’t give anything away here but it is a violent passage of text, and you can see why this was perhaps avoided in making the film.
Rick Dalton (played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the feature) gets less expansion, though here he’s used as a lens to reveal a treasure trove of classic Hollywood trivia — OATIH lists oodles of old watering holes for acting legends, describes the lives of those movie stars who pivoted to porno, and doffs a lovelorn cap to theaters that closed down years ago.
The crux of QT’s extended universe centres on how much a likeable character can get away with. So what if he’s a racist bully who might have murdered his wife, he looks good, sounds, talks good and is one mean stunt man.
The politics of these character beats will be discussed for quite some time to come, but once more the one time video clerk shows that he knows how to write a deconstruction of male machismo and how the industry was and is run.
Once Upon A Time In America is available now via Harper Collins.
