I do very much enjoy a sub-genre of film books that could be categorized as The Making of (film title), and Sam Wasson’s THE BIG GOODBYE: CHINATOWN AND THE LAST YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD came highly recommended by some cinephile friends. The book tells the story of how one of the most celebrated, and bleakest, films of the ‘70s came to be, and more than that, a look back at a particular time and place in the popular culture, and the talent who made it all come together. This was the era of the New Hollywood, where a younger generation of film makers, freed from the shackles of the old studio system, and its oppressive censorship, embraced this new freedom to tackle formerly taboo subjects and themes, and to take genuine risks and challenge audiences in a way not seen before. CHINATOWN, ostensibly a detective film with a gumshoe hero, is the story of corruption in Los Angeles in the late ‘30s, but also a journey into the true dark side of the human soul. It was very much of its time, Nixon era America under the shadows of Vietnam and Watergate, but it would transcend its contemporary relevance to be recognized as an essential classic of American cinema.

But my paperback copy, which comes in just under 400 pages, is not a blow by blow, scene by scene recounting of the film making process. Instead, Wasson focuses on the four men responsible for making CHINATOWN come to pass: producer Robert Evans, director Roman Polanski, actor Jack Nicholson, and screenwriter Robert Towne, who would win an Oscar for his screenplay. This book tells their stories, their deep friendships, and their clashes of temperament, as they went about doing the one thing they loved more than anything else: making movies. Evans was the head of Paramount, the man who brought the studio back from the brink of financial ruin by overseeing the production of THE GODFATHER. Wasson paints him as the ultimate modern mogul, wheeling and dealing constantly on the telephone from the bedroom of his beloved Hollywood estate. The guy who was on a first name basis with everybody who mattered, the epitome of a certain kind of slickness peculiar to men who have made it to the top of the film business. Evans was the big guy who could get things done, yet underneath was a prickly, and often fragile, man. Nicholson comes off best in the book, a star who could get the most out of the hard partying lifestyle, yet also the consummate professional who always knew his lines, showed up on the set prepared, and committed totally to whatever project in which he was involved. Nicholson was also very loyal to his friends (though not so the women in his life), someone who hadn’t forgotten where he came from, and who he’d met along the way. The other two, Towne and Polanski, come off as difficult at best, perhaps understandably with the latter. Roman Polanski survived the Nazi occupation of his native Poland when many other members of his family, including his mother, did not. After establishing himself as a young director, he escaped the Communists and came to America, where he found success as the director of the runaway hit, ROSEMARY’S BABY, and love with beautiful actress, Sharon Tate, only to lose her in one of the most horrific murders of the 20th Century. Polanski was a man who had experienced tremendous pain, and perhaps was insensitive when inflicting it on others. Towne, whose reputation as one of the best scriptwriters ever was cemented by the work he did on CHINATOWN, comes off as a real jerk, especially to those closest to him.

Yet it is Towne’s story that fascinated me the most, certainly the way Wasson tells it. Though his script is today held up as one of the greatest ever written and taught in screenwriting classes, it was a torturous path to the final draft, as Towne took bits and pieces of stories and themes and tried to make them into a coherent narrative. This was a process which took years, and much editing and rewriting, even after Towne had sold the story to Evans. Wesson makes plain the contribution of Edward Taylor, a close friend and collaborator of Towne’s, whose knowledge of the pulp mystery genre was essential to the finished script that wove in the history of California’s water wars with a subplot dealing with incest. I love deep dives into the creative process, and this book really delivers. Just learning the genesis of the “my daughter, my sister” Big Reveal scene made it worth the read. This book certainly changed my opinion of Robert Towne and his legacy, especially in the way he never gave Taylor the credit he was due. But it was Polanski who was responsible for the film’s final scene with its downbeat (to say the least) ending, borne out of his own experience. CHINATOWN in the end was not a place, but a state of mind.

Wasson’s book is filled with many wonderful anecdotes from the making of the film, one of the most amusing being a hilarious fight between Nicholson and Polanski when a Lakers game goes into double overtime late one night during the film’s shooting, and a tired Nicholson refused to leave a TV set broadcasting the game to do a scene. We learn exactly how difficult Faye Dunaway could be to work with, and she was worth the trouble—most of the time. But THE BIG GOODBYE is also the story of changing times, and a memorable section details how the film industry became like so many other big corporations, and how the film making process became top heavy in the years after CHINATOWN with “production assistants” and “talent management agencies” all out to justify the huge salaries and commissions they were making. No longer could a man like Robert Evans call up writers, actors, and directors from his bedroom, and get a movie project rolling. The book gives a short history of cocaine use in Hollywood, and how it became ubiquitous in the film industry in the ‘70s, as big money bought some bad habits.

Any list of great films of the ‘70s has CHINATOWN on it, usually in the Top Five, while Jake Gittes, Evelyn Mulwray, and Noah Cross remain among the most vivid and memorable characters ever to grace the screen, and you don’t have to be a fan of CHINATOWN to enjoy this book, just someone who loves Hollywood history and stories of what went on behind the scenes.

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