Robert Towne: The Hollywood Interview

Screenwriter and filmmaker Robert Towne.


FORGET IT BOB, IT’S CHINATOWN
Robert Towne looks back on Chinatown’s 35th anniversary
By
Alex Simon

The haunting trumpet wailing plaintively over the closing credits. The bandage covering star Jack Nicholson’s nose. The best last line of a movie, ever: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown"; all elements of a film now regarded by scholars, critics and cinefiles alike as one of the greatest pieces of American celluloid ever made. Chinatown was a collaboration between a who’s-who of ‘70s film icons. Directed by Roman Polanski, produced by Robert Evans, written by Robert Towne, starring Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, shot by John A. Alonzo, and scored by Jerry Goldsmith, Chinatown was nominated for 11 Academy Awards in 1974, but brought home only one: for its writer. Robert Towne was barely 40, and Chinatown his first produced original screenplay, his previous efforts having been literary adaptations, such as 1973’s The Last Detail.

Now regarded as the “perfect” script in terms of its structure, characters, and dialogue, Robert Towne became the screenwriter of his generation with Chinatown, going on to write classics such as Shampoo, “script doctoring” some of Hollywood’s most high-profile films, and moving into the writing/directing arena with Personal Best, in 1982.

Chinatown turns 35 this year, and with it, a new, deluxe DVD of the film hits shelves October 6 from Paramount Home Video, remastered in high-definition, and featuring a commentary track with Towne and director/fan David Fincher. Robert Towne sat down over cigars in his study recently to share a few memories of how his new wave detective story was created. Here’s what followed:



Let’s start at the beginning. How was Chinatown born?

Robert Towne: There are so many moments that contributed to the ultimate birth, if you want to call it that, of Chinatown, but it had its origins in the fact that the script of The Last Detail was having trouble getting made because of the (profanity) in it. There was kind of a counter-reformation going on in Hollywood at that time. Richard Hefner was head of the ratings board, and I guess they had the feeling movies had gone too far, too fast with this newfound freedom we suddenly had. There was a hilarious moment with (Columbia Pictures Chairman) David Begelman where he asked “Bob, would 20 ‘motherfuckers’ be more dramatic than 40 ‘motherfuckers’?” To which I responded “Yes David, but the swearing is not used for dramatic emphasis. It’s used to underline the impotence of these men who will do nothing but swear even though they know they’re doing something unjust by taking this poor, neurotic little kid to jail for eight years for stealing 40 bucks.” So I felt sort of hamstrung. Then I saw a copy of Old West Magazine that was part of the L.A. Times, this was about 1969. In it, was an article called “Raymond Chandler’s L.A.” I don’t remember the copy that well, but the part that got me were about half a dozen photographs taken in 1969 meant to represent L.A. in the ‘30s. There was a shot of a Plymouth convertible under one of those old streetlamps outside of Bullock’s Wilshire. There was a shot of a beautiful Packard outside of a home in Pasadena. There was another shot of the old railway station downtown. I looked at them, and realized ‘My God, with a selective eye, you could recreate the L.A. of the ‘30s.’ Then owing to a number of other experiences—walking on the Palisades and things like that which brought back a lot via sense memory, I began to realize and reflect upon how much I felt had been lost about the city in the intervening 30-35 years. ’37 was just beyond my recall, but the ‘40s weren’t, and pre-1945 they were basically the same thing. So I thought about that, and then, since we were stuck in limbo on The Last Detail, I went to Jack (Nicholson) and said ‘What if I wrote a detective story set in L.A. of the ‘30s?’ He said “Great.” The one feeling I had was a desire to try and recreate the city. But that was just the beginning. Then owing to a building project near where I lived, I got a chance to see the corruption of city hall first-hand, which is where that element of the plot got into Chinatown. I then had to go to Oregon where Jack was filming Drive, He Said. I hadn’t really read Raymond Chandler at that point, so I started reading Chandler. While I was there at University of Oregon, I checked out a book from the library called “Southern California Country: Island on the Land.” In it was a chapter called “Water, water, water,” which was a revelation to me. And I thought ‘Why not do a picture about a crime that’s right out in front of everybody. Instead of a jewel-encrusted falcon, make it something as prevalent as water faucets, and make a conspiracy out of that. And after reading about what they were doing, dumping water and starving the farmers out of their land, I realized the visual and dramatic possibilities were enormous. So that was really the beginning of it.

Jack Nicholson as private eye J.J. Gittes.

When you wrote it initially, you did so specifically for Nicholson to play Gittes, and Jane Fonda to play Evelyn Mulwray?

Well with Jack, yes, I wrote the part for him, in his voice, so to speak. We'd been close friends for a long time. But with the part of Evelyn, there were several actresses at the top of the list, and Jane was one of them. But Jack was Gittes. I could not have written that character without knowing Jack. We had been roommates, and we’d studied acting with Jeff Corey for years, so he was, in a very real sense, a collaborator.

The actual writing of the script was very difficult for you. The first draft took you nine months?

Oh yeah, that was due to a combination of things. I had to get out of my house. I was having domestic difficulties, so I took myself and my dog over to Catalina, and worked at The Isthmus for several months, then was reduced to finding places around the city: Curtis Hanson loaned me an apartment…but just moving around wasn’t the sole problem. It was also that the writing of it was just tough: writing scenario, after scenario, after scenario was just so complicated that after a certain point, I thought I’d never get through it.

Faye Dunaway as Evelyn Mulwray.

The first draft ran 180 pages?

I think so. 178, maybe. Not that bad, actually. I mean, the final draft was 140-something.

In the final draft that you published, there were lots of snippets of little scenes that, if there were actually filmed, were cut from the final film.

I think they were filmed, yes, and it’s a shame that they destroyed them, but most of them weren’t bad.

The one “lost scene” that really sticks out in my mind is when Gittes is flying to Catalina, and the pilot gives him all this backstory on Evelyn and the Cross family.
Yeah, I miss that one, too.

Roy Jenson, as Mulvihill, with director Roman Polanski, in his "man with knife" costume.

That’s another thing about the film that has always made it stand out: you populated it with all these great little throwaway characters that are so memorable, even if they have just one or two lines. This, coupled with the casting that Polanski and the casting director pulled off, with actors who all had such great faces…

Well, those secondary characters were, I think, effective because they all had detailed backstories, some of which actually came out briefly in the movie, like when Gittes is talking to Mulvihill outside the elevators, and Gittes asks “What are you doing here?” Mulvihill answers “They shut my water off, what’s it to you?” And we learn that he’d been a rum runner when he was Sheriff of Ventura County. Escobar also had a very lengthy backstory, that he’d lost family in the Owens Valley dam disaster, and wasn’t too sorry to see Hollis Mulwray go.

It was also an interesting choice you made to have a Mexican police lieutenant, because in 1937, I’m sure Escobar would have been one of the first.

Yeah, probably and again, that was a deliberate choice.

Jack Nicholson and Perry Lopez, as Lt. Lou Escobar.

And Perry Lopez, what a terrific actor.

He was very good, wasn’t he? He passed away last year. His health was failing for a while. I think he had lung cancer. It was a real shame. But part of writing those backstories for all the characters, they were very detailed, and that also contributed to how much time it took to write the script.

I also loved Wally, the mortician. Again, he only has one scene, but his character stays with you.

Yeah, that was a guy named Charles Knapp. Terrific character actor.

Even the players who didn’t have any dialogue, like when Gittes turns to his right during the city council meeting and sees those two old farmers in the audience whose faces looked right out of a Matthew Brady photo from the 19th century.

Roman is a very meticulous filmmaker and really took his time when it came to the casting, down to the smallest roles.

Let’s talk about the look of the film. You had the best in the business in charge of production design and costumes: Richard and Anthea Sylbert.

Yeah, all those fine details were very important to us. They were old friends, too. Really, we all knew each other on the film pretty well.

Polanski and Nicholson confer on the set.

That’s another interesting detail. You were all part of the same social circle, so much so that you named a lot of the characters after friends: Gittes, Mulvihill…

Well, Gittes was named after my friend (producer) Harry Gittes, but Muvihill wasn’t named after my friend Charles Mulvihill, which is an understandable conclusion you would have. He was named after a real estate broker that had worked with my father. I liked the name. There was another one, an old-time salesman my father knew, called Bagby. He became the character of Mayor Bagby.

Another interesting thing is that when you initially showed the script to both Evans and Polanski, they couldn’t make head or tails of it.

Yeah, that was truer of Evans than Polanski. Roman picked the first two drafts apart so we could start rewriting it. While Roman was still in Europe, I did a second draft, and those two drafts were the drafts off of which we worked to create the shooting script, which was the third draft.

And how long did that third draft take?

We spent nearly every day together for about six weeks. I brought my dog, Hira, with me to a lot of our initial meetings. Hira would go lie on Roman’s feet, which would drive him crazy, and finally he said “That’s enough of that dog!” (laughs)

What was Polanski’s creative process like, and what elements did he bring to the story? I know the biggest bone of contention the two of you had was about the film’s ending.

Yeah, but in the end, that was such a small part of our daily working relationship, and it only came up at the end. We didn’t spend a lot of time on it, to be honest. Roman said “I want it written this way,” and I responded ‘I think it would be very bad if I wrote it that way.’ He said “Well, try it anyway.” So I did, and brought it back to him and said ‘See, it’s so melodramatic.” Roman said “No, it’s perfect.” We said more about it, but not much. That was that. We sat down, and I don’t remember what draft, probably the first because there were things about the first draft that were much better than the second, although there were individual scenes in the second draft that may have been used. So we sat down, and we wrote a one-sentence description of each of the scenes that we were working on. We then pasted those onto the door of the room where we were working, and we just moved these little strips of paper up and down, readjusting the structure, to see where there were holes, adding scenes, and that’s how we worked on it. And what changes were made in the dialogue were made as I wrote. Roman, with rare exception, did not have any difficulty with the dialogue.

That was always one of your strengths though, as a dialogue man.

Yeah, I mean I guess you’d have to say that. The structure was extremely difficult, though, as it would have been for anybody.

But what resulted from all that work was that the screenplay for Chinatown is now regarded by most film and film writing scholars as the paradigm for the perfect screenplay, in terms of its structure.

Well, I don’t have to tell you that we weren’t trying to write a screenplay that was perfectly-structured. We were just trying to make it make sense. I remember, even without Roman, the first structural question, which may seem absurd now after the fact, was the question of which revelation comes first, the incest or the water scandal? And of course, it was the water scandal. When I realized that, I realized how foolish it was even to have asked the question. But the water scandal was the plot, essentially, and the subplot was the incest. That was the underbelly, and the two were intimately connected, literally and metaphorically: raping the future and raping the land. So it was a really good plot/subplot with a really strong connection. In the first draft, as I recall, it was pretty much a single point-of-view. And in the second draft I tried changing that for purposes of clarification and I think in the end, that’s what made the second draft weaker than the first draft. It’s one of the very, very few detective movies, including The Maltese Falcon, which has a singular point-of-view.

But in detective fiction, almost all of it is written from a singular point-of-view.

Yeah but remember, I hadn’t read much detective fiction up to that point. I had to take it upon myself to read Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. But of the two, I think Chandler was the more influential, probably because his stories were set in L.A.

Chandler was one of the great 20th century writers.

Oh yeah, he was a wonderful prose stylist. He was very useful to me in one sense in that Gittes is the sort of opposite of (Philip) Marlowe: the tarnished knight who wouldn’t do divorce work, who didn’t really care about his physical appearance. Where Gittes was more than something of a dandy, a clotheshorse, absolutely vain, and Jack playing him that way was half-kidding. Jack was a great-looking kid, but he wasn’t considered a leading man until he did Chinatown.

But the great thing about the ‘70s was that you had guys that weren’t pretty, who were just good-looking the way normal people are good-looking, being cast as leading men.

Yeah, that’s true. Jack would actually joke about his looks. He’d say “I have perfect tear drop nostrils,” (laughs) shit like that. He was kidding, but that aspect of his character certainly found its way into Gittes.

The other thing that struck me, especially with this new high-def transfer used on the DVD, was what a perfect profile Nicholson had then. It would have made the Barrymores jealous.

He had a great profile.

He was all right angles, as a young man.

Yeah, he was a great looking kid.

Let’s talk about some more of the casting. I know she won the Oscar for Network, but I think this remains Faye Dunaway's best work. She had such a haunting look in the film, almost as though her face was a death mask, showing that she was dead inside.

Yes, you know almost as soon as you see her that she’s damaged goods, you just don’t know how. She evokes mystery, but doesn’t tip it off.

Another detective story cliché which you turned on its head is that the woman is always the Black Widow, whereas in Chinatown, she turns out to be the victim.

Yes, just as in many ways, Gittes is also the opposite of the hardboiled detective. He’s cynical, but with his own kind of idealistic streak.

John Huston, as Noah Cross, and Nicholson: "Mr. Gits."

Tell us about John Huston, whose Noah Cross is one of the great screen villains of all-time.

John and that performance are absolutely central to that movie. His weight, his sort of patina of grandfatherly charm is a perfect receptacle, if you will, for the evil that is at the heart of Chinatown.

This is what makes him so dangerous: his charm. He’s not like Darth Vader or even someone like Gordon Gekko, both of whom are clearly evil from the get-go. It’s like the old saying “When the devil comes at you, it will be with a smile, not with a sneer.”

Yes, exactly. And the story never could have succeeded without John Huston playing that character as you described.

And his mispronunciation of Gittes as “Gits” was an honest mistake that Huston made?

Yes, that’s right. That came out on the set, and then Roman kept it in. That was Roman as much as it was Huston.

It’s a great touch: he’s so rich, he doesn’t give a shit if he gets your name right or not.

(laughs) Yes, and you never knew whether he was doing it out of carelessness or perversity. That’s the point.

Did you get to know Huston at all during the shoot?

A little bit.

What was your involvement in the actual filming once you turned in the final draft?

Not much. I would watch the dailies every day, but I stayed off the set.

You mentioned when we spoke before that everyone was expecting the film to be a disaster.

Initially, the shooting of it was going badly with Roman’s first cameraman, Stanley Cortez, and he replaced Cortez with John Alonzo, which was very fortunate. It just seemed that it was one series of difficulties after the other, and we didn’t know how it was going to hang together. Then, the score that we had written for the film (by Phillip Lambro) was an abomination, and we had to bring in Jerry Goldsmith at the last minute, who did that amazing score that’s on the film now, which is also part of what makes the film work so beautifully.

I wonder if that original score is what plays on the trailer? Because it sure isn’t the Goldsmith score.

It’s possible, but I’m not sure. I don’t remember the music from the trailer.

And Goldsmith did the score in six days?

No, no. Ten (laughs) There was no time at all, and Evans and I were on the scoring stage while Jerry was doing it. Roman was actually in Italy, directing an opera.

Did Polanski involve you in the casting process?

Oh yeah, and I was thrilled with the choice of Huston. Actually, there was a point where we were hoping to get (director) Bill Wellman for Mulwray, but I think he died shortly before we started pre-production (Wellman died in December, 1975). He was an amazing man, Wellman. I never got to meet him, although I did sit next to him at a screening once.

When did you realize that not only was Chinatown not a disaster, but something very special?

The first time I saw the completed film was at a screening for Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. The score was there, the print was there and I felt, when the lights went up, ‘Well, maybe it’s not a complete disaster.’ (laughs) The first inkling I had was when The Reporter critic ran up to me and started gushing about the film, and I thought ‘Well, that’s nice. It’s probably an aberrant reaction, but I’ll take it.’ (laughs) Then the reviews came out, and…you know the rest.

L to R: Robert Towne, Jack Nicholson, and Robert Evans attend the 1974 Oscars.

Chinatown was nominated for 11 Oscars and you were the sole winner of the group. Not bad for your first produced original screenplay.

No, that was nice. That was very nice.

So what was it like for you when, finally, you made the transition from being struggling writer to being one of the top dogs in town?

It happened so fast, almost overnight. One minute I was broke, and then these three movies got produced back-to-back, almost simultaneously. Then within a year, all three were released.

Did it take some time to process that new position?

No, not really. My main feeling was a tremendous sense of relief. There I was 37, 38 years-old and feeling like a failure with nothing produced, other than having a position as sort of a subterranean character who’d done some uncredited work on Bonnie & Clyde and The Godfather. I’d done a re-write of The New Centurions, but took my name off it. It was just a sense of relief that I’d finally had a body of work produced that I was proud of before I was 40. I remember talking to my dad, who was always very worried about me, and saying ‘Dad, I finally have a place in this business,’ and it happened before I was 40, and it didn’t look like there was a snowball’s chance in hell that was going to happen a year earlier. Above all, I was relieved for my dad, that he knew his son was going to be okay.

Your dad was in the apparel business, right?

Yeah, he owned a store that sold ladies’ apparel, and then went into the real estate business, and my familiarity with the real estate business as a result of his profession, actually found its way into Chinatown.

Let’s talk about some of the real-life counterparts to the characters in the film. I know that Hollis Mulwray is based, loosely, on William Mulholland.

Yeah, very loosely. With Noah Cross, I’m not sure who he was based on. I was probably thinking of the Chandler family and Harrison Gray Otis, people like that. He’s one of those guys that was a member of the Tuna Club and the California Club. The old saying was that the Tuna Club ran L.A., and that’s what the Albacore Club was based on, in the movie. They ran the city, like an oligarchy.

You once described the Mulwrays as “California Yankees.”

Yes, it’s a very particular subculture that exists here. A kind of casual elitism, I guess you’d say. It doesn’t have the intellectual bent that you’d find in a place like the Harvard Club in New York, or similar places.

How do you feel Chinatown holds up 35 years later?

Well, I like it a lot more now than I did 35 years ago (laughs), that’s for sure. I think it’s a good film.

Could Chinatown be made today?

No. It would cost too much money, and no major studio would want to deal with a story of that complexity.

Robert Evans and Roman Polanski, circa late 1960s.

At least one of the advantages you had was that your producer, Robert Evans, was the studio’s head of production, and he stayed out of the way.

Yeah, it would have been tough even then without Evans, that’s true, maybe even impossible. I think (then-President of Paramount Pictures) Frank Yablans always thought it was a fucked-up project. I think they were all very pleasantly surprised at the success of it, though.

This was originally planned as part of a trilogy, with The Two Jakes being the second part, and Cloverleaf being the third.

No, I don’t know where the title Cloverleaf came from. It was actually supposed to be Gittes vs. Gittes, took place in 1968, and was about the era when no-fault divorce became legal in California.

Is there any chance this will ever see the light of day?

No, I would have to say no chance. I mean, anything is possible, but I doubt it.

Another thing struck me: your social circle made this film, made The Last Detail, made Shampoo, and that’s something you don’t see much anymore.

I don’t know. What about Judd Apatow and his group?

Faye Dunaway touches up during the filming of Chinatown's violent climax.

I don’t know them, so I can’t speak with any real authority, but I get the sense that all those younger guys he works with have more a student-teacher relationship with him. You, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Polanski, Hal Ashby, you were all contemporaries, all equals, all collaborators, and after you were done shooting for the day, you’d have dinner together. Has Hollywood changed that much socially since then?

Well, I can’t really answer that. We were all friends, and collaborators, that’s true. The guys hung out more than the girls did. Our wives and girlfriends really weren’t part of the equation at that time.

Brian De Palma made an interesting comment once about his group that hung out in the Malibu Colony during the ‘70s: him, Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola, Margot Kidder, that once the era of the blockbuster started after the mid-70s, and people began making astronomical amounts of money, as opposed to just making a comfortable living, that’s when the fractures started, in terms of their relationships with each other.

That’s quite possibly true. I think the promise of making money split a lot of us up.

Who’ve you remained friendly with over the years?

You mean those of us who are still alive? (laughs) Well, I don’t see him much, but I’m friendly with Jack, very friendly with Warren (Beatty).

Bruce Glover and Nicholson during Chinatown's tragic final scene.

Do you talk to Polanski at all?

Oh yeah, we’re still very friendly. I forgot to mention him. I’ve managed to see him once a year or every couple years when I go to Europe.

Any comment on his current situation?

No, I’m sure you know how I feel about it. I love Roman. I have an enormous respect and affection for him. I’ll tell you my favorite story about Roman: when we started working on the re-write of Chinatown, Roman presented me with a book, a gift, called “How to Write a Screenplay.” He inscribed it “To my dear partner, with fond hope.” (laughs)

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Robert Towne: The Hollywood Interview

Writer/director Robert Towne.


ROBERT TOWNE DUSTS OFF A CLASSIC
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the March 2006 issue of Venice Magazine.

When Robert Towne won the 1974 Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Chinatown, he could have easily hung up his Underwood and spent his days in comfort, resting on the sizable laurels of having crafted what many feel is the greatest movie script of all-time. Towne, possessing the intellectual restlessness that drives most creative spirits, kept writing, penning classics such as Shampoo (co-written with Warren Beatty, 1975), and becoming Hollywood’s top “script doctor,” doing uncredited re-writes on some of filmdom’s greatest titles (Bonnie & Clyde, The Godfather, The Parallax View, Heaven Can Wait, to name a few).
Born November 23, 1934, Towne grew up in the port city of San Pedro, where his father owned and operated a women’s clothing shop. After attending Pomona College, Towne cut his screenwriting teeth working for legendary producer/director Roger Corman, penning the script for 1965’s The Tomb of Ligeia, viewed by many film scholars as the best of Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations. Towne made his directing debut in 1982 with the powerful, controversial Personal Best, about the lives and loves of female Olympic hopefuls. He went on to helm the nifty noir love triangle Tequila Sunrise (1988) starring Mel Gibson, Kurt Russell, and Michelle Pfeiffer, and the story of legendary runner Steve Prefontaine in Without Limits (1998). During this period, Towne penned a diverse slate of films, including Days of Thunder (1990), The Two Jakes (1990), The Firm (1993), Love Affair (1994), Mission Impossible (1995) and MI:2 (2000).
Towne’s latest puts him behind the camera and the pen once again, with his long-awaited adaptation of John Fante’s classic novel Ask the Dust. Set in 1930s Los Angeles, the story follows aspiring writer Arturo Bandini (Colin Farrell, in his best performance to date) as he searches for inspiration in the form of an unlikely muse: a tempestuous, beautiful waitress from a Bunker Hill greasy spoon (Salma Hayek, also her best turn to date). Like the novel on which it is based, Ask the Dust is an elegiac, poetic masterpiece: a triumph of mood, performance and especially production design (Capetown, South Africa has been meticulously transformed into 1930s L.A. Production designer Dennis Gassner should be remembered at next year’s Oscars). The Paramount Classics release, which also stars Donald Sutherland, hits screens March 10. Don’t miss it!
Ask the Dust had its world premiere at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on February 2, at the city’s historic Arlington Theater. Robert Towne sat down with Venice the following day to discuss his latest labor of love, and his remarkable career. Here’s what was said:

It was amazing to see Ask the Dust premiere at a theater like The Arlington, which was built in 1931.
Robert Towne: The irony of it is that as that theater was being built, John Fante was in L.A., struggling and beginning to think of this novel.

The novel is autobiographical, right?
Very much so. The psychodynamic of that character, his manic-depressive nature, I think was congruent with John. Probably much more so when he was younger than the time when I first met him. But an awful lot of the story is autobiographical. In a way, I took more from his life in the second half of the movie than the book did. The book, basically, is very much like the movie, dealing with Bandini’s obsession with Camilla—and it was one-sided. In the book, Camilla is not obsessed with Bandini. Because the internal life of the character was so strong in the book, I didn’t think that an audience would put up with such a masochistic hero, because just being a writer is masochistic enough. So I decided to make their love more mutual. Also, to make the racial theme of it work, you needed to have it cut both ways: both wanted the same things from society, but the person that each of them loved stood in the way of that, and each needed to overcome their respective prejudices. I felt that was an inherently much more dramatic dynamic for the story, and a better way to dramatize the racism.

The book is so rich in terms of its themes. It’s one of those books I re-read every five years or so, and it’s always about something new to me each time I pick it up, much in the way The Great Gatsby is.
When did you first read it?

In college.
I was a little older when I first read it, probably about 30.

What’s interesting is that when I was younger, I identified strongly with Bandini, just as I related to Gatsby. We all knew we were Jay Gatsby as young men. But as we get older, we realize that we’ve been Nick Carraway all along, just as during my last reading of Dust, I realized I related much more to Camilla now.
That’s interesting. Yeah, I can see how that would happen. Funny story about the ’74 film version of Gatsby: I turned it down to write Chinatown. I remember well being on Robert Evans’ tennis court, as Evans was trying to talk Jack Nicholson into playing Nick Carraway. And Jack said “Sure, I’d be happy to—as long as you re-title the movie Nick & Jay. (laughs)

Tell us some more about when you first read the novel, what it was about it that spoke to you so deeply.
I was doing research for Chinatown, and was scrambling around searching for something that would put me in the past. This was in the 70s, and I wanted to read about the 1930s, and also see if I could find one book that was set in Los Angeles in the 30s, and had dialogue that felt like it had authenticity to it. You couldn’t get that from Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Nathaniel West, or even Steinbeck, who was from northern California. So I heard about this book and checked it out from the local library and immediately found myself drawn back into the past. It was like these people were alive in some alternative universe, right then and there. I said to myself ‘This is the way it was.’ It also jogged my own memories of Los Angeles in the 40s. That’s close enough to remember. When you hear the title Ask the Dust, you might think that sounds rather affected and pretentious, but the truth is, L.A. doesn’t look today like it did then. Then, it was much starker. All the foliage that had been imported all over the world hadn’t grown yet. There was still a sense of it being a desert, and all the little bungalows and houses that had been built Spanish-style after the 1915 World’s Fair, the sun just burned off that white stucco. The sky was bleach blue. The roofs were red tile, and there was dust in the air, because it wasn’t held down. So all those memories of my childhood came flooding back, and as we know from great writers like Proust, you jog somebody’s memory, it’s a very powerful thing to want to recapture. So in a sense, it’s a longing to recapture your own past. And then there’s the characters, all of whom are so vivid. Look, I grew up in San Pedro, and my earliest memories of girls were Mexican girls. I’ll tell you, if a girl didn’t have a cross around her neck, it wasn’t a girl! (laughs) They were so sexy, and just drove me crazy: their vitality, their humor, I’ve always been drawn to them, and always sensed and felt the injustice of their lot in California. We were so cruel and stupid to them. California was Mexican, and we stole it during the Mexican war. I agree with Profirio Diaz, who said “Pity poor Mexico: so far from God, so close to the United States.” There was a sense of that in Fante’s writing, and I pushed it, maybe even more so.

You got to know Fante towards the end of his life.
Yes. (laughs) I’ll never forget our first meeting: “Who the hell are you, and what makes you think you know anything about writing, anyway? What have you written?” ‘Well…uh, nothing Mr. Fante, but…’ “Well then, what are you doing here?!” Then Joyce, his wife, a blue-eyed blonde from a Brahmin family in northern California, Stanford graduate and a poet in her own right, whose parents were appalled that she was marrying this Italian, calmed him down and said “Give the boy a chance.” So the next time I came to dinner, John was on his best behavior, and (laughs) we were making small talk, and I asked him a question about his neighbor. And you could just see John struggling, and he said “I don’t like her much, Bob.” (laughs) Then I asked him about Camilla. He said “She was a dyke, Bob” I said ‘Oh God, please don’t destroy it for me, John!’ But he actually did live with her and the two of them had quite an affair. And he had her name, Maria, tattooed on his shoulder. So when Colin and Salma finally met Joyce in my kitchen, Joyce looked at Colin and said “You are so perfect for John.” John, as a young man, was very handsome. Then she took one look at Salma, and said “I don’t like you!” And she meant it, too. She was jealous of Maria up to that day, because he had that tattoo on his shoulder.

Did you ever mention to John that you wanted to make Ask the Dust into a movie?
Yeah, we talked about it. He gave me the rights, and a first edition, which he signed “To Bob Towne, in the hope he will take it to far places,” and I ended up taking it to Capetown, South Africa. He died in 1983, ten years before I finished the screenplay, but Joyce read it, and she had been his editor and was a part of his writing process, she said “Not only do I love it, but I think John would have been proud of it.” I don’t know about that, because John was such a curmudgeon, that even if he had liked it, he would have had to have something negative to say.

So this has taken more than ten years to go from page to screen.
Elaine May once wrote a line in her script for Heaven Can Wait: “The virulence with which people oppose an idea is a sure indication that there’s some merit to it.” Like every other profession, ours is one that is filled with stories of the ugly duckling variety: he’s different, and nobody wants anything to do with him, but that’s the swan.

Look at the Best Picture nominees this year: nearly all of them had to fight for years to get made.
Yes, absolutely. “You talk too fast. Can you slow down, Mr. Cagney?” And “Mr. Stewart, can’t you speed it up a little bit?” “Mr. Brando, could you stop mumbling?” All of these things that make artists distinctive, are the very things that get the hackles up of the executives who want everything homogenous. They’re in the position of forever being like chateau generals: who are always fighting the last war, and not the next one. It’s just amazing. It’s something that simply that never changes, and I don’t know why. Dust was no different. Years and years ago, when I was doing work on The Godfather, I approached Pacino with it, and we had lunch about it. I think he would’ve been wonderful. Peter Sellers, who was then a friend, was going to play Hellfrick (played by Donald Sutherland in the film), and then that got lost when I got busy doing Chinatown and Shampoo and so on. Eventually John allowed the book to be optioned by Mel Brooks. Then Mel and I met, and he said “Look, if you’ll write it on spec, I’ll make sure you can direct it,” which was a good deal for me. So I wrote it, he loved it, but something happened where he let the option lapse, and the problem there became that the script had been circulating enough that people had been talking about it, and Irving Azoff grabbed the option out from under Mel. Then Irving couldn’t get the movie made, and I talked to the Fantes and went around everywhere trying to get it made—and got turned down everywhere, including Warner Bros., which was my home at the time. Over the years, I went to many actors, and many different studios, and it got to the point where if my mother could have turned me down, I think she would have. It wasn’t just that the powers-that-be didn’t like the characters. They didn’t. Plus the story was viewed as racist, depressing, a period piece, and it just went on and on. Finally, about four or five years ago, Josh Lieberman called and said “I got a kid whose right for the script. He read it and he likes it!” Nobody had ever heard of this kid, and up to my door popped this young kid, wearing a t-shirt and cowboy. He came in, and there was a family gathering going on. He says in a lovely Irish brogue “Ya got a fuckin’ beer?” And twelve hours, and many beers later, he was still there. I was crazy about him and we were crazy about each other. That’s how I met Colin Farrell. He had the right amount of arrogance and humor, and he looked enough like a young John Fante to make it perfect casting. You could just see how magnetic he was. And then we still couldn’t get it made! So things sort of lay fallow for a while. Years before I’d approached Salma, and she read the script and said “Robert, I love this script, but I just can’t play this character—a Mexican waitress.” She was struggling against the very prejudices that are addressed in the story. Subsequently I cast someone else, who I realized was not going to work. Then, not knowing who to cast, because I wanted to cast a Mexican actress, my friend Warren Beatty said “What’s wrong with Salma?” ‘She turned me down, man.’ So Warren offered to talk with her, and talked her into reading it again. She said “I don’t know why I turned this down. I absolutely love it.” Meanwhile, time was passing, and Colin became a movie star, and that was enough to get it made, although our financing was cobbled together very haphazardly.

So the whole thing was a huge act of faith on everyone’s part, it sounds like.
Yes, it was just remarkable. Colin even came down to the location in South Africa before everything was finalized. Paula Wagner and Tom Cruise put their own money into it, as did I. Our entire budget was only $15.5 million and we shot it in 50 days, which is not a lot on either end. It was tough, but we had to make this film. That’s all there is to it.

This is your second picture with Donald Sutherland.
I don’t know what to say about Donald, other than I so love him. We had one hell of a time on Without Limits, for a while. I didn’t want to cast him originally, so there was some animosity there. We were going to shoot the scene one night where he was going to tell them that the Israeli athletes had been killed during the ’72 Olympics. And I said “Donald, you look like Dracula going into suck their blood!” He blew up and said “You didn’t want me in the first place!” I said “Donald, why do you say that like it’s a surprise? You know I twisted in the wind to avoid having you in this movie, and hardly because you’re a bad actor. You’re a brilliant actor, but you have made a living for so many years playing tortured souls in the most spectacularly interesting manner. But (University of Oregon track coach) Bill Bowerman is not a tortured soul. He tortures other people!” (laughs) So we aired our differences then, and the next day we did this scene where he was talking about what the Olympics meant, and he got it. Then he just unfolded and transformed himself, and nobody could have been better. Against my own worst instincts I had cast the very best person for the part. So we’re now very good friends. With this, I said ‘Donald, unfortunately given our budget constraints, it’s not as big a role as I’d like for you, but I’d love you to do it.’ So he flew down, showed up, and did it. I didn’t really say anything, it was all Donald: “This is who the character is. This is what he’s wearing. This is his make-up.” I just watched and said “Wow. Thank you.”

Shampoo was on cable recently and I watched it from start to finish. It’s one of the great political pictures of the 70s, juxtaposing the national politics of 1968 with the sexual politics and changing mores of the denizens of Beverly Hills. One of the things that struck me were the socio-political parallels between ’68 and our last Presidential election, in 2004.
Yes, it’s true. All things considered, I’d rather have Nixon in office than Bush! (laughs) I mean, Christ, is it possible that I now long for the days of Richard Nixon? I certainly don’t feel he got a bum rap, but he was bright, but the fact that he was hopelessly filled with self-loathing and desperately needed to maintain a political constituency, all his instincts were good: whether it was about China, his initial take on the drug war, which was that there’s no way that enforcement is going to take care of this problem. It has to be re-education, treating people. It has to be all of these things. He wanted to do this, but politically it seemed unwise at the time, so he didn’t pursue it. But he was a bright man.

The irony between that administration and the present one is that a lot of the players are the same: many of the young Turks in Nixon’s White House are the elder statesmen of Bush II. The difference is, Bush II is a puppet, and the guys pulling the strings are people like Cheney and Rumsfeld. Nixon was always too paranoid to ever yield that much power to anyone.
That’s true. And there wasn’t this religious component that was part of his political constituency, which is perhaps the most dangerous single aspect of it. Having managed to divide our country this way, which is the first time this has happened in my memory, which is what he’s done, is unconscionable.

Look at where we were the day after 9/11: the entire world was behind us, including countries that had always hated us. In a matter of weeks, that position took a 180.
We had an opportunity then and there to change the world. And we didn’t. To change everything. Talk about being able to put an end to terror, we certainly could have put a big dent in it, had we approached in differently. Not to mention Bush’s environmental stance: what global warming? It’s an administration that will go down in history as probably our worst, and we’ll be feeling the ramifications for decades. So yes, Shampoo has become prescient again, but I wish to God it wasn’t.

Many people probably aren’t aware that Chinatown was originally planned as the first part of a trilogy.
Right. After The Two Jakes there was going to be a final chapter, Gittes vs. Gittes, which dealt with the new concept of no-fault divorce in the 1950s.

And we’ll never see this, correct?
Correct.

Can you tell us why?
Well, in the interest of maintaining my friendships with Jack Nicholson and Robert Evans, I’d rather not go into it, but let’s just say The Two Jakes wasn’t a pleasant experience for any of us. But, we’re all still friends, and that’s what matters most.

Ask the Dust is a story that would be best described as bittersweet. A common thread I’ve noticed in all your films, both as writer and director, is that you have a tragedian’s view of love. Would you agree with that?
Yeah, I think that love stories, if they’re love stories, are almost by definition tragic. Love stories are stories that are more religious, and if they have one purpose for people it’s to convince us of the importance of, and the actual existence of love. And the only way we can be truly affected by it, is if the lovers will give everything they have to be with one another. It’s that cliché “Honey, I feel like I’d die without you.” So when it ends with the loss of the lovers from each other, the love they’ve generated that held them in its grip, still feels like it’s a real thing, like it’s still there. It makes us feel hopeful that perhaps such a thing could exist for us, as well.

The longing that one feels in love is one of the most incredible feelings you can have.
There’s a reason for the analogy of Cupid’s arrow: the first thing you feel is a twinge of pain, because you feel “Uh oh, I’ve got something that could really hurt me if I don’t have it fulfilled.” There’s a wonderful old song that Sir Walter Raleigh wrote: “What is love? Love is a gentle, pleasing pain. Love is a sunshine mixed with rain. Love is a no, that would full thane.” That’s love.

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CHEN KAIGE: The Hollywood Interview

[Chen Kaige directing the tied-up Cecilia Cheung on the set of THE PROMISE]

Chen Kaige Makes The Promise
by Terry Keefe

For fans of epic martial arts films fantasy films, we're in a renaissance period of sorts on the Asian front, with larger budgets than ever before and some interesting directors such as Zhang Yimou trying their hands at martial arts stories. The advances in CGI have made possible a level of spectacle that filmmakers from previous generations could have only dreamt of, with wire work now only one of a virtual toychest of effects tools available. Looming on the martial arts horizon for some time has been the long-awaited American release of The Promise, which is Chen Kaige's first stab at the genre, as well as being the most expensive Chinese film produced to date. Like Zhang with Hero, The Promise marks a significant cinematic departure from the previous work which made Chen an international star director.

It was 1984 when Chen first came to prominence with his feature Yellow Earth, which was about a Communist soldier sent to the countryside to collect traditional folk songs. Chen soon found himself the subject of much discussion in the film communities at home and abroad as a director at the forefront of a group of recent graduates of the Beijing Film Academy who became known as "the Fifth Generation." Marked by a desire to move away from propaganda and social-realism cinema, the Fifth Generation were the first in China to have been greatly influenced by Western movies and their films received worldwide acclaim as the beginning of a new age in Chinese filmmaking. Chen's true international breakthrough though, critically and commercially, came with Farewell, My Concubine, which was honored with the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 1993, the first time a Chinese film had won that prestigious award. In the years that followed, Chen directed Temptress Moon [1996], The Emperor and the Assassin [1999], and Together [2002]. He also helmed his first English-language feature in 2002 with Killing Me Softly, which starred Joseph Fiennes and Heather Graham.

The story of The Promise follows a beautiful Princess (Cecilia Cheung), who wins the hearts of three very different men: a General (Hiroyuki Sanada), a Slave (Jang Dong-Gun - see our interview with him here), and a Duke (Nicholas Tse). The fates of all four are intertwined, and sealed, due to a deal that the Princess struck with the Goddess Manshen (Chen Hong) as a young girl: she would receive great riches and beauty, but forever lose any man whom she fell in love with. Well, there was a way out of this bargain with the Goddess, but it seemed impossible, as the Goddess proclaimed, "Once you have accepted your destiny, nothing can alter it unless time flows backwards, snow falls in the spring, and the dead come back to life." The Princess seems content with this set of cards, until she falls in love, and meets the one man who might be able to meet all of the Goddess' terms for a dealbreaker: the Slave named Kunlun who can run so fast that he can travel back in time.

As it was for many of his generation in China, the Cultural Revolution of 1966 was a world-shattering event for Chen. Prior to the Revolution, he attended a good school in Beijing and lived a privileged life as the son of the famous film director Chen Huaikai. But he quickly found himself sent into the countryside for "re-education," where he was assigned to clear trees for a living. At the age of 15, he was inducted into the Red Guard and forced to publicly denounce his own father. A rescue of sorts came in 1978, when he became one of the first students to attend the newly reopened Beijing Film Academy.

In person, Chen Kaige is quite tall, and every bit a formidable presence, which is softened by an easy laugh and sense of humor.

Had you wished to work in the martial arts fantasy genre for a long time prior to the making of The Promise?

Chen Kaige: Not really. Because, you know, I wasn't a big fan of martial arts stories when I was young, because all the martial arts books had been banned at that time. So I didn't always have the idea that I wanted to do a martial arts film. But now, if the chance comes, I wouldn't mind doing another one in the future [laughs].

So what was it that sparked your interest in The Promise?

It was a couple of years ago. After I had done a film like Together, which was a small, contemporary piece, I was thinking that there was just more I could do. I wanted to try new styles. I knew that there was a risk, always, when you try to do something very new. But I was inspired by some of the interesting myths that existed in Chinese cultural history. I knew I would be able to use those materials to develop the characters.

Which myths did you pull from?

There is the one interesting story about a man who can run very fast, like the wind. And he has a big ambition, that one day, he can catch the sun. But obviously, his story ends up badly, with death, because he runs too close to the sun. It was an interesting and naive story, almost like a fairy tale. But I think it contained the original energy of what I envisioned. That story which I just mentioned was written some 3,000 years ago.

Let's talk about the process from when you started developing the script to when you wrapped production.

It was very difficult. If you look at a lot of the films which have come out internationally from China, most of them are dramas. So, when I was presenting the idea that I wanted to do a sort of magical fantasy combined with a love story, with martial arts, it was really a big challenge. I spent nearly a year, working closely with my co-writer, to make sure that the story would work on the big screen. Then I think we took slightly longer than 6 months for the shooting. In order to find the best locations, we were very ambitious, and sometimes we'd travel from one far place to the other. Literally, from the north to the south, back to the north again. So there was a lot of time spent just on the way to the locations. Visually, you can see that the film is beautiful and I wanted to find good locations. Otherwise, I was going to have to use visual effects.

Was CGI used to create any of the locations?

Yes, because some of the locations we were trying to find only existed in my mind or dreams [laughs]. Like in the beginning of the film, where we see the Young Girl speaking to the Goddess, that location I couldn't find, so I shot all of that in front of the green screen.

This is the most CGI which you've worked with. The Emperor and the Assassin had a big scope, but not nearly as many computer-generated effects.

The Assassin probably only had 5 or 6 shots which were involved with visual effects, but this time we have almost 1,000.

How did that change your directing mindset?

Well, I don't know, but I did continue to criticize myself for having too many shots like that. We should have had a more limited number of effects shots. It was kind of tough for me to have too many.

The stampede scene with the Slave running in front of the buffalo was one of the most memorable, and visually complicated, of the film. How was it created?

We had a lot of the Tibetan Buffalo, which we took down to the lower lands. They're used to living in very high altitudes, so they become safe when they're in lower altitudes. We did three or four shots with them, and then we sent them back, because we didn't want them to lose their lives. Then we had to animate almost everything with the computer. I also worked with 1,000 soldiers as extras on that scene, so combined with all the moves it was quite a difficult scene to shoot.

Was it only in the editing room, when everything was put together, that you had any idea if it worked at all?

Right. On the set, I had no idea. I just thought, "Oh my god, this is difficult." I was very nervous and anxious about how it would look visually at the end of the day, but I had no clue at all until we were totally done.

What other scenes stood out as your greatest challenges on the film?

The fight between the Snow Wolf (Liu Ye) and the Duke of the North was very difficult. Doing those shots with wires. Although, in the film, the shots last less than 10 seconds, they easily took 14-15 hours to do. And that's tough.

Had you worked with wires before?

No, this was my first time. It was really a big change. I have to say that if I do a martial arts film in the future, I don't know what I will do [in terms of wires]. It's a challenge.

You had movie star leads from Korea (Jang Don-Gun) and Japan (Hiroyuki Sanada), as well as China. Were the language and cultural barriers a significant challenge on the film?

It wasn't that difficult. It's always been my dream to work with the best talents from different countries in Asia. I don't mean that politically, but if you look at the history of these three countries, it's very complicated. I think at least that if we show we can work together as artists, when the politicians are fighting against each other, we'll show what we can do. We'll show our dream of a peaceful future for Asia. There were cultural differences, sure, when we were working. It was like the UN, with interpreters all around. But I think they all understood their characters very well, so the languages weren't a huge problem for me.

This is the most expensive film made in China to date. Did you feel the need to justify that expense on the screen or did you just try to block it out of your mind?

Of course there is pressure. But I was okay, and I tried very hard to just concentrate on shooting the film and not to pay too much attention to the market. Obviously, though, the pressure was there and I had to deal with it on a day-to-day business. But I think if you look at the film, you can understand why so much money was spent. Still, compared to American studio films, The Promise would be a lower-budgeted film. Around 30 million dollars. But by Chinese standards, that's considered very high.

My guess is that it would have cost 120 million or so here to shoot the equivalent of The Promise. This is the trimmed version being released here in the United States, which has lost almost 20 minutes. Do you think this version is stronger?

Well, I think I'm sort of losing my judgment, but I was told many times I should make a version simpler for North American audiences. I think that makes sense because there is always a culture difference between east and west. And if we can do something to help an audience understand the story better, why not?

There is a big theme in the film that life is partially predetermined by fate but through a lot of effort, fate can sometimes be changed. Is that a personal philosophy?

You can say that it's a personal philosophy, but you can also say that it's a part of Chinese culture. We're used to believing that there is a destiny above us that controls everything we do. I think that it's sort of believable, because even here in the west, you can't always get everything you want, although you may make a great effort towards that. And you don't know why. It's not logical. Basically, you should have your harvest if you work really hard in the field, but sometimes there are other things out of your control. This is sort of what's called destiny. But I think to believe in destiny means that you should encourage yourself more to continue to do the things you believe. And by continuing to do what you believe, you can challenge your destiny. Just like what we see in this film. The destiny for the Princess seems unchangeable, but through love and freedom, I think the two men help her to change her destiny.

Had you wanted to be a filmmaker prior to the Cultural Revolution, when you were forced to move to the countryside, or did that desire come much later?

I didn't want to be a filmmaker at all, at first, although my father was a famous filmmaker. I think the reason was that I didn't have any kind of concentration when I was a kid. I found it too boring to do a film, spending so much time on the set and all. And also, I was only a first-year student in middle school when the Cultural Revolution broke out. So I had no idea what was going on. So that's what happened. I think I confirmed that I wanted to be a film director only after I became a film student. Even before I went to the film school, I just said that I needed to be educated and I needed to find a way for myself to do something in the future. But it was after I saw so many classical movies from the west and from Japan and Russia, and some good films from China, that I decided I wanted to be a director.

What do you think of the term "Fifth Generation?" Does it mean something to you or is it just a label?

It means something. I think that the directors from my generation all shared the same backgrounds and experiences during the Cultural Revolution. Then eventually, we became a small group of people who wanted to try to do something completely different from the past. We wanted to touch on the very sensitive subject matter of the society and to also develop a style of the cinema language. So that's why this group of people were so different, and special, from other generations.

You've spoken about one day perhaps wanting to do a film about the Cultural Revolution.

I want to do that, not because I try to be political or anything, but because there are so many strong and beautiful stories about human nature from that period that need to be told. But we want to wait until the time comes when we can just do it, and I don't know how long that will be.

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