Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

by Quentin Tarantino

  Johnny never knew why his mother spirited him off in the middle of that wet night, but he could guess. He guessed Murdock Lancer got tired of playing house with a Mexican chili pepper and her half-greaser son. So one night he told her to vamos!

  Johnny knew if he ever went back to the Lancer Ranch, he’d blow his father’s fucking head off for throwing him and his mother out in the rain. But he also knew Murdock Lancer was a very important white American. And if he shot his father, Johnny Lancer would eventually hang by the neck for it. Luckily, Murdock wasn’t going anywhere. It’s one of the few drawbacks to being a wealthy landowner. Anyone who wants you can find you. Johnny put his mother in the ground, and one day he’d do the same for his father. And if the cost of avenging his mother was to be the forfeiture of his life, so be it. Still, Johnny was in no hurry to forfeit his life. That rich bastard would wait. In the meantime, there was gold to be stolen, pussy to be laid, and tequila to be guzzled. So imagine Johnny’s surprise when a telegram showed up at the Hotel Felix, a contact place where he received job offers, usually of the nefarious type.

  * * *

  IN CARE OF JOHN LANCER—STOP—JOB OFFER—STOP—TRAVEL TO LANCER RANCH OUTSIDE OF ROYO DEL ORO CALIFORNIA—STOP—PAY ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS UPON ARRIVAL—STOP—PAYMENT FOR CONSIDERATION OF JOB OFFER—STOP—NO OBLIGATION—STOP—MURDOCK LANCER

  * * *

  Along with the telegram was a wire for fifty dollars to pay for the passage to Royo del Oro. Fuck me swinging, thought Johnny. But the real lure wasn’t the offer of a thousand dollars. It was the opportunity, after all these years, to look in the face of Murdock Lancer—the man who made a money-grubbing whore out of his mother—and blow his brains out of the back of his skull.

  Mirabella Lancer caught her breath as the Butterfield stagecoach door finally opened and out stepped a fancy black-and-white spat shoe onto the footwell. Her eyes widened as a very handsome blond-haired man emerged from the passenger coach, dressed in the fanciest bluest clothes she’d ever seen on a man. Having been raised on a cattle ranch, she was used to the attire of men who worked for a living. Even when the businessmen in town got dressed up to go to church or the ranch hands slicked their hair back and put on their Sunday-go-to-meeting duds to attend a dance in town, their fancy clothes were charcoal black, dull gray, or drab brown. This blond-haired Eastern dandy’s three-piece suit was bright baby blue with gold thread woven into his vest. As he disembarked from the Butterfield stagecoach, he placed a large same-colored top hat on his head. The base of the hat was circled by a cream-colored silk sash. The striking stranger walked with a limp in his left leg, leaning on a silver dog-headed cane. But despite this impediment, or maybe because of it, he moved with impeccable posture and grace. The blue Bostonian removed a brush from his inside jacket pocket and began slowly and meticulously brushing the dust from his baby-blue lapels and cuffs and shoulders.

  Color Mirabella impressed. With a quick glance up to Ernesto, her pleased expression said, That’s my brother Scott.

  Just as the little girl swallowed her spit and opened her mouth to greet her long-lost relative, another passenger emerged from the stagecoach.

  This one too was compellingly impressive but in a completely different way. While the blond-haired man was storybook dashing and incredibly dignified, this new man was a devilishly handsome roguish-looking south-of-the-border-styled cowboy with a thick snatch of fudge-colored hair that framed his face in a way that Mirabella could only describe as dreamy. This brunette cowboy’s clothes weren’t as fancy as the blond passenger’s, but they were just as colorful and, in their own right, just as snazzy. The dark-haired passenger wore a Latin-styled sangria-red ruffled shirt with a brown leather short coat and black jeans with big silver studs down the pant leg. As he stepped out of the coach, he placed a short brown cowboy hat on his head. Which functioned not to keep the sun out of his eyes but to complement his killer look. After stretching his long silver-studded legs, the rough cowboy in the rouge-colored shirt sauntered over to Monty the stagecoach driver and asked in Spanish for him to toss down his saddle, which sat perched on top of the stage. Monty tossed the handcrafted saddle, heaving it by the horn over the side of the stagecoach roof. It fell heavy into the outstretched arms of the ruffled-shirt stranger.

  The top-hatted dandy in baby blue inquired of Ramon, the shotgun-cradling second rider who sat next to Monty on top of the stagecoach, about his paisley embroidered garment bag. Top Hat received the valise from the shotgun-riding Mexican and thanked him with a gringo-accented gracias.

  Now both the little girl Mirabella and the little Mexican Ernesto showed confusion on their perplexed faces. Neither of them knew, for sure, which one to approach. The little eight-year-old gave a shoulder shrug and, thinking, Oh well, here goes nothing, loudly cleared her throat to get the two handsome passengers’ attention.

  “Mr. Lancer?” she inquired with a big question mark.

  The men answered in unison, Top Hat saying, “Yes?” and Red Ruffles saying, “Yeah?” Each man instinctively jerked toward the other with an annoyed expression on his face.

  More confusion clouded the little girl’s face, till she suddenly understood.

  “Oh my goodness,” she exclaimed excitedly, “this is great! Both of you came together!”

  After the two men shared another uneasy glance at each other, the one with the top hat asked the little girl, in his Harvard-educated diction, “What do you mean, ‘both of you’?”

  “Well, we knew you were coming,” she explained, “but we didn’t know you’d be traveling together.”

  Since Scott hadn’t any knowledge of his father’s life since his mother hightailed it to Boston, save for the fact he owned a cattle empire, he was a little slow to pick up the little girl’s implication. “You were expecting both of us?” pointing to the man at his side in the red ruffled shirt.

  “Yeah,” she said happily. “You’re Johnny,” pointing her finger at the dark-haired one in the red ruffles, “and you’re Scott,” moving her finger in the direction of the blond man in blue.

  Well, that was their names. The two men shared another uneasy look at the other, as the reality of the situation became obvious.

  Johnny pointed his finger at the pint-sized provocateur and asked, “And who are you?”

  “I’m Mirabella Lancer, and you’re my brothers!” And with that declaration, she charged like a runaway wagon at Johnny, wrapping her little arms around his waist and knocking him back on the heels of his cowboy boots.

  A look of dread crossed the face of Johnny Lancer. He’d contemplated many variables when he imagined the moment he would be reunited with his father, but an apple-cheeked, ecstatic eight-year-old half sister wasn’t one of them. Before Scott could inquire about the meaning of all this, Mirabella had untangled herself from Johnny and had now wrapped her arms around Scott, squeezing his pelvic area, surprisingly strong for such a small fry. Trying to maintain some decorum and hold off, if only for a few seconds more, the inevitable conclusion of her revelation, Scott said, “Look, little girl—”

  Mirabella interrupted him by clarifying her name a second time. “Mirabella.”

  “Mirabella,” he continued, “my mother never had any other children.”

  “No,” Johnny said, pointing out the obvious, “but apparently your father did.”

  Scott turned toward Johnny and said, “You mean our father?”

  Johnny answered, “Yeah, our father, Murdock Lancer. Look, I don’t know why you made the trip, Top Hat, but the old man said he’d give me a thousand dollars if I came to see him.”

  “He made the same offer to me,” Scott confirmed.

  “I want that thousand dollars,” Johnny said, “and after I get it, I’m going to give him a belly full.” A belly full of what, Johnny left unspoken.

  Apparently, Scott had the same idea. “You and me both, brother.”

  Johnny shook his head. “Don’t call me brother.”

  “Are you ready to go?” Mi
rabella interjected pleasantly.

  They both turned to her and said in unison, “Go where?” Which annoyed both of them, and they gave a dirty look to each other.

  But their little sister thought it was funny, and she giggled out loud, “Where do you think? Lancer Ranch, you silly goose.”

  Mirabella turned on her heels, and she and the vaquero Ernesto led the way down the street toward the wagon that Ernesto had driven ten miles into town.

  Scott hooked the handle of his silver dog-headed cane through the hardwood handle of his valise and lifted it up to his free hand, while Johnny pitched the saddle over his shoulder. The two brothers followed their sister, who proceeded to paint a picture of what they could expect when they met their father. “Now, Daddy won’t act like it at first,” she warned them, “and he can be a bit of a mule head, but no matter what he says, he’s happy both of you came.”

  Johnny snorted sarcastically, “Yeah, well, we’ll see if he still feels that way after our little family reunion.”

  As Scott limped beside him, he concurred, “You know, brother, that’s the first thing you said I agree with.”

  That fucking did it, Johnny thought, and stopped in his tracks, pointing his finger in Scott’s baby-blue chest. “I done tole’ you, don’t call me brother, Top Hat.”

  Scott’s eyes went down to the aggressive finger, then rose up to the aggressive face, and he warned, “Don’t point your finger at me, Ruffles.”

  “Boys?”

  The two brothers turned away from each other toward their little sister, as she gestured toward the wagon and asked, condescendingly, “Can we go?”

  The two men gave each other a look that suggested, To be continued, but for the sake of this little sweetheart, they’d drop their fighting stance, and Johnny gestured toward the wagon.

  “Lead the way, sis.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Think Less Hippie, More Hells Angels”

  Cliff drives Rick’s Cadillac past the front gate on the Twentieth Century Fox lot. The guard at the gate gives him directions to the Spanish-western-town back lot where the Lancer pilot is being shot: “Drive straight to the second left, make a turn at Tyrone Power Boulevard; drive past the man-made lake and the set of Hello, Dolly! Turn right on Linda Darnell Avenue, and you can’t miss it.” In the passenger seat next to him, Rick wears big dark glasses to shield his eyes from the sun and smokes down a Capitol W cigarette to shield his tongue from taste. When Cliff jerks the car to a stop, Rick knows they have arrived.

  The actor glances out the passenger-side window, and through his dark glasses he sees a western town; a few horses and wagons; a film crew; some asshole director perched on top of a Chapman crane; a cowboy actor who obviously thinks he’s sexy, dressed in a bright-red Las Vegas–style shirt and short brown cowboy hat; some comically dressed fancy-pants dude in a bright-blue three-piece suit, complete with a top hat that looks like he drifted over from the set of Meet Me in St. Louis; a period-dressed little girl; and a Mexican runt in a large sombrero. Welcome to fucking Lancer, Rick thinks. He opens the car door and steps out from the vehicle on shaky legs. Upon standing upright, he’s struck by a coughing fit that brings up some stomach acid to the back of his esophagus.

  He spits out a green loogie mixed with red and turns back to Cliff behind the wheel. The actor leans down and talks to his assistant through the open passenger window. “I think the wind blew down my TV antenna last night. You think you’d mind goin’ home and fixin’ it?”

  “I can and I will,” Cliff assures him. Then, asking Rick as nonchalantly as he can, “Could you talk to the stunt gaffer about me today? That way I know if I’m workin’ this week or not?”

  There was a time when Cliff’s involvement on one of Rick’s projects was contractually negotiated. If Rick was playing the role, then Cliff was doubling him. On the Universal films, it was negotiated into Rick’s contract and there was a chair on the set with Cliff’s name on it. But it ain’t been that time in a long time. Now that Rick is guesting on other people’s television shows, Cliff isn’t guaranteed jack shit. Most TV-show stunt gaffers had their own crew, and most TV-show stunt gaffers’ first priority was looking after their crew. If Cliff was going to get a couple of days on Tarzan or Bingo Martin, it was because Rick had a word with the stunt gaffer and talked him into it.

  Rick sighs. “Yeah, I been meaning to tell you”—avoid it was closer to the truth—“the guy who gaffs this show is best friends with Randy. You know, the gaffer from The Green Hornet?”

  Knowing what that means, Cliff says, “Fuck!”

  “So, there really ain’t no point,” Rick says pragmatically.

  Cliff curses bitterly, “That fuckin’ little nip.” Then he turns his bitterness onto himself. “Why do I care if the Green Hornet’s fuckin’ chauffeur thinks he can wipe Ali’s ass? I mean, Jesus-fuckin’-Christ, the heavyweight champion of the world needs me to fuckin’ defend him?”

  “Especially at the expense of your career and my fuckin’ reputation,” Rick adds, getting irritated all over again. “I practically had to suck Randy’s cock to get you that gig,” Rick remembers. “And what do you do? You practically break that little big mouth’s back. End result, you get blackballed from three-quarters of the shows in town and I look like a fuckin’ asshole. But you showed him,” Rick finishes sarcastically.

  “Look, man,” the stuntman raises his palms flat out in surrender, “when you’re right you’re right, and you’re right.”

  Rick tells Cliff an old acting story, oblivious to the fact that he’s told Cliff this exact same story three times before.

  Listening to Rick tell the same stories and anecdotes, pretending to be unaware of the repetition, is practically part of Cliff’s job description. And, to be ungenerous, a sign of Rick’s low intelligence.

  “I’m doin’ my first decent part in a feature,” Rick begins, “Battle of the Coral Sea with Cliff Robertson, directed by Paul Wendkos. I’m doing one of my first real parts, for the guy who’s gonna turn out being my favorite director. In a real studio movie, Columbia Pictures—a Columbia B-movie, but still, not Republic, not AIP, fuckin’ Columbia Pictures.”

  Cliff looks up from the driver’s seat at his boss, settling himself in to hear the same story for the fourth time.

  “So anyway, I’m excited as all fuckin’ hell. Except there’s this fuckin’ 2nd AD on the picture, who’s a real horse’s ass. And this fucker is fuckin’ with me the whole time. Not Tommy Laughlin, definitely not Cliff Robertson—he’s practically suckin’ Cliff’s cock! He’s not fucking with anybody else. Just me!”

  Rick continues, “It’s shitty, it’s unfair, and finally I’ve fuckin’ had it. So I’m having lunch with this chubby guy on the movie, a William Witney regular, Gordon Jones. Been around a real long time, been in eighty fuckin’ movies, a real good cat. So I tell Jones I’m waiting for this fuckin’ prick to say one more word to me, just one more fuckin’ word, and I’m gonna fuckin’ lay ’em out!”

  Now Rick gets to the moral of the story: “And Jones tells me, yeah, you could do that. And yeah, you could probably take ’em. And yeah, he deserves it. But, before you lay him out on the job, take your SAG card outta your wallet, light a match, and set it on fire. Because, since basically that’s what you’ll be doin’, you might as well go all the way.”

  Cliff repeats the sentiment from before. “I get it, I get it. Who fuckin’ cares what that little prick says?”

  “I mean, Jesus Christ on a fuckin’ crutch,” Rick says. “If every time a series lead made a big claim about something they obviously couldn’t do, somebody took a poke at them, no work would ever get done. Bob Conrad and Darren McGavin wouldn’t be able to get through a fuckin’ week without some wrangler brainin’ them.” Rick illustrates, “That midget playing Kato, he’s a fucking actor! Any actor claiming to do anything, except saying lines other people wrote, is full of fucking shit. And most of them can’t even fucking do that!”

  Rick counts of
f on his fingers the actors who know what they’re talking about. “You wanna talk to Audie Murphy about killing dudes, he could tell ya. You wanna talk to Jim Brown about running touchdowns, he could tell ya. You wanna talk to Sonja Henie about ice skating, she could tell ya. You wanna talk to Esther Williams about fucking swimming, go ahead. But everybody else is fuckin’ faking it. And if anybody should fucking know that, it’s a goddamn war-hero stuntman!”

  Cliff smiles up at his boss and repeats in his Zen-like manner, “Like I said, when you’re right, you’re right.”

  “Darn tootin’ I’m right,” Rick says.

  Changing the subject, Cliff asks, “Well, if you don’t need me for anything else, I’ll just pick you up at wrap?”

  “Naw,” Rick confirms. “Just see what you can do about that damn antenna and I’ll see you at wrap.” Then Rick asks, “When’s wrap today?”

  “Seven-thirty,” Cliff says.

  “See ya then,” and Rick walks off toward the Lancer set.

  Then, after a moment, Cliff calls out to him.

  Rick turns around and, from behind the wheel of the Cadillac, his buddy points a strong finger at him and says, “Just remember, you’re Rick-fucking-Dalton! Don’t you forget that!”

  That makes the actor smile. He gives his buddy a little salute, then the Coupe de Ville drives away and the actor reports for work.

  Sitting in a chair in front of a vanity mirror in the Lancer makeup trailer, Rick dunks his face in a bowl of ice water. Supposedly, Paul Newman does this every morning. But for Newman, it’s part of his beauty regimen. For Rick, it’s to stimulate his senses out of the queasy numbness of last night’s alcohol. When his face emerges from the freezing water, he takes a couple of cubes in his hand and rubs them across his face and on the back of his neck.

  Sonya, the makeup-and-hair girl on this pilot, who supplied Rick with the bowl of ice water, sits in a makeup chair three stations away, smoking a Chesterfield. Sitting in the chair next to her, waiting for the director to arrive so they can discuss Rick’s costume, is the show’s fleshy, big-haired cutie-pie costume designer, Rebekkah. If she were wearing pigtails, the outfit she has on could nab her third prize in a Wednesday Addams look-alike contest. Over the Wednesday Addams outfit, she wears a big “Wild Ones”–like black leather motorcycle jacket.