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

But it wasn’t till three years ago that one of Lancer’s former Pinkerton detectives sent him a telegram that informed the cattle baron that his long-lost son was indeed alive and living under the name Johnny Madrid .

The old man cried for three days, with nobody on the ranch understanding why.

However, now that Murdock Lancer’s battle with Caleb DeCoteau and his land pirates had graduated from the simple loss of cows to the tragic loss of life, it was only a matter of time before the cattle baron hired killers of his own. But before that inevitable day arrived, Murdock had one crazy idea. He would track down and get word to his two long-lost sons, John and Scott. He’d wire them enough money to travel to Lancer Ranch, with an offer of a thousand dollars apiece for just listening to his proposition.

His offer was simple. Help him defend the ranch against Caleb and his killers, and once they’d driven off these pirates, Murdock would equally share his entire empire with his two sons. It was a generous offer, but it was no gift. They’d have to earn it. And they’d have to keep from getting killed by Caleb and his boys.

But if they were willing to help Murdock prevail against these rascals and were willing to put in the blood, sweat, and tears it took to run a successful ranch this size, all three Lancer men would be equal partners. And if all these things miraculously worked out, Murdock Lancer and his long-lost sons would finally, at long last, be a family.

All in all, not a bad premise for a TV series, Rick thought. Good story and good characters.

A little reminiscent of Bonanza and The High Chaparral , but darker and more violent, more cynical.

For one, Murdock Lancer is no Ben Cartwright–like, stern but fair and compassionate patriarch. He’s a real uncompromising son of a bitch. You could imagine both former wives getting fed up with his shit real quick and hightailing it away from this bitter bastard first chance they got. And the horse-faced actor Andrew Duggan (who Rick did a play with once) they got to play Murdock doesn’t have a folksy bone in his body. He’s hard as a bar of iron and about as lovable. The character of Scott Lancer is more the likable good guy found on sixties’ western shows. But his fancy Eastern-dandy wardrobe definitely gives him a different look. He makes earlier dandies like Bat Masterson and Yancy Derringer look like saddle tramps. And his past as a former Bengal Lancer is an intriguing backstory. But it’s Johnny Lancer/Johnny Madrid that is the no-shit unique western-TV-series lead. Dalton’s Jake Cahill was about as antihero as western-TV-series leads ever got. But Johnny Lancer/Johnny Madrid, at least in the pilot script, goes far further than Jake was ever allowed to go.

The handsome, roguish, mysterious Johnny Lancer who steps off the Royo del Oro stage is the type of character that usually guest-stars on western TV shows, not stars in them. That type of character usually shows up on Bonanza ’s Ponderosa Ranch, or The Big Valley ’s Barkley Ranch, or The Virginian ’s Shiloh Ranch, and they’re young, cocky, sexy, and a little dubious. They make friends with Little Joe, or Heath, or Trampas, but at some point, usually in the first act, we learn they have some sort of dark secret. They’re either on the run from somebody or from something, or they’re running from who they were or something they did or didn’t do. Or they’re in the area for some clandestine reason (usually revenge, planning a robbery, or to meet somebody from their past). We (the audience) know they’re shady. But we also know we’ll have to wait till the third act before we find out: Is the character a bad guy or a misunderstood good guy? And in the third act, Michael Landon or Lee Majors or Doug McClure either helps them redeem themselves or shoots them dead. These characters are always the best roles on the show, and the guys who specialized in playing them usually went on to become stars (Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Darren McGavin, Vic Morrow, Robert Culp, Brian Keith, and David Carradine).

But the role of Johnny Lancer, while written like a guest star, is the no-shit lead of the fucking series. And he’s not anything like any of the other cowboys riding the range on the big three networks.

Whoever this fucking guy Jim Stacy is , Rick thinks, he sure fell into a big piss pot full of luck when he landed this role.

But Caleb DeCoteau isn’t just a standard-issue heavy either. It’s a damn good part and he has some of the script’s best dialogue. As he walks the dusty deserted streets of Royo del Oro, Rick goes over some of his lines, making his way to the saloon on the western back-lot set. As he walks by one of the western businesses on the main drag, he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the glass of one of the windows. The sight makes him stop for a moment and examine it.

Looking at the end result in the makeup-trailer mirror, surrounded by the wig girl and the wardrobe girl and the director, he wasn’t that keen on the results. Unless somebody reads it in TV Guide, who the fuck’s gonna even know it’s me , is what Rick really thought. But now he’s gotten a little more used to it, walking around ( the boots feel good ), seeing himself reflected in the western-styled picture window surrounded by a Wild West environment, this look ain’t bad . He liked the hat from the get-go, but it’s the brown hippie jacket that’s really growing on him. The fringe hanging off the sleeves is pretty swell. He starts pointing and gesturing with his arms and watching the effect in the window reflection. The way the dangling fringe emphasizes his movements is pretty neat. He can do a lot with that. Not too shabby, Rebekkah , Rick thinks. He also thinks:

It doesn’t look like me. But maybe Sam’s right, that ain’t such a bad thing. It does look like Caleb. Maybe not the Caleb I pictured in my mind when I first read the script. That Caleb just looked like me. I mean, if they want me, they want it to look like me, right?

But maybe Sam has a point. At least when Johnny Lancer kills me, he won’t be killing Jake Cahill.

But staring at Caleb in the window staring back at Rick, he sees something else. He sees a little of what Marvin Schwarz was talking to him about in his office yesterday. At one point he called Rick “an Eisenhower actor in a Dennis Hopper Hollywood.”

Looking at his reflection in his whole Caleb DeCoteau regalia, he understands a little more clearly, and a little less defensively, what Marvin Schwarz was getting at. Shaggy-haired guys are the style of the day. And that guy in the window in the fringe jacket could be Michael Sarrazin. Sans pompadour, Rick looks not only like a different character but a different actor. He’s worn his hair the same way for so long, somewhere along the line the pompadour became him. But now? Examining his reflection in the window without it? He doesn’t look so much like an aging cowboy actor from the fifties anymore. He kinda looks like a with-it modern actor. This guy isn’t an Eisenhower relic. This guy could be in a Sam Peckinpah movie.

After Rick tears himself away from his own reflection in the window and the reflections about his career in his head, he spots Caleb’s commandeered saloon, the Gilded Lily, out of which his character runs his murderous gang of rustlers. As he approaches the front porch of the saloon set, he sees a director’s chair with his character’s name on it. On TV shows, series regulars get a director’s chair with the actor’s name written on it. But guest stars usually get chairs with their character’s name on it, because oftentimes they’re not cast till a few days before.