The Chinese sex joke
The Chinese sex joke that Gittes learns from his barber was a classic!
shareIt's a great sequence. Just a regular guy there. You sit up in your chair then, no matter how many times you've borne witness to it. It's present day fresh 45 years in. 100 years in it'll be the same.
The movie goes high brow after that till---he comes up against the ruffians in the orange grove. Again, he's a regular guy---getting treated accordingly.
The production wanted it both ways. I did not like that approach.
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Great citation of this (joke materiel) Reno. Thank you.
..and in its own very direct way, the joke ties into the conception of Chinatown.
Not to mention reminding us that a 1974 R rated movie could show us a 1933(?) dirty joke being told and remind us...real life was always more raw than the sanitized movies of that era. (Well, the "pre-code" 30's movies were racier...but not THAT racy.)
I never felt the movie went highbrow at all. There were highbrow characters in it but that didn't change the overall tone and intricacy of the film's main character's ordeal, it added to it.
The production for Chinatown is one of the best I've ever seen in a movie. Not once did I feel like I was being force-fed a tragedy or lead on by cliched red herrings to trick my expectations like with so many movies before and after Chinatown.
The production for Chinatown is one of the best I've ever seen in a movie. Not once did I feel like I was being force-fed a tragedy or lead on by cliched red herrings to trick my expectations like with so many movies before and after Chinatown.
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I think part of the issue there -- which I always liked about this movie -- is how in the later stages, Gittes keeps reeling off what HE thinks is going on (like that Mulwray had a girlfriend, and Evelyn killed him over it..or that Cross wanted the girlfriend dead) and he's WRONG. Dead wrong. I think Evelyn tells him that he's wrong, a couple of times, even though she can't tell him WHY he's wrong. And Noah Cross sums it up very well to Gittes on first meeting: "You may THINK you know what's going on, Mr. Gitts...but you don't."
For these reasons, when the REAL solution arrives in a series of hard-slapping revelations at the end...it feels natural. Everybody TOLD Gittes he was wrong...the right answer is pretty devastating. But it makes sense. It was in plain sight all along.
The production wanted it both ways. I did not like that approach.
I'm not here to tell anyone what to like or not, but I can explain why I like "that approach," and why it's right for the film.
We learn a lot about Jake during the course of the film, most of it from him, but also from observations offered by other characters. He was once a uniformed cop and, under the veneer of gentility and elegance he's adopted since going into private investigation - represented by the snazzy wardrobe and well-appointed office - his point of view and actions are informed by the "street smarts" he acquired on the beat.
He may be all polite refinement when dealing with what appears to be a well-heeled client who tells him her husband is cheating ("No. Really? I am sorry."), and he can relate to less affluent ones like Curly as the "regular guy" you describe ("I don't want your last dime; what kind of a guy do you think I am?"), but challenging a barber shop customer to a fight or the kind of down and dirty tactics he pulls on Mulvehill at the retirement home come naturally to him, and have earned what Noah Cross calls his "nasty reputation."
In short, the barber shop scene and the joke that follows it reveal the real Jake - scrappy and a little crude - underneath the finely-tailored suits, monogrammed shirts and well-coordinated accessories.
All of this make Jake not only an interesting, compelling and unpredictable character, but also unifies him with one of the film's central themes - that nothing is as it appears on the surface - which form the very basis of the Chinatown symbolism running all through it.
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but challenging a barber shop customer to a fight
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Trivia: that barber shop customer was C.O. "Doc" Erickson, whose main job on Chinatown was, I think "production manager" and who served the same role on a number of Paramount films for Alfred Hitchcock(To Catch a Thief and Vertigo among them.) So...a Hitchcock/Polanski connection.
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or the kind of down and dirty tactics he pulls on Mulvehill
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Much deserved -- this is the first time Jake's seeing Mulvehill since the latter held him to get his nose cut. Its "payback" time, pain-wise.
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at the retirement home come naturally to him, and have earned what Noah Cross calls his "nasty reputation."
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Yes, I always wonder a bit about Cross's "nasty reputation" comment. This is one of those precise screenplays where practically every WORD means something, exactly how it is written, exactly when it is said.
I will say that many movies about private eyes do make the case that it is a profession where the worker better be prepared for physical fighting if necessary...whether life or death or just general orneriness. Now the TV show Peter Gunn posited a military-trained expert at judo AND fist-fighting, who got into a big fistfight in every episode, but Chinatown posits a more realistic take on fisticuffs -- avoided (with the barbershop customer); down and dirty(with Mulvehill, I like how Gittes pulls the man's jacket over his head so he can't see as Gittes hits him every which way and with "helpful" solid objects nearby.)
Gittes is well tailored and his office is well-appointed(he has a pretty secretary)...I've always figured that divorce work circa the "fault" divorce era of the 30's could make a man some moolah.
But for all his use of words like "operatives" or "métier," Jake's from the streets at heart.
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On the DVD documentary, screenwriter Robert Towne writes that he wrote Chinatown with Jack Nicholson in mind and Jack's own phrases and verbal timing in mind. I think this shows up in the Chinese joke telling scene(with Dunaway behind him) and the DVD documentary cuts to Nicholson in the restaurant with Dunaway talking all professional and serious until he says something happens "like crap out a duck's ass" -- evidently this is "Towne writing Jack" -- and nothing we ever heard Bogart say!!
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"Much deserved -- this is the first time Jake's seeing Mulvehill since the latter held him to get his nose cut. Its "payback" time, pain-wise."
- More trivia: that was Roy Jenson, Puddler in Harper, who got the butt end of a metal file across his forehead from Paul Newman (that scene still makes me flinch even more than Polanki's nose slash) and ended up at the end of a rope in Robert Mitchum's church in 5 Card Stud.
And another Hitchcock connection: Darrell Zwerling, who played Hollis Mulwray, was the priest who admonished Bruce Dern to put away his pipe at Grace Cathedral in Family Plot.
"I always wonder a bit about Cross's "nasty reputation" comment. This is one of those precise screenplays where practically every WORD means something, exactly how it is written, exactly when it is said."
- It's a funny thing about that precision; the most recent screenplay of Chinatown to be found online is dated 10/9/73, less than a week before it went into production, but changes - some major - were made to various scenes before it wrapped.
Legend has it that Jane Fonda was intended to play Evelyn after Robert Evans cut Ali McGraw loose (thank goodness for that) and before Polanski convinced him to go with Dunaway, but some lines in the script still sound like they were written for Fonda. When Jake asks Evelyn if she has any peroxide for his nose, the script has her replying, "Oh, sure. C'mon." Dunaway speaks the more formal and refined, "Surely. Come this way?" Once in the bathroom as Evelyn tends to the cut, the script's "Boy oh boy, you're a mess" is replaced with Dunaway's alarmed, "My - god - I had no idea," and all the dialogue about Jake's past in Chinatown was to take place there rather than in bed.
Cont'd...
The most significant changes occur in the final scene, which is longer and far more chaotic, beginning with a behind-the-wheel struggle between Gittes and Mulvehill when Cross spots Evelyn from his car, resulting in a collision with a lamppost and a brawl among the three which spills onto the sidewalk, Evelyn retrieving Mulvehill's gun that he loses in the struggle, Katherine getting away cleanly and still more brawling and shouting when Escobar and the police arrive.
All very traditionally "movie climax-y." There's much more dialogue (entailing extended arguing between Cross, Evelyn, Gittes and the police), and the only bits from the script remaining in the final film are:
"How many years have I got left? She's mine, too." - "She's never going to know that."
"You wanna do your partner a big favor? Take him home. Just get him the hell out of here."
And, of course:
"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown." Even that is written as, "Through the crowd noises, Walsh can be heard saying..."
The fatal shot isn't even delivered by Loach, but by a uniformed officer down the block, resulting in hysteria from Jake ("Where is he? I'll kill him! I'll kill the son of a bitch. Who is he? Get his name, I'll kill him.") and Cross cradling Evelyn's body as Gittes is dragged away still raving, rather than in stricken near-catatonia in the film.
I've seen interviews with Towne in which he stated that, as production went on, he eventually abandoned visits to the set, so there's no telling what - if any - involvement he had in the modifications, or if it was all Polanski.
Whatever the facts, the end result replaces chaos and melodrama with futility, inevitability and melancholy that suit the proceedings in their simplicity and focus. Whosever they were, someone's instincts were spot on.
"Much deserved -- this is the first time Jake's seeing Mulvehill since the latter held him to get his nose cut. Its "payback" time, pain-wise."
- More trivia: that was Roy Jenson, Puddler in Harper, who got the butt end of a metal file across his forehead from Paul Newman (that scene still makes me flinch even more than Polanki's nose slash)
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I saw Harper in the movie theater when I was very young, and when Puddler got that metal file across his face I felt two sensations: (1) the pain of the bloodiness of it and (2) fear of his RAGE at Newman for doing that to him...Newman hurt Puddler but I felt fear FOR Newman as Puddler came after him. A very scary scene to see at a young age.
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and ended up at the end of a rope in Robert Mitchum's church in 5 Card Stud.
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5 Card Stud is a rather cheapjack movie(Henry Hathaway did it the year before he did True Grit, and they share exactly the same low-rent quality), but its always intrigued me: if Hitchcock did a Western, this would likely have been it. A stranger accused of cheating at a poker game is lynched by the other players(less Dino, who gets knocked out trying to stop it) and they are killed one by one, "Ten Little Indians" style, by a mysterious killer. A SYMPATHETIC killer, who just might be co-star Robert Mitchum(as a preacher man with overtones of his "Night of the Hunter" character.") You've even got villainous Roddy McDowall (the "right man") fingering Dino as the "wrong man" leader of the lynch mob. Hitchcockian suspense. Alas just not as well made or written as a Hitchcock. Still...I like 5 Card Stud, I saw it on release, found it a good "Western thriller."
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But back to Roy Jenson. The movies always needs some "big guys." Sometimes they're good guys(John Wayne) sometimes they are bad guys(big actors hired to be beaten up BY John Wayne.) Richard Boone and George Kennedy were big guys who played good guys and bad guys(versus John Wayne, both of them.)
About a "level down" from Boone and Oscar winner Kennedy, in the 60's and 70's was...Roy Jenson. He had size, and he had a face that could be mean AND funny, sometimes at the same time. He did a lot of TV. I remember him from Harper. Chinatown is probably his most famous part, and definitely his best movie. He was good "comic relief" in the lightish Charles Bronson actioner "Breakout"(co-starring John Huston and made the year after Chinatown) in which Jenson played the jealous lout husband of sexy Sheree North, and grudgingly allowed Bronson to use her as sexual bait in some caper. Jenson was FUNNY in that movie, his size used for comedy.
And this: a little known B actioner starring Joe Don Baker called "Framed." Mid-seventies. I watched that on cable, and though most of it was forgettable, there came a time for Baker and Jenson -- both big men with a bit of flab on them -- to have a fight to the death in the car garage of a suburban home. It was - to that point in time at least -- the most brutal man-to-man fight I'd ever seen in a movie. No flying fists and crashing tables; this was two animalistic, grunting, screaming men grappling at close quarters with fingers in each other's eyes until one of them got his head bashed into the concrete until death. I've seen such scenes a LOT since "Framed," but Roy Jenson's famous for that scene, with me.
And another Hitchcock connection: Darrell Zwerling, who played Hollis Mulwray, was the priest who admonished Bruce Dern to put away his pipe at Grace Cathedral in Family Plot.
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Darrell Zwerling is one of those guys who had somewhat of a career ("Hey, its that guy!") in the seventies. By sheer luck he ended up perfectly cast as the very important Hollis Mulwray in Chinatown, a "forever classic," and I guess that same luck put him Family Plot, a lesser movie but a landmark nonetheless("Hitchcock's last.") Zwerling also did a small bit as an accountant in the Columbo episode where Robert Conrad's guest killer was a Jack LaLanne fitness freak type.
I saw Zwerling in person twice , after Chinatown and before Family Plot (so I guess that makes it 1975.)
ONE: I went on the set of a forgettable movie(too bad, George Pal produced it) called "Doc Savage, Man of Bronze" and watched Zwerling as part of a "team" led by Ron Ely's Doc Savage. To my delight I got to watch a "group fight scene" set inside the dining room of the villain's yacht. It was fun to watch a gang brawl with no sound effects for punches or breaking glass. It was like the men were all silently miming the fight. Zwerling elegantly used his umbrella to neutralize a foe; in the finished film, special effects added electroshock flashes to the umbrella. Watch that fight scene in "Doc Savage" (1975) and imagine me about 20 feet away from the action. I do. I have it on DVR.
TWO: Men's room, Senior Pico's restaurant in Los Angeles. I daresay that's probably the only time I've encountered a star(of sorts) in a bathroom. All I could do was nod that I recognized him.
"I always wonder a bit about Cross's "nasty reputation" comment. This is one of those precise screenplays where practically every WORD means something, exactly how it is written, exactly when it is said."
- It's a funny thing about that precision; the most recent screenplay of Chinatown to be found online is dated 10/9/73, less than a week before it went into production, but changes - some major - were made to various scenes before it wrapped.
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Aw...I guess I'm a bit foiled here. Well, sometimes the "precision" is almost an accident. Cross says what he says about a 'nasty reputation" and we CONNECT it to the surly brawler we see of Gittes in other scenes.
And certainly, Chinatown is famous for a changed ending.
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Legend has it that Jane Fonda was intended to play Evelyn after Robert Evans cut Ali McGraw loose (thank goodness for that) and before Polanski convinced him to go with Dunaway, but some lines in the script still sound like they were written for Fonda.
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I have read that Fonda actually turned the part down, with a quote attached from Fonda: "I'm so tired of people telling me how great Jack Nicholson is." Hah.
As for Ali MacGraw getting cut loose, its interesting. She WAS married to the powerful Bob Evans for a time, and she seemed to be a superstar on the basis of just three hits(Goodbye, Columbus, Love Story, and The Getaway.) But people "in the know" knew that MacGraw was a pretty terrible, wooden actress, and it seems that we all lucked out when she left Evans for Getaway star Steve McQueen, because suddenly...MacGraw wasn't so hot anymore, and she got dumped from The Great Gatsby(Mia Farrow got the role) and Chinatown. And she pretty much retired to Malibu with the reclusive McQueen, and when she came back when McQueen split with her...she was just...a working actress.
When Jake asks Evelyn if she has any peroxide for his nose, the script has her replying, "Oh, sure. C'mon." Dunaway speaks the more formal and refined, "Surely. Come this way?" Once in the bathroom as Evelyn tends to the cut, the script's "Boy oh boy, you're a mess" is replaced with Dunaway's alarmed, "My - god - I had no idea,"
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One wonders if the dialogue changes were scripted...or Dunaway's. Certainly they create the more elegant and caring woman that we have in the movie as finished.
I've read a published screenplay for "North by Northwest" and its like almost every line spoken by Cary Grant in the movie is different than in the screenplay. I don't know if Cary just couldn't remember his exact lines or sought to change them -- but the latter seems more likely, because he made the lines more elegant, cultured, and polite.
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and all the dialogue about Jake's past in Chinatown was to take place there rather than in bed.
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Hmmm...well, pillow talk has its own ambiance.
I've read of scenes being moved around -- or switched in order -- in finished films or changed in the scripting.
The late screenwriter William Goldman says that Paul Newman(a lot) and Robert Redford(a little, he was less powerful) kept arguing to move a scene called "The Bledsloe Scene" to later in the movie. The arguments went on for so long that Goldman said folks said "why don't we re-name this movie 'The Bledsoe Scene'?" (It was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.) This is the scene where a lawman named Bledsoe(Jeff Corey) tells it to Butch and Sundance straight: they'll never be forgiven for their crimes, they can never go straight, "you're gonna die bloody and all you get to choose is where." An important scene, actually. I can't remember when it appears in the film.
But anyway, moving the action from place to place in script or film is...important.
And here's another one: Warren Beatty and Hal Ashby decided , filming a scene where Goldie Hawn and Beatty argue in "Shampoo" the first time, with Goldie sitting and Warren standing over her, made Warren look like a bully. So they shot it again with Warren sitting and Goldie standing.
shareThe most significant changes occur in the final scene, which is longer and far more chaotic, beginning with a behind-the-wheel struggle between Gittes and Mulvehill when Cross spots Evelyn from his car, resulting in a collision with a lamppost and a brawl among the three which spills onto the sidewalk, Evelyn retrieving Mulvehill's gun that he loses in the struggle, Katherine getting away cleanly and still more brawling and shouting when Escobar and the police arrive.
All very traditionally "movie climax-y."
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Hmm. And Evelyn lives...and Cross dies? Or was there some "interim script" where she dies and he lives, as we have it now? At least Catherine got away in that version.
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There's much more dialogue (entailing extended arguing between Cross, Evelyn, Gittes and the police),
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Is this script on the internet? I'd like to read it.
the only bits from the script remaining in the final film are:
"How many years have I got left? She's mine, too." - "She's never going to know that."
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Good stuff. One senses, just a bit, some sympathy for the devil here. And how a rich powerful man realizes that even he can't cheat death. (Earlier he gets that great line, "I'm old, Mr. Gitts. I'm respectable. Ugly buildings, hookers and politicians all get respectable if they get old enough." Or something like that. As stage actors say "Line?!")
Meanwhile, Evelyn: "She's never going to know that!" Powerful stuff.
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"You wanna do your partner a big favor? Take him home. Just get him the hell out of here."
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Nice work in the final film by Perry Lopez. LIke a few actors in Chinatown, its like he arrived "out of the blue" and made a big impact and then...disappeared again.
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And, of course:
"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown." Even that is written as, "Through the crowd noises, Walsh can be heard saying..."
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Through the crowd noises...oh those got turned "way down." The line's too important. Such a simple line. Such a great line. I've jokingly used it about more minor tragedies in my life.
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The fatal shot isn't even delivered by Loach, but by a uniformed officer down the block,
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That might have made more "logical" sense -- the shooter closer to the victim -- than the rather crazily "perfect shot" we have in the finished film , but Loach was better the man to make the kill. We KNOW him. (And in the so-so sequel "The Two Jakes," it is Loach's SON, also a mean cop, who is Jake's antagonist.)
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resulting in hysteria from Jake ("Where is he? I'll kill him! I'll kill the son of a bitch. Who is he? Get his name, I'll kill him.") and Cross cradling Evelyn's body as Gittes is dragged away still raving, rather than in stricken near-catatonia in the film.
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I've read a few scripts where you can tell that what's "on the page" was practically impossible to get on film..you need to have the actors in place "for real" and a dramatic sense of the scene. Jake is better near-catatonic (ala Stewart in Vertigo; Hackman in The Conversation; Travolta in Blow-Out) than yelling.
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I've seen interviews with Towne in which he stated that, as production went on, he eventually abandoned visits to the set, so there's no telling what - if any - involvement he had in the modifications, or if it was all Polanski.
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Towne was probably lucky to get on the set at all. Directors often want the scenarist "gone" when its filming time. Though I guess some directors keep the writer around for "touch ups."
Interesting about two Robert Evans productions. Both the endings of Chinatown and Marathon Man were changed pretty much "on the spot" -- by director Polanski in the first place and by star Dustin Hoffman in the second. Polanski's changes were good; Hoffman's were terrible. (Hoffman sank his own vehicle.)
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Whatever the facts, the end result replaces chaos and melodrama with futility, inevitability and melancholy that suit the proceedings in their simplicity and focus. Whosever they were, someone's instincts were spot on.
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I think it was Polanski who said that the story HAD to lead to a tragic ending. Some stories are just like that. Vertigo's another example. A "happy ending" wouldn't fit and make the same point about people and the world in which we live.
But I will also note that Chinatown was "Exhibit A" in an indictment of 1974 "downer ending movies" (The Parallax View, The Gambler, Godfather II, and The Conversation were others) that "made you feel worse coming out of the theater than when you went in." The pushback was Rocky, Star Wars, Superman...up to most of today's films.
"Forget it, Jake. Its Chinatown."
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I think here is a good place to take note of the sole trailer for Chinatown, which went out to theaters shortly before the film's June 1974 release.
You can watch the trailer on YouTube and the DVD.
I saw the trailer IN 1974, before I saw Chinatown, and I remember thinking: (a) its telling the whole story and (b) its telling the ENDING.
For indeed the trailer ends with the shot of Joe Mantell telling Nicholson's sad and near-catatonic Gittes: "Forget it , Jake, its Chinatown." And Jake is looking at something. And I thought: "Well, Dunaway's not in this scene. She must be dead."
That said, of course the trailer couldn't give away the incest twist, though it certainly milked the water politics angle.
"Men's room, Senior Pico's restaurant in Los Angeles. I daresay that's probably the only time I've encountered a star(of sorts) in a bathroom. All I could do was nod that I recognized him."
- I was once at a urinal flanked by Eddie Albert on my left and Sylvester Stallone on my right. Nobody did any nodding, and we all focused quietly on our individual tasks. But, man, few things humanize a celebrity more.
For some reason, it always felt more polite - can't say why - not to acknowledge a "big name's" identity when encountering them unless an introduction was involved. But I've never been shy about greeting lesser-known players - the ones who are merely faces to most viewers - like Doreen Lang at the cashier of a Burbank restaurant or Charles Knapp (Morty in Chinatown) coming out of a N. Hollywood 7-11. They always seemed so pleased that someone actually knows their name, and responded graciously with a minute or two of chat.
"Aw...I guess I'm a bit foiled here. Well, sometimes the "precision" is almost an accident."
- Golly, didn't mean to do that. The precision's still there in the final product; what difference whether it was settled upon months, weeks, days or even hours (or minutes?) before shooting? Even when something's accidental, like Huston actually mispronouncing Gittes, a precise decision is made to leave it in.
"Is this script on the internet? I'd like to read it."
- I'd intended to include the URL and it slipped my mind:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~srbeatty/394/Chinatown.pdf
"Nice work in the final film by Perry Lopez. LIke a few actors in Chinatown, its like he arrived "out of the blue" and made a big impact and then...disappeared again."
- He did a ton of TV work (including a '58 A.H.), bits in films (he's one of the Creature From the Black Lagoon's first victims and a sailor in Mister Roberts) and even got top billing in a mid-'50s prison film called The Steel Jungle (along with being among James Dean's west coast "posse").
"That might have made more "logical" sense -- the shooter closer to the victim -- than the rather crazily "perfect shot" we have in the finished film..."
- I always say, something like that doesn't need to be likely; it needs only to be possible.
"...but Loach was better the man to make the kill. We KNOW him. (And in the so-so sequel "The Two Jakes," it is Loach's SON, also a mean cop, who is Jake's antagonist.)"
Although one of TTJ's weaknesses is excessive Chinatown references, having the bad blood between Jake and Loach carry over to the son was a nice touch. But Towne was able to sneak in some dialogue between Jake and Escobar that was cut from Chinatown (about the whore who'd "piss in a guy's face") and give it to Jake and Loach Jr. Some lines deserve to remain in the bin.
I know from interviews with both Towne and Polanski how closely they worked on reorganizing the script, and in Towne's case, it may be one of the writer having simply grown too close to the material. It needed another more objective eye to suss what story was truly being told, and place the accents where they belonged.
"I saw the trailer IN 1974, before I saw Chinatown, and I remember thinking: (a) its telling the whole story and (b) its telling the ENDING."
- - The music heard there is snippets from Phillip Lambro's rejected (and largely execrable) score, which employed not only the expected "moody P.I. sax," but the bad taste to include some of the most heavy-handed, rinky-dink "Chinee" musical cliches.
Jerry Goldsmith wrought a one-week wonder.
"Men's room, Senior Pico's restaurant in Los Angeles. I daresay that's probably the only time I've encountered a star(of sorts) in a bathroom. All I could do was nod that I recognized him."
- I was once at a urinal flanked by Eddie Albert on my left and Sylvester Stallone on my right. Nobody did any nodding, and we all focused quietly on our individual tasks. But, man, few things humanize a celebrity more.
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Woah...you certainly(and literally) "out-flanked" me on star power. One on either side of you. Wherever his career may be today, Stallone was a true star and Eddie Albert, well...his 70's villain roles(Columbo, The Heartbreak Kid, The Longest Yard, Hustle)...he's one of the "unsung great bad guys" to me. And Albert's like Lee Marvin -- he had to age and go gray to get truly handsome looking. He's kind of goofy looking as a young fellow in Roman Holiday. IMHO.
Since we're being direct here, I will note that my "nod" to Zwerling came after matters were, ahem, finished. At the sink, I think.
Ha...Hollywood.
For some reason, it always felt more polite - can't say why - not to acknowledge a "big name's" identity when encountering them unless an introduction was involved.
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You and I have shared our Hollywood tales, and I think all of this is true. But as i recall, you worked at Lorimar and therefore had "actual work-related clearance" to talk to some of these professionals.
With me it was either seeing them somewhere(in which case, a nod was about the best you could do or get) or asking them questions at the various seminars all over town.
Though I have noted this before -- the two stars I got to work with "up close and personal" -- were Liz Taylor and Burt Lancaster. Taylor I had to escort into a public meeting (we got swamped, made an escape into an office, locked the door, and I turned her over to security; I still remember telling the shocked secretaries in the office "Hello..I believe that you all know Elizabeth Taylor?"); and Lancaster sat in my office to talk with me for about 20 minutes to kill time before he had to leave to catch a plane. That's it. But two pretty big ones. And I got to discuss "The Professionals" with Lancaster. He humored me.
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But I've never been shy about greeting lesser-known players - the ones who are merely faces to most viewers - like Doreen Lang at the cashier of a Burbank restaurant
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Hitchcock musta liked Doreen Lang. There she is in The Wrong Man, NXNW, and The Birds -- memorable every time. The characters in The Wrong Man and The Birds share an irritating scaredy-cat paranoia(though its understandable in The Wrong Man; she was robbed by the Right Man --in The Birds, its funny, she's the one person who BELIEVES Tippi about the birds, but she's too hysterical to be an ally); she's just downright efficient and funny as Cary Grant's secretary in the opening scene of NXNW ("A cab for two blocks?" "You're late and I'm tired.")
So -- you met one of the greats with Doreen Lang.
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or Charles Knapp (Morty in Chinatown) coming out of a N. Hollywood 7-11.
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Morty in Chinatown! I've always felt that was one of the great "outta nowhere" performances in film(though I'm wrong about Perry Lopez, I guess Knapp worked a lot elsewhere?) His look, his voice, his hearty manner...and sudden seriousness. Great perf.
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They always seemed so pleased that someone actually knows their name, and responded graciously with a minute or two of chat.
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I would expect so. Bigger stars are -- justifiably I'm afraid -- nowadays needing to run from the fans. But those who toil in smaller parts -- a nice reward to be recognized.
A "fictional take" on a star not wanting to be bothered by a true fan occurs in that David Mamet movie where Alec Baldwin plays a big star in a small town accosted by a fan. Baldwin looks only briefly at the man, with anger and says something like:
BALDWIN: Yeah, OK, let's get it out of the way. Go ahead and tell me about how my performance in that one role I played deeply moved you and changed your life forever. I don't care!
..and walks away. Mamet wrote many a movie, I assume Baldwin was based on some REAL star with whom Mamet worked.
"Aw...I guess I'm a bit foiled here. Well, sometimes the "precision" is almost an accident."
- Golly, didn't mean to do that.
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Oh, I know. You know me. I get on a particular roll responding to something and later realize...hey, its not THAT precise.
Indeed Chinatown does seem to be a movie that had a few "accidents" on the way to classic-hood -- and which if they hadn't happened(the score change) would have KILLED the classic.
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The precision's still there in the final product; what difference whether it was settled upon months, weeks, days or even hours (or minutes?) before shooting?
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Hah. None. A better ending, a better line -- an accident of cinematography(like how in a shot from "In Cold Blood," water drops pouring down a window create "tears" in shadow on a man's face; I saw that in a documentary piece on cinematography.)
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Even when something's accidental, like Huston actually mispronouncing Gittes, a precise decision is made to leave it in.
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And wasn't the idea that maybe Cross(Huston) mispronounces it on PURPOSE? To irritate Jake a bit.
If not scripted, perhaps Huston thought to do this on purpose for fun...but if he just blew the pronounciation..mo bettah.
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"Is this script on the internet? I'd like to read it."
- I'd intended to include the URL and it slipped my mind:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~srbeatty/394/Chinatown.pdf
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Thank you!
"Nice work in the final film by Perry Lopez. LIke a few actors in Chinatown, its like he arrived "out of the blue" and made a big impact and then...disappeared again."
- He did a ton of TV work (including a '58 A.H.), bits in films (he's one of the Creature From the Black Lagoon's first victims and a sailor in Mister Roberts) and even got top billing in a mid-'50s prison film called The Steel Jungle (along with being among James Dean's west coast "posse").
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Hmm...it like modernly when I think some actor I liked disappeared and then I found out he/she has been working on an obscure(to me) cable show for years.
I think "retroactively" I found Perry Lopez in Kelly's Heroes but...
...there remains the issue that Chinatown gave him a pretty big role with pretty good lines in a pretty classic film.
I'll add this, too: I became aware, as a young movie fan, of a "new generation" of character guys suddenly appearing in the 70s: Charles Durning, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox(both plucked from the same stage play to debut in Deliverance), John Hillerman(a Bogdanovich favorite and great in Chinatown.) And kinda/sorta Perry Lopez. Unfortunately, this new crowd rather pushed an earlier generation(Balsam, Klugman, Ed Binns, Simon Oakland) into TV movies, TV series, and lesser parts.)
"That might have made more "logical" sense -- the shooter closer to the victim -- than the rather crazily "perfect shot" we have in the finished film..."
- I always say, something like that doesn't need to be likely; it needs only to be possible.
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Yeah, I'd agree. I do love Chinatown and if I sometimes seem "disagreeable" about elements of the climax(like that lucky shot), its not like (in this case) the scene falls apart. There have been some(many?) other movies where something just too coincidental or unbelievable DOES ruin the scene...but not here. And the shot through Evelyn's eye harkens back to the "imperfection" that Jake sees IN her eye.
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"...but Loach was better the man to make the kill. We KNOW him. (And in the so-so sequel "The Two Jakes," it is Loach's SON, also a mean cop, who is Jake's antagonist.)"
Although one of TTJ's weaknesses is excessive Chinatown references,
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Its been a long time since I saw The Two Jakes, and I've only seen it twice, I think. Once in the theater and once on TV. But my vague memory is that Nicholson (as the director) and his writer(Towne again, but half-heartedly?) put in a lot of weird expository dialogue about the earlier movie as if talking about the earlier movie would somehow make the new one better.
The Two Jakes is an intelligent film, with a pretty good final line(not as good as "Forget it , Jake") but it stresses and strains and never really hits the mark. I guess Godfather II is harder to do than it looks!
And boy did The Two Jakes have a 'history." Remember how Robert Evans himself was going to play "the other Jake?" With Towne directing? That version fell apart in 1986. The version with Harvey Keitel in the role came out in 1990. In between, Paramount looked to drop out Nicholson and cast Harrison Ford in the part! And entirely different actresses were cast in the Evans project; the Ford project, and the movie we got.
having the bad blood between Jake and Loach carry over to the son was a nice touch. But Towne was able to sneak in some dialogue between Jake and Escobar that was cut from Chinatown (about the whore who'd "piss in a guy's face") and give it to Jake and Loach Jr. Some lines deserve to remain in the bin.
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Yeah, I don't remember that line and I don't WANT to remember that line. I don't remember most of The Two Jakes lines(hell, any of them)...but that line wouldn't have fit in Chinatown.
I do remember being amused by a scene where a sexually ravenous Madeleine Stowe "presents herself" for pretty basic sexual activity before Jake in his office. He agrees, but needs a cup of water cooler water to prepare for the bout. He appears weary and dutiful rather than excited about it all(he says something quiet like "Hang on, I'll be right with ya."). Its just a funny scene, with middle-aged people -- Jack was fighting some heft in "The Two Jakes" that he would take off for "A Few Good Men" and a few years more.
I know from interviews with both Towne and Polanski how closely they worked on reorganizing the script, and in Towne's case, it may be one of the writer having simply grown too close to the material. It needed another more objective eye to suss what story was truly being told, and place the accents where they belonged.
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The Manson Murders came in between, but Polanski certainly seemed to apply all sorts of professionalism and craft to the scripting and shooting of Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown. Those movies are classics for a variety of reasons, but Polanski has to be included in.
Since then? I leave it to others to discuss.
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"I saw the trailer IN 1974, before I saw Chinatown, and I remember thinking: (a) its telling the whole story and (b) its telling the ENDING."
- - The music heard there is snippets from Phillip Lambro's rejected (and largely execrable) score, which employed not only the expected "moody P.I. sax," but the bad taste to include some of the most heavy-handed, rinky-dink "Chinee" musical cliches.
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Yeah. Its like the narrator follows the music in his OWN heavy-handedness(reading from a heavy-handed script.) The good scenes in Chinatown shine through the trailer, but a lot of it is...redolent of a far worse movie than we got.
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Jerry Goldsmith wrought a one-week wonder
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I'm amazed by movie music scoring in general for however long it takes but yeah -- one week. It got Oscar- nominated, didn't it?(I know that only Towne's script won.)