Category: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino long has taken his encyclopedic cinematic influences, including genres and actors from the past, and blended them through his filter to create wildly inventive films that have influenced many up-and-coming filmmakers. Now, he has done a similar thing that I bet will not be copied by other filmmakers. After steeping himself for a half-decade in the lore of ’60s films, stuntmen, Western TV series and the Manson family to create Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Tarantino harkened back to his love for movie novelizations and wrote one for his own movie, after the fact. The book becomes in a way its own singular Tarantino creation: Using his film as a springboard, Tarantino heads into many unexpected directions while satisfyingly expanding and fleshing out the mythology of the world and the characters populated by Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and others. If you are a fan of the movie, you’ll find it hard to put down a novel that first was published in paperback. Here, Tarantino discusses why he put the same painstaking detail in the book as he did the movie, and where he goes from here.

Read more. Great read, lots of mentions of Brad’s character Cliff Booth.

Harper Perennial has debuted an official trailer for Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming novelization of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” and it’s jam-packed with never-before-scene footage from the director’s ninth feature film. “Hollywood” was a critical and commercial hit when it opened theatrically in July 2019 following a world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The film grossed $374 million worldwide and picked up 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. Brad Pitt won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

The “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” novelization trailer, which can be viewed exclusively on Entertainment Weekly (check the video here), showcases footage Tarantino left on the cutting room floor for the movie’s theatrical cut. “Hollywood” ran 161 minutes in theaters, but Tarantino’s assembly cut was around four hours. Never-before-seen footage featured in the trailer includes new scenes with Al Pacino’s Marvin Schwarz and Damon Herriman’s Charles Manson. Herriman had a lot of buzz going into “Hollywood” for playing the infamous serial killer, but he only appeared in one brief scene in the theatrical cut.

One part of the book Tarantino touted was several chapters fleshing out the backstory of Pitt’s stuntman Cliff Booth. The “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” novel releases June 29 via Harper Perennial.

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