The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood

by Sam Wasson

They apprehended Charles Manson, but what did that change? Polanski could not return to Los Angeles. The canyons, the watercolor estates, the ruby red carpet into the Beverly Hills Hotel, the bending banana fronds—they all assailed his brain with Sharon, their swinging over the Topanga cliffs, pasta dinners on the beach, the scorched-poppy sunsets, drive-ins, cotton candy, Cracker Jacks, potted plants, baby books (the books in her hands, her hands turning pages, her fingers, her fingernails). Unlike Sharon, Los Angeles was still there. But his eyes couldn’t see it. Where others saw crimson sunsets fade to pink, he could not stop her bleeding flesh from rotting to darkness, and though, in Los Angeles, there would be women and compassionate associates and the fondest friends, he would hear only what they wouldn’t say: the pity, the admiration of his forbearance, their bracing attempts at wisdom. That alone would be too much. “For the world,” he said, “it was an event. But what about me?