Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: A Novel

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-20

Chapters 21-25

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Background

Cultural Context: Novelization of the Film

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a novelization of the 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino began writing the film, which focuses on the end of Hollywood’s golden era, in a novel format before he wrote the screenplay. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton, Brad Pitt as Cliff Booth, and Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate. Since Tarantino was a child in 1969, he recreated the film from his romanticized memory of the city, before events such as the Manson murders ruined these fantasies. The 1968 spaghetti Western film Once Upon a Time in the West inspired the novel’s title, which evokes the idea of a fairy-tale retelling of Hollywood’s glory days.

The novel follows the main plot of the film, with a few major differences. In the film, Cliff Booth and Rick Dalton kill three members of the Manson family after they enter Dalton’s house in the penultimate scene, providing the film’s dramatic (and graphically violent) climax, and the last scene depicts Sharon Tate inviting Dalton to have a drink at her house. In the novel, the attack happens much earlier in the novel, in Chapter 7, in reference to a future event, and the novel ends with Rick running lines with Trudi over the phone and Rick’s realization of how lucky he is to have the job of his dreams. The other major difference between the novel and the film is that in the novel Tarantino gives more insight into Cliff’s history, particularly about his wife’s murder.

Historical Context: 1960s Hollywood and the Manson Family

The novel’s setting is 1960s Los Angeles during the height of the hippie movement and Hollywood’s golden era. The hippie counterculture movement in the 1960s focused on sexual freedom and antiwar sentiments. Many people were suspicious of hippies, and this suspicion only grew after Charles Manson recruited hippies to join his “Family.” Several of the novel’s characters are historical figures that Tarantino uses to situate the plot in the events of the Manson murders.

Charles Manson was the leader of the Manson Family, which was the name he gave to his commune of followers. Under the influence of drugs and brainwashing, Manson convinced several of these members to commit murders across Los Angeles, the first and most famous of which were the Tate murders in the Hollywood Hills. On August 9, 1969, members of the Manson Family murdered Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folgers, Steven Parent, and Wojciech Frykowsk at the Polanski residence (though Tarantino’s novel and film don’t replicate these murders, instead featuring Tate inviting Rick Dalton to her home after members of the Manson Family invade his home). The graphic nature of the Tate murders, especially given the fame of Sharon Tate (who was eight months pregnant) and the other Manson murders that followed several days afterward, incited panic and fear throughout Los Angeles mainly because of the randomness and unpredictability of the violence. The Manson murders, followed by the highly publicized trials of the culprits, marked the downfall of mutual love and acceptance that had arisen in Los Angeles as a result of the hippie movement. Tarantino marks this shift by presenting Hollywood before the murders as a paradise that Manson tainted through his violence.