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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
Pretty early on the Manson's attack on Rick and Cliff gets mentioned as a offhand remark which surprised the hell out of me, but I assumed we'd still get the scene later. But not ever including it is such a baller move from Tarantino, because a big spectacle like that plays out better on screen than on the page, and the new last chapter of Trudi/Mirabella and Rick practicing their lines together was the best chapter in the whole book.
Speaking of Trudi, she's my favorite character in the story. I laughed during every chapter that featured her.
For this and other choices Quentin makes I do think you kind of do need to have seen the movie to fully enjoy this book, but I don't think that's a bad thing. The assumption that the reader has seen the movie lets him get so much more creative in writing the story, catering it to this new medium.
The only thing limiting my enjoyment and ultimately keeping me from liking the movie over the book is the amount of tangents the book goes on. I think they're great, the only problem is, since most of the tangents are about 50s-70s movies and actors, there are a lot of times I just have no idea what he's going on about, and killed the pacing a little bit. The ones I was at least a little familiar with worked really well, which makes me think I'd really dig them all if I knew more.
Speaking of Trudi, she's my favorite character in the story. I laughed during every chapter that featured her.
For this and other choices Quentin makes I do think you kind of do need to have seen the movie to fully enjoy this book, but I don't think that's a bad thing. The assumption that the reader has seen the movie lets him get so much more creative in writing the story, catering it to this new medium.
The only thing limiting my enjoyment and ultimately keeping me from liking the movie over the book is the amount of tangents the book goes on. I think they're great, the only problem is, since most of the tangents are about 50s-70s movies and actors, there are a lot of times I just have no idea what he's going on about, and killed the pacing a little bit. The ones I was at least a little familiar with worked really well, which makes me think I'd really dig them all if I knew more.
I’d be curious how this would read to someone who hasn’t seen the movie, because it feels ultimately like a companion piece more than a straightforward adaptation, but as a fan of the movie this is just chock full of even more delightful and goofy scenes and touching grace notes between forgotten Hollywood stars. Still need to revisit the movie again and listen to the rest of “The Day of the Dalton.”
medium-paced
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
I enjoyed the book but am unlikely to reread it or recommend it to most people.
Having seen (and mostly remembered) the movie, the parts of the book that mirrored the movie were entertaining but not that interesting.
I also could have done without multiple chapters on the plot of the Lancer pilot.
I was fascinated by all the nitty-gritty details about the state of the careers of various television and movie stars in the late 60s, and I learned all kinds of interesting tidbits about casting choices, the stars pecking order, and the foreign movie market.
Tarantino writes some great fiction, but after reading this book I'd be most interested in seeing him write a non-fiction movie/tv history book.
Having seen (and mostly remembered) the movie, the parts of the book that mirrored the movie were entertaining but not that interesting.
I also could have done without multiple chapters on the plot of the Lancer pilot.
I was fascinated by all the nitty-gritty details about the state of the careers of various television and movie stars in the late 60s, and I learned all kinds of interesting tidbits about casting choices, the stars pecking order, and the foreign movie market.
Tarantino writes some great fiction, but after reading this book I'd be most interested in seeing him write a non-fiction movie/tv history book.
Apparently Rick Dalton and Steve McQueen played pool once…wish I coulda been there to see it.
This book is very good as the movie.
Good job, Quentin Tarantino!
Good job, Quentin Tarantino!
Tarantino decides to write his first book as a novel adaptation of his most recent movie. It’s a slow burn character study of of aging actor, Rick Dalton who’s now at the crossroads of the Hollywood industry in 1969. It’s really fascinating reading this character have full blown anxiety filled breakdowns and trying o find his place in the world.
I also love his close friendship with his stuntman, Cliff Booth. They’re polar opposites yet they have each other’s backs.
Since it’s 1969, it makes full use of the era with plenty of real life celebrities topics having fun screen time. It very much is an alternative history with the Manson family failing to kill Sharon Tate and her friends and leaves the audience to wonder what would happen to the world at large if things went a different way.
It’s his first book, but this is well made. Good use of characters, new scenes, more internal thought process, and really setting each scene for the reader to use their imagination.
My only problem with it is that the pacing towards the latter half is a bit slower for my taste, but that’s just a nitpick.
I also love his close friendship with his stuntman, Cliff Booth. They’re polar opposites yet they have each other’s backs.
Since it’s 1969, it makes full use of the era with plenty of real life celebrities topics having fun screen time. It very much is an alternative history with the Manson family failing to kill Sharon Tate and her friends and leaves the audience to wonder what would happen to the world at large if things went a different way.
It’s his first book, but this is well made. Good use of characters, new scenes, more internal thought process, and really setting each scene for the reader to use their imagination.
My only problem with it is that the pacing towards the latter half is a bit slower for my taste, but that’s just a nitpick.
I love the dialogue in every Quentin Tarantino movie, so I expected the writing in this book to be substantially better. It reads like a screenplay rather than a novel. In just the first couple of chapters, it makes a million references to actors and films that I have never heard of and seems really geared towards serious cinephiles. I knew I couldn't deal with a whole book's worth of Tarantino's love letter to Hollywood, plus the audio narration left something to be desired. DNF.
There's history and there's Hollywood. When one intrudes on the other, it's just asking for trouble; best to keep them separate at all costs.
The Tate-La Bianca murders were not the end of an era, but the dissolution of a story. One that dictated love was indeed all one needed, and that there was nowhere that love was more potently felt than in the iridescent glow of a movie projector. The illusion that the wave would not break, that this was a way of life that could keep on going forever. Tarantino's movie lets that story keep on trucking a little longer than history allowed, but his novel suggests that revisionism might be more a gesture of justice toward Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, and the other victims of the Manson family than a complete upheaval of the Golden Age's tragic final act.
Comparisons to the movie are inevitable, as this is not so much a direct novelization as it is a separate work in conversation with its cinematic progenitor. The film's red-splattered climax is elided completely, relegated to marginalia in an early chapter, and what remains is drenched in melancholy, disillusionment, and fleeting moments of community that offer some understated kind of hope -- evocative of Chandler and Hammett at their best. Under this lens, "Hollywood" is less the escapist fantasy than it might appear from the outset. This fairytale contains more sincerity than I gave it credit for on the big screen.
Tarantino made his bones assembling the detritus of trash art into some of the most universally acclaimed movies of his generation. Depending on how you look at it, this can speak either to the dormant genius of pulp novels or the aesthetic bankruptcy of studio pictures. In that sense, reframing his ahistorical period-piece epic along the lines of a crime paperback was probably inevitable. And in its own way, the presentation itself is part of the story. Every dog-eared page in my battered mass market copy attests to the state of mind one should be in when reading this. The ads for other books (both real and imagined) placed at the end resonate with the same grungy timbre of the fake trailers from "Grindhouse." A different medium, but very much the same song-and-dance.
The director feels at home on the bookshelf, and as such is quite liberal about putting his dirty feet on the upholstery. (Though perhaps conversations about "feet" should be saved for later...) Given the seemingly boundless space of the novel format, plotlines balloon near to the point of bursting (even dragging in infamous imbiber Aldo Ray in one chapter), the altered trajectory of character arcs sometimes miss their marks (basically everything new involving Cliff's backstory), and moments that came off as discursive in the movie become downright tedious on the page. But the qualities that make a Tarantino flick so fun to watch -- irreverent banter, slow-building tension, a barrage of cultural cross-references -- are all present in spades, with several book-exclusive scenes even making me long to see the surely-filmed-but-discarded versions.
"Hollywood" is everything that is messy and wonderful about dimestore literature augmented by an encyclopaedic knowledge of and passion for a lost era. It is as much a work of documentary as it is an entertainment, paying due respect to what came before while telling telling the story of it in its own terms. Maybe you did have to be there to really "get" L.A. in 1969; this is the next best thing.
The Tate-La Bianca murders were not the end of an era, but the dissolution of a story. One that dictated love was indeed all one needed, and that there was nowhere that love was more potently felt than in the iridescent glow of a movie projector. The illusion that the wave would not break, that this was a way of life that could keep on going forever. Tarantino's movie lets that story keep on trucking a little longer than history allowed, but his novel suggests that revisionism might be more a gesture of justice toward Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, and the other victims of the Manson family than a complete upheaval of the Golden Age's tragic final act.
Comparisons to the movie are inevitable, as this is not so much a direct novelization as it is a separate work in conversation with its cinematic progenitor. The film's red-splattered climax is elided completely, relegated to marginalia in an early chapter, and what remains is drenched in melancholy, disillusionment, and fleeting moments of community that offer some understated kind of hope -- evocative of Chandler and Hammett at their best. Under this lens, "Hollywood" is less the escapist fantasy than it might appear from the outset. This fairytale contains more sincerity than I gave it credit for on the big screen.
Tarantino made his bones assembling the detritus of trash art into some of the most universally acclaimed movies of his generation. Depending on how you look at it, this can speak either to the dormant genius of pulp novels or the aesthetic bankruptcy of studio pictures. In that sense, reframing his ahistorical period-piece epic along the lines of a crime paperback was probably inevitable. And in its own way, the presentation itself is part of the story. Every dog-eared page in my battered mass market copy attests to the state of mind one should be in when reading this. The ads for other books (both real and imagined) placed at the end resonate with the same grungy timbre of the fake trailers from "Grindhouse." A different medium, but very much the same song-and-dance.
The director feels at home on the bookshelf, and as such is quite liberal about putting his dirty feet on the upholstery. (Though perhaps conversations about "feet" should be saved for later...) Given the seemingly boundless space of the novel format, plotlines balloon near to the point of bursting (even dragging in infamous imbiber Aldo Ray in one chapter), the altered trajectory of character arcs sometimes miss their marks (basically everything new involving Cliff's backstory), and moments that came off as discursive in the movie become downright tedious on the page. But the qualities that make a Tarantino flick so fun to watch -- irreverent banter, slow-building tension, a barrage of cultural cross-references -- are all present in spades, with several book-exclusive scenes even making me long to see the surely-filmed-but-discarded versions.
"Hollywood" is everything that is messy and wonderful about dimestore literature augmented by an encyclopaedic knowledge of and passion for a lost era. It is as much a work of documentary as it is an entertainment, paying due respect to what came before while telling telling the story of it in its own terms. Maybe you did have to be there to really "get" L.A. in 1969; this is the next best thing.
I give the film 5/5. I give the book 1/5. And I really do hate that. Here’s a little review:
Honestly, this is one of my least favorite things I’ve ever read. It leans into its worst self nearly the entire time. It takes all the mystery from behind the characters away, and it gets rid of the awesome ending. You can tell it’s a first-time novel, as it’s written so plainly. At times it felt that I’ve read more adult books from R.L. Stine. It’s really just trashy men doing trashy things for the most part. And I hate to reduce it to that, but that’s how it felt to me. Give me more Sharon!
A couple good things about the book are the stories within the story. Tarantino is a great filmmaker, and a great conceptualist, and you can see why he gets ideas greenlit, even when trashier (DEATH PROOF). You get a little extra on the background for BOUNTY LAW, and I can’t wait for that series.
Another good thing is that there is also some cool history here. It’s interwoven with the fictitious narrative, or characters, but most of it is based on real life events, or inspired by them. Tarantino is a wonderful historian, and I love to listen to him talk about films and the industry. He’s a great storyteller, even if I don’t like this book, or more specifically the way this film is adapted.
I don’t want to dissuade people from reading this. Maybe I should give it 2/5, but it pissed me off more than a few times with its juvenile and plain styling. I wanted to quit multiple times, and did for a couple weeks. It’s a very easy read, and is paced well, if you can get into it. It just didn’t do much for me overall. It’s okay though, because I absolutely love the film!
Honestly, this is one of my least favorite things I’ve ever read. It leans into its worst self nearly the entire time. It takes all the mystery from behind the characters away, and it gets rid of the awesome ending. You can tell it’s a first-time novel, as it’s written so plainly. At times it felt that I’ve read more adult books from R.L. Stine. It’s really just trashy men doing trashy things for the most part. And I hate to reduce it to that, but that’s how it felt to me. Give me more Sharon!
A couple good things about the book are the stories within the story. Tarantino is a great filmmaker, and a great conceptualist, and you can see why he gets ideas greenlit, even when trashier (DEATH PROOF). You get a little extra on the background for BOUNTY LAW, and I can’t wait for that series.
Another good thing is that there is also some cool history here. It’s interwoven with the fictitious narrative, or characters, but most of it is based on real life events, or inspired by them. Tarantino is a wonderful historian, and I love to listen to him talk about films and the industry. He’s a great storyteller, even if I don’t like this book, or more specifically the way this film is adapted.
I don’t want to dissuade people from reading this. Maybe I should give it 2/5, but it pissed me off more than a few times with its juvenile and plain styling. I wanted to quit multiple times, and did for a couple weeks. It’s a very easy read, and is paced well, if you can get into it. It just didn’t do much for me overall. It’s okay though, because I absolutely love the film!