Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

by Quentin Tarantino

  That was the downside. The upside was tougher dogs meant much more money when she won.

  After nine fights, Cliff and Buster had made about fourteen thousand each. But Buster, knowing a good thing when he finally fell into it, had a number in mind. Twenty thousand dollars each for him and Cliff. Then Brandy could retire. But it was during her tenth fight, in San Diego, where the young lady fought a pit bull named Caesar, that she got hurt and hurt bad. The fight was called off with no winner declared. And Cliff knew it was lucky for Brandy that it was called off. Because if it had gone on twenty minutes more, Caesar would have killed her. In both wartime and peacetime, Cliff had seen loved ones cut asunder. But the agony he experienced watching Brandy taking the punishment she took from the vicious Caesar was more than he could bear.

  So he was shocked when Buster booked Brandy in another competition in Watts, against a male monster named Augie Doggie, before she had fully recovered from the last beating she took.

  But Buster was sure of himself. “Hey, man, I promised you twenty thousand dollars, and I promised myself twenty thousand dollars, and we’re right there, man! This fight is the last fuckin’ fight!”

  “No shit it’s the last fucking fight!” Cliff shouted. “There’s no fucking way she can win against that beast Augie Doggie in her condition.”

  “That’s the beauty of it,” Buster animatedly expressed. “She ain’t gotta win. It’s about her undefeated reputation. We enter her in the fight and bet on the other dog.”

  That’s when Cliff attacked Buster. They grappled in savage combat inside of Cliff’s trailer for about four minutes, till Cliff broke Buster Cooley’s neck.

  Killing him.

  They fought around five in the afternoon. Cliff watched TV next to Buster’s dead body till about two in the morning. Then, after the drive-in closed, Cliff crammed the dead body in the trunk of Cooley’s car, a used white 1965 Impala Sport Coupe he’d bought with his Brandy winnings. With Brandy in the passenger seat, Cliff drove to Compton and abandoned the car there with the keys placed in the sun visor. He walked Brandy away from the car all night till daybreak. And when the sun came up, he and his dog hopped on a bus back home to Van Nuys.

  This wasn’t the first time Cliff committed murder and got away with it. The first time was in Cleveland in the fifties. The second time was when Cliff killed his wife two years earlier. This was his third time, and Cliff got away with this one too. He never heard a word about what eventually happened to Buster Cooley or his car. In fact, nobody he knew ever brought Buster up again. That was last year. And since that time Cliff’s only fought Brandy twice, when he was really hard up for cash. But after the last time, Cliff promised Brandy, even though Brandy didn’t understand, he’d never fight her again. And that was a promise Cliff intended to keep.

  In Cliff’s trailer on Friday night, February 7, 1969, he snaps his fingers and points at a chair. Next to Cliff’s recliner sits a wooden chair with a little dog pillow on it. Brandy hops on top of it and takes her position on her hind legs, waiting for Cliff to prepare her dinner. Cliff takes his time preparing Brandy’s dinner, even though he knows this is torture for the dog. But that’s okay—Cliff knows better than most that torture can build character. Before he prepares her meal, he first opens his refrigerator and removes from a plastic six-pack ring a can of Old Chattanooga beer.

  His small black-and-white rabbit-eared television is tuned to the local ABC affiliate, KABC Channel 7. A commercial for Cliff’s brand of cigarettes, Red Apple, plays on the little monochromatic screen. A sixties-era regular guy with Brylcreemed hair in a black suit and tie stares into the camera in a head-and-shoulders frame.

  An off-screen announcer asks the guy, “Would you take a bite of a Red Apple?”

  The regular man answers enthusiastically, “You bet I would!”

  Then, from below frame, he brings a big red apple up to his mouth and bites into it with a healthy crunch.

  Cliff takes a sip of his Old Chattanooga and then lays the can on the kitchen counter. He opens his kitchen cabinet and removes two cans of Wolf’s Tooth dog food (Good Food for Mean Dogs). Cliff opens the cans with a cheapy hand-crank can opener, then dunks the muck, still in the shape of the can, into Brandy’s dog dish. Knowing it’s feeding time and watching the food slither out of the can and plop into her dish, it’s killing Brandy to stay in her chair and not make a noise. But Cliff’s trained her and trained her well. She might not know much, but she knows what’s expected of her during feeding time. And she knows damn well that she must stay in that chair and sit without whining till her master gives her the signal that she can eat.

  On the little black-and-white television screen, a sixties-era female Marlo Thomas type with a small bouffant hairdo stares into the camera in a head-and-shoulders shot as an off-screen announcer asks her, “Would you take a bite of a Red Apple?”

  She answers, “You bet I would!” Then she brings a huge red apple up to her mouth and takes a big crunchy bite.

  In her chair, Brandy wags her tail furiously from left to right, while her muscled body vibrates with excitement, anticipation, and canine instinct. Now that Cliff is through plopping both cans of dog food into Brandy’s dog dish, he turns his attention to the stove and removes the pot of boiling water from the burner. Cliff pours the pot of steaming-hot noodles into a strainer, then, after giving the strainer a couple of shakes to lose the excess water, he dumps the noodles back into the pot.

  On the TV screen, a pretty young black woman with naked shoulders and a big round Afro looks into the camera as the off-screen announcer asks, “Would you take a bite of a Red Apple?” She looks at the off-screen announcer and says, “You bet I would.” Then the Afro gal brings a lit cigarette up from below frame, takes a big drag, and lets out a long stream of smoke with a pleasurable moan, then says, “Take a bite and feel all right, take a bite of a Red Apple.”

  Cliff takes the cheese-powder packet from the ripped-open box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, tears it open, and pours it on top of the noodles in the pot. He stirs up the orange powder with a big wooden spoon and a lot of muscle. The directions say to add milk and butter, but Cliff thinks if you can afford to add milk and butter you can afford to eat something else. As Cliff prepares his dinner, he hears a whine escape from a vibrating and twitching Brandy. Cliff looks at her. Placing the pot with the mac and cheese on the counter, he turns and gives Brandy his full attention.

  “Did I just hear a whine?” Cliff asks the canine. Brandy knows she’s not supposed to whine, she just couldn’t help it, she’s a dog. Cliff continues to address the excited dog with an authoritative tone. “What did I tell you about whining? You whine, you don’t eat,” Cliff instructs, “and I throw all this shit in the trash,” referring to the two cans of Wolf’s Tooth dog food piled in her dog dish. “I don’t want to, but I will.” Cliff clarifies, “Do you understand?”

  Brandy answers with a distinct “Woof!”

  “You better,” Cliff tells her.

  He then picks up a big bag of Gravy Train, a very popular dry dog food of the era, and pours it on top of the wet food in the dog dish. It brings the mountain of dog food to a peak. Cliff could give a shit if the dry kibble spills out of the bowl all over the kitchen floor, because no matter where it goes, Brandy will find it and eat it.

  On the television, after the off-screen announcer has described all the different assortments of fine Red Apple tobacco products, the commercial cuts to a head-and-shoulders shot of famous actor Burt Reynolds, smoking a Red Apple plastic-tip cigar.

  The off-screen announcer gets his attention: “Hey, Burt Reynolds, would you take a bite of a Red Apple?”

  Burt looks at the camera and says, “Oh, you bet I would.” He takes a drag from the cigar and blows it out, then says the Red Apple Tobacco slogan: “Take a bite and feel all right, take a bite . . . of a Red Apple.”

  Cliff grabs the pot by the handle and goes into the living room and sits in his recliner in front of the TV set. Brandy
is all eyes and ears. Once Cliff is settled in his chair and eats his first forkful of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, he makes a small clicking noise with the side of his mouth.

  That’s Brandy’s signal—she leaps out of the chair, bounds into the kitchen area, and wolfishly devours the food in her dog dish. Cliff changes the channel on his little TV set from KABC Channel 7 to KCBS Channel 2 and the Friday-night detective show Mannix, starring Mike Connors and Gail Fisher as detective Joe Mannix and his black secretary, Peggy. On the TV screen, Peggy seems worried as she relates the incidents of last night to her boss, Joe Mannix, as he sits behind his desk.

  “Okay, Peggy, what’s up?” Mannix asks. “We were all groovin’ in the club last night,” Peggy tells him, “then, wham, a sudden change.” Joe tries to explain it away: “You know how these musicians are; they’re temperamental cats. Who knows what got into him.”

  Cliff likes Mannix, both the show and the dude Mannix. Joe Mannix is his kind of guy. In fact, there’s a part of Cliff that kinda wishes he was Mannix. And if he was Mannix, the first thing he’d do is fuck Peggy. Cliff is also a big fan of the secret-agent character Matt Helm. Not those insipid Dean Martin movies that are beyond asinine, but the books written by Donald Hamilton. As a character, Matt Helm is unconsciously racist, consciously misogynistic, and Cliff loves him. Cliff quotes pulp-fiction heroes like Matt Helm, Shell Scott, and Nick Carter the way the British quote Keats and the French quote Camus.

  When he went to see the first Matt Helm movie at the cinema, The Silencers, he irately asked the box-office girl for his money back after the first fifteen minutes. If it made him sick, he could only imagine what it must have done to the author, Donald Hamilton. Dean Martin was a fucking terrible Matt Helm! But if the movies had been done like the books, Mike Connors would have been terrific. Even the drawing of Matt on the cover of the books looks like Connors.

  As Mannix and Peggy continue their scene, Cliff puts down the cooking pot filled with noodles and picks up the issue of TV Guide. As Brandy wolfs down her mountain of food, Cliff looks up this week’s episode of Mannix and reads the synopsis out loud:

  “‘Death in a Minor Key: Mannix searches for Peggy’s missing boyfriend, a Negro musician who escaped from a road gang. Heading south, the detective faces a run-in with an enigmatic police chief, a bigoted witness, and a ubiquitous interloper.’”

  Cliff tosses the TV Guide aside, picks the pot of orange and yellow food back up, and sticks a forkful in his mouth. As he chews, he asks himself and Brandy, “What’s a ubiquitous interloper?”

  Approximately twenty miles away, in Chatsworth, California, on what’s left of the dilapidated western-town movie set known as Spahn Movie Ranch, the eighty-year-old George Spahn sits in his house, in his bathrobe and pajamas, on his couch, watching the same Mannix episode at the same time. He watches the show with his twenty-one-year-old redheaded and freckle-faced caretaker, “Squeaky.” They watch TV like this every night. He sits on his couch in his bathrobe and pajamas, while she lays sprawled out on the couch with her head in his lap. Since George is blind, Squeaky describes the action on the television screen to the sightless old man. “So that nigger that works for Mannix is asking Joe to help find that nigger trumpet player boyfriend of hers from the first scene.”

  “Peggy’s a nigger?” George squawks with surprise.

  Squeaky rolls her eyes and says, “I tell you that every week.”

  Chapter Five

  Pussycat’s Kreepy Krawl

  Pasadena, California

  February 7, 1969

  2:20 A.M.

  It’s two o’clock in the morning on Greenbriar Lane in a suburban housing tract in an affluent section of Pasadena, California.

  Up and down both sides of the cul-de-sac street runs a collection of suburban houses with manicured front lawns with upper-middle-class white people inside. At this time of night, except for a random cat, or a bold coyote who ventured down out of the hills to eat out of trash cans, there is no movement in the neighborhood whatsoever. All the residents of this street seem fast asleep, safe behind locked doors, in their comfy beds with soft-purring air conditioners.

  Standing on the sidewalk in front of one dark house with a homey mailbox in front that reads The Hirshbergs are five members of Charlie Manson’s “Family.” Chipped-front-tooth “Clem”; “Sadie”; “Froggy”; one of the youngest Family members, Debra Jo Hillhouse (aka “Pussycat”); and Charlie himself.

  Charlie stands behind Debra Jo; his two hands rest on her shoulders as he quietly and softly speaks into her ear.

  “Okay, Pussycat,” Charlie purrs, “it’s your time. Time to cross the line. Time to face fear. Time to face fear in the face. And now, honeychile . . . it’s time you do it by your lonesome.”

  Debra Jo reminds him that this isn’t her first “kreepy krawl.” Her spiritual leader acknowledges, yes, she has, but not on her own. He reminds her of “the Family” philosophy of there being strength in numbers.

  As he explains it, “That’s why we do what we do, how we do it, and why how we live is ultimately important.” But then he clarifies as his fingers gently massage her shoulder blades under her dirty black T-shirt, “But also important is individual achievement. Testing one’s self. Facing one’s fears. And one only faces one’s fears by themselves. That’s why I’m compelling you to do this, Debra Jo.”

  Charlie is the only person on God’s green earth, other than her father, that she still allows to call her by her born name rather than her adopted one.

  “I want to do this,” Debra Jo says, not too convincingly.

  “Why do you want to do this?” Charlie asks.

  “Because you want me to,” she answers.

  “Yes, I do want you to,” Charlie agrees. “But I don’t want you to do it for me. And I don’t want you to do it for them,” jerking his head toward the other kids. “I want you to do it for yourself.”

  Charlie’s fingertips on her shoulder blades feel the slight trembling of Debra Jo’s body.

  “I can feel you trembling, pretty girl.”

  “I’m not scared,” she protests.

  “Shhh,” he hushes her. “It’s okay. No need to lie.”

  He explains to the dark-haired beauty, “Ninety-seven percent of everybody you’ve ever met in your life, and ninety-seven percent of everybody you’ll ever meet in your life, have spent ninety-seven percent of their lives running away from fear. But not you, pretty girl,” he whispers. “You’re walking toward fear. Fear is the point. Without fear, there is no point.”

  While Debra Jo’s trembling doesn’t subside, her body under Charlie’s touch does seem to relax. Standing behind her, Charlie leans forward and into her right ear asks in a soft whisper, “Do you trust me?”

  “You know I do,” she says. “I love you.”

  “And I love you, Debra Jo,” Charlie tells her, “and it’s that love that ever so slightly nudges you toward greatness. I’m in your heart, ‘Pussycat,’ I’m in your paws, I’m in your tail, I’m in your nose, and I’m in your pussycat skull.”

  Charlie’s fingers come off her shoulders, and he wraps his arms around the young girl, embracing her from behind. She leans her weight back against him. And they both slowly sway from side to side, shifting their weight from their left foot to their right foot, rocking her like a baby in his arms.

  “Allow me the privilege of guiding you through this. And the girl who emerges from that house will be gargantuanly more powerful than the girl who enters it.”

  Then Charlie unwraps his arms from around her waist, takes a small step backward, and slaps the ass of her blue-jean cutoffs, moving her forward toward the Hirshberg house.

  In 1968, Terry Melcher, record producer of the Byrds, the brainchild behind Paul Revere and the Raiders, and boy wonder of Columbia Records, spent a good amount of time around Charlie Manson and his “Family” when they were encamped at the Hollywood home of Dennis Wilson and sponging off the Beach Boy. Terry Melcher was never quite as convinced
of Charlie’s musical talent as Wilson was. When it came to Manson’s musical aspirations, Terry didn’t think Charlie was without talent. Terry’s honest opinion of Charlie’s music was that Manson was very very very not bad.

  But if Charlie Manson did have anything to offer, it was that of a folkie singer-songwriter type. And in that plentiful congregation, Charlie couldn’t hold a flickering birthday next to Neil Young, Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Mickey Newbury, Lee Dresser, Sammy Walker, or frankly any of the known folk names of the time. Also, the folk scene, as it existed only a few short years earlier, was dead. By that time, all the folkies who had made a name for themselves were plugging into amps and trying to be rock stars.

  And since Terry Melcher represented Columbia Records and they already had Bob Dylan, they didn’t need Charlie Manson. Besides, Melcher wasn’t in the acoustic singer-songwriter business anymore (as if he ever was). Paul Revere and the Raiders had made him one of the kings of Top 40 radio pop. He wasn’t raiding the Vanguard Records label, trying to poach talent for Columbia. He was looking for the next gimmicky band of cute shaggy-haired boys who could produce catchy novelty records, play on American Bandstand and all the other local-TV-station rock shows (Groovy, Boss City, The Real Don Steele Show, Where the Action Is, It’s Happening), and vie for space inside the pages of Sixteen and Tiger Beat magazines. That might have been Bobby Beausoleil, but it sure wasn’t Charles Manson.

  It wasn’t that Charlie didn’t have talent—he had a little talent. But what he didn’t have was the discipline to nurture the talent that he did have. If Charlie had a stronger songbook, it wouldn’t have persuaded Terry to record a Manson album for Columbia. But it might have resulted in Melcher bringing one of Charlie’s songs to Linda Ronstadt to record.