To my mind, as of early 2020, CHINATOWN remains the second most perfect American film ever made. (No, I won’t reveal my first most perfect; I’d end up in a 10-page digression that would be inappropriate here.) When I want to relax with a movie and my fingers wander across my vast collection, invariably they come to rest on an old favorite. Depending on my mood, it might be PSYCHO or Hitchcock’s truest masterpiece, VERTIGO; I can watch any Hitchcock again and again for his sheer technique with a camera. If I want a good scare, ALIEN or HALLOWEEN; it makes no difference that I know how they end, they scare me every time. A feel-good? STRICTLY BALLROOM, LOVE ACTUALLY or SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER. Sometimes I’m in the mood for a specific director: Fosse’s CABARET or ALL THAT JAZZ, Pollack’s THE WAY WE WERE or TOOTSIE, or one of my other favorites by Polanski, ROSEMARY’S BABY. The one I seem to go with most often, though, after my Number One choice, is CHINATOWN.
It was with the keenest anticipation, then, that I waited for the publication of Wasson’s THE BIG GOODBYE. I’d torn through the 600 pages of Wasson’s previous book (speaking of Bob) FOSSE because I’d worshipped at the altar of Fosse’s brilliance as a director-choreographer, and I think Wasson’s book stands as one of the great celebrity biographies, detailed, fascinating, and beautifully written. I had no lesser expectations of THE BIG GOODBYE, a celebrity biography of a FILM, a film I’ve placed on a pedestal since I first saw it in 1974. I clutched the book in my clammy hands the day of its release.
As with FOSSE, which at almost twice the length took me a week to read, I could not cliché cliché cliché put Wasson’s new book down. I finished in three days, extremely fast what with sleep, office hours, meals, and family obligations. My only disappointment was that it didn’t continue for another several hundred pages, because, with this subject matter, I could have read on and on and on, totally lost in it, unaware of the time of day or the day of the week. It is start-to-finish riveting and perhaps Wasson’s masterwork to date.
Yes, there are scenes on set to reveal the actual shooting of the movie, but they are rare; if you go into it expecting story after story about this day’s filming, that day’s filming, you might be disappointed. The few stories it does contain about the filming, however, are priceless: the scene between Nicholson and Dunaway in the restaurant, when a single flyaway hair of Dunaway’s led to take after take, pushing Polanski into a frenzy until he finally reached over and, without warning, plucked it out of her head; the nose-slicing scene, when Nicholson was honestly afraid of having his nose sliced open because if the specialty prop knife used by Polanski in his cameo role was held the wrong way… My personal favorite is the day’s shooting of the scene in the orange groves, in which Nicholson is caught exploring and beaten up by a small posse of farmowners. Once down and unconscious in the dirt, an ant crawls over his face. Picture Polanski squatting beside Nicholson, lifting one ant after another and placing them on Nicholson’s face – “Ready, set, CAMERA!” – until he gets the perfect ant crawl, all while Nicholson plays dead.
But THE BIG GOODBYE is so many other more important things than those that might warm the cockles of a gossip lover’s heart. It is the story, the lives, of four men – Robert Towne, screenwriter; Roman Polanski, director; Robert Evans, producer; and Jack Nicholson, actor – and the family and friends they interact with during the creation of CHINATOWN. It IS the story of the creation of the film, the prolonged gestation of it from its first seed of thought through its release and reception. It is the story of the effects, during the creation and afterward, that the film had on everyone involved, most of them shatteringly sad. It is the story of a period in Hollywood, in the world, really, when the Manson family abruptly ended the sense of security, safety, and freedom of the ‘60s. And it is the story of the end of an era in Hollywood when films were decided on, selected and worked on, by true artists of the craft, the era before JAWS created the blockbuster movies we know today, the era before studios began looking at only the almighty dollar sign.
The book begins, in fact, with Polanski and his first meeting with his future wife, Sharon Tate, who will be one of the Manson family’s butchered victims. With finely chosen details, it paints a vivid portrait of his life, from his brutal childhood in wartorn Poland to his flight from the United States to escape rape charges of an underaged girl. It moves to Towne, providing the same pointillist portrait of his life, a son of wealth, almost the epitome of the California golden boy, with a dream to write. Nicholson enters, a close friend of Towne’s, and soon connections begin to develop, Polanski working with Evans on ROSEMARY’S BABY, Towne working with Evans on his dream project, an unfinished script written with Nicholson in mind about water rights in 1937 Los Angeles. A mid-point version of the script is sent to Jane Fonda, the first actress considered for the lead female role of Evelyn Mulwray, who turns it down because she doesn’t understand the story. Evans deals very humorously with close friend Sue Mengers, super-agent to the stars. Richard Sylbert, a perfectionist production manager, begins to scout locations to represent late 1930s Los Angeles, while his sister-in-law, Anthea Sylbert, a perfectionist costume designer, begins to develop wardrobes for Nicholson, Dunaway, John Huston, and every cast member down to the last extra. All while Polanski and Towne, in a months-long battle of wills, begin to hammer out the script. I started the book with definite expectations of what each of these people would be like; I finished with extremely different perspectives on each of them.
As much as I love William Goldman’s memoirs and screenwriting how-to books based on his Hollywood career – THE BIG PICTURE, ADVENTURES IN THE SCREEN TRADE, WHICH LIE DID I TELL? – I learned more about how movies get made from Wasson’s book. He doesn’t tell you how – he SHOWS you in a way that you instantly understand. Whereas Goldman is eminently fascinating and funny, he’s perhaps a bit too technical, and you understand the film business technically. Wasson, instead, pours the process over you emotionally, and you understand it emotionally.
What Wasson does so brilliantly with this book is capture, with his writing – the structure, the voice, the choice of words – the same tone as the film itself, one of crushingly bittersweet futility. As Towne so often said about the title of the film, it is not a direct reference to the PLACE, the Chinatown of Los Angeles, but to a state of mind, unfamiliar and uncomfortable, a place you can’t know, a place where anything could happen. Only one scene in the film takes place in Chinatown, the ending, and, without giving too much of a spoiler to anyone who’s never seen it, things don’t end well. Wasson ends the book in very similar ways for each of the major characters, bringing each to his own sad Chinatown. Not sad enough to make me cry. Sad enough to make me feel exactly the way I felt in 1974 when I first heard the last line of the film: “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”
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Customer reviews
The Inside Story On One of Hollywood's Greatest Films
Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2020
Chinatown has long been one of my all-time favorite films. I might even argue it's the best film I've ever seen. Sam Wasson's "The Big Goodbye" is the definitive inside story of the making of the film from conception to completion. What makes the book even better, however, is context. Wasson takes care to place the film's history where it belongs - the Hollywood of the late 1960's and early 1970's when big changes were happening. He spotlights each of the film's major players, and tells what happened after the film was released - not only to those involved directly, but to Hollywood in general. It's a cautionary tale, however, as the last chapters show. But for a short time, there were a few men who came together to do the best work of their lives. That their success diminished in the coming years doesn't detract from the extraordinary achievement that is "Chinatown." Great story beautifully written.
Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2020
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