Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: A Novel

Early on the morning of February 8, 1969, Cliff drives to Rick’s house to pick him up. On the way, he sees four hippie girls crossing the street. The brunette hippie smiles at him and gives him the peace sign, which he returns. Around the same time, Rick wakes up hungover. It will be his first day filming the new Western series called Lancer. However, he drank eight whiskey sours while reading the script the night before, and as he lies in bed that morning, he throws up on himself. Even though no one’s there to see it, Rick hates himself for doing something so humiliating. Years later, he’ll learn that he’s bipolar and experiences extreme emotions, which he attempts to calm by using alcohol to self-medicate.

Seven months later, Rick returns home from his time in Italy and receives a call from his old mentor Paul Wendkos. Wendkos is calling because he heard that hippies broke into Rick’s house and attacked him. Rick confirms that two women and a man broke into his house, threatening him, Cliff, and his wife, Francesca with knives and a pistol. Cliff protected Francesca (whom he met in Italy while filming spaghetti Westerns) in the living room and bashed in the faces of one of the girls and the man. The other hippie girl almost shot Rick, who was floating in the swimming pool at the time, but he torched her using the flamethrower he had from filming Wendkos’s movie The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey. They never found out why the hippies broke into the house, but when Cliff asked the man what he was doing there, he replied, “I’m the devil, and I’ve come here to do the devil’s business” (90). The next day, the local news picked up the story, and soon it became world news. Hollywood obsessed over the idea of Jake Cahill of Bounty Law using a flamethrower to kill a home intruder. This publicity helps Rick’s career, and he receives offers for guest-star roles on Mission: Impossible and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. While filming another Wendkos film years later, Rick meets actor Pete Duel. They enjoy each other’s company because they both use alcohol to help with their undiagnosed bipolar disorders. Rick later learns that Duel killed himself at the height of his career, and thus Rick tries to cut back on his alcohol intake while he works.

On February 8, 1969, Squeaky makes breakfast for George at Spahn Ranch. Hollywood used the ranch to shoot Westerns in the 1950s, but recently George has let members of the Manson Family take up residency there. When Charlie first told Squeaky that she’d oversee George’s care and have sex with him, she considered leaving the commune to return to her family. However, she surprised herself by falling in love with George. He was kind and lonely, and although Hollywood had used his ranch to shoot Westerns for years, she’s sad that Hollywood forgot about him in his old age.

In another part of Los Angeles, Jay Sebring, a famous Hollywood hairstylist, watches television as his butler brings him breakfast in bed. At Roman Polanski’s home on Cielo Drive, Roman enjoys his morning coffee while watching Sharon’s dog in his yard. Roman is in a bad mood because Steve McQueen flirted with Sharon the whole night. He tries to calm himself down by playing with the dog as Sharon sleeps upstairs.

This chapter traces the storyline of the television show Lancer. On the California-Mexico border, eight-year-old Mirabella Lancer waits for her brothers to arrive on the Wells Fargo stagecoach. Her father is Murdock Lancer, the owner of the biggest cattle ranch in the area. Scott, Johnny, and Mirabella Lancer have never met each other because they’re all half-siblings. Johnny lived on the ranch with his father and mother until he was 10 years old. Murdock sent Johnny and his mother, Marta, back to Mexico without any way to sustain themselves. Marta returned to sex work in Mexico. Before long, one of Marta’s clients murdered her, but the man got away with it because a biased jury acquitted him. Years later, Johnny found the man who murdered his mother and killed him; then Johnny spent the next decade killing the members of the biased jury. The only reason that Johnny returned to Lancer Ranch was to kill his father and avenge his mother’s death.

Mirabella sees her brothers Scott and Johnny get out of the stagecoach and approaches them. Her excitement over meeting her brothers makes Johnny feels uneasy about the real reason that he’s there.

Cliff drops Rick off at the Twentieth Century Fox lot for his first day on the set of Lancer. Cliff tells Rick to ask if they can use him as a stuntman on Lancer. Rick tells Cliff that the showrunner is best friends with Randy, who fired Cliff from The Green Hornet set. This upsets Cliff, but Rick reminds him that it’s his own fault for fighting Bruce Lee and getting himself fired.

In the makeup trailer, Rick meets the director, Sam Wanamaker. Sam tells Rick that he’s going to give him a fake mustache to goad Jim Stacy, the lead, and thus create real tension between their characters. Jim wanted a fake mustache for Johnny Lancer, but the network wanted only the villain to have a mustache. Rick expresses his concern that with the costume and fake mustache, the audience won’t even recognize him. Sam replies that some people “call that acting” (121).

Cliff knows that he should never have shot his wife with a shark gun. It tore her body in half, and Cliff regretted it as soon as it happened. He hated his wife, but as soon as he shot her, all his anger and hatred disappeared. Cliff held her body together for hours, trying to keep her alive. When the Coast Guard boarded the boat later, they tried to transfer Billie to an ambulance, but she fell apart and died.

When Cliff first arrived on the Hollywood scene, the industry respected him because he was a war hero. Nevertheless, because of the suspicion surrounding Billie’s death, Hollywood executives were nervous about hiring Cliff. Many people knew that Billie and Cliff fought when they were drunk, so they assumed that Cliff killed her during one of their fights. Cliff regretted what he did, but he knew he couldn’t take it back, so he chose to move on with his life. The authorities weren’t aware of Cliff’s violent tendencies, so they believed him when he told them that the shark gun misfired. Afterward, Cliff was infamous on Hollywood sets because everyone knew him as the man who murdered his wife.