Finished reading Tarantino's first novel
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood last night.
First of all, the Era thread lied to me. Said this was a novelization of the movie and the movie's ending takes place 1/3rd through the book and it keeps going as a sequel. This is straight up false.
The book just randomly describes the ending of the movie 1/3rd through. Like in a paragraph, "blah blah blah, and a few months later X/Y/Z happens", but then immediately jumps back and continues the movie's timeline and never goes anywhere beyond it. In fact, it kind of ends a bit before the movie does.
As a novel standalone story, this book does not really work. Tarantino's isn't a novelist, at least in plotting. Most of the characters and sub-plots go nowhere and just end midway in the book. The dialogue reads really well because Tarantino writes great dialogue. This is also a medium where Tarantino gets to gush about his film nerd knowledge for pages on end.
I saw a goodreads review that described this novel as more akin to a collection of deleted scenes to go along with the movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I think this is the best description. You get some backstory chapters on some characters (mainly Brad Pitt's Cliff) and a much more detailed insight into the show that Dalton is working on with the little girl actress.
Also being inside the characters heads and reading their thoughts does help some scenes or make them more interesting. The Bruce Lee fight is the same, but it's handled better in the novel when you see the thought processes behind what's going on.
One thing though, the book really character assassinates Cliff. I've seen a lot of reviews mention that and it's pretty spot on. In the movie Pitt's Cliff is not a "good guy" but he's like a Tarantino character you can root for despite not being a great person. In the book he's a lot darker and more a psychopath and if this was the movie version of the character he'd be more likely to end up the antagonist. Probably not a great direction to have gone with the character unless his goal was to make everyone who rooted for him in the movie feel uncomfortable.
DiCaprio's Dalton though, I thought the book helped flesh him out more and his insecurities. I liked his character more in the novel and the novel focuses more on his actual acting career. The story of the show he's on and the girl he works with is pretty good and the most satisfying part of the book.
The other characters like Manson and Tate and Polanski have like two scenes that go nowhere besides telling that scene. Kinda pointless.
Also I feel like there's a lot of pages about dirty underage hippies fucking.
Overall, it wasn't particularly good, and wouldn't really recommend, but if you want to treat it as deleted scenes from the movie and get some more scenes with these characters (even if it will character assassinate Brad Pitt's character), then it reads fairly easily outside the pages upon pages of slobering over film knowledge.
