Yeah, no, I'm not exaggerating or anything. Chinatown's screenplay is one of the best ever. It's incredibly well written. It's somewhere in the top 10 best screenplays, at least. In fact on this list, it's #3 :). And rightly so, might I add.
http://www.wga.org/subpage_newsevents.aspx?id=1807
As fate would have it, that's the only Oscar the movie won out of 10 nominations.
"I'm in such bad shape, I'm wearing prescription underwear." Phyllis Diller 1917-2012
I knew an up-and-coming writer in NY City who used
to bring up this film quite a lot. "Not a weak spot in the whole film,"
he used to say, in awe of the whole production.
[deleted]
My ex is a screenwriter and NYU faculty member. He and his colleagues in the business and academia regard the Chinatown screenplay as the gold standard for structure. As others have commented, there's not a scintilla that's superfluous or out of place.
shareI agree. I think it is one of the few nearly perfect screenplays I've ever read. The version captured on film is perfect - absolutely flawless. Some scenes in my copy of Robert Towne's original screenplay didn't make it into the final film (e.g., a confrontation between a client's angry wife and J.J. Gittes in the Brown Derby; a discussion between Gittes and the pilot of a sea plane flying to Santa Catalina Island, etc.). The reason why the screenplay translated so brilliantly to film is partly due to Towne, but also partly due to Roman Polanski's ability to cut out the few scenes in the original screenplay that didn't work.
"You can dish it out, but you got so you can't take it no more." - Caesar Enrico Bandello
It is up there with Casablanca, Pulp Fiction and Double Indemnity as one of the best examples of screenplay writing in history.
shareI must admit it is a clever and unusual script because it plays on many levels. Film noir, political thriller, family drama with elements of greek tragedy at the ending. But i don't think it is a perfect script because it leaves many things to the audience imagination.It should be more exmplanatory on some plot elements. Also i can't understand some of the main characters reactions and acts.That's why i think Chinatown is a great movie but not a masterpiece.
share@ioantsek: your post would make more sense if you specified what you need explained.
shareAs i said in another topic i had some difficulty understanding Faye Dunaway's character. First she threatens to sue Jake, then she decides not to do it, then she hires Jake to find what happened to Hollis .I really can't understand her phychology at all.The reason behind all these is keeping Catherine away from Cross and not exposing her family secret,i suppose. But her behavior is contradictory.If she wants to keep Jake and the police away from her personal secrets then why she hired Jake to find what happened to Hollis? I am a little confused about her motivations.
Also something that has been discussed in this board many times. I'm refering of course to Jake's stupidity when he revealed to Cross everyting he knew about him and gave him the glasses, leading him straight to Evelyn and Catherine in Chinatown.The tragic ending could easily be avoided if Jake wasn't trying to play the superhero....
Don't get me wrong, i really like Chinatown and i think the script is very clever. But i don't think it is the perfect script that everybody says.Some plot elements should be explained a little better.
They need to be explained to you. The motivations you can't figure out are pretty obvious, which is why Towne didn't bother to spell them out explicitly.
I've no idea why you think "the reason behind all of it" – Evelyn’s suing Jake, retracting the suit, hiring him to find out what happened to Hollis - is to keep Catherine/her parentage secret. You're off-base there to begin with.
Evelyn was outraged by the press fomenting a scandal around her husband's having a non-existent affair. Believing Gittes to be an opportunistic scandal monger, she impulsively sued him. After the fact, she realized this action could expose Catherine, so she dropped the suit "quicker than the wind from a duck's ass."
After Jake tells Evelyn that her husband was murdered, she hires him to find out "what happened to Hollis, and who was involved" - i.e., investigate his death -- NOT the fictional affair, which would lead him to Catherine. And in fact, Hollis' death had nothing to do with Catherine: he was killed b/c of his opposition to the dam.
You're also perplexed by Jake's overplaying his hand w/Cross. You completely miss a piece of foreshadowing, and the irony of the hero making the same mistake twice, losing the woman he loved both times (Vertigo, anyone?). Jake tells Evelyn about the time he tried to keep a woman he loved from being hurt, and wound up making sure she was hurt. And that's exactly what happens again. Jake's confronting Cross IS a mistake; one Towne deliberately has his character commit.
As to motivation, take your pick: hubris, miscalculation, naiveté. My view: the hard-boiled detective always has a sense of honor and justice about him, however skewed. (Remember Sam Spade sending his lover to the gallows saying “When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it” -- although he had no problem banging the partner’s wife when he was alive?) Jake thinks confronting Cross with the truth will protect Evelyn from him. That faith was misguided. That’s his tragic defect.
The flaw you claim isn’t in the script, which is as perfect as it is hailed to be. It’s with your need for by-the-numbers explanations of things that are evident to intelligent viewers.
Thank you for your answers.
I still think though when a script is called perfect, it should be a little more explanatory about some plot elements and not leaving so many things to the audience imagination. I understand what you say about Evelyn but i still think that a possible investigation for Hollis' death could easily lead to Catherine.In a murder case everything can be investigated and in this case Jake could easily search for Mulwray's....girlfriend specially since this....girlfriend is disappeared. Evelyn probably suspected that her father was behind her husband's death and she wanted Jake to find evidence for it, that's why she hired him.
As for Jake in the end of course i understood the irony of making the same mistake twice and losing the woman he loved both times. I'm not that stupid.But i still think that his movement to reveal everything he knows to Cross is not a logic thing to do.Of course he couldn't predict what was about to happen in Chinatown and he probably thought he could expose Cross to the police. But this in my opinion remains a flaw.
In Towne's original script Jake calls Cross the moment after he finds the glasses in Evelyn's salt water garden.He thinks that Evelyn is guilty and he calls Cross to tell him he found the girl. That would be perfect. I don't understand why the changed it to the movie.
Chinatown is a great movie and i completely believe that.The script is very good and unusual but not perfect in my opinion.I'm not talking about the mystery plot.This is absolutely great.I'm talking about the characters and their reactions at some points.
You complain about the script b/c you don't understand why some characters do some of the things they do.
It's explained to you why those characters do what they do.
You say you understand the explanations of why those characters do what they do ("I'm not that stupid" -- are you sure?).
You then say you need it explained why those same characters did those same things they did.
You make absolutely no sense.
In addition, from the outset you've failed to grasp that a good screenplay does not need to spoonfeed its audience every detail. In fact, it shouldn't.
I don't know what screenplay you're imagining where Evelyn doesn't care enough to investigate her husband's death. Then what happens? Do we all go home half-way through?
I'm sorry, but you're just too dense to waste time on.
I don't think this poster's first language is english so when he or she's watching it, she's either listening to the english version and not comprehending completely or reading subtitles which are oftentimes very poor (speak more than 1 language and have experienced it where I've thought "that's not what they said". Give him or her some slack - the nuances were probably lost of him or her - which is understandable when it's a second language. Agree with all your posts explaining it out btw … I too thought it was obvious.
shareRRB, I agree with your assessment of these plot elements. If I could sum it up, the problem here is not that the script has flaws, it is that the characters do.
That is what makes this a tragedy.
Nobody's looking for a puppeteer in today's wintry economic climate.
So what do you consider #2 and 1
shareThe screenplay may be perfect but the last scene is hard to accept. I'm referring to the shot that Det. Escobar gets off at Evelyn Mulwray with a snub-nose revolver as she is driving away. She must have been at least 160 feet away and he is firing from almost a direct line with the left side of the car, yet he manages to hit her in the head while she is driving a big top-down convertible which barely, if at all, allows her head to be exposed to a shot. That was a one in a million shot. It would have been a difficult shot for a marksman with a rifle.
That shot reminds me of the myriad scenes in westerns where the good guy swivels and shoots the bad guy on top of the building in one quick motion with a handgun and he falls to the street. I can accept that in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly because that movie doesn't take itself seriously but in Chinatown that scene detracts from its overall credibility.
It's fate.
A Clockwork Apple
It's Loache who fires the kill shot. I had remembered Escobar pulling it off for a long time, until I watched it again last night.
shareJake tries to stop Escobar from shooting the tires. Instead, Loache shoots the woman. Yet another instance of Jake trying to do the right thing and making it worse.
shareI'm so sick of hearing about how "perfect" this script is. The final theatrical cut of the film is quite good, hitting all of the right notes and delivering a good linear story.
But "Chinatown," to hear Towne himself tell it, was heavily edited by Polanksi. It's "perfect" in the sense that it delivers a perfectly ordinary film noir private-eye story, but it's not terribly original nor does it break any new ground.
It's only a "perfect" script in that it's a good illustration of what an ideal script could be, as presented to newbie writers who are being trained to slavishly follow the hallowed Three Act Structure to a fault.
(I happen to think that most modern schools of screenwriting are just attempts by would-be gurus to retroactively impose their own pet conception of a structure onto some classic work in order to show rubes that they know what they're talking about--in other words, most of them can't tell you how to create a great story from their own formula, but can only point to something another writer has done as being exemplary. Robert McKee can tell you about what makes a great script until he's blue in the face, but he's never written a "Citizen Kane" or "The Godfather." The guy who wrote "Save The Cat" starts out his book by stating that he doesn't write movies to make art but to make money. Hence his co-writing credit on "Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot." That one speaks for itself.)
Anyway, "Chinatown" is not the sort of film that is even made anymore, so why keep pointing to it as an exemplar? Why not talk about the sheer structural brilliance of "Iron Man" or "The Dark Knight?"
"Beethoven had his critics too, Keith. See if you can name three of 'em."
I dunno. Maybe because 'Iron Man' & 'The Dark Knight' don't measure up to 'Chinatown'?
Just because a type of film is no longer made, doesn't make it less an exemplar. When 'Chinatown' came out, the type was no loner being made.
Carpe Noctem!