Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

by Quentin Tarantino

  Nothing, until the film’s final moment, confirms Rosemary’s sinister suspicions. Polanski never gives the audience a glimpse of anything that can be labeled supernatural. All of Rosemary’s “evidence” of the sinister conspiracy she feels is taking place against her is anecdotal and circumstantial. Since we care for Rosemary and we’re watching a horror movie, most audiences take her investigative gaze at face value.

  But instead of the elderly couple down the hall being the leaders of a coven of sinister Satanists, and instead of her husband selling his soul and the soul of his unborn child to the devil, maybe it would be equally likely, and frankly more probable, that Rosemary is suffering from acute paranoia brought on by postpartum depression?

  Now, true, at the climax it is revealed that, yes indeed, the Castevets and their friends have perpetrated a conspiracy against Rosemary. But the actual existence of Satan himself is still ambiguous. Who’s to say the Castevets and company aren’t just a bunch of fucking lunatics? If at the end they all yelled, Hail, Pan! as opposed to Hail, Satan! would you question the validity of their belief?

  Among any of the other filmmakers who Evans could have hired to direct that book, it’s almost unimaginable that they wouldn’t have made it a monster movie. Polanski managed the Herculean feat of not making a monster movie yet still scaring the pants off of audiences. Then Evans and his team did their part by devising one of the great movie-advertising campaigns of the era and cutting a horrific trailer that in some ways betters the movie. The end result was a massive hit that made Roman Polanski not only one of the hottest directors in the business but a pop-cultural icon (he’s mentioned in the lyrics of the rock musical Hair) and the first genuine rock-star movie director.

  And here he is, in the flesh, with his hot-ass wife, Rick’s next-door neighbor. Talk about a guy who has the world by the fucking balls, Rick thinks.

  Then the electronic gate in front of Roman and Sharon opens up and the Roadster, as quickly as it zoomed into view, zooms out.

  “Holy shit,” Rick says to himself, “that was Polanski.” Then to Cliff, “That was Roman Polanski! He’s lived here a month now; this is the first time I’ve seen him.”

  Rick opens the car door and steps out, chuckling. Cliff chuckles to himself as well: This is yet another example of Rick’s furious mood swings.

  As Rick walks across his front lawn toward his front door, his entire demeanor has changed since he saw Polanski. He says excitedly over his shoulder to his buddy, “What did I always say? Most important thing in this town, when you’re making money: Buy a house in town. Don’t rent. Eddie O’Brien taught me that,” referring to the intense character actor Edmond O’Brien, who Rick met when he once guested on a first-season episode of Bounty Law. As Rick continues, his strut gets more pronounced. “Hollywood real estate means you live here. You’re not visiting. You’re not passing through. You fuckin’ live here!” As he steps up the first three steps that lead to his front entrance, “I mean, here I am, flat on my ass, and who do I got livin’ next door to me?”

  He sticks his house key in the lock, twists it, then, turning to his buddy to finish his point and answer his own question, “The director of Rosemary’s fuckin’ Baby, that’s who. Polanski’s the hottest director in town—probably the world—and he’s my next-door neighbor.” Rick steps fully inside his house as he finishes his thought: “I could be one pool party away from starring in the new Polanski movie!”

  Cliff wants to jet, so he stays in the doorway, not wanting to step into the house. “So you’re feeling better?” Cliff sarcastically asks.

  “Oh, yeah, buddy,” Rick says. “Sorry ’bout that, take care of that fuckin’ Comanche Uprising thing whenever you get the chance.”

  Cliff indicates got it, then asks, “You need me for anything else?”

  Rick waves him away. “No no no. I got a lotta lines to learn for tomorrow.”

  Cliff asks, “You need me to run lines witcha?”

  “No, don’t worry about that,” Rick tells him. “I’ll do it with my tape recorder.”

  “Okay,” Cliff says. “If you don’t need me, I’m gonna get my carcass on home.”

  “Naw, I don’t need you,” Rick says.

  Cliff starts walking backward to get out of there quick before Rick changes his mind. “Okay, leave tomorrow morning, seven-fifteen.”

  Rick repeats, “Got it, seven-fifteen.”

  Cliff clarifies, “That’s seven-fifteen—out the door, in the car.”

  Rick repeats, “Got it, seven-fifteen, out the door, in the car. See ya, buddy.”

  Rick closes his front door. Cliff trips over to the car that’s parked next to his boss’s Cadillac in the driveway. It’s his in-need-of-a-wash light-blue Volkswagen convertible Karmann Ghia. The stuntman hops in, sticks his key in the ignition, and twists. The little Volkswagen engine rumbles to life. As the engine sparks, so does the sound of the Los Angeles radio station 93 KHJ. Billy Stewart is doing his scat-like improv vocal at the conclusion of his version of Summertime as Cliff reverses out of the driveway, gives the steering wheel a quick yank, which jerks the nose of the Karmann Ghia away from the house and points it down the hill on Cielo Drive. The blond driver revs the gas three times with Billy Jack’s boot, then, in time with Billy Stewart’s vocal gymnastics, throws the stick into gear and hits the gas, shooting down the residential Hollywood Hill, taking each hairpin turn at break-his-fucking-neck speed, heading to his home, three freeways away in the city of Van Nuys.

  Chapter Four

  Brandy, You’re a Fine Girl

  After Cliff became a widower, he never had another serious relationship with a woman for the rest of his life. He fucked girls. He took advantage of all that free pussy/free love that was floating around in the late sixties. But no serious girlfriends and definitely no wives. But Cliff did have one female in his life that he loved and who loved him back. His flat-head bent-eared pitbull with a reddish-brown coat, Brandy.

  The dog waits anxiously by the door to Cliff’s trailer home for the sound of her master’s Karmann Ghia pulling up outside. The moment she hears it, her little nub of a tail starts quickly moving from left to right, and she instinctively whines and scratches at the door with her paw. While Cliff is gone all day, he leaves his little rabbit-eared black-and-white television set on so Brandy won’t get lonely. On television at the moment is the February 7, 1969, episode of the ABC Friday-night variety show The Hollywood Palace. Each episode every week would have a new guest host introducing a new lineup of visiting guests. Last week the host was comedic pianist Victor Borge. This week it’s Camelot’s Broadway crooner Robert Goulet. Goulet is tearing into a dramatic interpretation of Jimmy Webb’s metaphysical classic MacArthur Park.

  MacArthur Park is melting

  in the dark

  All the sweet green icing

  flowing down

  The front door to the dwelling flies open, and there stands Cliff Booth in his full Billy Jack blue-denim regalia. As she does every night when Cliff comes home, Brandy loses her goddamn mind. Cliff, who treats Brandy with a firm hand (“She likes a firm hand,” he tells Rick), allows her to get her jumping up on him out of her system. But tonight Cliff has a happy surprise for his little lady. Cliff and Rick had lunch today at Musso and Frank, and the stuntman had steak and carried the steak bone in the pocket of his Levi’s jacket, wrapped up in one of the restaurant’s white cloth dinner napkins, all day long. After he gives her a few moments to get her welcome-home happy jig out of her system, he barks at her, “Okay, down down down.” She sits down on her hind legs, snout pointed up at him. Now that he has her undivided attention, he removes the white cloth napkin with the meaty T-bone inside from the pocket of his cool blue jacket.

  “Look what I got for you,” he taunts her.

  Something for me? Brandy thinks.

  As he unwraps it, he says, “It’s gonna blow your mind, man.” Then out of the napkin emerges the steak bone. Brandy, excited, hops up on her hind legs, her fro
nt paws pressed against Cliff’s waist. Cliff chuckles at Brandy’s appreciation. You could take a woman out to Musso and Frank, order the same goddamn steak, add a bottle of red wine, and top it off with a piece of cheesecake, and she wouldn’t show anywhere near this level of appreciation. This just goes to Cliff’s theory about the mercenary mindset of girls. Cliff theorizes what other people call courtship is all just a goddamn transaction. Girls would rather go out with some rich fuck, who the bill doesn’t mean shit to, than some lovesick dope, who’s saved up and is spending his last dollar on them.

  But not this girl. He holds out his gift and the dog jumps up in the air, catching the bone in her mighty jaws. Cliff lets go, and Brandy retreats to her corner with her little pillow and privately gnaws on the bovine bone.

  How Cliff and Brandy came to be acquainted is kind of an interesting story. It was a little over two years ago. Cliff was sitting in his trailer home behind the Van Nuys Drive-In when his phone rang. On the other end was Cliff’s ne’er-do-well stuntman friend, Buster Cooley. Cooley owed Cliff thirty-two hundred dollars. This amount had racked up over the last five or six years. Four hundred here, five hundred and fifty there. He first lent his friend some cash during the time Cliff was doing better than he ever had. It was during the time his partnership with Rick was allowing him to double the leading man in a series of studio action movies. Rick bitches and moans about this time, but for Cliff, these were his salad days. Actually having money for the first time in his life was kind of a mind fuck for the hand-to-mouth Booth. His big purchase was a nice little boat that he bought, lived on, and kept docked in Marina del Rey. It was during these flush days that he lent Cooley the lion share of the cash. Now, Cliff wasn’t an idiot, Cooley might have been taking advantage of him, but he wasn’t scamming him. Every time Buster borrowed money from him, he really did need it. They were going to repossess his car, his TV, kick him out of his apartment, his car again; he needed to pay off his Union 76 gas card, his first and last month’s rent to get a new apartment. Now, Buster Cooley may have been a mooch, but he wasn’t a chiseler. If he had the money, he would have paid Cliff, and Cliff knew that. There was no point in Cliff calling Buster up on the phone and humiliating him. One, he wouldn’t get his money any faster that way; two, Buster would just avoid him from that time on; and three, the day would come when the two men did run into each other (L.A. is a small town). And if Cliff put the pressure on Cooley and then Cooley tried to duck him, when they did bump into each other, Cliff would be forced to confront him about it. And that’s when things between two men of this type could turn ugly real quick. Cliff knew if Buster ever came into cash, he’d get at least some of it. But he also knew Buster was never going to come into cash. So mentally, two years ago, he kissed that money goodbye. And while, sure, he could use it now, he was still glad that when he had it he could help out an old friend. Maybe not to the tune of three thousand dollars, but, hey, at the time, if he couldn’t have afforded it, he wouldn’t have lent it.

  So Cliff was pleasantly surprised when he heard Cooley’s voice on the other end of the telephone receiver. And was even more surprised when Buster asked Cliff could he drive out to Van Nuys and see him that very day. It was a little over an hour later when Buster’s 1961 red Datsun pickup truck pulled up in front of Cliff’s trailer. Cliff offered his friend a beer, and after they both popped the top on two cans of Old Chattanooga, Cooley brought up to his old buddy the debt he owed. “Okay, about that three thousand dollars I owe ya—”

  “Three thousand and two hundred dollars,” Cliff corrected.

  “Three thousand two hundred? Are you sure?” Cooley asked.

  “Positive,” Cliff said.

  “Well, you know best. Three thousand and two hundred dollars,” Cooley said. “About that, I don’t got it.”

  Cliff made no reply, just sipped his beer.

  Cooley continued, “But don’t despair, I got somethin’ even better.”

  “Something better than three thousand and two hundred dollars in green American foldin’ money?” Cliff asked skeptically.

  “You bet your sweet ass,” Cooley said confidently.

  Cliff knew the only thing better than money was painkillers, so unless Cooley had brought with him a suitcase filled with ibuprofen, he was unenthused.

  “Pray tell, Buster, what do you have that’s better than money?”

  With his thumb jerking toward the door, Cooley said, “Come outside and take a look.”

  The two men stepped outside of the trailer, still drinking their cans of Old Chattanooga, and Buster led Cliff to the rear end of his truck. Standing on all fours in the flatbed of Buster’s Datsun, in a wire-mesh cage, stood Brandy.

  While Cliff was partial to dogs, and especially female dogs, and Brandy was a pretty girl, he at first was unimpressed.

  Skeptic Cliff asked, “You mean to tell me this bitch is worth thirty-two hundred dollars?”

  “Nope.” Cooley smiled and said, “She ain’t worth thirty-two hundred dollars.” Then added with a wider grin, “She’s worth anywhere from seventeen thousand up to twenty thousand dollars.”

  “Really,” asked a doubtful Cliff, “and why is that?”

  Cooley answered with conviction, “This dog is the best fighting dog on this side of the fuckin’ Western Hemisphere.”

  That raised Cliff’s eyebrows.

  Buster continued, “This bitch can take on all comers. Pit bulls, Dobermans, German shepherds, two dogs at once, don’t matter. This bitch will chew their ass up.”

  Cliff looked down at the dog in the cage, silently assessing her as Buster continued, “This bitch ain’t just a dog. She’s money in the bank. She’s a grub steak whenever you need it. She’s like owning five falling horses!”

  A falling horse was a horse you taught to fall on the ground and not get hurt or not get scared. And in a Hollywood that made hundreds of western movies and television shows, if you owned a horse that knew how to fall on the ground and then get back up again, you owned a little mini printing press of money. The only easier money was lucking out and having a kid who became a successful child actor.

  “‘member Ned Glass?” Buster reminded Cliff. “Had that falling horse Blue Belle?”

  “Yeah?” Cliff said.

  “‘member how much he made off that jughead?”

  “Yeah,” Cliff remembered. “He made a small fortune.”

  “This bitch”—pointing to the bitch in the cage—“is like owning four Blue Belles.”

  “Okay, Buster,” Cliff said, “you got my attention. What’s your proposal?”

  “Look, I can’t give you cash,” Cooley honestly stated, “at least not three thousand dollars. But what I can give you is a half interest in the Sonny-fucking-Liston of dogs.”

  Cliff listened as Buster illustrated his plan: “I got twelve hundred dollars. We put her in a dogfight they got running in Lomita. Bet the twelve hundred on her and just sit back and watch her go to work. Once you see her in action, you’ll realize her potential. Then me and you take her on the dogfight circuit, pool our winnings, by fight number six we could both have fifteen thousand each.”

  Cliff knew Cooley wasn’t conning him. He believed everything he just said. But Cooley was selling this as a sure thing, and Cliff never believed in sure things. Plus, dogfighting was illegal, not to mention distasteful, and there was just too much that could go wrong.

  “Jesus, Buster,” Cliff complained, “I don’t wanna fight fuckin’ dogs, I just want my money. If you got twelve hundred to bet, why don’t you just give me that?” Cliff negotiated.

  Buster answered honestly, “Because you and I both know I give you twelve hundred dollars, that’s all you’re ever gonna get.” Buster stressed, “I don’t want to pay you back thirty-five cents on the dollar. You were a straight-up fucking cat when I needed help, and I want you to make a profit!” Buster bargained, “At least go with me to the first fight in Lomita. Just watch her fight. Trust me, Cliff, it’s one of the most thrilling
things you’ve ever experienced. She wins, that’s twenty-four hundred dollars. You don’t want to continue, the twenty-four hundred dollars is yours.”

  Cliff took another swig from his can of beer as he looked at the little muscle man in the wire-mesh cage.

  Buster finished his spiel: “Now, you know me, so you know I’m not scamming you. If I say it, I believe it. So trust me—at least this first fight, this bitch can win.”

  Cliff looked to the little bitch in the cage, then to the son of a bitch standing before him with a beer can in his hand. Then he lowered on his haunches and brought his face parallel with the dog on the other side of the wire mesh. Both Cliff and the dog got into a staring contest. When the little lady could no longer handle the man’s forceful gaze, she growled and snapped at Cliff. The wire mesh stopped the canine’s teeth from puncturing Cliff’s handsome face. Cliff Booth turned and looked up at Buster Cooley. “What’s her name?”

  Cliff, Buster, and Brandy went to the first fight in Lomita. And everything Buster said came true. Brandy was the real deal, and she killed that other dog in less than a minute. They won twenty-four hundred dollars that night. Cliff couldn’t believe how incredibly thrilling the experience was. Fuck the Kentucky Derby, he thought, this is the most exciting forty-five seconds in sports.

  Cliff was hooked.

  For the next six months, they went on the dogfight circuit all over Los Angeles County, Kern County, and the Inland Empire. They fought Brandy in fights in Compton, Alhambra, Taft, and Chino. And Brandy won them all and won most of them easy. Only a few times did she get hurt, and even then, never too bad. And whenever she did get hurt, they took the time to let her recover. But after those first five fights, where Brandy seemed indestructible, the bets became bigger and the competition more fierce. Those fights took them to Montebello, Inglewood, Los Gatos, and Bellflower. Brandy kept winning, but the fights became excruciatingly longer, far bloodier, she got far more hurt, and it took her far longer to recover.