Rick Dalton, a fictional character from a movie and later a novelization, is “dead”. He was 90 years old, which is perhaps unbelievable considering his drinking and smoking habits. Quentin Tarantino, who created it in Once upon a time in Hollywood (and who was played by Leonardo DiCaprio), made the announcement this weekendthen swore to dedicate the next episode of Video Archivethe podcast he runs with his pulp Fiction co-screenwriter Roger Avary, to further explore his life and career. Well guess what? In this alternate reality of Hollywood, Dalton almost worked with John Carpenter.
According IndieWire, Dalton delved deeper into Dalton’s (again fictionalized) post-Hollywood career, which continued to be hills and valleys. On the plus side, he got himself another beloved screen character to go along with his Bounty Law anti-hero Jake Cahill. He ended up playing Eddie Karpinski, a vigilante who wields a flamethrower (which Dalton was already quite adept with) across three films: The fireman, The fireman 2, And The Firefighter 3: CIA Crackdown. He even made the third one after 48 hours. legend Walter Hill turned him down.
On the negative side, he lost John Carpenter The thing. He would have played Garry, the stuffy station commander ultimately played by Donald Moffat.
Tarantino said Dalton’s life immediately after the events depicted in Hollywood took a strange turn. Burning down a hippie from the Manson Clan (alongside two taken out by his buddy/stunt double Cliff Booth) inevitably turned him into a Tory hero…despite not being a Tory.
“So he was invited to, like, the Republican Convention, okay, because it became this thing for, like, the Nixon Silent Majority,” Tarantino explained. “And he’s a lifelong Democrat, but he left and they screwed him up. Rick was very happy to be dug. But they put him on Johnny Carson after that and he was a big hit on the Johnny Carson show, and then all of a sudden, because of the notoriety, he started doing better TV shows. It went from, like, to doing Land of the Giants And Green Hornet to do Impossible mission.”
In 2021, Tarantino flirted with chronicling Dalton’s entire (fake) career in a book, titled Rick Dalton movies.
“It’s written as if Rick were real. You know they have Charles Bronson’s movies And Anthony Quinn movies. Well, it’s done like that, with a synopsis and then some critical quotes from the era,” Tarantino said. “And the book goes over every one of Rick’s movies that he did, leading up to the end of his career in 1988, I believe, and every one of his episodic TV shows.”
Of course, that hasn’t happened yet. Also, Tarantino has a habit of announcing projects that never materialize.
But since his next goofy movie could be his last — and since he has already published two books since the Hollywood release, one by collection of film reviews – maybe he will.
(Via IndieWire)