DCC Bookclub: The Big Goodbye & Chinatown

The Big Goodbye tackles major cultural shifts in American film production and culture through the making of Chinatown.

Per the blurb in Goodreads:

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.

We will read the book (print, eBook and audio copies available for checkout at the library- but also check out your local bookstore or Bookshop.org) and watch the film (available on Kanopy) and discuss them both.

We're trying out a new place I just learned about, Stylus & Crate in Wheat Ridge. We'll be at the big community table. If you want to rummage through their vinyl collection, come early. They close at 4 PM on Sundays.

This is the first of a three-part series. We'll read two additional "making of" books, one in winter and one in spring.