“A love letter to cinema” was the tired-but-true trope that everyone trotted out when Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” the movie, hit theaters two years ago.
But it’s now clear just how insufficient a mere mash note to the movies was for Tarantino.
This week saw the arrival of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” the 400-page book, as his epic Penthouse Forum Letter to cinema.
You’ll know this trade-paperback novelization is cineaste-populist porn when you see it.The end result is not so much like reliving the movie on the page — although the book does have a few scenes in which the dialogue and descriptive beats are transcribed note-for-note from the screenplay — as much as a catalog of constant diversions that’s like being locked inside the New Beverly for a week with Pauline Kael, Harry Knowles and Leonard Maltin.
Let that intrigue
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