The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood

Sam Wasson, “The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood,” Flatiron Books, 2020, 331 pp.

I have an excel spreadsheet on which I list books I want to read along with the reason the book is on the list.  This book is not on that list but showed up on my hold-list at the library.  It sure is something that Linda would be attracted to, but me--?  However, I read it anyway and put it on hold for Linda to read next.  Anyway, if you want a quick synopsis of Sharon Tate’s murder, the making of the movie “Chinatown,” and a biography of Jack Nicholson along with a biography of Roman Polanski—this is a book for you.  As soon as you finish the book, reserve the movie from the library and watch it: that’s what I did.

My Notes:

Pg. 2:  Robert Towne once said that Chinatown is a state of mind.  Not just a place on the map of Los Angeles, but a condition of total awareness almost indistinguishable from blindness.  Dreaming you’re in paradise and waking up in the dark—that’s Chinatown.  Thinking you’ve got it figured out and realizing you’re dead—that’s Chinatown.  This is a book about Chinatowns: Roman Polanski’s, Robert Towne’s, Robert Evans’s, Jack Nicholson’s, the ones they made and the ones they inherited, their guilt and their innocence, what they did right, what they did wrong—and what they could do nothing to stop.

Pg. 32:  Roman Polanski last saw his Mother in Warsaw, Poland just before she was captured and sent to Auschwitz where she was immediately executed.  He saw his Father captured, ran to him and was told to ‘shove off’ before the German’s captured him.  At five years old, he was on his own but went to stay with acquaintances who hid him.

Pg. 94:  When he asked the vice cop what he did in Chinatown, the cop replied:

‘Nothing”

“What do you mean nothing?”

“Well, that’s pretty much what we’re told to do in Chinatown, is nothing.  Because with the different tongs, the language and everything else, we can’t tell whether we’re helping somebody commit a crime or preventing one…”

Pg. 293:  A reporter from Time magazine called Jack (Nicholson) and stated that he had investigated Jack’s parentage.  It seemed that Jack’s sister June was not, in fact, his sister but his mother.  The woman he thought was his mother, Ethel May, was actually his grandmother.