Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

I had forgotten the novel was going to be a thing, so I was pleasantly surprised to bump into it on a grocery store shelf a couple weeks ago. An appropriate location to find it given the mass market drugstore paperback look of the book.

The book expands on Cliff Booth's backstory and focuses more on Rick Dalton's coming to terms with where his career is heading. There is some substantial re-jigging of the plot so ultimately the Manson family and Sharon Tate stories could've been excised completely and the book would've been better off for it. Some things don't work here either - there are three unnecessary chapters completely set in the world of Lancer, and the precocious child actor didn't work for me in the film. Her role is greatly expanded here.

Overall, a fun read. Not great as a novel. Tarantino digresses too much into asides about B movie directors and TV stars for it to work as a novel, but those digressions were probably my favourite parts of the book. His writing of certain female characters feels much more cringy on the page than on screen (He twice mentions a character's “dirty soiled panties”) and the crudity can get a bit eye-rolling at times, but I would definitely read more from him if he goes down this route.