Квентин Тарантино - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - The First Novel By Quentin Tarantino

Later, Rick asked Cliff, did he fuck Miss Himmelsteen?

“Naw,” was Cliff’s reply.

But he did tell Rick she sucked his cock in his Karmann Ghia on the drive back to her home in Brentwood, but that was their only date.

By 1972, Janet Himmelsteen would become a full-fledged agent at the William Morris Agency, and by 1975 she would become one of their top talent agents.

From that point on, she kept her blow jobs above the line .

Chapter Three

Cielo Drive

Rick Dalton’s 1964 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, with his driver Cliff Booth behind the wheel, pulls out of the underground parking lot of the William Morris building onto Charleville, then turns one block down onto Wilshire Boulevard.

As the vintage Cadillac and the two vintage guys drive down the busy street, the hippie subculture that has invaded the town in a locust-like swarm proceeds to parade down the sidewalk in their blankets and frocks and dirty bare feet. Troubled Rick Dalton, who still hasn’t shared the reason for his anxiety with his buddy Cliff, glances out the car-door window and comments on the hippie passersby with disgust. “Just look at all these fuckin’ weirdos. You know, this town useta be a nice fuckin’ place to live in. Now look at it.” Then he remarks with fascistic disdain, “I swear they oughta line ’em up against a wall and shoot ’em all.”

They turn off of busy Wilshire and make their way back to Rick’s home on Cielo Drive, taking calmer residential streets. Rick rips a cigarette out of his pack of Capitol W’s, tosses it in his mouth, and lights it up with his Zippo, then snaps the silver lid closed in his tough-guy way. As he sucks the smoke a quarter down, he says to his driver, “Well, it’s official, ol’ buddy.” His nose does a loud snot sniffle. “I’m a has-been.”

Cliff tries to console his boss. “C’mon, partner, what are you talkin’ about? What did that guy tell ya?”

Rick spits out, “He told me the goddamn truth, that’s what he told me!”

Cliff asks, “What’s got you so upset?”

Rick spins his head in his buddy’s direction. “Comin’ face-to-face with how I threw my whole goddamn career in the toilet, that’s what’s got me so fuckin’ upset!”

“So what happened?” Cliff asks. “That guy in there turn you down?”

Rick takes another deep drag off his cigarette. “No, he wants to help me get into Italian movies.”

Quick comeback from Cliff: “Then what’s the problem?”

Rick screams, “I gotta do fuckin’ Italian movies, that’s the goddamn fuckin’ problem!”

Cliff decides to keep driving and let Rick blow off steam. The actor sucks down another lungful of smoke while simultaneously feeling sorry for himself. As he exhales, he chronicles, “Five years of ascent. Ten years of treading water. And now a race to the bottom.”

While negotiating Los Angeles traffic, Cliff offers up some perspective. “Look, I ain’t never had much of a career to speak of, so I can’t rightly say I know how you feel—”

Rick interrupts, “Whaddaya mean? You’re my stunt double.”

Cliff tells it like it is: “Rick, I’m your driver. Since Green Hornet and since your driver’s license got taken away, that’s what I am. I’m your gofer. I’m not complaining. I like driving you around. To the set and back. To auditions. To meetings and shit. I like house-sitting in the Hollywood Hills when you’re gone. But I ain’t been a full-time stuntman for a while now. So from where I’m standing, goin’ to Rome to star in movies doesn’t sound like the fate worse than death that you seem to think it is.”

Rick counters quickly, “Have you ever seen an Italian western?” Then, answering his own question, “They’re awful! It’s a fuckin’ farce.”

“Oh yeah?” Cliff counters back. “How many you seen? One? Two?”

Rick says with authority, “I’ve seen enough! Nobody likes spaghetti westerns.”

Under his breath, Cliff says, “I bet some Italians kinda like ’em.”

“Look,” Rick says, “I grew up watchin’ Hopalong Cassidy and Hoot Gibson. Watchin’ a wop western, directed by Guido DeFatso, starring Mario Bananano, ain’t gonna ring my fuckin’ bell.” Finishing his Italian tirade as he flicks his cigarette out of the car-door window, “Understand, I’m still pissed that spaghetti bender Dean Martin’s in Rio Bravo . Forget about fuckin’ Frankie Avalon dying at the fuckin’ Alamo.”

“Again,” Cliff ventures, “I ain’t you. But it seems to me like a pretty nifty life experience.”

“What do you mean?” a genuinely curious Rick inquires.

“Photographers takin’ pictures of you all the time. Sippin’ cocktails at little tables lookin’ at the Colosseum. Eating the best pasta and pizza in the world. Fuckin’ Italian chicks.” Cliff deduces, “If you ask me, that beats hangin’ ’round Burbank, losin’ fights to Bingo Martin . ”

Rick guffaws, “Well, ya got a point there.”

Then the two men start snickering, and pretty soon a smile creeps up on Rick’s face. Cliff putting out fires for Rick has been an essential part of their dynamic since the two became a team. Sometimes those fires are figurative, like right now. But the first fire that forged their partnership was a literal fire .

It was during the third season of Bounty Law (the ’61–’62 season). Cliff Booth was brought in to double the series lead. Rick didn’t take to Cliff right off. For one really good reason: Cliff was way too handsome to be a stuntman. Bounty Law was Rick’s pussy party. He didn’t need a swingin’ dick, who looked better in Rick’s costume than Rick did, horning in on all that ample tail. But he started hearing about Cliff’s exploits in World War Two. He learned Cliff wasn’t just a hero. He was one of the biggest heroes of World War Two. He won the Medal of Valor, twice. The first time for killing Italians in Sicily. There were a lot of reasons why he was given that distinguished honor the second time. But the main reason was, except for the fellas that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, no other American soldier had more confirmed kills of Japanese enemy soldiers than Sergeant Clifford Booth.

Rick, on the other hand, would have spent months jumping off of kitchen chairs to get flat feet if he thought it would keep him out of the Army (especially during wartime). Nevertheless, he admired men who served and served with distinction.

But the fire that forged the bond between the two men happened about a month into Cliff’s time on Bounty Law. One of the episodic directors on the show, Virgil Vogel, had an idea that the series’ main character, Jake Cahill, would wear a big winter jacket and the jacket would be dyed nurse-shoe-polish white. Now, in real life it would look ridiculous. But on black-and-white film it would look kind of neat. However, wardrobe took so long preparing the jacket, it wasn’t ready for Vogel’s episode. So the producers just earmarked it for the following episode. And on the following episode, at the end, Jake Cahill gets set on fire. Everybody thought that would be a good way to utilize this big winter coat they spent so much time prepping.

Cliff was ready, willing, and able to do the fire gag. But after it was explained to Rick what was entailed and what to expect, the actor decided he’d give it a whirl. So fire accelerant was placed on the back of Jake’s big white winter coat, far away from his face and hair.

However, what nobody on the crew knew—not even the wardrobe department, because they had sent the jacket out to get dyed—was the white dye they used was 65 percent alcohol-based. They didn’t know and nobody told them because there wasn’t a fire gag in the episode that the white garment was originally planned for. So with Rick inside, when they touched a flame to the back of Jake’s jacket, it burst into a blazing Roman candle.