'Chinatown' writer inspired by memories of L.A. 35TH ANNIVERSARY OF 'CHINATOWN'

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A couple of powerful flashbacks to the Los Angeles of his childhood persuaded Robert Towne to write "Chinatown."

One flashback came during a walk along the ocean in the early 1970s, when the quality of the light, the sea air and the smell of eucalyptus sent him into a reverie. "I remember thinking, 'I'm 11 years old again,' " Towne says, on the phone from his Los Angeles home to talk about the 35th anniversary of "Chinatown."

The other transporting moment was prompted by a newspaper article that focused on the 1930s and '40s Los Angeles of crime novelist Raymond Chandler and included photos of a period convertible at historic buildings.

"I'm very susceptible to the sights and sounds of the city," says Towne, who will turn 75 in November. "I realized all those parts of the city that I have loved and missed so much were still there to be had on film. I just needed the story."

He found his Los Angeles story in Oregon, where he'd gone with his friend and former roommate, an up-and-coming actor named Jack Nicholson, to appear in Nicholson's directorial debut, "Drive, He Said," released in 1971. Looking for a way to pass the time, Towne read Carey McWilliams' "Southern California: An Island on the Land," published in 1946. Still in print - "There's never been a better book about Southern California," Towne says - it contains a chapter about Los Angeles' infamous water scandal at the beginning of the last century, when shady if legal dealings allowed a core group of already wealthy men who controlled Los Angeles to become even richer by diverting water from the Owens Valley, 230 miles to the northeast.

Towne had his setting and his subject, and he and Nicholson wanted to make a classic murder mystery with contemporary sensibilities, a modern noir.

"Detective stories are always about something exotic, jewel-encrusted," Towne says. "I wanted to do something that was as common as what's right in front of you when you turn on the spigot." He further tweaked conventions of the genre by making his main character, a former police officer turned private detective named J.J. Gittes (a role written for and played by Nicholson), a brash, self-satisfied boor who dresses like a high-class pimp and specializes in divorce work. Many critics and film-industry experts call "Chinatown" the finest detective movie ever made, and some say it is the best film of the 1970s - a decade that also included the first two "Godfather" pictures. And Towne won an Oscar for his screenplay, the only Academy Award the film received despite 11 nominations.

Towne's original version of the screenplay was twice as long as the one used to shoot the movie, the result of condensing, editing and other streamlining done by Towne and director Roman Polanski. Polanski came up with the idea to end the film with a death in Chinatown. Though Towne so strongly disagreed with Polanski about the ending that he left the project briefly, today he concedes the director knew what he was doing.

"It was the right call," Towne says.

The remastered special edition of "Chinatown" will be released on Oct. 6.