"A New York Treasure" --Village Voice

Million Dollar Movie

john-huston

“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.”–Robert Towne.

Cinephilia and Beyond on Chinatown.

One comment

1 rbj   ~  Apr 15, 2014 11:29 am

Day-um, rained out already. Got about an inch and a half of the white stuff on the ground. Crazy weather this week.

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"This ain't football. We do this every day."
--Earl Weaver