THE BIG GOODBYE
"WAsson has truly outdone himself this time."
- Janet maslin, NEW YORK TIMES
New York Times Bestseller
Los Angeles Times Bestseller
New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
National Indie Bestseller
AudioFile Earphones Award Winner
The Sunday Times Best Books of Summer 2020
Amazon Best Books of 2020 So Far
James Patterson’s 2020 Summer Reads
Michael Connelly’s Favorite Reads of 2020
Air Mail Top 10 Best Books of 2020
Barnes & Noble Best Books of 2020
Washington Post Best Books of 2020
The Times (London) Best Books of 2020
Bloomberg Best Books of 2020
CrimeReads Best Crime and Mystery Criticism of 2020
British Film Institute’s Best Film Book of the Year 2020
Prix du Syndicat Français de la Critique: 2021 Meilleur livre étranger sur le cinéma
The Hollywood Reporter 100 Best Film Books of All Time
Los Angeles Times 50 Best Books of All Time
Chinatown is the Holy Grail of 1970s cinema. Its twist ending is the most notorious in American film and its closing line of dialogue the most haunting. Here for the first time is the incredible true story of its making.
In Sam Wasson's telling, it becomes the defining story of the most colorful characters in the most colorful period of Hollywood history. Here is Jack Nicholson at the height of his powers, as compelling a movie star as there has ever been, embarking on his great, doomed love affair with Anjelica Huston. Here is director Roman Polanski, both predator and prey, haunted by the savage death of his wife, returning to Los Angeles, the scene of the crime, where the seeds of his own self-destruction are quickly planted. Here is the fevered dealmaking of "The Kid" Robert Evans, the most consummate of producers. Here too is Robert Towne's fabled script, widely considered the greatest original screenplay ever written. Wasson for the first time peels off layers of myth to provide the true account of its creation.
Looming over the story of this classic movie is the imminent eclipse of the '70s filmmaker-friendly studios as they gave way to the corporate Hollywood we know today. In telling that larger story, The Big Goodbye will take its place alongside classics like Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and The Devil's Candy as one of the great movie-world books ever written.
REVIEWS
"The wondrous thing about Sam Wasson’s new book is that it feels both necessary and inevitable - as if Chinatown couldn’t (or shouldn’t) exist without it. Reading The Big Goodbye, something strange happens: it acquires the historical, dizzying, incestuous gravitas of the film itself. Wasson has a habit of making vividly thematic, compassionately revelatory art."
— Bruce Wagner, author of Force Majeure and I Met Someone
“Fascinating.”
— Maureen Dowd, New York Times
“Magnificent.”
— Sight & Sound
“[Y]ou need this book, which you should consider even if you’re not a fellow Chinatown obsessive.”
— Frank Bruni, New York Times
“This book is a fascinating documentation of how the stars aligned in the making of a classic film during a short period in Hollywood when the film industry created many of the endearing and lasting classics that have defined a generation.”
— Michael Connelly, The Amazon Book Review
“Wasson bellydives into one of the deepest pools in Hollywood history. Along the way, he tells revealing stories about Jack Nicholson, Roman Polanski, and legendary producer Robert Evans—as well as dark secrets behind the making of Academy Award winner Chinatown.”
— James Patterson, The Amazon Book Review
“It’s the best nonfiction book about the making of a movie that I’ve ever come across — utterly fascinating.”
— Bret Easton Ellis, MovieMaker
“For those who like their films more modern, there is no greater treat than Sam Wasson’s new book The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood, a completely fascinating account, filled with intriguing new information, of the making of one of the undeniably great films of the modern era.”
— Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
"Fascinating and page-turning…Wasson has flushed so many fresh sources out of the woodwork, and dived so deeply into the voluminous existing interview material…[proving] himself an indefatigable researcher, plundering every imaginable scrap of relevant material from court records (Polanski’s polygraph from the Tate-LaBianca investigation) to transcripts from ‘The Dick Cavett Show’ and the musings of Roland Barthes...."
— Peter Biskind, Los Angeles Times
“[The Big Goodbye] is as fine an unwrapping of the moviemaking process as I’ve read.”
— Airmail
“Hollywood stories are hardly in short supply, but Sam Wasson can be trusted for some juicy, compelling discoveries. His latest investigates the making of Chinatown…his innovative approach: and assembly of mini-biographies of Roman Polanski, Jack Nicholson, and more, each packed with intriguing revelations.”
— Entertainment Weekly
"Cultural historian Sam Wasson swims in the muddy making of the 1974 film, the messy lives of its four main players, and the murky chronicles of L.A.’s studio system and the municipal water wars to produce a page-turner as suspenseful and spellbinding as the Raymond Chandler novel from which the book takes its name."
— AV Club
“Inimitable Wasson…argues convincingly that Chinatown was one of the last great Hollywood films… this portrait of a neonoir classic will cast a spell over cinephiles.”
— Library Journal, starred review
“If you love Chinatown, then you’ll love The Big Goodbye.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“Chinatown was a watershed moment in a colorful era of American filmmaking. Wasson looks past the myth to tell the true story of its making.”
―USA Today, “Winter Reading Guide: This Season’s Must-Read Books”
"Sam Wasson has written a smart, human and utterly engaging book about an iconic American movie. With its rich depiction of 1970s Hollywood, The Big Goodbye is grounded in marvelous reportorial detail and moves with novelistic urgency."
— Julie Salamon, author of The Devil's Candy and An Innocent Bystander