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

William Holden in The Wild Bunch led a band of bastard murderers. His first line in the film, in regard to the innocent customers of the bank they’re robbing: “If they move, kill ’em!”

Henry Fonda started his performance in Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West by shooting a five-year-old boy in the face.

Actors who had spent their careers playing villains in both western movies and practically every western show on television, like Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Lee Van Cleef, and James Coburn, were now suddenly the heroes … and the movie stars!

And the villains of these new westerns weren’t just bad men; they were bloodthirsty, sadistic maniacs. And any parallel with hot-button political issues of the time was encouraged. In Little Big Man and Soldier Blue , they fought the Vietnam War. In Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here , Robert Blake’s Indian on the run from “the man” was a de facto Black Panther. And when characters got killed in these movies, they didn’t just clutch their bellies, grimace and groan, then slowly fall to the ground. They got the shit blown out of them and the blood sprayed across the screen. If Sam Peckinpah was behind the camera, they got the shit blown out of them at a hundred and twenty frames per second, and the spurting red blood squibs achieved a visual poetry beyond mere Don Siegel–style brutality.

Naturally, Sam Wanamaker couldn’t achieve much of that for a CBS television series airing at 7:30 on Sunday nights. But he could strive for the ambiance of this new style of western. And he intended to do it in two ways. One was the look, especially in regard to the costumes. And two was in the personification of one of his three series leads, Jim Stacy’s character Johnny Lancer aka Johnny Madrid. Of all the western series on television during that time (and actually Lancer marked the beginning of the end of that time), Johnny Lancer was hands down the closest thing to an antihero in the entire genre.

It was this shady aspect to the character that excited both Stacy and Wanamaker. And an idea that both men had to exploit this aspect of the character was to give Johnny Lancer a mustache. Now, Jim Stacy wanted Johnny Lancer to have a mustache for more than just integrity-of-characterization concerns. One of the clichés of the sixties’ western TV series was when casting the two leads, almost always, one had dark hair and one had light. Stacy’s co-star Wayne Maunder, who played his half brother, Scott Lancer, was the light-haired lead. And Jim was the brunette. But Jim also knew if he wore a mustache he’d draw the audience’s attention away from his co-star even more and break further new ground.

The network told both Stacy and Wanamaker, “Nice try. But no fucking way. You want to put a mustache on somebody, you put it on the heavy.”

And now here we are, first day on the set and Rick Dalton looking fly as fuck in his brown rawhide fringe-style jacket, sporting a fabulous soup catcher that they’d never let Stacy wear in a million years. Those fucking assholes , Stacy thinks. One of these days they’re going to let some numbnuts wear a mustache on his show; then everybody’s going to be wearing mustaches. And that numbnuts could be me!

But there’s more in Stacy’s racing mind than just Rick’s mustache. He was going over his lines last night for their big scene together, and it hit Jim that Dalton had all the best lines. Sam acted contrite to Stacy when the network nixed the mustache idea. But the director couldn’t hide his excitement at the news that they were casting Rick Dalton as Caleb.

So much so that now Jim thinks, rather than introducing Johnny Lancer, it’s subverting Rick Dalton’s persona that his director is the most excited about. And it’s this thought that can’t help but run through the actor’s mind as he sits on his set, on the first day of his series, and he watches Rick Dalton and his director sitting in director’s chairs, laughing it up and chatting away like this is their fifth film together. What the fuck’s up between these guys? Stacy wonders as he sips his soda.

Right then, Trudi Frazer, the little actor who plays his half sister, Mirabella Lancer, comes skipping up to Jim and plops herself in his lap.

“What’s up, doc?” she asks. She notices he’s staring in the direction of the actor playing Caleb and the director Sam, sitting in their director’s chairs, gregariously shooting the breeze.

“Sizing up your competition?” she cheekily inquires.

Tearing his eyes away, he looks down at the little girl in his lap and says, “What’s up, squirt?”

“Well,” she observes, “I could see you getting all puffy-chested over Caleb from across the set. So I thought I’d come over here and give your feathers a few loving pets.”

He doesn’t protest to the child that he’s not bugged looking at his dramatic antagonist. Instead, he tells her, “I can’t believe they put that goddamn mustache on him.” Stacy spits out, “I wanted Johnny Madrid to have a mustache. Fuckin’ know-nothings at the network wouldn’t go for it.”

She asks Jim, “Have you met the actor playing Caleb?”

“Not yet,” he says.

“Well”—extending her arm toward the furry-faced actor—“He’s right over there. What are you waiting for?” she challenges. “This is your show. He’s your guest. Go over and introduce yourself and welcome him aboard.”

“I will, honey,” he promises. “He’s talking to Sam right now.”

She shakes her head from side to side in a tsk-tsk manner, then murmurs under her breath, “Excuses, excuses, excuses.”

“Hey, squirt, I’m gonna do it,” he says, getting irritated. “Get off my back.”

Trudi puts up her hands. “Okay, okay, okay,” she says. “It’s your show, you know what you’re doing. Take your time.”

Jim Stacy huffs and takes a swig from the small green 7 Up bottle.

Trudi wiggles in his lap and asks, “Do you know Caleb as an actor?”

“As an actor?” he repeats. “Of course I do—”

She quickly interrupts him. “Don’t tell me his real name,” she warns. “I want him to just be Caleb to me!”

“Well, in that case,” he explains, “ Caleb had a cowboy show of his own about six years ago.”

She asks Jim Stacy sincerely, “Was he good on it?”

Jim glances over at Rick Dalton looking really hip and really different in his Caleb costume, wearing the mustache he wanted to wear, getting on like a house on fire with his director, and says, more to himself than to her, “He wasn’t bad.”

Rick Dalton sits in his director’s chair, in the shade, in his Caleb costume, reading his paperback, Ride a Wild Bronc . As he reads, killing time before his first big scene (the 1st AD told him they’d probably get to it in about an hour and a half), he contemplates the book more seriously than he’d done before his emotional encounter with the little girl. The little girl was right, this is a pretty frickin’ good novel. And Tom “Easy” Breezy is a pretty frickin’ good character. Like maybe it might be worth trying to get the rights and make a movie out of it, with Rick playing Easy Breezy. Maybe he could talk Paul Wendkos into directing it.

His first scene of the day is also his first appearance in the story. And it’s a pretty nifty introduction scene. Before we meet his character, he’s been talked about by a lot of the other characters. And that always sets up excitement for when the character is finally revealed to the audience. If this were a movie, he would have demanded that this scene not be shot on the first fucking day! But this is TV, and on TV they don’t shoot a script, they shoot a schedule. And if your big scene makes sense to do the first day—even first thing in the morning—that’s how they’re doing it. In the scene, he deals with two actors, James Stacy playing series lead Johnny Lancer, and Bruce Dern playing his henchman Bob “the Businessman” Gilbert. Rick has known Bruce going on a few years now (everybody knows fucking Bruce Dern). And Rick knows the co-lead Wayne Maunder from when Wayne starred in his earlier show, where he played Custer. Rick never appeared on it, but his buddy Ralph Meeker did. And one night when Dalton and Meeker were sippin’ sauce at the Riverbottom Bar and Grill (across the street from Burbank Studios), Maunder came in and joined Rick and Ralph for a couple of drinks. Rick and Wayne hadn’t seen each other since that night, so they traded hellos and Wayne welcomed him on the show. As did Andrew Duggan, who plays patriarch Murdock Lancer (Duggan had appeared twice on Bounty Law ). Once Dalton got out of the makeup trailer, he and Duggan smoked cigarettes and caught up. Dalton congratulated Duggan on what looks to be a successful new series. But Rick Dalton has yet to officially meet his co-star, James Stacy.