Oscar Got it Right

Best Original Screenplay in 1974

Robert Towne, Chinatown

aka Chinatown - in 10 Pictures

“All right, Curly. Enough’s enough. You can’t eat the Venetian blinds. I just had them installed on Wednesday.” (Jack Nicholson as Jake J. Gittes) (Click below for the rest)

“I’m not in business to be loved, but I am in business.” (Jake J. Gittes)

“You’re a very nosy fella, Kitty cat, huh? You know what happens to nosy fellas? Huh? No? Wanna guess? Huh? No? OK. They lose their noses.” (director Roman Polanski in a cameo)

“OK, go home, but in case you’re interested, your husband was murdered. Somebody has been dumping thousands of tons of water from the city’s reservoirs and we’re supposed to be in the middle of a drought. He found out about it and he was killed. There’s a water-logged drunk in the morgue, involuntary manslaughter if anybody wants to take the trouble which they don’t. It seems like half the city is trying to cover it all up which is fine by me. But Mrs. Mulwray, I goddamn near lost my nose. And I like it. I like breathing through it. And I still think you’re hiding something.” (Jake J. Gittes)


“Of course I’m respectable. I’m old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.” (John Huston as Noah Cross)


“Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can’t already afford?" (Jake J. Gittes)


“Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown” (Joe Mantell as Lawrence Walsh)
-my vote for best last line ever.


But it’s not just the razor sharp dialogue. It the creative ways Nicholson/Gittes goes about the business of solving the case:

1) Placing two watches on either side of a car tire to see when a person leaves.

2) Kicking out a tail-light so he can follow a car.

Plus it’s got one of the best revelations ever (given by Faye Dunaway – which I won’t spoil here), Unlike the great last scene revelations in Citizen Kane and The Sixth Sense, this reveal occurs at the beginning of the third act.

Note: Pretty good monologue by Nicholson above. He gets bonus points for delivering it in one uninterrupted take.