Mourning the old Hollywood has become something of a cliché—yet there are some films that stand out for a kind of moviemaking in the seventies that no amount of Netflix or Amazon money can replicate: i.e. massive bets—many successful-- placed on talent without any assurance of box office returns. Chinatown was one of those adventures, not for the risk adverse. A producer, Robert Evans, whose eye for the sure thing was pegged to a sappy Love Story and the trilogy Godfathers; Robert Towne, a writer who struggled for years to get his story down; Roman Polanski, a Polish director who had made art films and Jack Nicholson, a star who held them together by sheer force of will and personality. All these come together in Sam Wasson’s granular, riveting history in his new book, The Big Goodbye. Wasson has them and close bystanders on the record. None remain untainted by cocaine and ego, but not enough to prevent Evans from digging his heels in and getting the movie done. Watch it again and be struck by how remarkably it holds up.