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

Jim yells after him, “Make that Johnny Madrid to you, asshole!”

All three fellows chuckle.

Another San Gabriel actor saunters up to the three—a craggy-faced, so-ugly-he’s-sexy type, with shaggy, feathered-style sandy hair and a black leather jacket. The actor named Warren Vanders joins the three men, cradling a Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Jim and Warren greet each other warmly, then Jim looks to Rick and jerks a thumb back at Warren. “Rick, you know this guy?”

Rick gives a knowing grin. “Shit, you know I do.”

Rick and Warren shake hands knowingly, as Rick explains, “Vanders here musta done ’bout three Bounty Laws .”

“Four, you ungrateful bastard. Once a season I’d go down to Spahn Ranch and get my ass wiped by Rick Dalton,” Warren declares. “That’s four years Bounty Law kept me in cornflakes.”

The piano player goes into the instrumental Alley Cat .

As Maynard places the customers’ drinks down on the bar, the four men mount barstools. The bartender hangs out with them till he’s summoned by a thirsty patron.

Cliff and Warren are still working on their beers, but Rick has sucked his whiskey sour through his straw fairly quickly, and Jim has polished off his brandy Alexander.

The bartender returns and asks Jim and Rick, “Another one?”

“Yep,” says Jim.

“Whiskey sour,” repeats Rick.

The piano player, Curt Zastoupil, finishes up Alley Cat as Jim and his three friends, with drinks in their hands, saunter up to his piano station.

“Hey, Curt, how ya doin’?”

Taking a sip of his Harvey Wallbanger, Curt replies, “Just fine, Jim, how’s it goin’ with you?”

“Goin’ real good.” Jim tells him, “I did the first day on my pilot today.”

“Fuck, man, that’s great.” Curt begins playing Happy Days Are Here Again on the piano.

“Calm it down, Liberace,” Jim warns him. “Let’s finish the pilot first. Let’s see if it’s good. Let’s see if it makes the CBS fall lineup. Then ‘Happy Days Are Here Again.’ For a few weeks anyway.”

Jim introduces the piano-bar musician to his two new friends. Warren already knows Curt. In fact, Warren gave Curt’s son his first dog, named Baron. The actor and the stuntman shake hands with the piano man. Jim brags on his musician buddy: “Curt can play every song of the day on both piano and guitar. And he does a good job, especially on Me and Bobby McGee . He plays it like a country song—”

“It is a country song,” Curt explains.

“I know, but that’s not how everybody plays it,” Jim says.

“That’s ’cause they just do the Janis Joplin arrangement. But if you listen to the song, it’s best done on acoustic guitar, as a country song.” Then Curt clarifies, “Not Ernest Tubb country. But modern country.”

Jim continues to brag to Rick and Cliff about his musician friend, “I’m telling ya, if Curt did Me and Bobby McGee , he coulda had a hit with that. Good Creedence Clearwater too. Especially that ‘Doo Doo Doo’ song.”

Curt’s confused. “What’s the ‘Doo Doo Doo’ song?”

Jim reminds him, “You know that one.” The actor sings, “‘Doo doo doo, lookin’ out my back door.’”

Curt starts playing the opening of the song on the piano and sings:

Just got home from Illinois

Lock the front door, oh boy

Look at all the happy creatures

Dancing on the lawn

Dinosaur Victrola, listenin’ to Buck Owens

Singin’ doo doo doo, lookin’ out my back door

The four men applaud him. “Great,” Rick says.

“Well, not great , but not bad,” says Curt modestly, then adds, “My son likes that song. So I always do it for him when I’m at home practicing.”

“How old’s your son?” Cliff asks.

“He’s turning six next month,” Curt says.

Jim encourages the musician, “Get out from behind that piano and show ’em what you can do with a guitar.”

“Okay,” Curt agrees, picking up his guitar and putting it in his lap. As he tunes the neck, he tells Rick, “I gotta say, Rick, I’m a big fan. Loved Bounty Law . Bounty Law and The Rifleman are my two favorite shows of that time. I still watch ’em on TV. Also one of your western movies I loved.”

“Which one?” Rick asks. “ Tanner ? That’s the one most people dig.”

Still fiddling with the tuning, Curt asks, “Who else is in that?”

“ Tanner ’s me and Ralph Meeker,” says Rick.

“No, it wasn’t Meeker—I like Meeker, but it wasn’t him.” Curt thinks a moment, then it comes to him: “Glenn Ford!”

“Oh, Glenn Ford,” Rick says. “That’s Hellfire, Texas . Yeah, that one ain’t so bad. Me and Glenn didn’t get along so well. He was less committed to the picture than I was. I mean, you know, a fella can do too many movies, and that was Glenn’s problem. But, all in all, not a bad picture.”

Jim says to Curt, who’s finishing up getting his guitar ready to go, “Play somethin’ that shows you off a bit.”

Curt says, “Oh, so I’m selling myself. I didn’t realize that. Thanks for pointing that out.”

“Well, it’s only fair,” teases Rick. “You said you liked my shit. It’s only fair I get to judge you to see if I like your shit.”

Curt goes into the recognizable opening chord riff of Johnny Rivers’s The Secret Agent Man Theme . The other men smile in recognition. Then Curt starts singing the first verse:

There’s a man who leads a life of danger

To everyone he meets he stays a stranger

Be careful what you say, you’ll give yourself away

Odds are you won’t live to see tomorrow

Secret Agent Man

Secret Agent Man

They’ve given you a number and taken away your name

Curt stops and waits for the cheers he gets. “That’s another favorite of my son’s.” Then, looking at Rick, he asks, “So do we exist on a plane of mutual respect?”

“Abso-bloody-lutely.” Rick raises his whiskey sour. “Cheers to the troubadour.” They all raise their glasses and bottles and toast Curt.

“Also speakin’ of my son and of you, we’re both big fans of The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey ,” Curt tells Rick.

“Well, that’s one of the good ones,” says Rick.

“You know when you watch a movie like that,” Curt explains, “about a team of guys doin’ some shit, you kinda pick your favorite dude and root for him through the whole movie, hoping he gets through it alive.”

The men all involuntarily nod their heads in agreement.

“Well, for my son, you were his favorite dude.”

“Aw, that’s nice to hear,” Rick says.

“In fact, I showed him a Bounty Law the other day on TV,” Curt explains. “It was on and I pointed at you and said, ‘Hey, Quint’—his name is Quentin—‘hey, Quint, you know who that guy is?’ He said no, and I said, ‘You remember that guy from The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey with the eye patch and the flamethrower who burnt the shit outta all them Nazis?’ He said yeah and I said, ‘That’s the same guy.’” Asking rhetorically, “You know what he said? He said, ‘So that was back when he had two eyes?’”

They all laugh.

“Can I get you to sign him an autograph?” Curt asks.

“Sure,” Rick says. “Ya got a pen?” Curt doesn’t, but Warren Vanders does.

So Rick signs a Drinker’s Hall of Fame cocktail napkin to Curt’s son, Quentin, addressing it to “Private Quentin,” making sure to check the spelling, then writes, “Maj McCluskey and Sgt Lewis salute you.” Then signs his name, “Rick Dalton,” with “Sergeant Mike Lewis” written under it. And then he adds a little drawing of Sgt. Mike Lewis with an eye patch, wearing a shirt that says Quentin Is Cool , and then a p.s. with “Burn Nazi Burn!” underneath it.