Trivia / Chinatown

Chinatown

• Creative Differences:
  • Cinematographer Stanley Cortez was fired soon after production began, because his classical style did not match the naturalistic style Roman Polański wanted for the film, and proved to be too time-consuming. Polanski had to find a replacement in only a few days and chose John A. Alonzo. The orange grove fight with the farmers (but not the following porch scene with Evelyn), and the drive back to Los Angeles at sunset are Cortez's work, ultimately being some of his final before his retirement four years later.
  • Robert Towne and Polanski butted heads with each other about the ending of the film from the get-go. Ultimately Towne walked off set and Polanski rewrote the ending with Nicholson. Towne was angry about the changed ending for years but eventually came to accept that Polanski made the right call and now believes that Polanski's ending was superior to his original one. Towne and Polanski also had differences about other parts of the script, with Polanski greatly de-emphasizing the social criticism and political backdrop about the dam and land appropriation schemes while highlighting and re-emphasizing the personal story of Gittes and Evelyn and the latter's relationship with her father.
• Creator Breakdown: The film's ending can only be attributed in part to Roman Polański's bitterness with the world. It actually reflects the reality that America had been awakened to by the civil rights movement, Watergate, and Vietnam, that the corruption of the rich and powerful was an epidemic. Polanski also modeled the outfit of Faye Dunaway on his mother (who was killed in The Holocaust). However, Polanski himself pointed out that he generally preferred Downer Ending, noting that even the film he made when he was at his happiest, The Fearless Vampire Killers (where he met Sharon Tate and fell in love with during production) ends with the hero, played by himself, failing and the bad guy winning. He also felt that the whole point of doing a New Hollywood Genre Throwback is irrelevant if they didn't do what The Hays Code usually prevented the classic noir from showing on screen (as opposed to generally implying and suggesting), namely the hero loses, the villain wins, and the innocent go unavenged.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Although he liked the idea of doing a cameo in the film as the hood who slits Jake's nose, Roman Polański was less thrilled about having to have his long hair cut off for his brief appearance in the film.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • Jack Nicholson was genuinely nervous during the nose-cutting scene because the knife being used could actually have hurt him badly if not held correctly. In the end, Roman Polański did the scene himself to get it right.
  • During the infamous scene where Evelyn reveals that her sister is also her daughter, the slaps that Jake gave her were apparently genuine. Faye Dunaway mentioned that the fake smacks weren't leaving their intended impact in the scene, so she told Nicholson to actually slap her.
• Hostility on the Set: Faye Dunaway and Roman Polański were notorious for their on-set arguments; during filming, Polanski pulled out some strands of Dunaway's hair. On another occasion, when she asked him what her character's motivation was, he exploded, "Just say the fucking words. Your salary is your motivation". On another occasion, while filming a scene in a car, he refused to let her urinate, so he could finish the scene. She then urinated in a cup and threw it in his face.
• Inspiration for the Work: According to Robert Towne, Carey McWilliams' Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (1946) and a West magazine photo essay called "Raymond Chandler's L.A." inspired his original screenplay. In a letter to McWilliams, Towne wrote that Southern California Country "really changed my life. It taught me to look at the place where I was born, and convinced me to write about it."
• Life Imitates Art: Shortly after the film was released, it was discovered that Jack Nicholson's "sister" was really his mother and his "parents" were really his grandparents, though his father was not his grandfather. His mother got pregnant as a teenager and his father ran off, so his grandparents hid the pregnancy.
  • In one of the most infamous examples of this in film history, Roman Polanski was later implicated in the sexual abuse of a minor, just like Noah Cross.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Despite it being considered his best film, and certainly his most famous film, Roman Polański in interviews has claimed that while he was satisfied with the film, he didn't think it was one of his most personal works and in his view other films he made including Cul-de-sac (1966), The Fearless Vampire Killers, Rosemary's Baby, The Tenant, and Tess were as good if not better. Polanski said that for him Chinatown was mostly just a commercial job that he did due to his friendship with Evans and Nicholson.
• Orphaned Reference: Originally, the opening scene had an exchange where Curly tells Gittes he's going to kill his unfaithful wife, and Gittes tells him he's not rich enough to get away with murder. (That's why they're talking about Curly paying his bill as they come out of the office, and why Gittes says, "I only brought it up", Curly's financial situation, "to illustrate a point.") Robert Towne later regretted removing this part of the scene. He said in 1999:
  That exchange I miss probably as much as any in the movie. Because it really foreshadows (the) 'You've got to be rich to kill somebody and get away with it' (theme). He's really foreshadowing the whole movie.
• Referenced by...:
  • Forever Knight. In "Cherry Blossoms", Detective Schanke says "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown" when they get a murder case in Toronto's Chinatown. Da Chief is not impressed as This Is Reality, not a movie.
  • Lackadaisy: Virgil comforts Zib by telling him, "Forget it, Zib. It's Sleazy Town."
  • In the Star Trek: Voyager Parody Fic The Last Kiss Goodbye, when private eye Jane Kates uncovers Canon Bragger's Evil Plan to introduce television to Hollywood, the latter replies, "The future, Miss Kates, the future."
  • Rango. The mayor Tortoise John sounds and dresses like Noah Cross, and is involved in a conspiracy involving water.
• Stillborn Franchise: As per Robert Towne, Chinatown was meant to be the first film in a trilogy, each starring Jake Gittes and revolving around corruption during the development of Los Angeles.
  • Jack Nicholson never played another detective character for that reason so that Gittes would remain his iconic PI. Unfortunately, the sequel had trouble getting off the ground — thanks to Roman Polański's rape of at least one underage girl and his subsequent flight to Europe to avoid prosecution. Polanski, however, said that he never would have been interested in doing the sequel anyway since he saw Chinatown as a standalone film and approached it that way.
  • The Two Jakes, a sequel did materialize sixteen years later, directed by Nicholson himself but its commercial failure and lukewarm reception (it was seen as good and serviceable but not as good as the original) put a kibosh on any chances for the third film. Bizarrely enough, many elements of what would have been the third film turned up in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, notably the freeway arc. L.A. Noire would also take the 'dirty dealings surrounding the introduction of the Freeway' concept and roll with it, as well, with a major real estate conspiracy involving fraud, corruption, arson, PTSD, and military-grade morphine.
  • The title of the third film according to Towne was at different times Cloverfield or Gittes versus Gittes. According to Towne, the entire freeway element would have happened in the backdrop to Gittes being divorced from his eventual wife and fighting her in court.
  • A theme of the third film would have been how California became a no-contest divorce state. Thus, without his key source of investigations bringing in cash, Gittes would have gone from a nice apartment and a country club to a seedy office and barely scraping by.
• Spared by the Cut: Robert Towne originally wrote the screenplay with more of a Bittersweet Ending in which Evelyn kills her father and goes to prison to make it closer in spirit to the classic noir. Polanski felt differently, feeling that they had to go Darker and Edgier and take full advantage of the end of censorship. Polanski and Towne kept feuding and Towne walked off the set. Polanski and Nicholson wrote the infamous Downer Ending. Towne later conceded that the film was better that way.
• Throw It In!: Cross's mispronunciation of Gittes's last name wasn't in the script. John Huston couldn't get it right, so Roman Polański had Jack Nicholson add a line trying to correct him, and after that just let it go.
• Wag the Director: According to Faye Dunaway, Evelyn's eye wound was meant to parallel the story of Oedipus, who blinded himself after realizing his marriage was incestuous. Miss Dunaway had to fight to keep this in the film; when there was a problem getting the makeup/prosthetics, the filmmakers wanted to change where Evelyn would be shot.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Anjelica Huston, John Huston's real-life daughter, as Evelyn Mulwray. Squick. Things were pretty awkward as it was given that Jack Nicholson had just started dating Anjelica in real life, making the scenes where John's character asks "Mr. Gittes, do you sleep with my daughter?" just...uncomfortable. Julie Christie and Jane Fonda were also up for the role before it went to Dunaway.
  • The first draft of Robert Towne's screenplay ends with Jake — having explained via voiceover that Evelyn got out of prison after four years and Hollis Mulwray got a street named after him — stopping to look out over the lush Northwest Valley, which is slowly transformed via a series of dissolves into the overdeveloped, smog-ridden sprawl of The '70s.
  • Originally, the opening scene had an exchange where Curly tells Gittes he's going to kill his unfaithful wife, and Gittes tells him he's not rich enough to get away with murder. (That's why they're talking about Curly paying his bill as they come out of the office, and why Gittes says, "I only brought it up", Curly's financial situation, "to illustrate a point.") Towne later regretted removing this part of the scene. "That exchange I miss probably as much as any in the movie", he said in 1999. "Because it really foreshadows (the) 'You've got to be rich to kill somebody and get away with it' (theme). He's really foreshadowing the whole movie."
  • Jake was originally going to have a Private Eye Monologue. Polanski removed it because he wanted the audience to discover the clues at the same time Gittes did and feel just as trapped as he did.
  • Shortly after Hollis Mulwray's body is recovered, the original script included an omitted scene in which Lt. Escobar reveals to Gittes that he has limited sympathy for the victim because a cousin of his was killed in the Van Der Lip dam disaster.
  • Huston was offered the chance to direct this movie, but he decided that he did not want to. Peter Bogdanovich and Mike Nichols were also asked to direct (the former would have cast Cybill Shepherd as Evelyn Mulwray).
  • Before the official sequel got made, another script for a sequel was written about Gittes uncovering a conspiracy to demolish a poor neighborhood to buy the land cheaply to build a freeway, then dismantle the city's public transportation so people will have no choice but to use it. If this sounds familiar, it's because that script got turned into Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
  • Missing White Woman Syndrome: At the beginning of the film, farmers are campaigning for the construction of a new dam which will allow for better irrigation. Hollis explains that the proposed site for the new dam has a shale base, as did the previous dam in the area, which collapsed and killed five hundred people. In a line of dialogue present in the screenplay but not the film itself, Escobar explains that the reason this collapse and all the deaths it caused didn't get sufficient publicity was because most of the people killed were Mexican immigrants.
• Written by Cast Member: The film's ending was co-written by Polanski and Jack Nicholson himself after Towne walked off the film.

The Two Jakes

• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $25 million. Box office, $10 million.
• B-Team Sequel: For obvious reasons, Roman Polański had no involvement with the film.
• Doing It for the Art: Jack Nicholson, Robert Towne, and Robert Evans agreed to not take up-front salaries and instead share in the film's profits.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Jack Nicholson gained weight to play the older Jake Gittes to show that he was "settling in".
• Fake American: Panamanian actor Rubén Blades plays a Jewish-American gangster (based on Mickey Cohen).
• The Other Darrin: Meg Tilly replaced Belinda Palmer in the role of Katherine Berman (née Mulwray) in The Two Jakes.
• Role Reprise: Besides Jack Nicholson, the other actors from Chinatown to return in The Two Jakes were Perry Lopez (as Escobar), Joe Mantell (as Lawrence Walsh), James Hong (as Kahn, Evelyn Mulwray's butler), and Faye Dunaway in a vocal cameo as Evelyn Mulray.
• Release Date Change: It was originally scheduled for an American release at Christmas 1989 but didn't get released until Spring 1990. It only got a brief British West End screening in October 1991.
• Sequel Gap: The film was released sixteen years after its predecessor.
• Troubled Production:
  • Filming was due to start in 1985. Kelly McGillis, Cathy Moriarty, Dennis Hopper, Joe Pesci, and Harvey Keitel had all been cast, ready to shoot in April, with Robert Evans playing the other Jake. The following month, the sets had been built and filming was ready to begin, but Robert Towne's lack of confidence in Evans's acting ability exploded into a final argument when Evans objected to having to get a 1940s-style haircut (mostly due to recent plastic surgery scars that would be visible). Filming was scheduled to begin four days after the confrontation with a witness telling Vanity Fair: "In the morning, nothing happened. They said the weather was wrong. But you could tell the plug had been pulled".
  • Grievances were filed by 120 crew members who had not been paid (over $500,000 from Screen Actors Guild and Directors Guild of America members, and $1.5 million from suppliers of sets, props, costumes, and sound stages), and the project was officially postponed indefinitely.
  • Because the film hadn't been budgeted normally due to the initial plan, Towne approached Dino De Laurentiis to help finance. McGillis remained in the cast, with Harrison Ford set to take over as Jake Gittes and Roy Scheider attached to play the other Jake, with a tentative start date of mid-1986. At one point, John Huston was rumored to be brought in as director, although Towne denied the claim. However, the constant shuffling worried Paramount, who withdrew from the distribution deal out of nervousness, eventually taking a $4 million loss on the film. The project was discontinued until the late 1980s when Jack Nicholson took on the responsibility of directing and also rewrote parts of Towne's script (which "was really only about 80% ready").
  • Filming began in Los Angeles on April 18, 1989, lasting through July 26. Numerous scenes had to be reshot after initial filming had wrapped, causing the release date to get pushed from Christmas 1989 to its August 1990 date, however, Nicholson insisted that it came in "perfectly on schedule and perfectly on budget" (the final cost was about $25 million). The film ended up in a personal fallout between Nicholson, Towne, and Evans, with Towne saying in 1998 that he hadn't spoken to Nicholson in over ten years and Evans checking into a hospital for mental health and substance abuse issues.
• Voice-Only Cameo: Faye Dunaway voices Evelyn Mulray briefly.
• Write Who You Know: Robert Towne based Jake Berman on his father Lou.

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