Quentin Tarantino is Releasing a 'Once Upon A Time' Novel Exploring Cliff Booth's Past
Quentin Tarantino described the novel during a recent podcast appearance.
On Tuesday, award-winning director Quentin Tarantino joined the Pure Cinema Podcastwith hosts Elric Kane and Brian Saur. In the episode, the trio discussed notable directors' final films, and in the meantime, he discussed the forthcoming novel, a reimagining of his Academy Award-winning film Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. The book will be available in paperback and audiobook on June 29th.
"I'm really happy with it," Tarantino said. "I'm really proud of it. I think if you’re a fan of the movie, I think you will get a kick out of reading the book, and exploring the characters further and deeper, and learning secrets that you didn’t know, and were not in the movie.”
Tarantino promises a new experience for fans who are already familiar with the film. "“It’s not just me taking the screenplay and then breaking it down in a novelistic form," he explained. "So it’s not like, ‘Oh, OK, well he obviously had a few scenes left over, so he just took the screenplay and novelized it and threw in a few extra scenes.’ It was a complete rethinking of the entire story and not just a rethinking as far as throwing some scenes that were left out of the editing room. But I did so much research.”
The new novel will further explore Brad Pitt's character, Cliff Booth. In January 2020, Tarantino hinted at a four-hour director's cut of the movie being added to streaming platforms. Those plans were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In the movie, Cliff is a real enigma, you’re kind of like, what’s this guy’s deal?” he said. “And one of the things in the book is, there’s these isolated chapters that tell you, like, this whole chapter will be about Cliff’s past. It goes back in time to tell you about Cliff at this point in time. And then you go further on with the normal run of the story and there’s another chapter that goes back in time and tells you about Cliff’s past. And every isolated chapter that’s just about Cliff’s past is like a weird little pulp novel unto itself starring Cliff.”