Quentin Tarantino said about his novel “Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood”, which will be released on June 29, that this is not a banal novelization of his Oscar-winning film, this is his complete “rethinking”, so the version turned out to be quite cumbersome, the director shared on the Pure Cinema podcast.
“It's not just that I take a script and then break it up into chapters, like in a novel. I retell this story as a novel. So it's not like “Oh, okay, he apparently has a few scenes left, so he just took the script, reworked it and added them.” It was a complete rethinking of the whole story, not just a rewrite. Some of the scenes were left outside the editing room when making the film, but I did so much research, ”Tarantino said.
The director has been writing the novel for five years. Working on the book made him understand the characters, learn more about them … “I am trying to tell a novelistic version of the life of these characters. If the book had existed first, then the film would have been the basis of the film. You know, it's like taking a cumbersome novel and trying to turn it into a movie. Well, for me the novel is just like that. This is a heavyweight version of the film. “
Tarantino added that one of the characters in the novel will be stuntman Cliff Booth, for whose portrayal in the film Brad Pitt won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Several chapters will be devoted to his story: “And each separate chapter will itself be like a strange little crime novel with Cliff in the title role,” concluded the director.
Last year, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was voted Best Home Movie. And in Russia, Tarantino's picture for the first time in 15 years collected a billion rubles at the box office.
