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

Uncharacteristically, Cliff snorted dismissively, “That guy ain’t fuckin’ shit! It might as well be Russ Tamblyn out there. The guy’s just a fuckin’ dancer. Send Twinkle Toes back to West Side Story .”

Rick countered, “That guy’s fast as fuck. Those kicks are great.”

“They look great—in a movie,” Cliff schooled. “There ain’t no power in that shit. Yeah, he’s fast, I’ll give you that. But fast patty-cake is still patty-cake. None of these karate faggots are worth a shit in a real fight . Judo’s a little different. With judo, you deal with a guy who don’t know what he’s doing, you can toss him around a little bit. But none of these karate faggots have any power in their kicks, and not a single one of them can take a punch to save their life.” Then Cliff points at Kato for emphasis. “Least of all that midget there.”

Cliff rarely went on a tear, so when he did, Rick let him rant himself out.

“Hand-to-hand combat, man. That’s where it’s at. A fucking Green Beret would scramble his eggs. Everything he does is for show.

“Everything Ali or Jerry Quarry does is to inflict punishment. Everything a Green Beret does is to kill. I’d like to see that faggot in the jungle, fightin’ a Jap who outweighs him by thirty pounds with a knife in his hand and murder on his mind.” Cliff snorted, “That happens, the Green Hornet’s lookin’ for a new chauffeur.”

“Okay, look,” Rick offered, “maybe in a kill-or-be-killed situation you might be right—”

“I am right,” Cliff interrupted.

“Nevertheless,” Rick continued, “those fast kicks are impressive.”

“Stretching,” Cliff said dismissively. “It’s all stretching. I come over to your house and stretch you out for three hours a day, Monday through Friday. In three months you can do every fuckin’ thing he can do.”

Rick gave him a skeptical look, and Cliff backtracked a bit.

“Okay, maybe not everything . But close enough.”

The fight between Cliff and Bruce occurred when Cliff was on the set of The Green Hornet, doubling for Rick. Bruce, as usual, was holding court with the crew about his prowess. And then somebody asked him the single question that people asked Bruce all the time: Who would win in a fight between him and Ali? Bruce was constantly asked this question. And depending on the time and his mood, his answer was different. Later, on the set of Enter the Dragon , when John Saxon asked him the question , Bruce supposedly said, “His fists are bigger than my head.” But Bruce admired Ali’s ability and made it a point to study 16mm films of Ali’s fights. And in examining those films, he had made a discovery: Ali dropped his left.

In a boxing ring, he knew, Ali would murder him.

But frankly, Bruce felt there was nobody he couldn’t defeat in a fight. The trick would be to fight Ali without boxing gloves and to allow Bruce kicking privileges.

So when asked on the set of The Green Hornet that day, he said, “If put in a room and told anything goes? I’d beat him senseless.”

And Cliff—this day-player stuntman—laughed.

Bruce asked him, “What was so funny?”

For one small moment Cliff tried to deflect the confrontation. “Hey, man, I’m just here to do a job.”

But that wasn’t good enough for Bruce. “But you’re laughing at what I’m saying, but I didn’t say anything funny.”

“Yeah, ya kinda did.” Cliff smirked.

A pissed-off Bruce asked the stuntman, “What do you think is so funny?”

Okay, here it goes , Cliff thought.

“I think you ought to be embarrassed to suggest you’d be anything but a stain on the seat of Muhammad Ali’s trunks.”

All eyes on the set shifted to Bruce.

But Cliff, who knew from this point on his job was kaput, felt he might as well get his money’s worth, so he continued, “A little squirt like you is gonna beat the heavyweight champion of the world senseless? A fucking actor is going to beat Ali senseless? Fuck Ali—Jerry Quarry would pound you like a nail! Let me ask you something, Kato: Have you ever taken a serious punch?”

An angry Bruce answered back, “No, I haven’t, stuntman . Because people can’t hit me!”

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” Cliff said.

Cliff looked to the wide-eyed crew members watching all this. “I can’t believe you buy the horseshit this squirt’s dishing out.”

Turning back to Bruce, “Get real, man. You’re a fucking actor ! You get a black eye, the fight’s over. You get a loose tooth, the fight’s over. Jerry Quarry will fight five rounds with fucking Muhammad Ali with a broken jaw! You know why? Because he’s got somethin’ you don’t know shit about— heart !”

Bruce, in his chauffeur’s outfit, took a cool-guy pose, looked at the ground, shook his head, then looked at the stuntman and smiled, saying, “You got a big mouth, stuntman . And I’d really love closing it, especially in front of all my friends. But, you see, my hands are registered as lethal weapons. That means, we get into a fight and I accidentally kill you, I go to jail.”

Cliff came back with, “Anybody accidentally kills anybody in a fight they go to jail. It’s called manslaughter. And I think all that ‘lethal weapon’ horseshit is just an excuse so you dancers never hafta get into a real fight.”

Okay, now that was an actual challenge, made in front of a handful of Bruce’s colleagues. So Bruce offered Cliff a “friendly contest.” Two out of three falls. Nobody tries to hurt anybody. Who just ends up on their butt.

“You’ve got it, Kato,” was Cliff’s reply.

Under the excited eyes of the crew, the two men prepared to face off against each other. What Bruce didn’t know was, Cliff loved two-out-of-three challenges. Though they usually took place in the parking lots of bars at one in the morning. Whenever Cliff engaged in this style of contest, especially with somebody who had some fight training, he deployed a sneaky technique that was so obvious he’s surprised it always works.

The technique is simple.

He gives them the first fall.

He offers very little resistance and prepares himself to withstand whatever they give. He offers so little resistance that the opponent, especially if they’re a skilled fighter, assumes Cliff is just some barroom tough guy in way over his head.

Cliff also knows in this type of contest his opponent will use whatever moves, or combination of moves, he’s the most confident with. So after the first fall, Cliff’s opponent has usually shown him his big move .

And if Cliff appears untrained and the guy’s confident about putting Cliff away, nineteen times outta twenty the other guy will use the exact same move again. And now that Cliff knows what it is, he waits for it, counters it, and drops the fucker on his ass.

From Bruce’s perspective, he had no intention of hurting this loudmouth honky. He just wanted to shut his big mouth and make him look a little foolish in front of the crew. For one, it would mean big trouble for Bruce if he hurt this guy. The stuntmen were already complaining about Bruce hitting them and were informing Randy Lloyd, the stunt gaffer, that they didn’t want to work with him. Plus, from showing off on the set, Bruce had accidentally dislocated a set designer’s jaw with a mistimed kick. If Bruce broke anybody else’s jaw on the set, his ass would be grass.

So the Little Dragon decided the best plan of action was something that would look good but ultimately wouldn’t hurt the guy. Just knock him off-balance. But at the same time show this asshole a demonstration of who he was dealing with.