Tarantino teases book with unseen clips from Once Upon A Time in Hollywood

Clocking in at a cool two hours and 40 minutes, it may seem like Quentin Tarantino couldn’t bring himself to cut a single second of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. However, as we found out from Margot Robbie, there’s actually a 20-hour version of the film somewhere out there in the world and now some of that unseen extra footage has turned up in the new trailer for the upcoming novel of the film.  

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: A Novel, will be Tarantino’s first published work and has been described by the director as a “complete rethinking” of the film’s narrative. Dropping June 29, a new trailer has been released teasing the novel and offering fans never-before-seen footage from the Oscar-winning movie. There’s new clips of Charles Manson and Mama Cass, a brief glimpse of Dakota Fanning as Squeaky Fromme, and a phone conversation between Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton and his young costar, Trudi Fraser.

Tarantino has promised the book will clear up some of the gossip teased in the original film including if Brad Pitt’s character Cliff Booth killed his wife. “In the movie, Cliff is a real enigma, you’re kind of like, what’s this guy’s deal?” he said on the New Beverly’s Pure Cinema podcast. “And one of the things in the book is, there’s these isolated chapters that tell you, like, this whole chapter will be about Cliff’s past. It goes back in time to tell you about Cliff at this point in time. And then you go further on with the normal run of the story and there’s another chapter that goes back in time and tells you about Cliff’s past. And every isolated chapter that’s just about Cliff’s past is like a weird little pulp novel unto itself starring Cliff.”

Tarantino also explained in the interview that the book was more than just turning the screenplay into a novelistic form but rather that it was a “complete rethinking of the entire story.” “It’s not like, ‘Oh, okay, well he obviously had a few scenes left over, so he just took the screenplay and novelised it and threw in a few extra scenes.’ It was a complete rethinking of the entire story and not just a rethinking as far as throwing in some scenes that were left out of the editing room. I did so much research.”

Earlier this year, Tarantino released a 30-minute featurette offering a new insight into the production of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Titled A Love Letter To Making Movies, the documentary explores the movie’s themes and ideas, and features interviews with the film’s stars. The director is also set to work on a Once Upon A Time In Hollywood spin-off based on Bounty Law, the fictitious TV show that stars DiCaprio’s character in the film. 

Watch the trailer for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: A Novel below.