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

Marvin finishes, “It’s forgivable.”

Then Marvin smiles at the actor. The actor smiles back.

“But,” the agent adds, “it does require a bit of reinvention.”

“What do I hafta reinvent myself as?” Rick asks.

Marvin answers, “Somebody humble.”

Chapter Two

“I Am Curious (Cliff)”

Rick Dalton’s stunt double, forty-six-year-old Cliff Booth, sits in the waiting room of Marvin Schwarz’s office on the third floor of the William Morris Agency building, leafing through an oversized copy of Life magazine that the agent provides those who wait.

Cliff wears tight Levi’s blue jeans and a matching Levi’s blue jeans jacket over a black T-shirt. This outfit is a leftover costume from a low-budget biker flick that Cliff worked on three years earlier. Actor-director Tom Laughlin, an old buddy of Rick’s and a friend of Cliff’s (they all did The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey together), had hired Cliff to stunt-double a couple of biker characters in a motorcycle movie he was starring in and directing, The Born Losers , for American International Pictures (it would end up being AIP’s biggest hit of the year). In the film, Laughlin would play, for the first time, the character that would make him one of the most popular pop-culture movie characters of the seventies, Billy Jack. Billy Jack was a half-breed American Indian–Vietnam veteran–hapkido expert who didn’t mind demonstrating it on the violent biker gang known in the movie as the Born Losers (a stand-in for the Hells Angels).

Cliff’s job was to double one of the gang members known as Gangrene, played by David Carradine’s old buddy Jeff Cooper, who Cliff kind of looked like. However, during the last week of the shoot, Tom’s stunt double dislocated his elbow (not performing a gag but skateboarding on his day off). So Cliff filled in doubling for Tom that whole last week of the shoot.

At the end of the shoestring production, when given a choice between seventy-five dollars or keeping the Billy Jack wardrobe—leather boots included—Cliff opted for the outfit.

Four years later Tom Laughlin would star in and direct the movie Billy Jack for Warner Bros. Laughlin would be disappointed by how the studio marketed the picture. He would buy back the rights himself, then sell it state by state, market by market, like an old carny promoter. Laughlin four-walled movie theaters and flooded the local TV stations with enticingly cut TV spots aimed at kids watching television in the afternoon after school. Laughlin’s maverick distribution innovations, along with his having made a pretty terrific movie, made Billy Jack one of the biggest sleeper success stories in the history of Hollywood. And once that happened, Cliff’s blue-jeans wardrobe became so identified with the high-kicking hero that he had to stop wearing it.

While Miss Himmelsteen sits behind her desk in the outer office answering the telephone (“Mr. Schwarz’s office,” pause, “I’m sorry, he’s with a client right now, can I ask who’s calling?”), Cliff sits on the colorful uncomfortable couch by her desk, huge Life magazine laid out on his lap, leafing through the pages. He’s just finished reading Richard Schickel’s review of the new Swedish film that has all of America’s puritans and many of their newspaper-based opinion makers in a tizzy. This new movie has both Johnny Carson and Joey Bishop, as well as every comedian from Jerry Lewis to Moms Mabley, making puns out of its catchy title.

From the couch, Cliff calls to Miss Himmelsteen behind her desk, “Have you heard of this flick from Sweden, I Am Curious (Yellow)?”

“Yeah, I think I have,” Miss Himmelsteen says. “It’s supposed to be dirty, isn’t it?”

“Not according to the U.S. Court of Appeals it ain’t,” Cliff informs her.

Reading directly from the magazine, Cliff recites, “‘Pornography is a work lacking in redeeming social value.’ And according to Judge Paul R. Hays, ‘Whether or not we ourselves consider the ideas of the picture particularly interesting or the production artistically successful, it is quite certain that I Am Curious does present ideas and does strive to present these ideas artistically.’”

He lowers the huge magazine and meets eyes with the pigtailed young thing sitting behind her desk.

Miss Himmelsteen asks, “What does that mean, exactly?”

“ Exactly ,” Cliff repeats, “it means the Swedish guy who made it wasn’t just making a fuck film. He was trying to make art. And it doesn’t matter if you think he was a total failure. And it doesn’t matter if you think it’s the biggest piece of shit you’ve ever seen in your life. What matters is he tried to make art. He didn’t try and make smut.” Then, smiling and shrugging his shoulders: “At least that’s what I get out of this review.”

“Sounds provocative,” the young pigtailed lass remarks.

“I agree,” Cliff agrees. “Wanna go see it with me?”

A sarcastic smirk spreads across Miss Himmelsteen’s face, as she asks with just the right touch of Jewish comic timing, “You wanna take me to a dirty movie?”

“No,” Cliff corrects. “According to Judge Paul-something-Hays, I just want to take you to a Swedish film. Where do you live?”

Before she can stop herself, she instinctively answers, “Brentwood.”

“Well, I’m pretty familiar with the cinemas around the Los Angeles area,” Cliff informs her. “Will you allow me to choose the theater?”

Janet Himmelsteen is well aware she hasn’t even agreed to go on a date with Cliff yet. But both she and Cliff know she’s going to say yes. Now, William Morris has a rule against miniskirt-wearing secretaries dating their clients. But this guy ain’t a client. Rick Dalton’s the client. This guy is just one of Rick’s buddies.

“You choose,” says the young lady.

“Wise choice,” says the older man.

They both share a laugh as Marvin’s office door swings open and Rick Dalton in his tan leather jacket emerges from the agent’s office.

Cliff quickly stands up from Marvin’s uncomfortable couch and throws his eyes toward his boss, to read the demeanor of the meeting he just completed. And since Rick looks a little sweaty and a little distraught, Cliff figures the meeting didn’t go so hot.

“You okay?” Cliff softly asks.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Rick says briskly. “Let’s just get out of here.”

“Sure thing,” Cliff says. Then the stuntman Cliff spins on his back heel, till he’s facing Janet Himmelsteen, his movement so quick it startles her. She doesn’t make a noise, but she does instinctively flinch. Now that Cliff is standing directly in front of her (over her, actually), smiling like a blond Levi-clad Huck Finn, Miss Himmelsteen sees how truly handsome this guy really is. “Opens this Wednesday,” Cliff informs the young lady. “When do you want to go?”

Now that he’s fully engaging her, goose pimples break out all over the fatty part of her arms. Under the desk, her sandaled right foot rises off the ground and runs down the back of her bare left calf.

“How about Saturday night?” she asks.

“How about Sunday afternoon?” Cliff negotiates. “I’ll take you to Baskin-Robbins afterward.”

That reaches beyond the Himmelsteen giggle to her actual laugh. The woman has a lovely actual laugh. He tells her so and discovers she has a lovely actual blush.

He reaches down and plucks out one of her business cards, sitting in what looks like a clear-plastic bus stop for business cards, and brings it up to his eyes to read.

“‘Janet Himmelsteen,’” he reads out loud.

“That’s me,” she giggles self-consciously.