Once Upon a Time in Hollywood*
Sam Wasson has written a very long (416
pages in the print edition) and detailed book about the making of the classic
1974 movie “Chinatown.” It is far more than that in that he introduces the
biographies of his four leading protagonists and it is in part a social history
of Hollywood and Los Angeles.
His protagonists are screenwriter Robert
Towne, who was born in San Pedro; Krakow born director Roman Polanski, actor
Jack Nicholson of Asbury Park, New Jersey and producer Robert Evans, the son of
a Manhattan dentist who served his Harlem clientele. These Hollywood icons were
not to the manner born.
Robert Towne got his idea for
“Chinatown” after reading Carey McWilliams classic history of Los Angeles,
“Islands on the Land.” From that book he learned how the City of Los Angeles
“stole” the water rights to the Owens Valley, 260 miles to the north. It was
that water that enabled Los Angeles to become the great city of today. As
Balzac once said that behind every great fortune there is a crime.
However Towne’s “Chinatown” is not a
literal history. In order to copy the film noir themes of the 1930s, his water
grab takes place in 1937, not the 1908-1913 time period when the great water
project was developed. Further not much happens in the real Chinatown which is
a metaphor for the corruption of Los Angeles.
We see Jack Nicholson coming into his
own as a star. First in Towne’s “The Last Detail” and later in “Chinatown.” We
learn how the movie simulated the breaking of his nose and for a star he
unlikely as it sounds wore a bandage around his nose for most of the movie.
Producer and Paramount studio boss Robert
Evans rightly fancies himself as the new Irving Thalberg, MGM’s legendary
studio boss of the 1930s. He brings Paramount hit after hit, especially “Love
Story” and “The Godfather” series. However he uses cocaine to excess and after
his divorce from Ali McGraw he surrounds himself with a bevy of lovelies.
To me the most interesting character is
director Roman Polanski. It he who rewrote Towne’s script and made the movie
what it is. Polanski suffered from the Nazis and later the Communists in
Poland, but manages to get to Hollywood. There he marries the actress Sharon
Tate who while eight months pregnant was brutally murdered by the Manson gang.
As a sidebar after the Tate murder, fear gripped the oh so liberal Hollywood
community that there was a rash of gun buying for self-protection.
Given Polanski’s childhood and the
brutal murder of his wife and unborn baby it is no wonder that he became so
messed up with drugs and young women. That reached its denouement in 1977 when
Polanski was charged with rape and drugging a 13 year old girl. Although the
sentence was reduced to unlawful sex with a minor, he skipped the country and
hasn’t been here since. Had #MeToo been around in 1977 Polanski would have been
sent to the slammer for a long time.
I experienced Wasson’s Los Angeles when
I first moved there in 1964. To him and to me the 1960s were a great time of
optimism and only to him everything turned bad in the 1970s. I was on the
periphery of Hollywood at the time knowing a few A-List movie stars and having
two friends who wrote for movies and television. To Wasson Hollywood was about
art up until the big 1975 hit “Jaws” hit the screen and then it became all
about money. Not true. Hollywood was always all about money. Just look at the
big houses in Beverly Hills, Brentwood and Malibu and the lavish parties. My
guess is that Wasson took Mike Davis’ dystopian “City of Quartz” too seriously.
Readers will learn an awful lot how a
great movie was made including costumes, sets and cinematography. For me the
technical discussions and nuances of the personalities involved were a bit
much. And one more thing the year “Chinatown” was up for an Academy Award
“Godfather Part 2” won and its only major award was for Towne’s best original
screenplay.
*With apologies to Quentin Tarantino.
For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2JY38YJQP6BGG/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv
No comments:
Post a Comment