Jack Nicholson, Robert Towne, Roman Polanski y Robert Evans, on Chinatown, 1974, Spanish Subs.

[Music] Robert town and I were roommates at some point and he had this idea that we talked about I don't know how long before he actually started writing it to do it Trilogy on um Los Angeles and the idea was to do a film a Trilogy and wait the same number of years between them that passed in real time that started in 1937 and end with the third film in 1953 the year that no fault divorce went into effect in California there were number of steps about that brought me to to Chinatown one um was um oddly enough was a a a construction project that was going on up at my uh then house uh in Benedict Canyon a developer had managed to fog through City Hall an outrageous project which was going to be moving N9 or 10 million yards of Earth around and destroying the entire Canyon and I went down to City Hall and I saw how they worked and and the the building superintendent actually said this project is so ill advised that I'm going to approve it because it will never get through I mean you know the most tortured logic imaginable and then I was walking with an old friend of mine along the beach uh the Palisades above the beach and I suddenly felt like I was about 8 or n years old because all the smell that I remembered as a kid eucalyptus and pepper in the ocean and then I realized that uh because of the growth of the city all those sents that you could catch anywhere in the city had sort of been banished uh to the farthest edges where you could there were only a few traces left of them and then there was a an article called Raymond Chandler's LA and in it there were photographs of Los Angeles Tak at that time which was 1970 but uh meant to suggest the period of Raymond Chandler late 20s into the 30s and I thought my God it would still be possible to recreate the Los Angeles of that period and all these other things were roiling up at me then I went to uh Eugene Oregon with Jack and uh he was directing drive he said and he wanted me for some perverse reason to be in the film playing uh a teacher so I I did and I checked out of the library up there a book called Southern California country an island on the land and in it there was a chapter called water water water and it was a real eye opener it was about the way that the city of Los Angeles basically stole the water of the Owens Valley uh and brought it to the San frando Valley and then Incorporated the valley into the city so I took that kind of Nostalgia that I felt it was more than Nostalgia the pain of feeling a loss of those things that I love so much in childhood and then the reason for that loss which was the cancerous growth of this place at the expense of beautiful surrounding areas and put them together and that was the beginning of Chinatown then there was one final component to the the initial phase of it and that was hyra my dog I had bought Hira from a Hungarian Vice Cop who was breeding these dogs and um we got to talking I said well what do you do Tony and he said well you know work in Chinatown I said doing what he said nothing said wait a minute you're working Vice in Chinatown and you're doing nothing he said oh yeah I said well why is that he said that's what they tell us to do is nothing I said why he said well he because the problem is that we can't get inside that uh culture uh the dialects and the tongs uh are just we just shut out and so we really can't tell if something is going on whether we're helping somebody commit a crime uh or or preventing it and that really stuck in my mind I thought what A Great Notion and so I gave Gus a background in Chinatown where he did something and it didn't work out because then Chinatown as a as a notion becomes begins to stand for the futility of Good Intentions and then I thought wouldn't it be great to do a detective movie not about uh those things that had traditionally been done in films but do it about something that's in front of your face every day like water and power and to make that a mystery you know make a mystery out of the fact that uh the reservoirs are being emptied I thought it's something you can follow through the city just like you can follow this dried La riverbed and a man drowns in a riverbed that's dry how the hell did that happen and I thought wouldn't it be great to do a detective movie out of that and so all these pieces came together and I caught up with the Jack and said listen I've got an idea what if I do a detective movie it was a series of conversations I must say don't remember them specifically but he had this idea all I pretty much said was fine and Robert liked writing for me as he understood me as an actor in in that period and thought this would be good I couldn't have conceived uh or written the character of gtis without my knowledge of Jack and my friendship with him we'd room together we've been in acting class together uh I had seen him struggle in anonymity for 15 years years being insulted at the unemployment office uh by people telling him that maybe he should get a a real job uh all of those things that uh in one way and another uh became part of the character of gdus The Thin skinned quality uh the uh cynicism the uh flashes of anger um all of the things that made Jack unique as an actor and and as a person were characteristics that uh inevitably found their way into the character of gtis you must really think I'm stupid don't you GES I don't think about it that much but uh give me a day or two and I'll get back to you I got involved with Chinatown on a rainy night back in 71 I was having dinner with Bob Town who was a at that moment a fledgling writer with a good reputation but uh money meant nothing to him he just wanted wanted to write what he wanted to write and I wanted him to write Gatsby for me and offered him at that time which was an astronomical amount $175,000 to do it no I don't want to try and beat Fitzgerald I didn't want to be the unknown Hollywood screenwriter who up a a literary classic because I figured that's what would happen you know I mean you can afford to do that if you have some sort of reputation uh but if you have less than none and you do that you know I mean and I just didn't want to do it I didn't think it was going to make a good movie and I wanted to do what I what I was doing this is I'm writing a story called Chinatown but it's not about Chinatown it's it's it's a it's a place in your mind rather he began telling me about it he says let's do that instead Robert Evans was not an independent producer he was the head of the studio he was the head of production and head of sedu ction you know Bob was goodlooking had a beautiful house he was the Talk of the Town in in those days Robert Evans is a unique individual in every way so uh and somebody that we all got along with and somebody who understood all you know we were friends I mean Robert Town had his wedding at at evans's house Chinatown was my first film as a bonus cu no person ever ran a studio and can make their own films so instead of giving me a raise Charlie blon who was at that time own Paramount he let me have something unprecedented which is being able to make a film a year and also run the studio and it worked against me not for me if the picture were not a success it wouldn't have mattered but the picture being the hit that it was all the other filmmakers around par it's not right he's working on China toown wi is spending time with us in our film so it reverberated negatively dods me I was living in Rome and working there and I loved it there and uh Jack called and said I don't remember how specific he was about the kind of film but it did something for us to do together we spent a lot of time together Roman and I you know he's one of the great directors so just based on that not only the Friendship anybody would really have a strong desire to work with him and Chinatown is a romanff thriller uh Roman's very good and had a already wellestablished reputation for suspense pictures even comedy my favorite cuaac so it was just a kind of natural progression I wanted a European Vision not an American Vision of it because the Europeans see America differently then Jack wanted him very much and I wanted him very much and he wasn't that anxious at the moment to come back to America the subject was exciting the genre was something that I thought of doing one day but I wasn't very hot on going back to to to Hollywood and making a movie there again but Bob Evans said come over we talk about it I had I had criticism regarding the script so I took a trip and we had a meeting to talk about the script and I remember Bob town at the time was somehow um depressed by all criticism that we had which mainly was the question of the length it was about 180 pages and so I said Roman you know let me take one more whack at it I said okay and see you then and I left and I thought that it was probably the end of my involvement I did a second draft and I don't know I I think that Roman probably liked the first draft better than the second and then I I somehow got more involved in it and uh Bob Evans said we must guys sit down now and really uh put put it into the uh shootable shape before we started work he said I have a present for you and he gave me a book it was how to write a screenplay and he signed it to my dear partner with hope Roman