‘⁠Once upon a time⁠.⁠.⁠.⁠ in Hollywood⁠’ and releasement

Cliff Booth is Tarantino’s version of a Hollywood Zen Buddhist: detached, paradoxical, and with a good sense of humour. He lives in a trailer somewhere beyond the hills. Lives simply: friends with Rick Dalton, keeps a dog, watches TV, eats cheap. But this simplicity does not look forced — it looks deliberate.

Cliff lives without excess and does so willingly, because this simplicity is enough. He lives carelessly, almost dismissively: the mess in the trailer speaks to it, so does the ride given to a hippie hitchhiker, so does the fight with Bruce Lee. But even this careless indifference comes not from teenage recklessness, but rather from the Heideggerian releasement.

Following ‘⁠releasement towards things and openness to mystery⁠’, he values life’s small pleasures but understands clearly that they belong to the world outside. By day he works for a movie star; by evenings he watches films. Cliff evidently loves cinema, and perhaps loves Hollywood, but he does not surrender to the din of voices. And so he calmly adds hot sauce to his Bloody Mary and dips celery in the resulting cocktail, sitting in a Hollywood bar surrounded by stars. Cliff understands the brevity and fragility of life, and of everything in it, but he does not yield to fear, dread, or paranoia — he meets both the good and the bad with a single phrase: ‘⁠Not bad, Kato.⁠’

Detachment, openness, and an awareness of one’s responsibility for one’s own life and death do not come by accident: it’s self⁠-⁠assurance honed by time, living, and conscience. And so, when the ambulance takes him away and Rick says, ‘⁠You’re a good friend, Cliff,⁠’ Cliff replies after a short pause: ‘⁠I try.⁠’