Summary of Sam Wasson's The Big Goodbye

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 Roman Polanski knew that his attraction to Sharon Tate, or any woman, stirred in him feelings of terrible sorrow as ancient as long-lost wars. He knew the reasons behind it, and he didn’t like it, but it made sense.

#2 Sharon was a dutiful daughter who loved to cook and help her parents. She was twenty-three when she signed with Ransohoff. She had been seeing someone, Jay Sebring, a hairstylist to the stars, for about three years.

#3 Roman had done acid once or twice. He had a date named Sharon, who was an angel. She was fantastic, and he was in love with her. But he was doomed by the possibility of recurrence, because he knew that could happen again.

#4 Roman’s father, Ryszard, moved the family to Kraków in 1936. In 1939, the Germans occupied Warsaw. Roman and his sister clung to their mother, while their father did nothing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669381808

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Insights on Sam Wasson's The Big Goodbye

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Roman Polanski knew that his attraction to Sharon Tate, or any woman, stirred in him feelings of terrible sorrow as ancient as long-lost wars. He knew the reasons behind it, and he didn’t like it, but it made sense.

#2

Sharon was a dutiful daughter who loved to cook and help her parents. She was twenty-three when she signed with Ransohoff. She had been seeing someone, Jay Sebring, a hairstylist to the stars, for about three years.

#3

Roman had done acid once or twice. He had a date named Sharon, who was an angel. She was fantastic, and he was in love with her. But he was doomed by the possibility of recurrence, because he knew that could happen again.

#4

Roman’s father, Ryszard, moved the family to Kraków in 1936. In 1939, the Germans occupied Warsaw. Roman and his sister clung to their mother, while their father did nothing.

#5

Roman’s parents began to fight regularly, and Roman feared they might split up. He and his mother practiced how to escape the ghetto if that happened.

#6

Roman’s heart was broken when his best friend, Pawel, was taken away from him. He loved Sharon, and he loved L. A. When he finally arrived in L. , he loved it all: the free embrace of sensuous ideals, the wide red carpet into the Beverly Hills Hotel, and the unbroken vistas.

#7

Polanski remembered watching his first movie, the Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy musical Sweethearts, at age sixteen. He was fascinated by the light, dark, and muffled click-click-whir of the projector, and he wanted to understand how it worked.

#8

Polanski had come to Hollywood to show Ransohoff his rough cut of The Fearless Vampire Killers, a film he made to recreate the joy of childhood. Ransohoff detested it. I want to be told a story without all that hocus-pocus symbolism going on.

#9

Polanski’s relationship with Ransohoff’s Filmways left him, in 1967, professionally adrift. The end of the studio system in the fifties curtailed production of domestic film product.

#10

Hollywood was in a semipanic, with many studio heads new to the film industry.