WHAT WENT WRONG - Chinatown (with Paul Scheer)

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

This week, Faye Dunaway and Roman Polanski square off in one of the messiest on-set feuds of all time. Chinatown may be one of the greatest movies ever made, but between hair plucking, tv throwing, and alleged urine tossing, the production was an absolute disaster. Special guest Paul Scheer (Unspooled, How Did This Get Made) joins Lizzie & Chris to discuss the insane making of the 1974 Jack Nicholson classic, and the complicated legacy it leaves behind.Check out Paul's memoir, Joyful Recollections of Trauma.Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, full stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one. As always, I am Chris Winterbauer, and I am joined by my co-host, Lizzie Bassett, but before I kick it over to Lizzie, we wanted to give a shout out to Aaron McCann

over at the New York Times, who gave our podcast a very nice plug in the newspaper of record. We really appreciate it. It was in the recommendations section. We were under podcasts. And Aaron, thank you very much for spreading the good word about what went wrong. And that's just a reminder to all you listeners who don't work for the New York Times.

You too can make a difference by sharing this podcast with your family and friends. We deeply appreciate the support. All right. Sending it over to you, Lizzie. How are you doing today? I'm doing great, but Chris, I'm not alone. It's not just me today. There's a third.

We have a very, very special co-host with us today. We are joined by the host of Unspooled and How Did This Get Made? He has a brand new book coming out called Joyful Recollections of Trauma. You've seen him and everything. You love him. We love him. It's Paul Shear. Welcome, Paul.

I am so excited to be introduced not as the enemy. That's right. Which is the way that I officially heard myself introduced on this show a handful of episodes ago. Let me tell you what went on, right? So I had heard about your podcast. What went wrong? People are like, oh, you should listen to this podcast, really good. And I was on a long road trip, and I was loving it.

Oh, no. Like going, I was binging through episodes. I was like, this show so good. I really like this show. And then, driving late night from L.A. to Palm Springs, I hear my name as the enemy. And I felt so, like, Oh no, what did I do wrong here?

What have I done? I was just sitting here enjoying this podcast. And then I thought maybe I had done something wrong. So I really tried to Google around and figure out what it was. But I didn't. I didn't do anything wrong. I don't think. Unless you're going to reveal it here today.

And that's going to be a whole. No, you were successful. Yes. And so that's what you did wrong. No, we are thrilled that our plan worked. As they say, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. By the way, here's the thing. No one even told me that you mentioned me, which was even, I had only heard praise for the show.

So I was really, like, I wasn't going in there with my hackles up. I was just, I got sucker poised. Wow. I was assuming someone had told you, like, these people hate you. No. No, no. It was so funny because I, you know, we share obviously like a commonality in the things that we're interested in. And, you know, Chris, I'm a fan of yours.

Lizzie, you're great. And, like, you know, so I just jumped in as a fan of this kind of stuff. And it always is, you know, fascinating. So I really, I kind of started off with Lost because I thought I knew a lot about Lost. And I was like, let me hear. And that was a great two-part episode, a little different, you know. And it was just, I was like, whoa, I learned so much stuff. And I've stolen so much of that stuff in casual conversation because I could tell everybody that Lloyd Braun is the previously on Lost.

Oh, yeah. And I never knew that. Well, we are huge fans of yours. Yes. Paul, I've been listening to How Did This Get Made Forever? And then obviously The League and Black Monday and so many wonderful things that you've done. And so we had to figure out a way to get your attention. And negativity seems to work.

It worked. Yeah. So we're thrilled to have you on to talk about a really dark movie. Yeah. Well, I mean, this movie, I mean, I'm blown away because what weren't wrong, seemingly everything. I mean, there are books. written about this movie, you know, and it is one of those rare films where I'm fascinated about it. For a while, I work with Michael Weber and Scott Neustetter. They did disaster

artist, and we worked on this pilot for HBO where every season was going to be what went wrong on a movie. And it could be like this. You know, our second season in our mind was going to be Casablanca, because it's a really interesting behind-the-scenes story. But our first season, as prepared and written, and we went through all the many script versions that we could possibly do, was the Island of Dr. Moreau, the Dalek-Kilmer Marlon Brando film. And it's such a great movie,

but I'm always fascinated by these stories. I mean, whether it's not, like, I read the, there's an M-night book about The Lady in the Water, which is great. I love these stories. I think, you know, obviously, you know, Chris, you know this, too. Like, you work on so much stuff. You see so much stuff. And, you know, I always say that people are never setting out to make a bad movie and you never know which way it's going to go, right?

Because you're like, this is trash. And then all of a sudden, you're like, oh, people love it. Okay, I guess I was wrong. You know, and no one's not trying. But it is fascinating to go, like, what, how close it comes to being terrible is my fascination. This one comes stunningly close so many times. Yes. Well, when was the first time you saw Chinatown?

And also, what's your feeling about it? I know you've covered it on Un spooled, which was a great episode. Oh, thanks. I, you know, I love Chinatown. I did a thing when I was a kid where I went and watched all these movies that I was supposed to watch, right? Taxi Drive or Chinatown. And I'll be very honest and say maybe I wasn't a smart enough kid, but in high school they didn't appeal to me. I thought they were just like, eh, whatever, fine.

Like, it just didn't grab me. And I've revisited a bunch of these as I've gotten older. And, you know, that's when Chinatown really, like, does. I was like, wow, this is fantastic. And I think I might have revisited the first time after I had seen the kid stays in the picture. Because, you know, Robert Evans, the head of Paramount at this time, has this track record that's amazing. Yeah, it's nuts.

But also the stories behind it are equally insane. This is like prime Hollywood great stories. Like big movie stars, big egos, tremendous successes. just insanity. Yeah, and one very controlling director, as we'll see. Yes. And I love this movie. This movie is beautiful, and, you know, it's so hard to make successful noir.

And I feel like it's, you know, everyone's trying to find different ways to do it. And, you know, like, for me, the rallying cry that I've had recently is like, Bosch is one of my favorite noir's. Because it's like, it is just straight up noir. It's a TV show, obviously, but it's an, you know, You know, every season's a book. And it just, that's L.A. Noir, that's current L.A. Noir. But, yeah, it's hard to kind of pull off.

Obviously, they weren't able to pull it off from the two jakes, the sequel to this. But then, and I just want to maybe talk about this to very top, like, the tricky thing about this is obviously Roman Polanski. And it becomes this thing of like, well, can we say he's a great director? Can we say this movie is good? And it's tricky because I fall in this line of, I don't know where you all fall. I'm like, the work has to stand. If the work is about doing something bad, then we can talk about that. But, like, it's hard.

It's hard to separate performances and things like that and say, well, we can't talk about anything. So I was on the Pete Holmes podcast, and he said something really funny. He said, you have to go, like, you know, so Roman Polanski, scandal noted when he did this. Like, you know, it's like, because it's this hard thing because it's like you want to separate the two because there's such a bigger thing that was given to us out of it. So I do want to say scandal noted. And also, I like this movie. Yeah. No, I'm on the exact same page.

I think we probably all are. I love this movie. I'm the same as you. I had seen it when I was younger and I was like, all right, sure, whatever. And then watching it again, especially having lived in L.A. for almost 15 years at this point. Oh, yeah.

It's such a good L.A. movie, too. Like, it really, it captures the city in a very real way, which I think was intentional on Romans part and maybe not intentional on Robert Towns in an interesting way. But we will get to that. So, yeah. And in terms of Roman Polanski, I do just want to say at the top, to Paul's point, you cannot avoid discussing what happens with him. There will be a mention of sexual assault in this episode.

It's not our focus. It is important to the story. If it's not something you want to hear about, I will give a warning before we get to that part so you can feel free to skip ahead. But I completely agree. I think this movie's amazing. I think it is amazing for a lot of reasons because of Roman Polanski. And I feel comfortable saying that. Chris, what do you, what do you think? Briefly, same experience as Paul. I watched this in high school, did not appreciate it. I think the litmus test is L.A. Confidential was my favorite L.A. Noir for a long time.

I love that movie. And I still love that movie. And obviously, great shootout scenes, very much kind of an action noir film. And then it totally flipped for me upon kind of the most recent rewatches. And I still love Ellie Confidential, but Chinatown now, with its ambiguous, dark ending, just amazing cinematography. has kind of taken the top L.A. noir position for me. So, yeah, amazing film. You know, and I will say jockeys for me back and forth between this and double indemnity, which I think is another great noir. I mean, this is very much probably like the blockbuster

version of double indemnity, but like there are these movies that leave you with this sense of, I think the end of this is such a great film because it doesn't end in a true. traditional noir way. It kind of does have that 70s influence in a traditional noir setting. I think that's really fascinating. Yeah. It's definitely, I think, one of the best detective movies ever made, and also one of the best movies about L.A. It also, of course, features one of the most infamous on-set feuds in movie history, which is what we're going to mostly be talking about today, and that is Faye Dunaway versus Roman Polansky. And I'm going to let Faye have the first word before we dive in with this quote from her memoir,

which is titled Looking for Gatsby, Life in the Star Chamber is made of very dangerous stuff. You're damned lucky to ever get out alive. So, Paul, as the first verifiable star we've ever had on the show, what is the Star Chamber? Well, you know, look, I'm always talking about the Star Chamber. You know, I think that, you know, when you hear that, you forget, you know, this whole,

world is in this business is rigged to kind of set you up and pull you down. And I think the best way to be is to kind of be just floating solidly on the outskirts. You know, like, we like you, you're good, but you're not, you don't cost us any money. Like we don't, it's not all circling around you. Because when it does circle around you, it's very hard. You will, it will just, the undertow will get you. And I think especially back then, and especially as a woman, you're really tripped. fully fucked. It's like, you know, it's like, that is, I can't even understand what you went through. A hundred percent. We're going to get into a little bit. A basic info for the movie. It's directed by Roman Polansky, released by Paramount Pictures on June 20th, 1974, written by Robert Town,

and also maybe some other people, and starring Jack Nicholson as Private Eye, Jake Giddy's, Faye Dunaway as the Mysterious Rich Widow, Evelyn Mulray, and John Houston, as the villainous Noah across, among many others. As always, the IMDB synopsis is a private detective hired to expose an adulterer in 1930s Los Angeles, finds himself caught up in a web of deceit, corruption, and murder. Yeah, that's it. That's right. Very accurate. Good logline. Yeah. You know, in a sense, any more information will be confusing. I think that that's kind of the problem with this script and why people were so confused by it because, you know, a main part of this is that, you know, for the first act, we believe that someone is someone who they aren't.

And then that's revealed. So you are dealing with two people pretending to be the same. It's once you start getting into just even the smallest parts of the story, it's very hard. It becomes unruly. Well, and as we're going to see, what we got in the end is actually a vastly simplified version of this story. So let's start with Roman. His earliest memories were of violence. He was born in Paris in 1933, but moved to Krakow, Poland when he was only three years old.

So at seven, that means that he watched as a wall was built around his neighborhood, turning it into a ghetto. Shortly thereafter, he saw both his best friend and mother taken away to concentration camps. He lost both of them. His father would be taken as well, forcing him to essentially fend for himself for, like, a decently long period of time. He was reunited with his father after the war. But he said in one of my main sources for today, which is The Big Goodbye by Sam Wassen, which is a great book. I highly recommend reading it. Polanski said, I remember as a child, I was never really scared of any ghosts, but I was very much scared of people.

And I think that we see that sort of echo throughout his entire career. He attended a very prestigious film school in Wudge, Poland, in the late 50s, and by 1962, his first feature, Knife in the Water had been nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. That's under 30 at that point. Amazing. He went to England next where he directed three films that gained him attention, repulsion, cul-de-sac, and Fairless Vampire Killers, which, of course, starred beautiful 24-year-old actress Sharon Tate, who would become his wife.

With Sharon, he felt a happiness that both thrilled and terrified him. He said, I've always been very afraid of any ties. I felt that any type of family tie, anything that means nest means tragedy. Sharon adored Roman. She did not adore his infidelities. He had a hard time committing to her, I think, because of kind of what we're seeing had already happened to him in his life at that point. But it was 1968's Rosemary's baby that made him a household name in the U.S. and solidified certain members of his team that he would call again for Chinatown, including production designer Dick Silbert and Dick's then sister-in-law costume designer Anthea Silbert. She did say of working with Roman. Roman, like all great filmmakers, was a dictator, a benevolent dictator. The rest of the team from Rosemary's Baby consisted of 1st AD Howard Koch Jr., aka Hawk, and of course, you mentioned him, but Paramount Producer extraordinaire, Robert Evans.

You could do a whole episode on Bob Evans, but all you need to know about him for this purpose is he'd gotten his start as an actor, but through an absolutely wild path, only possible in the 50s and 60s, had become head of production at Paramount Pictures by 1966 at the age of 36 years old. He managed to prove himself very quickly with a string of massive hits, including Love Story, featuring his third out of seven wives, Ali McGraw, and Rosemary's Baby. He would also go on to produce, of course, the Godfather and many, many more. He also did an enormous amount of cocaine, so good for him. Yeah.

Well, look, I mean, at this point, maybe we should just say, to talk about who didn't do cocaine, because really we have to assume that a majority of people here were high. Yeah, on something. Yeah. Alcohol, anything. Yeah, they're not, they're not getting through the day just on coffee. No. Evans had protected Polanski from studio scrutiny on the set of Rosemary's baby, allowing him to go over time and over budget, but it had paid off big time for both of them with that one. So let's circle back to Roman. In the summer of 1969, Polanski was in London preparing for his next film, Day of the Dolphin, which was set to star Sharon and Jack Nicholson, when he found out that she was pregnant. She had come to visit him in London, but had since returned to L.A., and she was really eager for

him to come home. For weeks, she had asked, when he would come back, finally on Friday, August 8th, he agreed that he would return that Monday on the 10th, whether the script was done or not. However, just past midnight on August 9th, Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson family, alongside Jay Sebring, Wojichik Frykowski, and Abigail Fulger. Roman returned to L.A. immediately. It was Bob Evans, actually, who stood guard over him, which was necessary not just because of the murderers who were still on the loose,

but also because the press was horrible to him. I didn't know this, but there was so much commentary immediately following the murders about Roman and how violent and sexual his films had been, so he must have been connected, and like this must in some way be his fault, none of which is true. He was not connected to this in any way.

Following Sharon's death, he's described as manic and jumpy. He parties really hard. He overcompensates. He also took to bugging his friend's houses to see if he could get any clues, which was like recommended by the LAPD. Wow. They were like, I don't know, see what you can find.

And so poor Roman is like... And just set him on his own way to do. do it? Like he had the equipment? Wow. All right. Yeah. Way to go. He was like doing, he was doing crazy things, like carrying around glasses with a specific prescription to see if they matched another person. I think he did that to Bruce Lee because he was like, I just, I mean, really like so absorbed in this, understandably. It reminds me of the conversation and which also that movie reminds me of Chinatown in so many ways. Same year. Yeah, the obsessive quality of the protagonist and the ambiguous ending and the hinted at conspiracy that's larger than you're able to fully understand,

totally. Totally. Totally. Yeah, I think that's, in reading about this, he's so clearly, like, he wanted to find a pattern in this, which you would. Like, that's, I think that's the appeal of conspiracy theories to so many people. And when something is this horrific, like, you want to see the reason why this happened to you.

But, you know, of course, it was random, essentially. And at the same way, it really does feed into this idea. that the system is bigger than you. Like, you can't, like, you will never be able to figure, you won't be able to figure it out. Like, there won't be justice. I think that that's really interesting, you know, especially, and we'll talk about it,

but the idea of like how this script kind of becomes what it becomes, the ending especially. Totally. He also admits that he was, quote, more gentle with people before the murder. So I think he's, he was self-aware that there was a pretty big shift in him. after this, understandably.

I mean, this is an enormous amount of trauma at this point to have experienced in your life. So after the murders, he leaves L.A. He made the extremely violent McBeff, and then the pretty poorly received sex comedy, what, question mark. I would like to reboot that. I don't even know what's about, but I'm kidding. Also, he didn't do Day of the Dolphin, right? No.

Because that was Mike Nichols. One of my favorite. Mike Nichols film. Oh my gosh. Yeah. George C. Scott, dolphin assassination. Crazy.

Yeah. Great. Great. Great wild film. Highly recommend. All right. Haven't seen it. Top of my list now with that pitch. Check it out.

Yeah. The Mike Nichols book has a nice little chapter about that one. Okay. At this point, obviously, things are not going well. Personally, for Roman, they're also not going particularly well career-wise, either. So let's meet our screenwriter. In the late 1960s, screenwriter Robert Town had made a name for himself in Hollywood, thanks to his credit, as a special

consultant on one of the biggest movies of the decade, 1967's Bonnie and Clyde. Interesting tidbit about Robert that came up a lot is that he did his best work when his name was not in the credits. But the second his name was attached to something as a writer, he had a really hard time committing to anything. He basically had like crippling performance anxiety to a certain degree. Got it. This was the case with shampoo, which he was writing with Warren Beatty, and he ends up stalling out, Warren gets frustrated and drops the project. So Town is looking for a new project, and he found himself drawn to the Los Angeles that he remembered as a child, because he was born in San Pedro.

He stumbled across a photo essay in West Magazine of Raymond Chandler's L.A. and became obsessed with the way that Chandler's detective novels depicted pre-war Los Angeles. So to your point about this being an excellent noir film, I love that it, like, that was sort of secondary because he realized that that was like the genre that would best depict the L.A. that he missed. I think that's really interesting. So in researching the era, town's partner Julie Payne dug out a book about the time that detailed the Los Angeles Water Wars and in particular something called the Owens Valley tragedy, which Chinatown is very loosely based on. I'm not going to get into that. If you want more detail and the actual history of L.A.'s water wars,

check out Paul's unspooled episode on Chinatown, which features L.A. historian Hadley Mears, breaking it down. She does a great job. And, yeah, because it does, like, this is the thing about this movie. It's complex. Yes. Like, there are these really interesting stories around it

that are episode worthy. Mm-hmm. That whole thing was fascinating. I did not know about that. It's not exactly it. It is inspired by it, which is fine. You know what reminds me of the same thing that Paul Thomas Anderson does in The Master, right?

Goes to the library, does all this research, kind of finds these things. And I think the same thing you could be said for there will be blood. Totally. There's a lot of similarities, but it's completely a fictional account, but it is based in something. Yes, I think the only sort of direct parallel

is Mulray is kind of Mulholland, I think. Okay. Oh, that's interesting. Carmela, I watched it with my wife last night, and she was specifically asking, is Mulray, Mulholland, just based on the name? name. She's right. Smart lady. Very much smarter than me. My response was, no, that seems ridiculous.

I was obviously wrong. Town immediately had a leading man in mind for his LA detective story, and that was his old acting class buddy and former roommate, because again, there were 12 people in Hollywood. Jack Nicholson. Yep. Jack Nicholson. Of course. Of course. Extremely handsome Jack Nicholson. Oh, yeah. At the time. I mean, young Jack Nicholson was hot. Oh, yeah. I mean, Easy Rider, Jack Nicholson, this Jack Nicholson, like, it's funny because, you know,

I think a lot of these movies serve to create what become caricatures of these people we love. You know, Al Pacino, like, you look back, like, oh, this attractive guy, like, but we now view him as the scarf, Al Pacino, the, you know, it's like all these things. These are, like, before these things kind of set in. Totally. It's the very early stages of when they're. actors, not character. Yeah.

They could actually still be, actually, I should say that, as they were movie stars who could do character actor parts in a way. They can kind of find themselves in a role. And I think he does a great job in this. Totally. So he had been working in like a lot of sort of B movies and TV prior to his breakout role in Easy Rider in 1969 at 32 years old. Fun fact, another one of their acting class buddies was Roger Corman.

And that is how Jack Nicholson got a lot of his early credits. Wow. Yeah. Little Shop of Horrors, everything. Yeah, I feel like Corman gave so many people their start because he could produce such a volume of content and then you could take a risk on a smaller budget project, et cetera. I mean, we'll talk about Hellraiser eventually,

but he was even involved in that production when nobody else wanted to get involved. So it's pretty interesting. I also think it's this thing where you don't have to run through a studio saying, oh, this person's worthy, this person's not. And it's, you know, and I just know from my, own issues. Like, I work with my friends all the time. Like, that's it. Like, of course, you're going to cast, you know, it's the people who are going to get you that are going to trust you. And,

you know, everyone's helping each other out in a way. Yeah. And I think as we'll see across this episode, Jack Nicholson is someone who is particularly loyal to his friends. Yeah. Also, he's ready for his first big leading man role. Like, he hadn't really had one prior to this. And also, who better to write it than one of his best pals? I love it. By the way, Paul, have you ever had a role written specifically for you. You know, I'm sure that I have. I don't know if I have always known that. I think that, especially on sitcoms and that world, absolutely, I feel like people are like, oh, we should have Paul come in and do this. You know, whether it was, I think the good place might have, because I've been talking to Mike, sure, and I was like, oh, I really want to do this. And they wrote me this great

part. There, you know, I do it for my friends, too. Like, in my mind, I'm saying, oh, I would love this person to play this part. Now, if they can do it, there's so many hoops to jump through, not because, you know, it's like, oh, does that day work out for them? But I do think, like, yeah, there are these, like, little moments where you find it. And then once you, I think the real trick is,

once you say yes, do they kind of craft it a little bit more? I know, like, when I was on 30 Rock, they were like, oh, we need a nemesis for Jack. Jack and Paul do a show together. It would be fun to have them together. You know, and vice versa, like, when I ever I kind of come up with stuff, I am thinking, like, oh, who would be funny in that?

And then go back out. Because I don't want to, I'm open to having a great big audition process, but as this world has kind of gotten shrunker, shrunker, kind of smaller, you have less time to kind of do that. So you do just run to you, the people you know can deliver on a short period of notice. Totally. And as we said, also Jack enjoyed working with his friends and was extremely loyal to them. He actually turned down a role in the Godfather because he felt the last detail in Chinatown were the more interesting scripts. So can you guys guess the part that he was offered? I was going to say was he offered the same part as, oh my gosh, the guy who hung out at the Playboy Mansion all the time. I'm just forgetting his name.

What is that? Sunny. Is it Sunny? Oh, James Conn? James Con. Yeah, yeah. Sorry that I've moved him down to just that. Get shot a hundred times in a car, just like everybody else in proper townscript.

I love that that's your descriptor for James Con too. That is a man at the Playboy Mansion all the time. I know. I really, sorry, really just eliminate his entire career. No, no, it's good. That's the only way I'll remember him from here on. I'll just guess Freda then just throwing it out there, even though I don't think that's right. You're both wrong. The answer is Michael Corleone. Oh, wow. Wow. He was offered Michael. So there are two reasons that he turned down Michael and the Godfather.

One is that he really wanted to work with Marlon Brando, and the script that he read didn't really have scenes together between Michael and Vito, which we will come full circle to in just a minute. He also felt strongly that a quintessentially Italian character should be played by an Italian. Very ahead of his time, I would say. Yeah, I buy that. I mean, it's crazy to me that Coppola would even consider him, right? You know, it's like, because it is, it is a bizarre thing. You know, I mean, I guess in that point, we were doing crazy, crazy casting like that. But that one seems particularly like, you can't find just an Italian actor who can do this?

Like, you know. Not a one. You have to go to Irish Checkner. Nicholson. It would just become the departed at that point. Right. I think part of what works so well in The Godfather Free Sidebar is Pacino's size, his physicality.

He feels a little smaller in the world, so then he has to become bigger. He grows into it across the film. Nicholson's a much more powerfully built person, and I think that, anyway, I like Pacino, obviously in the end. I think we got the best two movies we could have gotten, you know what I mean, as a result. Absolutely. I agree. Also, how quiet Al Pacino is in those movies.

which I know is something that we don't get as much later on, but there's so much power in that. So meanwhile, Town was also stalled out on another project with Jack, the last detail set to be directed by Hal Ashby. Have you guys seen this movie? Oh, I love the last detail. Me too. It's such a perfect movie.

And the follow-up that I guess just came out, like, it was like, I felt like, oh, why do we have to do this? Why do we have to do, like, this pretend sequel to it? that was such a bummer to me. I didn't even know about that. What was that? Oh, yeah. Do you know what I'm talking about, Chris? It's, um...

Oh, is it Last Flag Flying? That's it. I never put that... I saw that movie, and I never even put that together. Yes. So, I mean, it's sort of this idea that Richard Linklater is going to do this kind of spiritual sequel, you know, which... So basically, Last Flag Flying was an adaptation of this...

this Darrell Ponsnakan book, which was a sequel to The Last Detail. Right. But it's not the same thing. It's not the same thing. That movie's perfect. I love Hal Ashby. I think it's such an amazing performance from Randy Quaid in particular. He's so young.

He's really good. But to find out why the last detail was stalled at this point, let's play a little game. You've got newly minted It Boy, Jack Nicholson, and Hal Ashby attached to your hot-ticket screenplay. You have funding. Columbia Pictures is on board. They're just asking for you to adjust one thing in your script. What is it? Robert, can you please reduce the number of motherfuckers across your script?

Not even eliminate. Wow. Just reduce them. And the reason that he had them in there was that he wanted the sailors to be swearing like sailors. So, again, Robert, what do you say? Can you take out a couple motherfuckers? I think you have. No, he's probably not.

He's going to fight it. Absolutely not. He says, fuck you, I'm Robert Town. He insisted that they be able to swear as much as he wanted them to, which was a lot. And they spot the studio for four years to keep every motherfucker in the script. Oh, my God. I feel like at that point you're hoping for a regime change. You're basically just thinking, like, one of you guys are going to get fired at some point?

And I'll try it with the next person. That's probably right. But at a certain point, too, it's like, why are they so worried about that? Like, all right, so you have 10 motherfuckers and five motherfuckers. fuckers. Yeah. Like, is that really going to, as an audience going to be like, well, they didn't, they didn't go overboard.

They didn't push it. You know, I don't know. I mean, what kind of mentality is that even, you know? I can get, like, take them all. You know, it's one executive who is just like, I will die on this hill. However, this does mean that screenwriter Robert Town was broke at this point. So as an extra check, he came in and did some crucial rewrites on The Godfather. And if we remember reason number one, why Nicholson didn't want to do it.

was because there were not scenes between Michael and Vito. Robert Town actually came in and wrote the scene between Brando and Pacino that Nicholson had not seen in the original script. Wow. Yep. Marlon Brando also, apparently, it was like a major prankster, which I won't get into. But I would love to know what his pranks were. I mean, to me, the funniest thing is that Hollywood are full of pranksters.

Like, to me, that seems like a hellish experience. Like, you don't want to be pranked on these things. Sets like, who wants that? I don't want to be pranked by Marlon Brando. Is that why Jared Lito was sending used condoms, live rodents, and anal beads to his co-stars on Suicide Squad? Oh, Jared Lito. See, it's even worse with Jared Lido because he doesn't even think he's doing a prank. He thinks he's the Joker over there sending you like dead cats and stuff. Yeah, great.

So Town pitches Nicholson on Chinatown as something to do while they waited for the last detail. Nicholson asked him, what is it about? and Robert Town was like, I don't know, water. So is that enough to get you on board? I'm in. I mean, I'm in. I'm in, you know, it's like, like, if anyone's making a movie about water, if, like, at that point, too, if Paramount's making a movie about water,

you're like, yeah, what's the godfather about? Mafia. Like, who knows? Yeah. It's like, whatever. It's true. Yeah. So a couple really important things about Town's early intentions for Chinatown.

One is that he wanted it to be a love letter to early Los Angeles, highlighting the beauty that he remembered when people would sleep on their front porches and never lock their doors. Two, that it would be a twist on the femme fatal. The big reveal is that she's actually pure and good, which I think we do keep in the movie. And three, that he would direct it.

So by March of 1971, he had a working title for the film. Any guesses? The dam. I literally was going to say the damn. That makes so much more sense than what it was, which was the picture business. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Love that.

Listen, first draft. First draft. By June, he had a dream cast, George C. Scott for the part of villain Noah Cross. Of Day of the Dolphin. Yes. Yep. Yeah. Jane Fonda for his daughter, Evelyn Mulray.

Oh. And, of course, Jack Nicholson for Jake Gittis. Town struggled to contain all the subplots in the script, and he enlisted the help of his friend and frequent editor Edward Taylor, who apparently was the only person who could convince him to write an actual outline, so that's exciting, and they soldiered on. By 1972, though, Town was essentially out of money. But still, when Bob Evans asked him to rewrite the Great Gatsby

after a truly horrendous draft from Truman Capote came in, he said, no, that he had something better that he was working on. I do want to see Truman Capote's horrible great Gatsby script. I feel like that might be amazing. Evans was intrigued enough to offer to pick up Chinatown, and Town said no again. But finally, in June of 1972, he gave in because he was completely broke. He also gave up his dream of directing Chinatown for a $25,000 option. If Evans and Paramount liked the script, he'd get an additional enormous payout of $210,000.

I think Evans did not think he could finish the script. So Towns partner, Julie, sent Robert, his editor, Edward, who never got any credit, by the way, and his dog to Catalina Island to finish the script. She apparently had to fly them out food once a week on a seaplane purchased with money from Jack Nicholson. So they come back and they've got a script and it's a short, slim, 340 pages long. Whoa. Oh, my God. Wow.

Just 340. A tight 340. Just 340. Yeah. Despite the script being kind of a mess, Evans is interested enough to pick it up. So he and Jack Nicholson call up their old palanke, to step in as director, but more importantly, to fix the script. Evans literally called him and said, Roman, the script is a fucking mess. Polanski was reluctant to return to Los Angeles, but realizing that he would be surrounded by friends with his Rosemary's baby crew on the job, he agreed. So this does put Robert Town pretty much immediately as the odd man out because he did not work on Rosemary's baby. He was also concerned that a Polish guy was maybe not going to get his love letter to Los Angeles

and thought that they might disagree on a couple of things. He's correct. They hated each other. So Roman has a couple of really key points about the script. Let me know if you guys agree or disagree with any of these. One, it's called Chinatown. There has to be at least one scene in Chinatown. Town's argument was that Chinatown's a state of mind.

I agree with Roman. I'm going to go with Roman. That title, by the way, actually came from a conversation with the undercover cop who sold Robert Town his dog. He asked him where he was stationed. This undercover vice cop said Chinatown. And then Town was like, what do you do there? And this cop goes nothing. That's what they tell us to do is nothing.

Because the problem is we can't get inside that culture. so we can't really tell if something is going on whether we're helping somebody commit a crime or preventing it. So that's where it came from. Wow. That actually kind of recontextualizes so much of the movie, too, when you hear that quote.

Yes. Well, it's the best, like, end quote of a film because it does kind of speak to it in a couple different ways, right? Like, this idea that, like, we are, we're powerless. But that's really what they are. Like, we are here, but we can't do anything. We have no.

no, you know, it's almost like a giving up. It's like, but you have to show up to work. Yeah. So next, the subplots have got to go. Cut anything that doesn't feed the central scandal of water. Okay. Lose the multiple POVs. If Gitties doesn't see it, we don't see it. Originally, there were a lot of other POVs throughout the movie. Again, I'm with Roman on this one. Yeah. Allegedly, early drafts of the script also contained a lot of narration. which obviously is a pretty common trope in noir film.

It seems Roman may have done away with that as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which I also kind of agree with. I think that's great because it also makes you appreciate his character from his actions so much more. It feels much more observational. You're getting to observe him and observe with him. And he's a really interesting, complicated, seemingly amoral character, especially at the beginning.

I mean, he does obviously have some credo at the beginning when he doesn't overcharge curly, you know, et cetera, or even demand his full payment. But it's a complicated movie, and I think it's more interesting if he's not guiding you through it with voiceover. Right. I think we also have to see, we're making some judgments, too, right? Because when you're in the head of the character, you know exactly what's going on.

And here, I feel like, even if he's ahead of it, we're not. It keeps you off balance, I think, which is really good, too. Totally. Finally, which Paul, you've alluded to, the big one was the ending. Roman insisted that the bad guy has to get away with it, as they do in real life and particularly in his own life. So I think that's one of the best things about this movie, and we do owe that to Roman Polansky. He would not budge on that.

And that was something that really, like, Nicholson was upset about, right? Like, Nicholson really wanted it to be like, she goes to jail. Oh, interesting. That totally could be. Because I think he was more of a hero in the original end, for sure. because it had it as they were, like, able to stop cross, and Jake does save the girl and is able to kind of, like, take her out of the country. But I think Evelyn does either die or go to jail.

So she's, like, she's still sort of punished, but you don't have the ending we have here where, of course, Noah gets the girl, which is just so, like, ugh, it is, that scene is appalling. Oh, yeah, literally just manhandles her out of the car and, you know, look away. God, he's so creepy. He's so good. That's great. Amazing. Amazing. One of the slight, Mr. Gitz.

Yeah. It's so good the way he continuously misnames him intentionally. That is maybe intentional and maybe an accident. They're not 100% sure. Oh, interesting. He was quite hammered. John Houston was a little bit... Hamillammed for a lot of this, definitely the last scene.

And it's unclear whether that was an intentional acting choice or not. Faye Dunaway was like, it had to be intentional. other people are like, I don't know if he can't remember how to say his name. I mean, it's kind of nuts because at the same time, you are talking about this actor who is probably freaked out that Jack Nicholson is dating his daughter. Yes. Who, you know, is in this movie. Like, there's probably this weird machismo bullshit going on. So it's probably getting more drunk than normal.

But I also could see him playing that machismo just to fuck with Jack Nicholson as a performer, not saying his name, right? Totally. takes, you know, I think that, you know, and so I like that idea. Oh, I love it. I love it. And there's just the darkness in him is so creepy. And he's a big dude, too. I think that's where he works so much better than George C. Scott, too, is the size. Yeah. He's such a bear of a man. And obviously also was such an enormous director by this point, too. But yeah, he, there's, we won't get into this, but obviously Nicholson was dating Angelica Houston at this time, which is how he brokered the deal to get John Houston on this movie. But there was such a weird

anecdote in that book that I read where John Houston at one point said to Angelica Houston like, I like Jack, I think we should marry this man. It's like, oh. Oh, my Lord. Let's both do it, Dad. Method acting there. So Roman Gifts screenwriter Robert Town with a book on the basics of screenwriting with the note, to my partner with hope.

Jeez, wow. Brutal times, brutal times. He's such a jerk. That's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. So really setting it off on the right foot. Casting seemed to have been relatively smooth, although Roman Polanski did spend time testing,

even the extras and the smallest parts in the film to make sure that they were exactly right. One guy spent like hours and hours in audition thinking he must be getting a huge part. And then Roman was like, no, you're just going to be the man with the crutch in that one scene. And the orange orchard, thanks so much. And the guy was like, okay, I've been here six hours. Wow. Yeah, you get to play the disabled Oki in one scene. You know, you said it early on, like, that, you know, Roman McClancy does admit that he is coming into this movie a little bit more critical and cruel because of where he is emotionally.

But, you know, I wonder if, and this is something that you see all the time, like, it's the only place where he can have control. Yes. And so, you know, from a psychological perspective, like, he can make people run through. He can basically work out all of his aggression on these performance. And we're going to hear how he did it. But wow, he, I mean, even for the guy in the orange orchard, wow. Yeah. It's also just, I mean, it is an attention to detail.

Like, yes, it's control, but it's also that, like, he is so specific about every single thing in the frame, potentially to a fault, but they're amazing. And the performances across the board are great. Yes. Like, all of the bit parts are great. Yeah. Even Romans, great. Yes. Well, then this brings up a question, which I'm not trying to snake us into an irresponsible answer.

But, like, sometimes when you have these directors that are, you know, you can go back to Chaplin and say, you know, cruel, right? But it was good. So then you go, like, does that make a good performance? Like, you go Kubrick or, you know, it's like, I don't know unless it is something that. is, like, good for the picture. Like, so in the sense that if you want your character to be nervous all the time, maybe a director makes a choice, I'm going to keep this actor at base,

so they always feel a little bit off their foot. I think that's psychologically really difficult to do. But, like, then I look at, like, somebody like Pam Greer, who and Jackie Brown, when she's being interrogated in that scene, she didn't take any pee breaks because she wanted to feel like she was, like, trapped in that room and giving herself something to do. But this just seems, like, unhinged. Cruelty. And maybe in a way, it's like everyone performing good despite him or to fuck him out. I don't know. It just

seems like a gamemanship thing that's going on in this one. I mean, I think something you just said is very important, which is that that was Pam Greer's decision. And I feel like this kind of attention to detail can work. And I think it's actor dependent. Like if they are open to this and if this is something that they're comfortable with and comfortable kind of like owning their character inside of the structure that you're building, I think you could potentially be this restrictive. Right. But if you're not, as we're about to see, it can go really badly. Right.

There's one part that they had a hard time filling, and that was Evelyn Mulray. So as we said, Jane Fonda had been in mind for the part, even when Town was writing it, and the studio agreed that she was perfect. That is who they wanted for this part. Unfortunately, they sent Jane the script, and she said, I don't get it. and passed on it. Now, in fairness to her, the script was likely still a massive mess at this point. Would that have worked? I think, sure, but I do think that there's a complexity to Faye Dunaway as a performer.

There's an unusual nature to her. I think it's what works so well in Bonnie and Clyde. I think she can play her ability to flit between dark and light. You know, oh, is she the true femme fatal? is she the innocent, you know, at the end, that level of mysteriousness to her character, I don't know, if you would have gotten exactly the same. I'm trying to think of what Fonda was in right at this moment.

I'm thinking of, like, the China syndrome. Well, I was thinking about, like, I'm thinking a clout or something like that, right? Right. Oh, yeah, clout is great. And, you know, I think with Jane Fonda, she, and to this day, has this ability to be incredibly strong. Mm-hmm.

And I feel like this character feels like porcelain to a certain degree, right? You want it to feel like, you know, the slapping scene, you want this character to feel a little bit out of it. I think as we've seen Faye Dunaway more and more in her career, this is the right role. It is something that, you know, I'm not saying that she's not with it, but she has these levels that are a little bit more, like you said, up and down and can kind of go back and forth seem completely composed but then be completely

and you know completely loose so i think in that way it's it's a good choice i think jane fonda would have made great choices with it but sometimes it is just like oh it's not perfect casting it's like she could do it right i don't think it's right well i also think there's a warmth to jane fonda and you described faye dunaway in this as porcelain i think she's very cold which works really well for this, and also her look is so right for the era and what they're trying to capture. Yes. So Jack didn't really want Jane Fonda. He actually had his heart set on Faye Dunaway, even though they had not worked together at this point.

A little bit of brief background on Faye. She grew up in very rural Florida with a pretty much absent father and a less than doting mother. According to her memoir, she was always extremely ambitious, and evidently that made her a little bit ruthless even as a kid. I love Faye. She attended Boston University acting school. It's where I went. The Faye of Our Times. Yeah, I hope not.

After graduation took some theater and TV roles before her Oscar-nominated breakout as Bonnie Parker in Bonnie and Clyde when she was 26 years old. So despite Bonnie and Clyde's box office success, it made studio executives nervous. It was way more sexually explicit and violent than a lot of them were comfortable with.

So while it was a huge moment for Dunaway, her career didn't really take off the way that it should have, or I think she expected it to immediately afterwards. So fast forward, like six or seven years at this point, she is shooting the three musketeers and Jack Nicholson starts calling her at her hotel, trying to sell her on Chinatown, even though neither at the studio nor Polanski were sold on her. Interestingly, Roman was not the first choice to direct either. Apparently, that may have been Bonnie and Clyde director, Arthur Penn. And I wonder what that would have been like to have someone who was more amenable to Fay in the director's chair. But he convinced her to stick around and when Fonda finally passed, she got the part for a somewhat discounted rate because, again, she really wasn't sort of doing the way that she had expected to at this point. So, filming began on October 15, 1973. Some cast and crew were immediately put off by Polanski's directing style, which was very different from other American

autos of the time. As we've said, he's very controlling. He wasn't really about encouraging his actors to craft their own performances. He was a perfectionist and was prone to line readings, particularly for Fay, which she did not like. So they disliked each other from day one. In her memoir, she wrote, quote, he's had a complicated connection to women for much of his career with tastes that ran to young, malleable girls. And that's not what I was. Ours was a personality clash. from the beginning. I mean, I think she nailed it. Yeah, I mean, this is really interesting, too, because you probably have two people who want to prove a lot. One, she's not a flash in the pan, and he's trying to prove that he's not a flash in the pan with his, you know, the work that he has been doing.

So you have this real battle of who knows what's right. And if this is my only shot, I have to do it better. You know, it's like, that I think actually probably is the reason why this movie is so good is because you have these people who are truly like, this is. my only shot. And thankfully for both of them, it worked out. Yeah. So to be fair, she came in hot. She would show up hours late to costume fittings, offering to pay for the time, but still holding up the crew. She was also very particular about her hair and makeup, something that Roman started testing her on from the earliest makeup tests. He would apparently grab the powder away from her artist and powder her face himself until she was super pale. The makeup continued to be an issue throughout filming. At one point, Roman was so frustrated with how frequently she was stopping down for touch-ups that he again grabbed the makeup out of Lee Harmon's hands and said, I'll do it myself when you need it.

And Lizzie, remind me, wasn't this a bit of an issue on Mommy Dearest as well? Kind of her control over her looks? Yes. She's very particular about what she looks like. Again, I don't know that I blame her on that one, given, you know, what things were like in Hollywood and what her career had been to that point. it would be really hard to surrender control of that to a director, particularly one who's not making you feel super comfortable. Well, let me say this, too. I mean, will you get into it? I mean, it wasn't just taking the makeup out of her hand.

No, no, we'll get there. He got easily frustrated with her when she occasionally stumbled or took a line back. He assumed that she didn't know her lines. At one point, when she asked what her character's motivation was, he famously screamed, just say the fucking words, your salaries, your motivation. That's what the money's for? Yep. The crew followed Romans lead, whispering behind her back, calling her fucking Faye and the Dredd Dunaway.

Even though she adored Nicholson and he her, he even appropriated that into his own affectionate nickname for her, simply dread. So fun working environment, casual, you know. Paul, have you ever been involved in a director-actor feud of this magnitude? Not of this magnitude, because now it wouldn't happen. Right. You know, you see shit. There's a benefit to when it's this bad because everyone sees it. I think that I see a lot of people talk shit behind people's backs, right?

And you create this vibe where there are these like teams. We don't know who's on what, you know, it's all behind the scenes. You know, I've worked with crazy directors. It's been a while. And I will say I've, you know, thankfully worked enough in the time where that wasn't part of it. But I've seen, you know, doors being locked, things being slammed. One of my first jobs, I was just talking about this the other day. One of my first jobs I ever got was this TV show called Make My Day.

It was a positive prank show. And our executive came from L.A. to New York to do whatever he needed to do, you know, be around. And this guy broke a phone a day. Every day it would be a screaming match. And either a receiver is thrown. a phone is thrown, and on the last day he broke a glass partition between, like, the bullpen where the writers were and his office. Like that kind of insanity.

So, we never really was directed at us, but we were living in it. And that was the first time that I ever had worked with a writer who was very smart, who was like, we're going to hide now. So basically what we would do is just hide out. He's like, it's not worth being up there. It's like, it's just, it's not good for your psyche. So we just had our own little, like, office that we hid down. and we would still do our work, but just not out of that insanity.

Oh, my God. I think it happens a lot more in the writer's rooms now. Yeah. That makes sense because those are a little bit less visible. That's, and I feel like you can sort of, you can fall back on that old chestnut of like, oh, we're just, we're just working through things. Like, it's just, it's comedy, you know? Yeah.

I did think this was interesting. James Hong, who plays her butler in the film, had a very different take on her antics on set. He saw a method actress who was deeply dedicated to her craft. and her character, and who was kind to him on set when many others didn't give him the time of day. She echoes this in her memoir and points out that she was playing a pretty fragile and scared woman

who was the victim of sexual assault and incest. So, you know, that's a very fragile state of mind to be in. Absolutely. It was also Dunaway's idea for Nicholson to really hit her during the iconic, she's my sister, my daughter, sequence, because she knew it wouldn't look real enough for Roman otherwise. That scene is remarkable. It's extremely hard to watch, but what a performance in that scene.

And also, it's such a great... So this film is constructed out of so many long takes, right? You think of like the average length of a shot now less than three seconds. This film, it's got to be at least 15 seconds per. And that authenticity of that scene is sold largely by the fact that they don't cut. There's no edit on the action. That's what she was saying is like, Roman's going to want a long take. He's going to want this to run.

We have to really go for it. And Jack was like, are you sure, Drem? And she said, yes. And, I mean, that is an iconic scene for that reason. And I think it's one of those things where that's like a trust. That's a decision that was made, right? And I think that that's a choice that does make it iconic because you can't fake. There's so many things that, you know, I think it's why we react to stunts being done well.

Yeah. And now, meanwhile, you have a story like Groundhog Day, right? Where that slap scene was working out some aggression between these two actors. I think that that's unsafe. Yeah. This, you know, this is different. To be fair, on the other side of this, I can see how her method acting would also be really annoying.

Sometimes she was so in character that she didn't want to leave the set at all, even to go pee. So she allegedly peed in potted plants and waste baskets around the set. Oh. So it's a workplace. I don't know if I would love that. Paul, what's your take on potted pea plants? All right, without naming names, I do have a story about this.

So, a very famous sitcom actor, I'm not going to name them, nor will I give you any clues, because this is a story that was told to me in confidence. Basically, had the same thing, not method acting, but just didn't want to leave the set. And had the crew set up kind of like Home Depot orange buckets, like that kind of size buckets, full of sand Like a litter box? Yes, and he would just go backstage on a, it was a multi-cam

and just piss in sand buckets. Okay, I take it back. Amazing. I guess they can pee in all the plants she wants. So that's not me. I mean, I also know, I also have heard a very famous director who is still working to this day

has basically, a urinal on set and it goes up to his waist. So he'll be taking meetings, walk into the urinal that covers him. Like, it's almost like getting into like a bottom half of an umbrella. He gets into it. And it will continue to have meetings and then go along his way. That's some Lyndon Johnson stuff right there. Yeah, truly.

Halt that on set. There is another infamous P story from the set of Chinatown. But I'm going to put a major allegedly in front of this one. According to Peter Biscan's book, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, while filming a scene in a car, which I'm guessing is referring to the final scene, I don't know that for sure. Polanski apparently would not let Faye take a break to go to the bathroom or her favorite nearby potted plant. By this point, Faye had had it, so she peed into a cup while sitting in the car, and when Polanski approached the edge of the car, she threw it in his face. Oh, my Lord. Allegedly.

Now, the reason I'm saying allegedly is because when asked about this by The Guardian in 2008, Dunaway was enraged, completely denied it, and was so mad that the reporter even asked about it saying it was absolutely ridiculous. She also stormed out of the interview saying, I can't believe I passed on the mail for this, which is like one of my favorites. I don't know. I kind of think she did it. I feel like it's one of those things that you don't remember and you definitely did it because look we're already talking about her peeing implants we're talking about this relationship where and we're going to get even into more crazy stuff you know she did it i think she did it apparently the only time roman ever gave her a compliment was when he said oh that was wonderful just like my mother

oh god there's a lot of a lot of issues going on on this set i mean this is the thing about chinatown like yes it's a beautiful noir but there's so much more fucked up things going on underneath the surface You're talking about, you know, mommy and daddy issues. You're talking about, you know, father and daughter working together on set. You're talking about a guy who has lost his wife and a gruesome murder taking out his own aggressions about the system. Everything, like when Jack Nicholson is the most normal guy on a set by a lot, shit's gone weird. Like, I mean... Absolutely.

Faye Dunaway also wasn't the best to the crew. One time first AD Hawkech called her to check in when she was sick, and she said, said, quote, I don't speak to assistant directors and hung up. But finally, things came to a head during a scene when Roman, frustrated by a flyaway hair on Dunaway's head that would not stay flat, reached in and ripped out the hair from her head. She stormed off set and she had her agent call up Bob Evans and say, you have got to fire Roman Polanski. Evans stood by Roman, though, and brokered a very awkward truce between them where they both stayed on the film, but they hated each other.

Here's the one thing I will say. I'll also put, allegedly, another great story that I've heard about Faye Dunaway. This is more recent than back in the day. And this might be method acting, but I do love this story. So if she was doing a scene and carrying a

coffee cup and they could cut, she would just let it go. And so they had to position PA's underneath her to grab whatever she was holding because she would just let it go. And it was like, no, no, you call cuts. I'm out of character. I'm done. I'm not working anymore. That's what she learned from China. It's like my character's dead now. It's amazing.

So I, knowing that story, seeing all of this together, it all fits a picture that I'm seeing. It does, and we're going to see more of it. So Nicholson and Polanski got along pretty well for the most part, although there were times that Polanski got on his nerves, too. One very infamous encounter was Polanski was running way behind because he was so fixated by the Venetian blinds in one particular scene that he couldn't stop. Jack had been biting his time in his trailer watching a Lakers game. Of course, he's a huge fan of the Lakers. And Roman decided he was ready with one minute left in the game. Jack Nicholson was like, no, I have been sitting here waiting, running back and forth for six hours at this point or whatever it was. You are going to wait for one minute of the game. Of course,

it goes into overtime. And Roman Polanski loses his mind. He grabbed a mop and he stormed into Jack Nicholson's trailer and is trying to smash the TV with a mop. But apparently the mop was too tall to get a good swing in. So he's just kind of like stabbing it up and down in the trailer. So he grabs the TV and flings it out the trailer door, smashes it on the set. Jack Nicholson is so mad. He runs out. He starts throwing anything he can at Roman Polanski.

He takes off his shirt and throws it. He takes off his shoes and throws it. Roman Polanski starts stripping off his clothes. They're both in their unlawful. underwear. They run, Jack Nicholson runs and gets in his car. Roman Polanski gets in his, follows him. They race off set. And the crew is like, oh, my God, our actor and director just quit the movie. And then they apparently met up at a red light a few blocks away, both in their underwear and their cars and just started laughing. And they were like, well, it's fine.

Oh, my God. That is amazing. I will also say, you know, I had heard, now this could be a different version of that story. But I think what made me really laugh that that was, yes, he was watching the Laker game, not coming out of his trailer, and then the game goes into overtime. And then it goes into another overtime. Yeah, I think that's right. And he goes, what's double overtime? Yes. Robo Blanski, not even understanding double overtime, which is a rare occurrence. Right. But I do, like, that to me made me laugh. Like, what's double overtime? Yeah. He did

not understand or care about basketball, and he was enraged. So a couple of quick fun facts from the rest of filming that we'll rattle through. The broken door at Ida Sessions House, who is the lady who impersonates Evelyn at the beginning. That's actually broken by Roman Polanski with a hammer because they lost the key and couldn't get in. So he was just like, fuck it, we're behind. And he just smashed the door and broke into the house. Wait, but that's so interesting because it feels like such an important plot point that the glass is broken. Of course.

Yeah, but they were yelling at him, no, Roman, the back door. And he's like, I don't care. I like it and just smash the front door of this person's house. Wow. Speaking of Ida, filming that scene where she's dead on the ground gave actress Diane Ladd the creeps because she said it felt to her like Roman was replaying the death of his wife. We also have Fay Dunaway to thank for the grisly eyeball shot that Evelyn gets at the end of the film.

That is what was scripted, but according to Dunaway, it was an Oedipole reference because, of course, Oedipus blinds himself after discovering his own incest. Someone, however, forgot to order the process. that they would need for the shot. So Roman was like, I don't care. We'll just shoot you in the head instead. And Faye was like, no, we need the eyeball. So she actually had her makeup guy build that out of a leftover prosthetic nose from true grit.

And he did it in like six hours. It looks great. Whoa. Wow. And such an important moment with the foreshadowing of the flaw in the iris earlier, she's talking to Jack. So you do need it to be the eye. And it's also so much more gruesome that it's through her eye as well,

which really drives the brutality of the scene home. Yeah, yeah, that was her. She insisted on that. Wow. He also didn't have the ending scene fully planned out until basically the night before they shot it. John Houston was for sure hammered in this one. Worked great.

Roman also fired the original DP halfway through production. It was Stanley Cortez, and he proved to old school for Polanski who really wanted a more modern, natural look, particularly with natural light. He replaced him with John Alonzo, who had worked on National Geographic, and Harold and Maude did a beautiful job. Principal photography wrapped around the end of January in 1974.

I think that's interesting with the natural look, because, yes, a lot of the night scenes have the noir lighting in particular. Yeah, but a lot of it's very bright. And so much of it's shot during the day. So much the movie takes place during the day, despite being a noir film. And you can see when they move into handheld in some of these scenes, and it's so effective and intimate in a way that you wouldn't expect in a tradition. noir film. And yeah, it feels like it takes noir and kind of transcends it in an interesting way. Well, it's interesting also because I think, you know, I think Robert Town's goal was to show

this sort of glamorous old Hollywood that he remembered, this like safe, warm Hollywood. And Roman, I think, wanted to show the Hollywood that he was experiencing post-death of Sharon Tate, which was, yes, it's very bright. It's L.A. It's sunny. But it's a bit grimy. It's dark, like things you need to lock your doors. And I think the juxtaposition of it being very very bright and in some ways colorful against that. It works really well in this movie. I also think, you know, we're talking about this idealized version of the past. And I think what you realize as you get older is that there was no idealized version of it.

You know, even, you know, this idea of and not to bring it into politics, but the idea of like, oh, make America great again. And like, well, when was it great? Right. Because, you know, we've, people have gotten their rights. People have, you know, like, it was great for certain people, but not for other. people. I think that that's what this movie, it's not tackling such a big thing about, you know, racism, but it is talking about like, yeah, it looks one way and underneath it is

grimy. And, you know, to your point about, like, the Oedipal complex, it does have a similarity to that story, too, like the tragedy. Like, the L.A. that we see is a little bit grosser and disrepair. You know, it's like this middle ground between being like an industrialized city and a city that was, like, more farms. And, you know, I think that that's, that's a really, I think that that's really fascinating, kind of like embrace. It's, it's sloppiness, and it's an unromanticized look at this world. And I think that's what makes it probably for me, my number one, because it is, it's not like LA confidential, which is great, but very much a romanticized version of more detectives, good-looking people in cars, doing it, but fast-talking,

you know, that kind of idea. Can I tell you one more story from set that I know that I think is great? Oh, yeah. The story that I love, and I just recently heard this. one. The Laker event obviously was a big deal with Jack Nicholson. But there was another thing where they were getting on each other's cases a lot. Jack had issues with a lot of things, right? You know, first leading role. So this becomes the part where Roman Plansky decides he's going to put himself in the movie and put the knife to Jack Nicholson's face. And it's a real knife that one side is dull, one side is sharp. So if it goes the other way,

slice Nicholson's nose off. So talking about that slap scene, and again, to just at least show that the abuse was balanced on some level, he does get into that scene and puts the knife into Jack's nose, and I think you see a true terror

in Jack's face in that. That's a brutal scene. It was on a hinge, so if he had turned it the wrong way and had went to slice because it was sharp. If it was not the way it was supposed to bend, he would have absolutely cut his nose.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely crazy. Yeah. Post-production was relatively uneventful until they were almost wrapped, and then it took a very sharp turn. So Polanski couldn't use his Rosemary's Baby composer, Christoph Kameda, because he was dead. He had been pushed off of an escarpment

during a drinking party with friends in Los Angeles. Whoa. So he turned to avant-garde composer Philip Lambrough, with very little time to complete the score ahead of their May 3rd preview and June 20th release. Lambrough did not want to reemphasize what was already on screen and apparently thought the story was a bit of a mess. I don't think he liked the movie that much. So he was sort of working against it, also trying to layer on some Chinese instrumentation to make up for the fact that Chinatown is barely in Chinatown at all. So Bob Evans got a bee in his bonnet, called up Lambrough one night saying what the movie needed was a love theme.

He wanted 10 more minutes of music to make it a rom-com with a love being. Wow. Great idea, Bob. Lambrough did it. And the May 3rd preview rolls around. Not only is it already a weird vibe because it was moved out of the Bay Area due to a Zodiac murder, but everyone also thought the music was bad. They were like, this is not good.

This is not doing it. Polansky is exhausted by this point. He took off to Europe to direct an opera. and essentially handed control of the score over to Bob Evans, who, in a panic, hires Jerry Goldsmith. Now, how long do you guys think Jerry Goldsmith had to compose and record the entire score for Chinatown? Four weeks. I'm going to say like three weeks, yeah.

It's 10 days. No. Wow. Yeah. He must have just gone into a fugue state. Like, I don't know how you do this. Yeah. I don't know how you do this.

Yeah. you do this. That is nuts. And it's great. It really is. It's used sparingly, which is great for the film. I'm sure he was like, we're only doing this where we have to. I know. There's only so much I can do, but it works very well. It sets a really naturalist tone for the movie. Yeah, 10 days. That is nuts. That's crazy. So it premieres June 20th at Gromond's Chinese Theater. Critics were mostly positive. Audiences lined up around the block. They had a certifiable hit on their hands. It pulled in somewhere around 30 million on around a $6 million budget. So not the Godfather, but that's a great return for this movie.

It was nominated for 11 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. But at the end of the day, only Robert Town would walk away with the award, which is interesting because he felt like he had really relinquished control of this movie to Roman Polanski. Discussions began early on about the planned sequels to Chinatown. It was supposed to be a trilogy. with the two jakes and then Gitties versus Gitties following.

Did you know that? What? I thought it was going to be the two Jakes and then the three Jakes, but I'm glad it stayed. No, the other one is supposed to be something about like divorce court? I don't know. It goes in a strange direction. Kramer versus Kramer, but Gitties versus Giddy? I mean, literally, yeah.

Got it. However, Polanski bowed out pretty quickly of the two Jakes, thanks to a press tour Bob Evans did, where he talked constantly about how he'd saved the movie. And it was something that Roman had heard before on Rosemary's baby. And this time he was like, I have had enough of this. Yeah. Have you seen the two Jakes, by the way? No. I've never seen it. Well, the much beleaguered film was finally released in 1990. Whoa. Yeah, it took a while. Directed by Jack Nicholson. And it bombed. It got mixed reviews. It just couldn't live up to Chinatown. Underperformed at the box office did not make back its budget.

And I think everybody was just kind of like, ah, we don't need this. They pulled Jack away from the film and said, forget it. It's Chinatown. Forget it, Jake. It's just Chinatown. Leave it there. As promised, at this point, I am going to give a warning if you would like to skip ahead to avoid mention of sexual assault. Despite Chinatown, Roman's success in America was short-lived. Three years later, on March 10, 1977, Roman was at Jack Nicholson's house, taking photos of a 13-year-old girl who I'm not going to name because she's made it very clear that she would like to move past this. And I'm just going to state the undisputed facts here.

He gave her quailudes and champagne over the course of the shoot, and he raped her. Nicholson was not home at the time, but Angelica Houston did come home while Roman and the girl were there and seemed immediately aware that something was off. There's no gray area on this. No one, not even Roman himself, disputes those facts. He pled guilty to statutory rape, served 42 days of an extended sentence before being released. However, the judge was concerned about his own image, and that that might seem like a really light sentence given the crime. Yes.

So he concocted a plan where Roman would go back to prison, but Roman's lawyer would petition for a sentencing change, and then they would release him early. Long story short, they didn't trust that the judge would actually hold up that end of that weird shady bargain. So Roman said, see you never, got on a plane, went to London, and never returned to the United States again. Wow. Yeah, the case is actually bizarre and, like, really complicated. It's not what I thought in terms of what has been holding it up for as many years as it's been held up. But despite this, and by the way, other allegations of assault, his career remains relatively unscathed. Now, even though she was nominated for an Oscar for her work in Chinatown,

Dunaway's career would never recover from the difficult reputation she had earned on the film. As time went on, she did live up to this label. In 2019, she was even fired from a Boston theater production for allegedly being abusive to the wardrobe crew, both physically and verbally. Now, there's no excuse for being abusive ever, but I do think that what began in Chinatown was a feeling that she had to constantly be on the defense

and that everything had to be a fight. If you want to hear more about Fay and where her career went, definitely check out our episode on Mommy Dearest. That wraps up. Chinatown. I mean, what a giant movie. And like, it's a

tricky movie. Like, you're talking about this idea, like, you know, people get broken. And I think that it's often fun to talk about how broken they are. But at the same time, I think a lot of these things are often started

because people are taking advantage of in a prime moment. Yeah. You know, and they are protecting themselves. And it's the only way that they know how to do it. And, you know, it's easy to say, oh, she shouldn't and she couldn't. But like, unless you've lived through that, like, it is abuse. It's just straight up abuse, right? Like, and whether it's creatively, whatever, it's just abuse. And, you know, it could trigger more things. But it's, it's interesting. Like, we live in this weird world where it's like, oh, but it made

something good. I know. Like, what, you know, what does that mean, you know? And it's, I think that's something that we always are wrestling with. Well, on that note, we always do what went right. Yeah, our famed segment, Paul, what went right. Yeah, of course. Hunting for sponsors to our brands listening out there. Paul, was you like to offer what you felt went right on Chinatown? Most right, most specifically right, something you just particularly enjoyed. It could be anything.

Well, for me, the ending went right. They took something and they improved upon a formula, or they took. took it into the present, at the same time leaving it in the past. I think that that's very hard to do, especially in remake culture. Like, yes, we're going back to doing a noir. It's the 70s. Where are we at in the 70s? And I think it feels very much like a 70s film. You know, for a long time, I didn't enjoy the last picture show. Now I really enjoy it. And, you know, and I think that one of the things that that movie did, too, like it kind of takes this kind of youth movie, this teen movie, this coming of age thing, and brings it into another, it kind of pushes it forward

a little bit, does it a little bit differently. And then people start to ape it. So I think that this movie made some bold choices, but I'm a big believer in saying, oftentimes the best end product comes out of collaboration. And we're talking about something here where there's a lot of people who didn't want to collaborate. I wanted to take their own thing and they were forced into collaboration, whether that's 10 days to score the movie, whether that is casting somebody you didn't want to cast, or fighting against something. There's so much issues here. But ultimately, I think that collaboration is what went right.

This, you know, yes, everybody had their own way of doing it, but it was the combined impact of everybody's influence that made this a great film. Yeah. Chris? I am going to go with Los Angeles. I think Los Angeles is an underappreciated city. I actually think it's a very beautiful city in many ways. And I think that this film highlights some of the amazing architecture. architecture, landscapes, et cetera. And I love L.A. I've loved living here. And so I will say Los Angeles

went right as a backdrop for this movie. I agree. Similarly, I'm going to choose the look of this, particularly when it comes to the costumes. I think they made such interesting choices, whether it's the way that he starts in this bright white suit with that sort of wacky, like, colorful tie or that's the clothes that Evelyn wore, which apparently she was, sometimes she was wearing like $10,000 worth of jewelry and you didn't even see it. Like there was such crazy attention to detail. And that really across the whole movie for me, I think, is what went right. And I understand that when it came to Roman, that was at the expense of, you know, certain people's comfort and psyches, which is not good. But I do think that

how much detail is paid in this movie, particularly to time period in the production design and costume is just really, really beautiful. And I love it. I loved it. And I love Faye in this movie. I love all the actors. I love John Houston. I love Jack Nicholson. I think this movie is fantastic and absolutely stands the test of time. So thank you, Paul. Thank you. My pleasure. I'm so excited to be. I mean, it's a heavy episode. I know. Happy to be here for it. I'm fan of your show. Thank you for having me. You are now a friend of the show. Yes. No longer an enemy. Yes. Now Jason and June can be. your enemies. Yes. Oh, they remain. They remain on our hit list. Yeah, so you can let them know. And Amy will take Unspooled as well. Yeah, take Amy. Yeah, take Amy in there. That's right. Arch Nemesis. Paul, is there anything else you want to plug for our audience? Oh, that's it. No, I mean, if you'd like to get a copy of my book, it would be fantastic. You can get it wherever

you get your books. I also do the audio book for it. And I'm going to be out on the road at certain time. So whenever you're hearing this, just check out my website. You'll see what is up. And that's great. so I'm happy to be here for this. I will say that's true. I mean, the other thing that's really great about this show is, to me, what I long for is I miss DVD special features. And listening to this is like, it has that thing. It's like you both are so incredibly smart, well researched.

It's so fun. It's a great way to kind of just sit back. I mean, it's become a staple of my podcast listening. So I'm thrilled to have it as one of my new faves. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much. This was really fun. Guys, if you are enjoying this podcast, as always, there are three ways to support us.

Number one, hire a plane to create letter writing in the sky that says listen to What Went Wrong. It will be expensive, but it will be worth it. Number two, leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. We really appreciate it. Ideally, if you enjoy the show, not if you hate us. And number three, head to our Patreon, www. www.com slash what went wrong podcast. You can join for free. For $1, you can help vote on films that we will cover in the future. For $5, You get an ad-free RSS feed, and for $50, you get free merch every quarter and a shout-out on the show just like these. Lizzie? That's right. It's time for our full-stop supporters. Thank you so much to Jake Killen, Kang, Andrew, Matthew Jacobson, Grace, Ellen Singleton, Jewishry Samant, Lachlan Morrow, Scott Gerwin, Sadie, Chris Leal, Leah Bowman, my mother-in-law. Steve Winterbauer, Chris's dad, Don Shibyl, no relation, George, Rosemary Southward, Chris's mother-in-law,

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and check out our website at what went wrongpod.com. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Additional research for this episode provided by Sarah Baum and Richard Cunningham. Editing and music by David Bowman. Thank you so much to our frenemy, Paul Shear, for joining us this week.