Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: A Novel

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-20

Chapters 21-25

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary: “Call Me Marvin”

Content Warning: This section of the guide refers to antisemitic, antigay, and misogynistic language, which features in the source text. In addition, this section describes instances of graphic violence, alcohol and drug misuse, death by suicide, and discussions of statutory rape.

The novel begins in the office of talent agent Marvin Schwarz as he meets with Rick Dalton, a struggling actor, for the first time to discuss the future of Rick’s career. Rick was the star of the Western television show Bounty Law, where he played the main character, Jake Cahill.

Marvin tells Rick that as an agent his goal is to “put famous American talent in foreign films” (7). Marvin asks Rick if it’s true that network executives considered him for Steve McQueen’s role in The Great Escape. Rick tells Marvin that McQueen didn’t accept the offer for the role immediately, so the producers started to consider other actors for the role. Rick’s name was on a list along with four others in consideration. Nevertheless, McQueen took the role, which is why Rick hates the story. Marvin thinks this is great news because Italian directors want McQueen to star in their movies. Because McQueen always refuses, Marvin knows that the Italian directors will settle for Rick because he looks like McQueen. This horrifies Rick, and he starts to cry after being faced with the reality of his career. Rick confesses that it was his fault that Bounty Law didn’t continue past its third season because he was so obsessed with becoming a movie star that he was uncooperative on the set. Marvin tells him that many young actors fall prey to the same type of arrogance and that it’s forgivable but if Rick wants to keep going, he must reinvent himself as a humble actor.

Chapter 2 Summary: “I am Curious (Cliff)”

Cliff Booth, Rick Dalton’s stunt double, flirts with Marvin Schwarz’s receptionist, Miss Himmelsteen, and asks her out on a date to see the new Swedish film I am Curious (Yellow). Rick walks out of Marvin’s office, obviously upset, and Cliff leaves with him.

Cliff and Miss Himmelsteen enjoy I am Curious (Yellow). Unlike Rick, who enjoys only Hollywood films, Cliff loves foreign films. After he returned home from World War II, Cliff found Hollywood films inauthentic. In the 1950s, Cliff started seeing foreign films by himself because reading the subtitles and understanding the film made him feel smarter than other people. Cliff likes I am Curious (Yellow) because of the way the film combines fiction and reality, which makes Cliff think about the implications of “what’s real and what’s a movie” (33).

Chapter 3 Summary: Cielo Drive

Cliff drives Rick back to his house on Cielo Drive after his meeting with Marvin. Rick complains about Marvin’s suggestion that Rick should make Italian movies.

When Cliff and Rick first met on the third season of Bounty Law, Rick disliked Cliff because he hated that his stunt double was more attractive than him. However, he started warming up to Cliff when he heard that he was a war hero and had won the Medal of Valor twice. Rick loved the idea that Cliff was a real killer, something that Rick only emulates on screen. When they first met, Cliff told Rick that if he wanted to know what it felt like to kill a person, then he should kill a pig. Rick wants to know what it feels like for acting experience, but he believes that imagining killing a pig is the same thing as doing it.

Cliff pulls Rick’s car into the driveway. At the end of the driveway is a large oil painting of Rick with a boot on his face. The painting was originally a section of the billboard of Rick’s first feature film, Comanche Uprising. Rick angrily tells Cliff to throw the painting away so that he doesn’t have to look at it anymore.

Rick sees his new neighbors, Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, pulling into their driveway. Polanski has become Hollywood’s most famous director, especially because of his film Rosemary’s Baby. Rick tells Cliff that if he can get himself invited to a Polanski party, he could star in Polanski’s next film.

Chapter 4 Summary: “Brandy, You’re a Fine Girl”

After his wife died, Cliff’s most meaningful relationship has been with his pit bull, Brandy. Brandy was a gift from a friend named Buster Cooley, who owed Cliff $3,200. Since Buster was unable to pay Cliff back, he gave Brandy to Cliff so that they could make money on her winning dog fights. Brandy won consistently until another dog hurt her in a fight. Cliff wanted her to stop fighting because he’d grown attached to her, but Buster insisted that they put her in one last fight against a bigger dog and bet against her, knowing that she’d die. This infuriated Cliff, and he killed Buster to protect Brandy. Buster’s murder was the third that Cliff got away with. The first was when he returned from the war, and the second was when he murdered his wife.

In 1969, Brandy eats her food while Cliff sits in front of the television and watches Mannix while eating dinner. Twenty miles away, at Spahn Movie Ranch, elderly George Spahn watches Mannix with his young caretaker, “Squeaky.” Squeaky describes the show to George because he’s blind.

Chapter 5 Summary: “Pussycat’s Kreepy Krawl”

At two o’ clock in the morning, Charles Manson stands with five members of the Manson Family in front of a suburban home in Pasadena, California. One of the youngest members, Debra Jo, or “Pussycat,” prepares to do her first “kreepy krawl,” which is what Manson calls their ritual of breaking into someone’s house and crawling around it without the owner’s knowledge.

In 1968, record producer Terry Melcher spent time with the Manson Family while they were staying with Dennis Wilson. Charles Manson wanted to become a musician, but he wasn’t talented enough for Terry to want to sign a record deal with him. Nevertheless, Terry didn’t tell Charles this because he wanted to have sex with 15-year-old Debra Jo. Debra Jo met Manson (“Charlie”) when her father picked him up hitchhiking and brought him home for dinner. Charlie had sex with Debra Jo and then stole her father’s car and ran away with her. Debra Jo’s father later asked Charlie if he could join the Family, but Charlie refused. When Terry heard this story, he realized the power of Charlie’s influence over other people considering that a man whose daughter he stole still wanted to be a part of his movement.

On February 7, 1969, Debra Jo stands in the backyard of the Hirshberg’s house and then enters it. As she does, she feels Charlie enter her psyche and control parts of her. She undresses, takes a red lightbulb out of her pocket, and climbs the stairs naked. After she watches the Hirshbergs sleep, she replaces the lightbulb in their lamp with the red lightbulb. She turns on the light and watches them with the room illuminated in red. Then, she leaps into the bed with the couple. When they wake up, startled, Debra Jo kisses the man and then runs out of the house, joining the laughing Manson Family members in the yard.

Chapters 1-5 Analysis

The novel’s first five chapters introduce the 1960s Hollywood setting. Rick doesn’t want old Hollywood to evolve, even though it’s the same city that has turned its back on his career. Cliff, however, sees Hollywood as fake, just another desert transformed into a city when “it got paved over with concrete” (86). Tarantino uses these two perceptions of Hollywood throughout the novel to highlight one of the novel’s main themes, The Decline of Hollywood’s Golden Era.

Rick Dalton struggles to accept his life and career because he believed Hollywood’s promise that he’d become a famous star at a young age. As a result, Dalton struggles with contentment and satisfaction. Rick’s disillusioned attitude sets up another primary theme, The Difficulty in Transitioning to New Phases. Rick’s conversation with Marvin in Chapter 1 reveals Rick’s fears that the prime of his life has past him by, and he doesn’t know how to cope with this idea. When Marvin tells him that he needs to move on to Italian films, Rick starts to cry and says to Marvin, “It’s a little hard to sit here after all that time and come face-to-face with what a failure I’ve become. Coming face-to-face with how I ran my career into the ground” (18). However, Marvin doesn’t see this moment as a failure but an opportunity for Rick to enter a new phase of his career and expand past the perimeters of Hollywood: “Mr. Dalton, you’re not the first young actor to land a series and fall under the spell of hubris. In fact, it’s a common ailment out here” (19). According to Marvin, Rick’s pride and arrogance has been his downfall, but he can still change his attitude. Rick’s inner conflict centers on the proud and arrogant belief that Hollywood films are the only movies worth making and that if he isn’t a Hollywood movie star, then he’s a failure.

A third theme that this section introduces and explores is Reality Versus Fiction, largely through Cliff’s obsession with foreign films and disdain for Hollywood films. After fighting in the war, in Cliff’s sees America as a country “where its home-front civilians were shielded from the gruesome details of the conflict, their motives remained stubbornly immature and frustratingly committed to the concept of entertainment for the whole family” (25). Americans’ separation from the war stopped them from making films that were realistic and authentic, which is what bores Cliff. The only way he can remove himself from the over-sentimentality of American films is by watching foreign films in his free time. When Cliff sees I am Curious (Yellow), he loves the film’s ability to weave reality and fiction together to the extent that he can’t tell whether the film is based on real-life events. Likewise, the novel reflects this theme by depicting fictional and historical characters in its plot to the point that it becomes difficult to decipher what’s real and what isn’t. For example, Chapter 5 uses the historical reality of the Charles Manson “Family” and superimposes fictional characters, including family member Debra Jo (possibly based on Ella Jo Bailey, a confirmed Manson Family member). The term “kreepy krawl” enhances the blend of fact and fiction; the real Manson family used this alliterative phrase to refer to breaking into a person’s home and moving around in it without the owner’s knowledge.