One of the mysteries in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is whether or not Brad Pitt’s character, Cliff Booth, killed his wife. The novelization of the film is now available, and it confirms what really happened. Read on if you’d like to know.
SPOILERS FOLLOW BELOW/DESCRIPTION CONTAINS GRAPHIC LANGUAGE
According to Collider, the book confirms that Booth did in fact shoot and kill his wife, Billie, with the shark gun as it was alluded to in the movie in a flashback scene on a boat. The book confirms in grisly detail how it happened. The spear “hit her a little below the belly button, tearing her in half, both pieces hitting the deck of the boat with a splash.”
In the movie, we see Booth pointing the spear gun at Billie but the scene ends before anything happens, leaving it up to the imagination of the viewer as to what really went down. But the book makes it clear that Booth is a cold-blooded murderer.
After Booth murdered his wife, he had a revelation. “The moment he saw her ripped in two…years of ill will and resentment evaporated in an instant,” reads a line from the book.
Booth then attempts to save his wife by holding the two fractured parts of her body together, and it works for seven hours as they chat and hash out their differences. A rescue team finally makes it to the boat, and this is when the woman dies.
Booth covers his tracks and gets away with the murder, but the book explains how he “felt really bad about what he did to Billie.”
“As much regret and remorse as he felt, it never occurred to him not to try to get away with murder,” according to the book.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: The Novel is available now. In other news, Tarantino recently revealed that he considered remaking Reservoir Dogs as his final film before retirement but ultimately decided against it.
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