Videoage International August-September 2020

10 Book Review Aug/Sept. 2020 V I D E O A G E Y ou may think you know what you’re dealing with, but, believe me, you don’t. That is what the villainous entrepreneur tells the detective in Roman Polanski’s neo-noir classic, Chinatown . The scene comes at a point when J.J. Gittes, a private investigator played by Jack Nicholson, still fails to grasp the scale of citywide deceit and corruption he’s dipped his feet into. He laughs it off, saying that the district attorney used to give him the exact same line about cases in Los Angeles’ Chinatown area. Collusion among white-collar criminals and government officials being so prevalent, one would do better to abandon all inquiry. In The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood (416 pgs., Flatiron Books, 2020, $28.99), author Sam Wasson delves into what Nicholson’s character is advised against: revealing the grand scheme of things. With his latest book, Wasson chronicles the making of Chinatown , linking the lives of a now-infamous director, a talented screenwriter, a rising studio executive, and an acclaimed actor. As Wasson states in his introduction, “This is a book about [all] 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.” If his book’s raison d’être sounds nebulous or broad, that’s because it partially is. It covers not only the years of the writing and filming of Chinatown , which was released by Paramount Pictures in 1974, but also the decades before and after it. Wasson is more than capable, and with The Big Goodbye , he shows his encyclopedic knowledge in untangling the threads that run from life to art. The L.A. native is the author of five other books, including Fosse , a biography of the American dancer and choreographer Bob Fosse, and Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M, a study on the film adaptation of Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s . The reasons are countless as to Wasson’s attraction to the film. In an interview with Vanity Fair from earlier this year, Wasson recounted how back when he was pitching his book, around Trump’s presidential election, he was looking for a film that mirrored the discomfort of the time. In Chinatown , Wasson found Noah Cross, the under-the-table mastermind behind the criminal activity that guides the film’s plot. Cross, a sort of pre-Trumpian figure, was portrayed by the inimitable John Huston, the legendary director, whose daughter, the actress Anjelica Huston, started dating Nicholson in 1973. Behind the central murder of Chinatown lies a network of shady dealings concerning water, its distribution within L.A. and its withholding from the nearby farmers, all of which seems to be orchestrated by Cross to make a big bucks. Of course, there is an outstanding cast to match the intricate story, which, in addition to Huston and Nicholson, also included Faye Dunaway, John Hillerman, James Hong, and even a cameo appearance from Polanski himself. Wasson’s priority, however, is in telling the stories of how the four men would make Chinatown and how they would fare following its success. As Wasson indicates, the fellowship of men each had flourishing and sometimes troubling lives. The Big Goodbye begins and ends with episodes from Polanski’s life, beginning with the murder of his wife Sharon Tate by members of the Manson family in 1969, relating the facts of his sexual abuse charges in 1977, and closing with his contemporary exile in Europe. At times, such facts seem extraneous to the making of Chinatown and seem to be included due to their appeal as spectacles. Part of the thinking behind the book’s expan- siveness, its braiding of personal and professional timelines, seems to be due to the doubling of themes and motifs between the film and its makers. Paranoia, conspiracy, sexual violence, and a sense of nihilism comingle in Chinatown . They also emerge as pivotal moments in the lives of the essential figures to Wasson’s book. As Wasson describes, following the murder of Tate, Polanski fell prey to his own manias. “What-ifs lured him through endless nightmare scenarios, false hopes, and he lost, slowly, incrementally, bits of his mind,” writes Wasson about the director’s grief. Later on, when Wasson chronicles the after- math of the film’s success, events occur that seem to relate back to the incidents depicted in the film. Wasson returns back to when Jack Nicholson learned about his true parentage: the person he thought was his sister was actually his mother. The detail is meant to recall the familial trauma revealed at the end of the film. In another instance, Wasson explains screenwriter Robert Towne’s marital problems with his wife and actress Julie Payne. Payne was disturbed by the fact that Towne had decided the spelling of their daughter’s name based on the daughter in the film, who was, as Wasson reminds the reader, “born of incest.” After the couple’s divorce and during their custody battle, Payne felt gaslit by Towne and the men who were hiding her husband’s drug addiction so that he would be given custody. Payne is quoted as saying: “It was all for money and reputation and I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t help my daughter. It was like the ending to Chinatown .” In addition to the more salacious details or the gossipy anecdotes, one of the more interesting parts of Wasson’s book was his chronicle of Towne’s backstory. As Wasson explains, Towne’s interest and research led him to the real Owens Valley water scandal, which served as a model for the scandal in the film. Wasson’s finesse as a cultural connoisseur appears at its finest when Wasson weaves between his subject’s stories, L.A.’s history, and other remnants of the time. Considering the breadth and scope of his project, Wasson achieves a superbly woven account mixing biography, cultural and social history, and film analysis. He has written a provocatively entertaining book that sets Chinatown into perspective. Cultural investigator Sam Wasson weaves together historical facts and personal anecdotes to tell a vivid story about the exemplary mystery film. The Making of Polanski’s Chinatown and its Real Life Aftermath By Luis Polanco