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

He spits out a green loogie mixed with red and turns back to Cliff behind the wheel. The actor leans down and talks to his assistant through the open passenger window. “I think the wind blew down my TV antenna last night. You think you’d mind goin’ home and fixin’ it?”

“I can and I will,” Cliff assures him. Then, asking Rick as nonchalantly as he can, “Could you talk to the stunt gaffer about me today? That way I know if I’m workin’ this week or not?”

There was a time when Cliff’s involvement on one of Rick’s projects was contractually negotiated. If Rick was playing the role, then Cliff was doubling him. On the Universal films, it was negotiated into Rick’s contract and there was a chair on the set with Cliff’s name on it. But it ain’t been that time in a long time. Now that Rick is guesting on other people’s television shows, Cliff isn’t guaranteed jack shit. Most TV-show stunt gaffers had their own crew, and most TV-show stunt gaffers’ first priority was looking after their crew. If Cliff was going to get a couple of days on Tarzan or Bingo Martin , it was because Rick had a word with the stunt gaffer and talked him into it.

Rick sighs. “Yeah, I been meaning to tell you”— avoid it was closer to the truth—“the guy who gaffs this show is best friends with Randy. You know, the gaffer from The Green Hornet ?”

Knowing what that means, Cliff says, “Fuck!”

“So, there really ain’t no point,” Rick says pragmatically.

Cliff curses bitterly, “That fuckin’ little nip.” Then he turns his bitterness onto himself. “Why do I care if the Green Hornet’s fuckin’ chauffeur thinks he can wipe Ali’s ass? I mean, Jesus-fuckin’-Christ, the heavyweight champion of the world needs me to fuckin’ defend him?”

“Especially at the expense of your career and my fuckin’ reputation,” Rick adds, getting irritated all over again. “I practically had to suck Randy’s cock to get you that gig,” Rick remembers. “And what do you do? You practically break that little big mouth’s back. End result, you get blackballed from three-quarters of the shows in town and I look like a fuckin’ asshole. But you showed him,” Rick finishes sarcastically.

“Look, man,” the stuntman raises his palms flat out in surrender, “when you’re right you’re right, and you’re right.”

Rick tells Cliff an old acting story, oblivious to the fact that he’s told Cliff this exact same story three times before.

Listening to Rick tell the same stories and anecdotes, pretending to be unaware of the repetition, is practically part of Cliff’s job description. And, to be ungenerous, a sign of Rick’s low intelligence.

“I’m doin’ my first decent part in a feature,” Rick begins, “ Battle of the Coral Sea with Cliff Robertson, directed by Paul Wendkos. I’m doing one of my first real parts, for the guy who’s gonna turn out being my favorite director. In a real studio movie, Columbia Pictures—a Columbia B-movie, but still, not Republic, not AIP, fuckin’ Columbia Pictures.”

Cliff looks up from the driver’s seat at his boss, settling himself in to hear the same story for the fourth time.

“So anyway, I’m excited as all fuckin’ hell. Except there’s this fuckin’ 2nd AD on the picture, who’s a real horse’s ass. And this fucker is fuckin’ with me the whole time. Not Tommy Laughlin, definitely not Cliff Robertson—he’s practically suckin’ Cliff’s cock! He’s not fucking with anybody else. Just me!”

Rick continues, “It’s shitty, it’s unfair, and finally I’ve fuckin’ had it. So I’m having lunch with this chubby guy on the movie, a William Witney regular, Gordon Jones. Been around a real long time, been in eighty fuckin’ movies, a real good cat. So I tell Jones I’m waiting for this fuckin’ prick to say one more word to me, just one more fuckin’ word , and I’m gonna fuckin’ lay ’em out!”

Now Rick gets to the moral of the story: “And Jones tells me, yeah, you could do that. And yeah, you could probably take ’em. And yeah, he deserves it. But, before you lay him out on the job, take your SAG card outta your wallet, light a match, and set it on fire. Because, since basically that’s what you’ll be doin’, you might as well go all the way.”

Cliff repeats the sentiment from before. “I get it, I get it. Who fuckin’ cares what that little prick says?”

“I mean, Jesus Christ on a fuckin’ crutch,” Rick says. “If every time a series lead made a big claim about something they obviously couldn’t do, somebody took a poke at them, no work would ever get done. Bob Conrad and Darren McGavin wouldn’t be able to get through a fuckin’ week without some wrangler brainin’ them.” Rick illustrates, “That midget playing Kato, he’s a fucking actor ! Any actor claiming to do anything , except saying lines other people wrote, is full of fucking shit. And most of them can’t even fucking do that!”

Rick counts off on his fingers the actors who know what they’re talking about. “You wanna talk to Audie Murphy about killing dudes, he could tell ya. You wanna talk to Jim Brown about running touchdowns, he could tell ya. You wanna talk to Sonja Henie about ice skating, she could tell ya. You wanna talk to Esther Williams about fucking swimming, go ahead. But everybody else is fuckin’ faking it. And if anybody should fucking know that, it’s a goddamn war-hero stuntman!”

Cliff smiles up at his boss and repeats in his Zen-like manner, “Like I said, when you’re right, you’re right.”

“Darn tootin’ I’m right,” Rick says.

Changing the subject, Cliff asks, “Well, if you don’t need me for anything else, I’ll just pick you up at wrap?”

“Naw,” Rick confirms. “Just see what you can do about that damn antenna and I’ll see you at wrap.” Then Rick asks, “When’s wrap today?”

“Seven-thirty,” Cliff says.

“See ya then,” and Rick walks off toward the Lancer set.

Then, after a moment, Cliff calls out to him.

Rick turns around and, from behind the wheel of the Cadillac, his buddy points a strong finger at him and says, “Just remember, you’re Rick-fucking-Dalton ! Don’t you forget that!”

That makes the actor smile. He gives his buddy a little salute, then the Coupe de Ville drives away and the actor reports for work.

Sitting in a chair in front of a vanity mirror in the Lancer makeup trailer, Rick dunks his face in a bowl of ice water. Supposedly, Paul Newman does this every morning. But for Newman, it’s part of his beauty regimen. For Rick, it’s to stimulate his senses out of the queasy numbness of last night’s alcohol. When his face emerges from the freezing water, he takes a couple of cubes in his hand and rubs them across his face and on the back of his neck.

Sonya, the makeup-and-hair girl on this pilot, who supplied Rick with the bowl of ice water, sits in a makeup chair three stations away, smoking a Chesterfield. Sitting in the chair next to her, waiting for the director to arrive so they can discuss Rick’s costume, is the show’s fleshy, big-haired cutie-pie costume designer, Rebekkah. If she were wearing pigtails, the outfit she has on could nab her third prize in a Wednesday Addams look-alike contest. Over the Wednesday Addams outfit, she wears a big “Wild Ones” – like black leather motorcycle jacket.

While Sonya doesn’t let on, she clearly knows the difference between a beauty ritual (Paul Newman be damned) and a hangover assistance. For one, there’s less moaning in a beauty ritual.

Just as the ice-cold stimulation is starting to penetrate Rick’s face, the door to the makeup trailer flies open, banging against the back wall, and the director of the Lancer pilot steps into the trailer with the huge theatrical flamboyance that is his customary method of entering a room.