Quentin Tarantino has clearly loves the world of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. In addition to the film itself, he’s written a novel based on the film and a half-a-dozen episodes of Bounty Law, the fictional TV series that starred Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), but he’s not done yet. Quentin Tarantino’s latest project in the world of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a book about the films of Rick Dalton.
While speaking with Empire, Quentin Tarantino said that he took inspiration from real-life movie guides for The Films of Rick Dalton. “You know in the ‘70s, you could get those books like The Films Of Charles Bronson, The Films Of Anthony Quinn? Well, this is that,” Tarantino explained. “It gives you a little quickie biography of his life… And it goes through the entire career until he retires in 1988.” The director added that he probably needs to “punch it up a little bit,” but that the “body of it completely exists.” Here’s where things get a little meta; while Quentin Tarantino obviously wrote the Rick Dalton book, he also wrote the book that exists in the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood universe as well. I’ll let him explain.
That is written by me, by Quentin Tarantino, in 1999. Because in this pretext, Rick retires and moves to Hawaii. And so I go, in 1998, to the Hawaii International Film Festival. I’m there, and Roger Ebert’s there, and I’m seeing films. And then one of the festival people goes, ‘Hey, so is there anybody in Hawaii that you’d like to meet?’ You go, ‘Well, who’s worth meeting here in Hawaii?’ ‘Well, Don Ho’s here, and this one is here, and that one’s here. Rick Dalton’s here…’ ‘Woah, woah, Rick Dalton? I wondered what the fuck happened to that guy!’ ‘Well, he retired in 1988, and him and his wife Francesca [Lorenza Izzo’s character, who Rick marries in the film], they moved to Hawaii…’
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Although Quentin Tarantino admits that there’s probably a “limited audience” for a book about a fictional actor, it might see the light of day somewhere down the road. “Everybody who likes Rick, and cares about Rick, and is interested in the trajectory of Rick and has now become invested in my alternative history of Hollywood… well, this takes the alternative history of Hollywood all the way to the bitter end,” Tarantino said. Would you be down to read a book about the films of Rick Dalton from Quentin Tarantino?
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