Title: Hollywood Ramblings
Product review: THE WHOLE EQUATION reads more like separate observations than anything that coheres. David Thomson, so good in his WHO's WHO, seems to be in his own little world in a book that I desperately wanted to like, but found nearly impossible to read. The best parts are about CHINATOWN, Howard Hawks, and his trashing of TITANIC and EASY RIDERS. But, having read his other material, that's old news. The addition of sound in the 30s brought pictures forward, but moving away from black and white robbed them of something--again, old news from Thomson. In the end, I had to put it down because it was going nowhere.
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