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

Aldo looked up from the bottle to Cliff. Then he looked back down at the bottle of gin. Then back up to Cliff. His eyes narrowed and he asked, “Are you wearin’ a wig?”

Just then Cliff remembered he still had his Rick wig on from earlier today. “Oh yeah, I forgot I still had this on.” He took the wig off his head, revealing to Aldo his own blond hair for the first time. Cliff Booth gave the big man a wave and said before splitting, “Have a good night, Aldo.”

Aldo Ray looked back at the bottle in his hand and said to the Beefeater fella on the label: “I will.”

After killing Cliff’s bottle of gin, Aldo was unfit for work the next day, and was put on the first plane home. The Spanish producers tried like hell to find out who supplied Ray with the booze, but thankfully for Cliff they never did. Cliff was so nervous he never even told Rick about it. At least, not until two years later.

“You did what?

“Cliff,” Rick hipped him, “when they give you your SAG card at the fuckin’ union office, they give you three rules: One, they gotta give you turnaround. Two, don’t do any nonunion shoots. And three, if you ever do a film with Aldo Ray, under no circumstances give him a bottle.”

If Cliff had to do it again … he’d do the same damn thing.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Drinker’s Hall of Fame

Staring at himself in his makeup mirror, in his trailer on the Lancer set, Rick rubs a small cotton ball doused in spirit-gum remover across his phony mustache and upper lip. He’s already removed his long-haired wig, and his natural chocolate-brown hair sits on top of his noggin in a sweaty mess. After thoroughly drenching his upper lip and filling his nostrils with the smell of alcohol fumes, he takes his two fingers and slowly, somewhat painfully, peels the fake horsetail from off his face and lays it down carefully on his makeup table.

On the small TV in his trailer, football star Rosey Grier, on his syndicated variety show The Rosey Grier Show , sings Paul McCartney’s song Yesterday . Half-listening to the song, Rick grabs a jar of Noxzema Medicated Cold Cream, scoops out a big hunk with his fingers, and begins slathering it all over his face. Hearing a tiny knock-knock rap, he leans over in his chair, twists the handle on the trailer door, and pushes it open, revealing pint-sized Trudi Frazer standing on the pavement, looking up him. This is the first time Rick’s seen what she looks like in her street clothes. Which, in this case, consists of a white button-down shirt with a crisp white collar under beige corduroy overalls. Rather than the twelve-year-old she pretends to be, the outfit makes her more resemble the eight-year-old little girl she actually is.

“Well, I’m leaving right now,” she informs him, “and I just wanted you to know I thought you were excellent in our scene today.”

“Aw gee, thanks, honey,” he says modestly.

“No, I’m not just being polite,” she assures him. “It was some of the finest acting I’ve ever seen in my whole life.”

Wow , Rick thinks, that hits him harder than he would have imagined. This time the modesty isn’t a put-on. “Well … thank you, Mirabella.”

“It’s after work,” she reminds him. “You can call me Trudi.”

“Well, thanks a bunch, Trudi,” says the cold cream–faced Rick. “And you are one of the most excellent actresses—”

“Actor,” she insists.

“Excuse me, actor , of any age, I’ve ever worked with,” he sincerely tells her.

“Why, thank you, Rick,” she says without cuteness.

“In fact,” Rick builds on the compliment, “I have no doubt that the day will come that I brag to people that I got a chance to work with you.”

“After I win my first Oscar, you will be bragging that you worked with me when I was only eight,” Trudi says confidently. “And you’ll tell everyone I was just as professional then as I am now .” Then adding under her breath, just to make it clear, “‘Now’ meaning in the future, when I win an Oscar.”

Rick can’t help but smile at the moxie of this midget. “I’m sure I will, and I’m sure you will. Just hurry up and do it while I’m still alive to see it.”

She smiles back. “I’ll do my best.”

“Like always,” he says.

She nods her head yes. Then her mother’s voice yells at her from the waiting car: “Trudi, come on now, stop bothering Mr. Dalton. You’ll see him again tomorrow!”

Trudi, annoyed, spins in the direction of her mother and shouts back, “I’m not bothering him, Mom !” Gesturing theatrically at him with her arm, “I’m congratulating him on his performance !”

“Well, hurry it up!” her mother orders.

Trudi rolls her eyes and turns her attention back to Rick. “Sorry about that. Where was I? Oh, I remember … Bravo to you, sir. You did exactly what I asked. You scared me in that scene.”

“Oh man, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” Rick blurts out.

“No, don’t apologize, that was what was so exciting about your acting,” she stresses, “and consequently that’s what made my acting so good. You didn’t make me act scared. You made me react scared. Which is exactly what I asked you to do,” she reminds him. “You didn’t treat me like some little eight-year-old actress. You treated me like an actor colleague. And you didn’t baby me. You tried to win the scene,” she says with admiration.

“Well, thank you, Trudi,” now falsely modest again, “but I don’t think I won the scene.”

“Well, of course you did,” dismissing his protest. “You had all the dialogue. But,” she warns him, “in our big scene tomorrow, that’s another story. So watch out!”

“You watch out,” he warns her right back.

She sports a huge grin and says, “That’s the spirit! Bye-bye, Rick, see you tomorrow.” She waves at him.

He gives her a little salute and says, “Bye-bye, honey.”

As Rick turns back around to face the makeup mirror, she starts to close the door for him, but before she completely closes it, she says in an undertone, “Know your lines tomorrow.”

That turns Rick back around in his chair, not quite believing what he heard. “What was that?”

Trudi’s little face looks at him through the small crack in the almost-closed trailer door. “I said, know your lines tomorrow. You know, I’m very surprised how many adults don’t know their lines, when that’s what they are paid to do,” and adds, a little snot on the end of her observation, “I always know my lines.”

Rick says back, “Oh, you do, do you?”

Emphasizing each word: “ Yes-I-do .” Then she quickly adds, “If you don’t know your lines, I’m going to make you look bad in front of the crew.”

Why, this little bitch, he thinks.

He asks her, “Are you threatening me, you little punk?”

“No, I’m fucking with you. Dustin Hoffman does it all the time. Nevertheless, it’s not a threat, it’s a promise. Bye-bye.” She shuts the door before he can say anything back.

Trudi Frazer never did win an Academy Award.

But she was nominated three times. The first time was in 1980, when she was nineteen and she received a best-supporting-actress nomination for playing Timothy Hutton’s sort-of girlfriend in Robert Redford’s Ordinary People . She lost to Mary Steenburgen for Melvin and Howard .

Her second best-supporting-actress nomination was in 1985, when she was twenty-four, for the role of Sister Agnes in Norman Jewison’s Agnes of God . She lost the Academy Award to Anjelica Huston for Prizzi’s Honor , but she won the Golden Globe for best supporting actress. Frazer’s only nomination for the best-lead-actress Oscar was in Quentin Tarantino’s 1999 remake of the John Sayles script for the gangster epic The Lady in Red. Frazer played thirties’ brothel-prostitute-turned-bank-robbery-gang-leader Polly Franklyn, opposite Michael Madsen as public enemy number one, John Dillinger. Losing her last nomination to Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry.