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This is the part where I talk about the movie (oh yeah, also I’m going to spoil it):

I’m going to pretend I’m on Letterboxd for a minute, so please bear with me. While want to say that I’m a casual fan of Quentin Tarantino’s movies, I have seen and somewhat liked all of them, so I guess you could say I’m a fan�� casually. Anyway, I watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood pretty recently and really enjoyed it! Yeah sure, the movie’s mostly just people driving around in cool cars for three hours followed by ten minutes of intense and cartoonish violence, but I had a good enough time. In fact, I actually think my favorite parts of the movie were the driving bits, and while they’re probably overlong and “unnecessary�� to the plot (whatever that means), I think I’m more charitable to movies that look like actors are actually in a real place, acting opposite each other, doing a real thing (no shade to a certain other studio). Also, I watched an interview with Quentin Tarantino where he said that this movie was partially based on how he used to go on drives around Los Angeles with his step dad, so that’s a nice memory. It’s true that the film certainly has a quality about it that captures that nostalgic, dream-like feeling. And while it’s definitely no Jackie Brown, I appreciated its more low-key storyline compared to his more heightened movies. The basic story is that it’s Hollywood, 1969, and we follow a washed-up actor Rick Dalton and his stuntman Cliff Booth for two and a half days as they try to adapt to the changing times. That’s it. Oh, they also fight the Manson Family in climax. That's a thing for some reason. It’s not my favorite of his movies, but I was never bored.

Of course, That’s not to say that there weren’t some intense, glaring issues that I had with the movie. First of all, its portrayal of Bruce Lee (he’s also in this) �� what the hell was that!? You’re going to sit there and tell me that ninety-seven-year-old Br*d P*tt could win against Bruce Lee in his prime? Yeah right. Get out of town! Actually, the Bruce Lee situation brings up a larger issue I had with the story in how the fictional characters are integrated and interact with the real-life figures that are featured in the movie. For example, a large part of the story focuses on Sharon Tate and the Manson Family. Now, if you’ve seen Tarantino’s other movie, Inglourious Basterds, you’d probably guess the big “twist�� in that history is pretty dramatically changed in his movies a lot of the times. Basically, Sharon Tate ��DZ����’t die by the Manson family in this story, and instead they go to Rick Dalton’s house and then they all promptly die by the combined efforts of Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth. I know this fairy tale, “what if?�� vibe is kind of the whole point, but it felt really odd to me. Like Tarantino was basically saying “well, this terrible tragedy wouldn’t have happened if my super badass made-up character was there to save the day!�� Like�� okay? It also ��DZ����’t help that Sharon Tate is barely in both the movie and the book, removing her as a player in a story that supposedly hinges on what �徱���’t happen to her. The whole thing just had me like, ��so~oo, what was the point of any of this?�� Very, very bizarre.

This is the part where I talk about the novelization (yuck):

But hey! The real question is how good is this specific book version of the movie? …Yeah well, it’s fine. It’s still very much a Quentin Tarantino story, with all the good and bad that comes with it. The casual misogyny, the racism, the homophobia, it’s all there. Usually, these things are excused by stating that it’s “historically accurate,�� but without the actors here to lessen the blows and add some kind of nuance to the characters, it’s just that�� casual misogyny, racism, and homophobia. Only, it’s on the page this time around. Otherwise, it certainly reads like a book. Which I’m aware ��DZ����’t sound like high praise, but of the few novelizations I’ve read, they mostly just recount things that happened in the movie verbatim, without doing its own thing or adding new interesting context to the characters. So, the changes to the movie’s structure were definitely unique in this instance, though I think that even though there’s a lot of backstory (pretty much the whole book) given to characters like Rick Dalton or Cliff Booth, I found that I wasn’t all that interested in them outside of the context of the film. I guess what I’m trying to say is that they were made boring in this book version, which is about the worst thing I could say about a Tarantino character.

I mean, the only reason anybody would read the book was for further insight on the characters! And unfortunately, their inner-monologues only helped to display just how shallow they really were in the end. At least the movie version allowed for a modicum of mystery around these two that made them seem like they had something more going on than we see on the screen! I don't know, there was this weird balancing act in the book version where it felt like there was too much detail, but also like there was something key missing. You get all the movie nerd babble that his movies are known for, but none of the aesthetics. The story was definitely made more interesting by the banging soundtrack of the film, that's for sure. So much so that I didn't even realize that I missed it until halfway through the book! Not even playing my Dad Rock playlist while reading this helped! So I think I’ll stick to the movie from now on. In other words, the book definitely showcases how collaborative Tarantino movies are and just how much his material gets elevated by the camera work and the music and the actors he works with. And, and, and! He said it himself; certain actors make his dialogue ��sing.�� Phew, now that I’ve talked myself to exhaustion, I’ll just end it by saying that the movie was pretty good and the book was pretty meh. I’m going to go watch Jackie Brown now, bye.