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Quentin Tarantino once confirmed a chilling detail about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – Cliff Booth did, in fact, kill his wife, Billie. But don’t worry, this grisly truth never made it into the film. Fans of the 2019 hit have long speculated about Cliff’s mysterious past, especially after the film teased a dark rumor: did he really kill his wife? Tarantino finally pulled back the curtain in the 2021 novelization of the film, offering a shocking and violent answer.
The movie, which reimagines the events surrounding the infamous Manson family murders, gave us Brad Pitt as the laid-back, but deadly, Cliff. A flashback in the movie showed a brief moment with Cliff and Billie on a boat, where he held a spear gun, but left the audience in suspense about whether he actually killed her.
Enter Tarantino’s novel, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: A Novel, where the truth came to light. Tarantino didn’t just hint at Cliff’s past, he laid it all out. In the book, Cliff brutally kills Billie with the spear gun, slicing her in half. But in true Tarantino fashion, he didn’t leave it there. Cliff’s regret is palpable, and in a twist that only Tarantino could pull off, he spends hours trying to “hold her body together” while they talked and made amends. But, of course, it was too late. The Coast Guard arrived too late to save her, and Cliff walked away, telling everyone it was a tragic diving accident.
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Tarantino admitted in a 2021 interview with Empire that he didn’t want to include such a grisly, graphic moment in the film. “KNB would have figured it out,” he said, referring to the special effects studio. “I wouldn’t have done it CGI, that’s for damn sure. It would be macabre and grotesque and it might even be a little funny, like it is on the page. But that’s doable.” Still, he felt it would have been too much for the film’s tone, leaving the moment out of the final cut.
And while that was one shocking revelation, Tarantino also gave fans an exclusive peek at what could have been a different ending to the film. The director had originally planned a conversation between Rick Dalton and Trudi Fraser, a moment of gratitude for their work that left Leonardo DiCaprio in tears. However, Tarantino chose to leave it out, explaining that it didn’t quite fit with the flow of the movie’s conclusion. “I pretty much knew from the beginning that I wasn’t going to include the ending that’s in the movie,” he shared in the same interview. But for anyone eager to get the full picture, that chat lives on in the novel.
In the end, Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood left us with enough questions and unexpected twists to keep us talking. Whether it’s the bloody truth about Cliff’s past or the scenes that didn’t make it to the big screen, the film continues to unravel in new ways. If you haven’t already, grab the book to dive deeper into the world of Hollywood’s alternate history, and the dark side of Cliff Booth.
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