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

In the thirties, the cinema was a vaudeville house called Slapsy Maxie’s.

In the fifties, it was where Martin and Lewis first performed in Los Angeles.

Later, in 1978, it will become a revival house called the New Beverly Cinema, showing repertory films. But in 1969 it’s called the Eros Cinema, and it is one of the erotic cinemas of Hollywood (the Vista, located where Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard meet, is another).

Not pornographic films, which would later be labeled “Triple XXX.”

But just sexy movies, usually from Europe or Scandinavia.

The Eros marquee reads:

CARROLL BAKER DOUBLE FEATURE

THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH RATED R

PLUS

PARANOIA RATED X

Cliff climbs out of the Cadillac and buys a ticket for the show at the box office. He makes his way down the darkened aisle and finds a seat in the middle of the fourth row. On the Eros’s silver screen, Carroll Baker is doing a sexy dance to tom-tom drums, dressed in a skintight emerald catsuit. Cliff throws his moccasin-covered feet over the back of the chair in front of him. As he settles down in his seat, he looks up at Carroll Baker sashaying her big green hips from side to side.

My god , he thinks, she’s as big as a horse! Then he smiles. Just the way I like ’em.

Chapter Fourteen

“The Wrecking Crew”

The 8-track tape player in Sharon Tate’s black Porsche is playing Françoise Hardy’s first album in English, Loving . The track that’s coming out of the sports car’s stereo speakers is Hardy’s version of the Phil Ochs song There but for Fortune . Sharon loves this song, and as she sits behind the wheel of the Porsche, driving down Wilshire Boulevard on her way to Westwood Village, she sings along with it.

Show me the prison, show me the jail,

Show me the prisoner whose face is growing pale,

And I’ll show you a young man with so many reasons why,

And there but for fortune, may go you or I.

Tears run down her cheeks as she sings. The actress is out running a few errands. She picked up some dry-cleaning. Three short mod-ish dresses, whose hems reach down to Sharon’s upper thigh, and Roman’s blue double-breasted blazer hang on clothes hangers wrapped in clear plastic on a hook behind the passenger seat. She also picked up a pair of chunky-heeled platform shoes from a tiny shoe repair shop located on Little Santa Monica Boulevard. And now she’s off to run her final errand of the day. She ordered a first edition of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles as a present for Roman. And the sweet old man who runs the store called the house yesterday to tell her it had arrived. So, singing along with Mademoiselle Hardy, enjoying an anxiety-free cry, Sharon races toward Westwood Village.

She spots the young hippie girl standing on the side of the road with her thumb stuck out about a mile after she turns onto Wilshire from Santa Monica Boulevard. The waify hippie looks pleasant, and Sharon is in a pleasant mood, so she thinks, Why not?

A year later, the answer to that question would be: because that hitchhiker could murder you. But in February 1969, even people who have something to steal, like Sharon in her cool black Porsche, don’t feel that way.

She pulls up to the curb in front of the sweet-looking freckle-faced hippie, hits the button to lower the passenger-side window, and informs the hitchhiker, “I’m only going as far as Westwood Village.”

The young girl bends over with her butt stuck out to look through the window frame at the driver. This young girl may be a free spirit, but she’s not just going to climb into anybody’s car. But upon seeing the beautiful blonde behind the wheel, the hippie’s smile grows wider and she says, “Hey, beggars can’t be choosers.”

Sharon smiles back at her and tells her to climb in.

The two young women chat easily together during the thirteen minutes it takes for Sharon to get to Westwood Village and park her car. The hippie girl calls herself Cheyenne, and she’s hitching up to Big Sur to meet up with a bunch of friends. They’re going to attend an outdoor music festival where Crosby, Stills and Nash (but no Young) will perform, along with the James Gang, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and the 1910 Fruitgum Company . Sharon thinks it sounds like a lot of fun. If it was two days later, after Roman left for London, she’d consider driving Cheyenne to Big Sur and joining her and her friends for the concert. She might not actually do it, but she would consider it. Sharon has always had an impulsive streak. Roman does not, and it’s one of the few things that make her cooler than her hip movie-director husband. As they drive the thirteen minutes together, they speak of Big Sur and Crosby, Stills and Nash, listen to Françoise Hardy, and eat sunflower seeds out of Cheyenne’s small leather pouch.

“Well, bye-bye, have fun at Big Sur,” are Sharon’s last words to Cheyenne as she hugs her farewell in the pay parking lot behind the Westwood Village Theatre, where a large six-sheet poster for Roman’s friend Michael Sarne’s film Joanna is fly-posted on the wall. Then, while Sharon strides into Westwood Village to complete her errands, heading west, the little hippie girl continues on her California adventure, heading north.

As Sharon’s white patent-leather go-go boots walk past head shops, coffeehouses, pizza parlors, and newspaper vending machines giving away the Los Angeles Free Press , she removes the big black bug sunglasses from her purse and puts them on to shield her eyes from the glare of the California sun. As she moves toward her destination, she notices her new movie, the Matt Helm secret-agent adventure film comedy, The Wrecking Crew , is playing at the Bruin Cinema, directly in front of her. The big marquee reads:

DEAN MARTIN AS MATT HELM

IN

THE WRECKING CREW

E. SOMMER S. TATE N. KWAN T. LOUISE

Smiling as she crosses the street, she stops in front of the drawing of herself on the film’s poster. She looks down the poster to the credit block and finds her name. She reaches out with her finger and traces it. After enjoying seeing her name, looking at an artist’s rendering of her swinging on a wrecking ball by a cartoon Dean Martin, and appreciating that the movie is playing at one of the premier Westwood houses, she trots past the cinema to the bookstore, four shops away. In Arthur’s Rare Books for Sale, the sound of the Classics IV’s Stormy emanates from the radio behind the counter. The moment Sharon walks through the door and hears Dennis Yost’s lead vocal, her body relaxes in response. Along with Art Garfunkel, Dennis Yost of the Classics IV has the prettiest voice in current rock ’n’ roll, Sharon thinks. And she thinks David Clayton-Thomas of Blood, Sweat and Tears has the sexiest.

“What can I do for you, young lady?” asks Arthur.

As she removes the sunglasses from her face, she greets the old man behind the counter. “Yes, hello, I’m here to pick up a first edition you called me about?”

“What book?” he asks.

“ Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles . I ordered it a couple of weeks ago.” Then she clarifies, “It’s under ‘Polanski.’”

“Whoa boy,” Arthur says, “now you’re talkin’ books, kiddo.”

She lights up. “I know, isn’t it wonderful? I’m getting it as a gift for my husband.”

“Well, your husband’s a lucky fella,” says Arthur. “One, I wish I could read Tess of the d’Urbervilles for the first time again. And two, I wish I was young enough to be married to a pretty little gal like you.”

Sharon smiles once more and reaches out across the counter to touch the old man’s spotted hand. He smiles too.