00;00;02;18 - 00;00;35;26

Jonathan Hafetz

Hi, I'm Jonathan Hafetz and welcome to Law on Film, a podcast that explores the rich connections between law and film. Law is critical to many films. Film and turn tells us a lot about the law. In each episode, we'll examine a film that's noteworthy from a legal perspective. What legal issues does the film explore? What does it get right about the law and what does it get wrong?

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Jonathan Hafetz

And what does the film teach us about the law, and about the larger social and cultural context in which it operates? This episode we look at Chinatown, the 1974 neo noir crime thriller directed by Roman Polanski from a screenplay by Robert Towne, based loosely on the Owens Valley Water Wars in Los Angeles from the early 20th century. The film follows private investigator J.J. Jake Gettys played by Jack Nicholson, as he pursues a series of leads that take him into the dark underbelly of power and corruption in 1930s Los Angeles, a woman claiming to be a villain, mole Ray, initially hires Gettys to follow her husband Hollis, whom she suspects of infidelity.

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Jonathan Hafetz

The woman, however, has been hired to pose as Maury when the real Evelyn Mulroy, played by Faye Dunaway, sees photos of her husband and a young woman published in the newspapers. She threatens to sue Gettys. Gettys decides to investigate and discovers that Evelyn Mowbray's wealthy father, No cross, played by John Houston, had Hollis, his former business partner and the superintendent and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, killed.

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Jonathan Hafetz

When Hollis learned of Cross's plan to force farmers in the Northwest Valley to sell their land by cutting off their irrigation water and then purchasing their land through dummy syndicates on the cheap, with the aim of developing the land into valuable Los Angeles real estate. Ross also dumped city water during a drought to win public support for a bond issue on dam and aqueduct construction, which Hollis had opposed on safety grounds.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Geddes, meanwhile, learns that the young woman he falsely suspected of having an affair with is Evelyn's sister and daughter, the product of Evelyn's rape by Kross when she was 15. While Geddes ultimately unravels the mystery, he is unable to stop the powerful Noah Cross from achieving his goals or prevent the tragic fate that awaits Evelyn. My guest to talk about this venerated New Hollywood era film is Professor John Walton.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Professor John Walton is an author, sociologist, and historian who lives and works in Carmel Valley, California. John received a PhD from UC Santa Barbara and taught for many years at UC Davis as Distinguished Professor, and now serves as emeritus there. John has studied and written about the water wars mounted by the communities of California's Eastern Sierra in response to the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

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Jonathan Hafetz

His work on the Owens Valley Water Wars also includes a study of the film Chinatown, which provides a fictionalized account of his events that affected popular perceptions then and now. John has also developed these ideas into his book The Legendary Detective The Private Eye in Fact and Fiction, which describes how private detectives and agencies became a major industry devoted largely to labor espionage.

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Jonathan Hafetz

While through the efforts of the culture industries via mystery stories, pulp fiction, radio and film became an enduring legend. John, welcome to law and film. It's great to have you on to talk about Chinatown.

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John Walton

My pleasure.

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Jonathan Hafetz

So can you talk a little bit more about the historical context for this 1974 movie?

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John Walton

The context for the film really isn't so much the historical as it's the, neo noir novel, particularly the Raymond Chandler, books. So the screenplay by Robert Towne, as you said, classic screenplay, one that's still taught in film schools, and that the narrative structure of a Raymond Chandler novel based in L.A. and then reads the history of the Owens Valley through that narrative.

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John Walton

So that's the principal context, is the literary one adapted to film. The historical context, of course, is the, Owens Valley, which, is not a designated place. It's an area of the eastern Sierra or eastern California, two people. Another is in eastern California, but eastern California is the east side of the Sierra mountains that extends or depending on where, perhaps 100 miles to the Nevada border and between the, Sierra Nevada, Mount Whitney, opposite the Allen's Valley, which is the highest mountain in continental U.S. to the eastern Nevada border.

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John Walton

There's another mountain range called the White Mountains, and the Owens Valley is formed between those two ranges and extends perhaps 150 miles from the northern part to where it spreads out into the desert. So the significance of the Owens Valley is it is a great source of water, natural runoff from the Sierras and kind of groundwater precipitates in that direction.

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John Walton

And, of course, the water is a major resource which eventually was, came to the understanding of certain officials in Los Angeles that this abundance of water might be tapped, and transported through a major project to Los Angeles in order to enable the development of Los Angeles real estate population. So the story simply is an onion of particular popular culture, narrative style, and a natural resource, an environmental phenomenon and an environmental struggle.

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John Walton

Because what ultimately came out about, the Owens Valley, a con salaam was the resistance to the export of that water from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles. So in a nutshell, that's the combination of historical and, literary elements that make the whole story.

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Jonathan Hafetz

And so the film, as you describe, makes some adaptations to the history. What are a couple of the most key changes that the film makes, historically speaking?

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John Walton

Well, this is the fun part because there's so many changes in the reality. And as I'll get to later, the way that reality feeds back on the present tends to become a matter of speculation and exposé. But there are several. First place, the struggle over the export of water began in 1905. The film is based in the 1930s, I believe there's, captions in 1937, in the film, really tell tale dating.

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John Walton

The scene of the film is, Jake Jerry's sitting in a City of Los Angeles council meeting, and he's really in the sports section, and the headline is Seabiscuit Wins. Seabiscuit was a famous horse that was running at Santa, needed a racetrack in the late 1930s and early 1940s. There's the film and the era. So that's the biggest transformation and change in the time changing to the time, really, which is coincidentally with Raymond Chandler and with the mystery novels of the 1930s and 40s.

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John Walton

So that's one change. Then. The other, of course, is the change of place. The struggle over the water took place in this Owens Valley area of the Eastern Sierra and, in Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, where the film is set not in orange groves, is depicted. And and they found that in an agriculture of the Owens Valley.

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John Walton

So that moves it to L.A.. The actors are largely different. There was no private detective prominent in the actual story. They weren't private investigators. They were hired by the city to watch what the Owens Valley people were doing, but they didn't play a decisive role in the outcome of those events. So, Private Eye is inserted there again, for the sake of the narrative, the actors in the real drama were leaders of this so unsavory community and raised to resistance to the, building of the aqueduct, which ultimately transports water them and figures from the city of Los Angeles.

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John Walton

A bit of a tangent here, and that is that in the film and in much popular culture, a central figure is the character of a man named Mo Ray in the film. But in reality, Mulholland, who was the great engineer who built the aqueduct. Mulholland was not really a figure in the drama that he was played, as in the film, but he was an engineer that supervised the building of the actors rather than fiction becomes people always referring to Mulholland as the evil genius that stole the water from oh, in spite of him, it wasn't him.

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John Walton

He was an engineer, quite a, accomplished fellow. He was an Irish immigrant from Belfast who came to Los Angeles and went to work for the then private water company, learned the entire water system of Los Angeles and rose, creating the chief engineer of the Department of Water and Power. So a formidable figure, but not the one who played the kind of role that that film shows.

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John Walton

All right. So that's another change. They go on and on. And the film, of course, depicts a conspiracy of developers, or at least a conspiracy headed by Noah across this John Houston character to buy the properties that would come with water rights, which then would allow the city to expropriate that water. In fact, it wasn't a conspiracy at all.

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John Walton

It was done openly and actually, with the support of many civic minded Los Angeles people, especially powerful people. A bit of a coincidence in name, says the Chandler family owned the LA times, newspaper, not Raymond Chandler related, but a powerful family. And they, along with the, figures in the water department, were the ones who were active in this public campaign to, find issues that would support the building of the aqueduct.

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John Walton

So the lack of a conspiracy in the, actual development of the aqueduct and their project was key to the ambitions of Los Angeles, historically to develop very much behind the efforts to, have Mulholland to build the aqueduct and bring the water. So there were no murders that ever took place. And the real story, although there are two in the film, first of all, Ray and later of his daughter, not exactly a murder, but, police killing accidentally.

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John Walton

So those are a whole series of differences between the historical developments and the way the film portrays them.

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Jonathan Hafetz

So interesting. And, you know, in a way, you describe it. It was still a story in real life and the history of power and money, but it sounds like, you know, it wasn't conspiratorial in the real Los Angeles or in the Dark Shadows. It was right out in the open. And I think all those adaptations were part of the way of kind of making this a crime thriller and making the private eye central.

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Jonathan Hafetz

So just kind of shifting to the. But I figure, you know, they talk about this in your book, The Legendary Detective, which I recommend to anyone who's interested in the genre. It's fantastic book. And you talk about the private investigator in popular culture and how it changed over time. It's almost, almost like a separate story to understand the film.

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Jonathan Hafetz

So can you guys just give a little snapshot of the development of the private eye in film and popular culture? And then where JJ it is Jake, it is the Jack Nicholson character finally fits when we get to the 1970s.

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John Walton

The private detective in the United States, different history from, oh, there were parallel and earlier developments in England and France is one that's connected with the labor movement. The famous Pinkerton Agency began and 1850s as a protection service for the railroads. There were train robberies by, bunch, Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, also Jesse James. They were, train robbers and the Pinkerton agents.

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John Walton

They came into existence at the behest of the railroads to protect their shipping not only from train robbers, but from employees. They were afraid that the employees would go for the mails. So. And Pinkertons came in to surveil that and to chase the robbers when they could. So the association between private detectives and development of that industry was largely around the labor movement.

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John Walton

And so more and more private detectives, with additional agencies being formed, many, many throughout the country, were infiltrating and surveilling the union movement to see what they were doing, and often to discourage or break the union. So many great stories of detectives becoming union members and labor spies, basically, and that industry and people don't really realize the extent that it was.

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John Walton

Here's industry. All the major corporations and hired detectives who sometimes had their own internal detectives. And this was the principal activity later and involves particularly at the end of the 1930s and the end of the depression, they there are labor laws passed which allow collective bargaining, which is where the labor spies were reported on as a nefarious activity until it becomes legal and when it becomes legal, then the detectives have no, business surveilling them and they turn to other things.

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John Walton

So the private detective is a occupation changes, and it moves much more into, to mostly controversy, infidelities fired upon, fortune hunters and then a big industry and insurance claims, you know, workman's compensation fakes and all of this and the development keeps going until it gets into industrial espionage and stealing patents and that sort of thing, until at the present is much more about the security, security and trade secrets and the interesting characteristic phenomenon is that Pinkertons ultimately were bought and they were by a firm in Sweden called Security Force.

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John Walton

And their whole business is industrial espionage and spies. That was the development of the course, the institutionalization of the idea. The private detective comes from this outpouring of popular culture, which is another long story. But to make it short, the agencies in their heyday of labor spying began a PR campaign to portray their work as something heroic and something beneficial.

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Dr. Johnathan Walton

So Pinkerton published a series of books about the detectives in the railroads that detectives in this and that, and that evolved into a kind of literature that then other authors took up because it was a popular genre. So a lot of the early novelists, many of them, but the most well-known figures and National Ham unto himself was a private detective for Pinkerton for a time certain.

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John Walton

And Raymond Chandler, and on and on that marks then the accompaniment of the evolution of the detective. So sidebar here I was invited to talk to a group called the Kaleka Alai, which is the California Association of Licensed Investing Actors, and I spoke to their annual dinner and meeting a lot of fun, really nice people. And they enjoy their work and they enjoy this man's all of the eye.

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John Walton

The work they do were background checks and insurance fraud and all that. Well, and of course, there were also some Hollywood scandalous figures that got there. The eyes exist today, but very different from their image. One final note there when Jake Geddes comes on and the opening of the film Chinatown is depicted in this scene in his office, as you mentioned, with a fake Mrs. Murray coming in and hiring his services.

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John Walton

And that scene is an exact, almost duplicate of the way The Maltese Falcon opens in the 1941 film, which was an direct portrayal of the action romance novel. Same thing. So this interplay of fiction and real kind of characters is pervasive.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah. So interesting. I mean, definitely a direct nod or reference to that scene, right? Where the woman comes in in Maltese Falcon to Sam Spade, Humphrey Bogart and his partner Archer, who's soon killed in like the next scene. And that sets off the plot. So interesting about the labor history, because I promise this question. Right. Clearly talk about Jake and his motivation, but he's clearly not working for big powers, anything.

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Jonathan Hafetz

He's kind of resisting it. And there's actually a great little scene between Geddes and the acting head of the LA Water and Power department, who takes over after Hollis Ray is killed. And Jake is is trying to pressure him for information. And he tries to cozy up, saying, we'll go after we'll get together. We're going to put our finger on the big guys.

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Film Dialogue

Well, let's look at it this way more. I didn't want to build a dam. He had a reputation that was hard to get around. You decided to ruin it, and he found out you were dumping water at night. Then he was drowned.

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Film Dialogue

Just to get. Goodness, that's an outrageous accusation. I don't know what you're talking about.

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Film Dialogue

Well, Whitey Mahoney's over at the times. Will dumping thousands of gallons of water down the toilet in the middle of a drought. That's news.

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Film Dialogue

Just to get his,

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Film Dialogue

We're not anxious for this to get around that. We have been diverting a little water to irrigate orange groves in the Northwest Valley. As you know, the farmers out there have no legal rights to our water. We've been trying to help some of them out. Keeps them from going under. Naturally, when you divert water, there's a little runoff.

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Film Dialogue

Yeah. Little runoff. Where'd you say those groves were?

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Film Dialogue

In the Northwest.

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Film Dialogue

Valley. It's like saying they're in Arizona. This as good as my field man arrived.

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Film Dialogue

I can't give you the exact location.

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Film Dialogue

You're married, man. Arch. Yes. Hard working wife, kids? Yes. I don't want to nail you. I want to find out who put you up to it. I'll give you a few days to think about it. Call me, I can help. Who knows? Maybe we can put the whole thing off on a few big shots and you can stay the head of the department for the next 20 years.

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Jonathan Hafetz

It's a transformed role for the private eye in Chinatown. And I think probably even in a movie like Maltese Falcon, where they're really not working for the powerful forces.

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John Walton

Yeah, exactly. That's a great question because it's ambivalent. Jake. Hard boiled working man, which was the way the detectives were often portrayed. Are is he a crusader of some kind or at least say, writer of wrongs? And you get both sides, I think in the film, if anything, you didn't have that history in the real L.A. Chinatown.

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John Walton

I checked on that, and apparently he alludes to a woman in that history when he was with the police department who was hurt in some way that he couldn't help. And it sort of carries some guilt over that. But also, of course, he then takes out the cause of Faye Dunaway and the romance. So in many ways, he's representing her and develops a real dislike, moral outrage for the way she's been treated by her father.

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John Walton

So I think it's a bit of both. Okay. This has a certain respect for the obligation and the response similarly to his position, and that he's hired to do a job and so loyal to that job until his clients so as I say, I think it's a bit of, well, he's going to get the Don Quixote actions on his part actually confronts the power figures.

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John Walton

I mean, maybe it's deliberately ambivalent.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah, it's certainly ambivalent, right? He's a hardboiled detective, he's cynical. And, you know, he has the job to do, but he's sort of released from the job basically, as a limo, right? Tries to get him to drop the case.

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Film Dialogue

The point is, is I'm not in business to be loved, but I am in business and believing this is me. All right, whoever set your husband up, set me up. L.A. is a small town. People talk. I'm just trying to make a living. I don't want to become a local joke.

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Film Dialogue

Mr. Gaines, you've talked me into it. I'll drop the lawsuit.

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Film Dialogue

What?

00;22;07;18 - 00;22;13;01

Film Dialogue

I said I'll drop the lawsuit. So let's just drop the whole thing. Sugar lemon of a boat.

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Film Dialogue

This is Mo Mallory. Yes it is. Drop it. I better talk to your husband about this.

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Film Dialogue

Fine. What did I for? Harley seems to think you're an innocent man.

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Film Dialogue

Well, I've been accused of a lot of things before, Mrs. Mallory, but never that. Look, somebody has gone to a lot of trouble here in lawsuit or no lawsuit. I intend to find out. I'm not supposed to be the one who was caught with his pants down. So unless it's a problem, I'd like to talk to your husband.

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Film Dialogue

This would.

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Film Dialogue

Be a problem.

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Film Dialogue

And speak frankly. This is my break.

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Film Dialogue

You can stick. It is.

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Film Dialogue

Well, that little girlfriend, she was pretty in the cheap sort of way. Of course she's disappeared. Maybe they disappeared together.

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Film Dialogue

I suppose they did. How does that fit you?

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Film Dialogue

It's nothing personal.

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Film Dialogue

It's very personal. It couldn't be more personal business or an obsession with you, Jake.

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Jonathan Hafetz

It is. Continues to pursue it even at considerable professional and physical risk. I mean, he has his nose cut and the kind of an iconic scene slashed by Roman Polanski, right, in a cameo role, cuts his nose when he, Jake, is investigating what's going on with the water, but he refuses to drop it. Why? He gives some different explanations, but he follows it to the end, and it's built about why he does so.

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John Walton

There's another scene with him and John Houston, which, for those who don't know, California, Southern California, actually filmed on Catalina Island. That's where he had his first arena. And all that. But I think he gets a little pissed off the way John Houston is taunting him or saying, you know, this is the way of the world and, you know, you're not going to be able to do anything about it anyway.

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John Walton

You know, it's umbrage to that put down and go after John Houston's scheme for that reason.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah, that's a great scene with John Houston, who as you know, of course directed The Maltese Falcon. So another connection. You know, at one point you ask Jake asks John Houston when he finally has the information about what's going on, he confronts John Houston with the plot. He knows about his rape of his daughter, Evelyn, and he confronts John.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Houston asked him why you're so rich, you have millions of dollars, why? And John Houston responds about power.

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Film Dialogue

Got something I'd like to show you, Mr. Cross.

00;24;29;29 - 00;24;30;29

Film Dialogue

What is.

00;24;31;02 - 00;24;34;07

Film Dialogue

An obituary? Come in the screen. This light.

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Film Dialogue

I guess I can manage. So what does it mean.

00;24;37;29 - 00;24;50;19

Film Dialogue

That you killed Hollis Mallory right here? That part. You drown me, and you let these. Coroner's report shows Murray had salt water in his lungs.

00;24;50;22 - 00;24;56;09

Film Dialogue

I was always fascinated by types. You know what he used to say?

00;24;56;12 - 00;24;58;00

Film Dialogue

I'm the faintest idea.

00;24;58;03 - 00;25;14;15

Film Dialogue

That's where life begins. Sluice titles. You first come out here. He figured if you dump water into a desert sand and let it percolate down to the bedrock and stay there instead of evaporate the way it does most reservoirs, you only lose 20% instead of 70 or 80. He made this city.

00;25;14;20 - 00;25;16;11

Film Dialogue

And that's what you were going to do in the valley.

00;25;16;16 - 00;25;22;22

Film Dialogue

It's what I am doing. The bond issue passes Tuesday. There'll be $8 million to build an aqueduct in reservoir. I'm doing.

00;25;22;22 - 00;25;28;15

Film Dialogue

It's going to be a lot of irate citizens when they find out that they're paying for water, that they're not going to get.

00;25;28;18 - 00;25;36;09

Film Dialogue

Oh, that's all he can see. Mr. gates, if you bring the water to L.A. Or you bring L.A. To the water.

00;25;36;11 - 00;25;37;10

Film Dialogue

How are you going to do that?

00;25;37;15 - 00;25;41;02

Film Dialogue

By incorporating the valley into the city. Simple as that.

00;25;41;04 - 00;25;42;09

Film Dialogue

And what you worth.

00;25;42;11 - 00;25;44;17

Film Dialogue

I've no idea how much you want.

00;25;44;19 - 00;25;47;11

Film Dialogue

I just want to know what your worth. Over 10 million.

00;25;47;13 - 00;25;48;08

Film Dialogue

Of my ass.

00;25;48;15 - 00;25;53;12

Film Dialogue

Why are you doing it? How much better can you. What can you buy that you can already afford?

00;25;53;14 - 00;26;05;18

Film Dialogue

The future, Mr. gates. The future. Not. Where's the girl? I want the only daughter I've got left. You found out everything was lost to me a long time ago.

00;26;05;21 - 00;26;07;27

Film Dialogue

Who do you blame for that? Her.

00;26;07;29 - 00;26;19;07

Film Dialogue

I don't blame myself. It's you, Mr. Gates. Most people never have to face the fact. The right time, the right place. They're capable of everything.

00;26;19;10 - 00;26;27;03

Jonathan Hafetz

And so you're right. I think Jake is is really motivated to push back against this. And you made a kind of Don Quixote reference, like the tilt at this windmill.

00;26;27;05 - 00;26;50;22

John Walton

That's the important thing. There's another one where he discovers that the people in the rest home, retirement home are the people that are being listed as the purchasers of these lives. And that's really the moment in the film or in the real detective skill or the detectives breakthrough, comes.

00;26;50;25 - 00;26;59;14

Film Dialogue

That damn second job. What death? The one your husband opposed. They're conning LA into building it. But the water's not going to go to LA.

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Film Dialogue

It's coming right here to the valley.

00;27;02;02 - 00;27;18;09

Film Dialogue

Everything you can see, everything around us. I was at the Hall of Records today. In the last three months, Robert Knox's about 7000 acres. Emmett Till 12,000, Clarence Spear 5000. And Jasper Lamar Crabb, 25,000 acres.

00;27;18;11 - 00;27;19;21

Film Dialogue

Jasper Democrat.

00;27;19;22 - 00;27;20;17

Film Dialogue

You know.

00;27;20;20 - 00;27;22;17

Film Dialogue

I think I would have remembered.

00;27;22;20 - 00;27;34;20

Film Dialogue

Yeah. They're blowing these farmers out of their land and then picking it up for peanuts. You have any idea what this land would be worth? With a steady water supply? About 30 million more than they paid for it.

00;27;34;22 - 00;27;36;06

Film Dialogue

Hollis knew about this.

00;27;36;08 - 00;27;43;07

Film Dialogue

That's why he was killed. Jasper. Lamar Crabbe. Jasper. Lamar Crabbe.

00;27;43;09 - 00;27;46;19

Film Dialogue

We got it. We got it. But what is it a.

00;27;46;19 - 00;27;53;04

Film Dialogue

Memorial service was held at the Mar Vista end today for Jasper Lamar Crabbe. He passed away two weeks ago.

00;27;53;07 - 00;27;55;00

Film Dialogue

Was that unusual.

00;27;55;03 - 00;28;00;27

Film Dialogue

He passed away two weeks ago. And one week ago he bought the land. That's unusual.

00;28;00;29 - 00;28;13;23

Jonathan Hafetz

As he says they're taking the irrigation water from the farmers, forcing them to sell John Houston. No cross. Then using this dummy syndicate to buy up the land for peanuts. And then he's going to sell it and develop this into valuable real estate.

00;28;13;26 - 00;28;16;29

John Walton

That's when he discovers the whole scheme.

00;28;17;02 - 00;28;36;00

Jonathan Hafetz

What are the other things that's interesting in this movie? And, you know, it's in other, more private eye movies like Maltese Falcon is the relationship between the P.I., the investigator, and the police, right. Of course. Here, Jake, it is worked for the DEA for a period of time until something went deeply wrong in Chinatown. Now he's on his own.

00;28;36;00 - 00;28;50;11

Jonathan Hafetz

But there's this kind of uneasy relationship, and sometimes the P.I. becomes the suspect or is viewed as a kind of an accessory. So can you talk a little bit about the relationship between Jake? It is. And law enforcement?

00;28;50;13 - 00;29;46;14

John Walton

Well, actually, that's, as I say, convention and detective stories forever. Mystery stories in the US, which are largely about private detectives. The police are not as capable and as insightful and often or am not really pursuing justice, but pursuing a savage human interest. And it's the P.I. who is, you know, and that context and Quixote here, the reformed figure in Chinatown, because he in the case that he had been a member of the police force and, now views his old friend as not pursuing the case as saying there's a long history when the first, detectives were, created and historically it was in England and there it was a detective course, and it

00;29;46;14 - 00;30;23;12

John Walton

was added to the Metropolitan Police. So in Britain, because of greater strength of the labor movement and, greater resistance to Spain, detectives were sort of feared or resented force. And so the detective was instituted within the police departments, supposedly to make them more acceptable, more transparent. And the British line found much more portraying the police detective rather than the private detective, which is the model in the U.S..

00;30;23;14 - 00;30;45;01

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting he, get his relationship with the police get is is clearly a step or two steps ahead. I mean, he sees the larger picture. The police are just they're still at stage one. They think they're investigating some murder that was done out of, you know, romance, adultery based murder. And they just don't see the larger forces of power and money that are behind the larger crime here.

00;30;45;04 - 00;30;58;08

Jonathan Hafetz

The main officer is, not so bad as far as police go, honest as far as it goes. But he has to, Jenkins says he has to swim in the same sea as everybody else. So kind of operate in that world. Guinness gets very mad, when he has this confrontation.

00;30;58;10 - 00;31;14;20

Film Dialogue

He looks to me. Yeah. So what? How did you happen to have him? Either you tell me or I guess I don't know the answer. You must really think I'm stupid. Don't you get his? I don't think about it that much. But give me a day or two and I'll get back to you. And I'd like to go.

00;31;14;22 - 00;31;38;23

Film Dialogue

I want the other pictures. He's wet. Picture this broad hired you, not Devlin. Murray. Yeah, yeah. Somebody wanted to shake Murray down. She hired you. That's. How come you found out he was murdered? I heard it was an accident. Come on, get his. Want out? You think you're dealing with a bunch of assholes? Murray had salt water in his lungs.

00;31;38;26 - 00;31;58;02

Film Dialogue

You were following him day and night. You so killed him. You even took pictures of it. It was Evelyn, man Ray. And she's been paying you off like a slot machine ever since. You accusing me of extortion? Absolutely. I don't think I need a day or two. You're dumber than you think. I think you only that. But I wouldn't extort a nickel from my worst enemy as Goodbar.

00;31;58;02 - 00;31;59;22

Film Dialogue

That's where I draw the line.

00;31;59;24 - 00;32;02;01

Film Dialogue

I want the rest of the pictures, kiddies.

00;32;02;01 - 00;32;20;21

Film Dialogue

We're talking about accessory after the fact. Conspiracy and extortion. Minimum. What do you think, Evelyn Mallory knocked off her husband in the ocean and drag him up to a reservoir. Because she thought it would look more like an accident. Mo Ray was murdered. Moved because somebody didn't want his body found in the ocean. Why is that? You found out they were dumping water there.

00;32;20;23 - 00;32;23;07

Film Dialogue

That's what they were trying to cover up.

00;32;23;09 - 00;32;34;03

Jonathan Hafetz

So it's kind of interesting. Even though the private eye is outside the normal legal system, there is some moral code to some extent, like we're talking about before was getting a little you know, it's not entirely clear what drives him.

00;32;34;05 - 00;32;57;25

John Walton

And I think he would say the police part of that establishment is wedded to the Department of Water and Power and developers. And, you know, John Houston, the former owner of the water system, they're all, you know, yeah, alliance of people. And I'm sure you're getting to that last line in the movie where the good guy policeman, he says.

00;32;57;27 - 00;33;01;00

Film Dialogue

Yeah, I think it's Chinatown.

00;33;01;03 - 00;33;30;27

John Walton

Meaning it's opaque, the power. It's something that we can't penetrate or understand or affect in any way. And that's the kind of the mysterious East stereotype that Robert Towne brings. And we didn't say much about Robert Towne, who is a screenplay writer and, L.A. and he grown up with the whole story of the so-called rape of the Owens and the stealing their water and all that.

00;33;30;29 - 00;34;01;20

John Walton

And that's all that he knew about the historical events and met him once at a conference. And, I asked him about that. And he grew up like I did in L.A., you know, hearing these stories. And I asked him and I said, well, if he ever gone up to Owens Valley and looked at the aqueduct. No, never did he say never set eyes on a little town that built the story from the Legends Road.

00;34;01;20 - 00;34;25;25

John Walton

It has that kind of mystery story. I didn't realize that Roman Polanski had actually commissioned him to write the story into The Great Gatsby. I mean, there's story I've read, and he thought about it and he said he couldn't do it. I didn't have any inspiration, but he could write this kind of story. So then landslide, write that one and we'll look at the screenplay.

00;34;25;28 - 00;34;32;07

John Walton

So that's the kind of interesting historical accident, I feel like, over how the whole film came about.

00;34;32;07 - 00;35;01;00

Jonathan Hafetz

And yeah, I guess I'm fortunate one, I mean, maybe would have made a great, Great Gatsby movie, but Chinatown is just so iconic as you describe. Chinatown itself operates as a metaphor for sort of mystery and power and corruption. I have multiple levels. It's referenced at various points kind of throughout the movie, you know, and even before the final climactic line, you know, Jake Chinatown, you know, various points it's referenced standing in for this sort of mystery of power and corruption operates behind the scene.

00;35;01;02 - 00;35;28;17

Jonathan Hafetz

One of the things that's so interesting about your work is in your book and in your article as well, especially on the film, because you have the history of what Owens Valley Water Wars. Then you have the adaptation or the changes that were made to tell the story that was told by Robert Towne in Chinatown, the film. And then you have the kind of history of what happens after and how Chinatown affects perceptions of the water wars and power and money in LA, which we're alluding to before.

00;35;28;17 - 00;35;33;13

Jonathan Hafetz

But maybe you could talk a little bit of more of that, because that's kind of a fascinating third chapter of the story.

00;35;33;16 - 00;35;59;11

John Walton

Yeah, right. That's the real kicker in the way I said, you have a lot of people who, bemoan the, falsification of the history. They should get it right, and they should listen to the historians and not put out movies like that that sell a 29 million and that era. But yeah, I was talking to a teller the other day and, somebody mentioned the water wars, so that's very nice.

00;35;59;13 - 00;36;25;22

John Walton

Yeah. They made a movie about that. Couldn't remember the name of it. I told him my name was changed. Well, he represents a whole era African people who think Chinatown portrays what happened. And not only what happened with what happened egregiously. These poor farmers were cheated out of their land and their water and their communities. In fact, not all of that happened.

00;36;25;29 - 00;37;16;26

John Walton

The Owens Valley resistance movement won some victories, which are pretty remarkable given who were they? Opponents. But Chinatown became the way people understand the injustice that was done by L.A. to these people and that, you know, recognition of the legitimacy of the cause of the people who were expropriated has played into even supported, ideologically, culturally, the movement of resistance, which has gone on from actually in 1905 till now, was 119 years of continuous representation of the interests of the Eastern Sierra people.

00;37;16;26 - 00;37;50;11

John Walton

First it was people who were residents. Some of them were farmers, but most of them were merchants and bankers. And so today it's the environmentalists. And so the whole Owens Valley story became the cause of the environmental movement. You know, one of the big successes for the environmental movement in that it has brought to heel in some important way is the city of Los Angeles in restoring water to and that is taking the less basically to these Owens communities.

00;37;50;11 - 00;37;56;18

John Walton

So it's a great story instead of David and Goliath and qualified. Oh, well, he's there.

00;37;56;18 - 00;38;30;10

Jonathan Hafetz

I think you say it's the story. You know, most audiences who don't really know the real history, the L.A. water story becomes the story of the film Chinatown, that becomes the LA water story, and that becomes kind of this urban history in the realm of popular culture, as you write about. And ironically, this story, as told through popular culture in the film, is used by environmental activists, Citizens Alliance in the 70s and 80s and succeeds or helps advocates or activists give back to Owens Valley some share of natural resources, community control, and local dignity.

00;38;30;10 - 00;38;41;04

Jonathan Hafetz

So it's not the original story. It's like the modified story as told in Chinatown, then sort of launches this new wave of activism so fascinating. Tell us kind of what happens with popular culture.

00;38;41;07 - 00;39;12;02

John Walton

Changes of Oscar Wilde in terms of your interest in LA to the movement throughout, not only later, but throughout made use of public land laws, which include a water district to form and then operate as a public body, which could in some ways stand on an equal footing with employees legally with the Department of Water and Power in the city, and there were further court injunctions collapsing.

00;39;12;02 - 00;39;45;25

John Walton

A lot of history courts then limited what a city could do, but a ban on export of water for certain period of time, legally because of suits that were brought. And ultimately it's the passage of the Environmental Quality Act, which is followed by California's version of that requiring an environmental impact assessment of projects like an aqueduct that in law has to be done and then provides the contending parties with the templates that they have to observe.

00;39;46;02 - 00;40;04;05

John Walton

So I think that's true of many environmental struggles, that the decisive moment comes first with the mounting of this public protest, this movement, and then its institutionalization and LA Environmental Quality Act.

00;40;04;12 - 00;40;30;21

Jonathan Hafetz

So interesting, you know, because in the film especially, law is kind of powerless to stop what's happening. Right? You have sort of the formalities of the law. You have the public hearing, you have the public bond issue, the aqueduct, you have the sale, this quote unquote, sale under law to these dummy corporations. All the formalities are observed. But in fact, it's just raw, naked power and ambition of no across that's operating and law enforcement as well.

00;40;30;21 - 00;40;41;01

Jonathan Hafetz

It's actually, I think, Faye Dunaway character's line when someone says something about the police, she says to get the police to stop him, she's like, he owns the police. He owns everything and put that gun away.

00;40;41;01 - 00;40;44;02

Film Dialogue

Let the police handle this. He owns the police.

00;40;44;08 - 00;41;02;12

Jonathan Hafetz

There's law, but it's in the control of this sort of all powerful or super powerful tycoon who is just bent on amassing as much power as he got, not just at the political level, at the public level, but there's the subplot, which I think is probably worth touching on, too, because, you know, he commits this horrific crime with respect to his daughter, right?

00;41;02;12 - 00;41;14;04

Jonathan Hafetz

He rapes his daughter, Faye Dunaway character, who then has the child. And he actually then attempts to justify this to get is where it talks about how power is its own justification and right.

00;41;14;04 - 00;41;25;27

John Walton

And thing is the incest and says in reality, an incestuous politics. So that's the kind of powerful symbol of a conspiracy the town selected to use.

00;41;25;27 - 00;41;32;26

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah, exactly. And operates on both levels and a level of corruption, a powerful movie, even if you know it's a fictionalized account in many respects.

00;41;33;01 - 00;42;09;09

John Walton

Well, it's a great story, like you said on many levels, continues to work for environmental causes. There's another phenomenon that, few people would recognize, but, you know, drive to Nevada somewhere in the sciences. Remember the Owens Valley groups that are trying to take water from central Nevada aquifers and export it to Las Vegas? And this phrase, Owens Valley stand in for that kind of legitimate action is, you know, part of the culture.

00;42;09;11 - 00;42;24;23

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah. And it also resonates, too, from that and, and from the other end, because, you know, one of the interesting things is basically, Jake, get access to the cross. You know, how are you going to get all this water to LA or how are you going to get this land? You know, it's out in the sticks. It's far away.

00;42;24;25 - 00;42;30;10

Jonathan Hafetz

Maybe not as far as it was in reality, he says, we're not going to bring the water to LA, we're going to bring LA to the.

00;42;30;10 - 00;42;38;08

John Walton

Water, which you could only do if you're talking about the San Fernando Valley. You know, you could move L.A. up through the Mojave Desert.

00;42;38;10 - 00;42;54;00

Jonathan Hafetz

Just going to change the zoning, right? We're just going to make this part of the L.A. County, not L.A. city. We're gonna to make this part L.A. County, kind of another way that this sort of legal tool, they're just going to kind of annex this territory, and all of a sudden this is now going to be o Los Angeles because he says, you know, why aren't people going to be mad about this?

00;42;54;00 - 00;42;59;20

Jonathan Hafetz

He's well, basically, no, because now Los Angeles will be getting water. We're just going to change the borders of L.A..

00;42;59;23 - 00;43;09;24

John Walton

Yeah. The L.A., boosters were very much behind the project. So metaphorically again, John Houston was right about it.

00;43;09;27 - 00;43;21;08

Jonathan Hafetz

I guess in reality, it happened, as you were saying before, much more in public, whereas in the film it's much more of this dark in the shadows type of conspiracy, all the machinations that were going on.

00;43;21;10 - 00;43;48;16

John Walton

And all these great scenes remind you how rich the movie is with his stopwatch, his under the tires of the car to find out when the dumping of water took place. Little gimmicks like that, as I say, and I think the ironic takeaway is that film designed to portray intrigue and injustice, in fact, works in reality and eventually in the opposite way.

00;43;48;22 - 00;44;25;21

John Walton

It's a, what we call weapons of the week resources of those who are seemingly powerless but may not be powerless without romanticizing the power of the developers, and so important to remember that there are sometimes resources. How are they expropriated? Tell you a quick story. One great sociology book is called Society of Captives, and it's about a new Jersey state prison, a city of a years ago.

00;44;25;24 - 00;44;53;15

John Walton

And it starts out with the idea that what could be more authoritarian and tyrannical than the prison warden and the guards, they can do anything they want, sometimes do. So they dominate these people. And, the book goes on to say, well, no, I mean, there's something called the defects of total power. And what's that? Well, there's 50 guards and 5000 prisoners.

00;44;53;21 - 00;45;30;14

John Walton

They're not all powerful. The only way that they can maintain their livelihood and their jobs, their institution, is through concessions, through making allowances for eliciting cooperation. They say you behave and don't riot. And we'll do this. We'll let you have more freedom on your wards. I worked during some graduate school in the Los Angeles County Juvenile home, and then they unit where the kids weren't in camp, but when in juvenile hall itself.

00;45;30;17 - 00;45;54;14

John Walton

And we did exactly. Then we said, all right, we know how you smoking in the back and you're not supposed to, but we're not going to crack down on that if you march to the chow line when starting a fight and all manner of concessions like that in a tacit negotiation. So there were always those limits of total power.

00;45;54;14 - 00;46;14;25

John Walton

And that, I think, has brought out in the reality of the China, I'm sorry, where the exposé and the way a literary exposé provides that kind of resource for people like the chap I met is. Oh, yeah, I remember that film about that, the nasty Things that city did I read names?

00;46;14;28 - 00;46;31;14

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah. I mean, this story, when you look at it in the context and the multiple layers of ironies, which it operates, it's a fascinating movie. It's fascinating history. But as you said, there's the kind of the post film history of the way the film was adopted and used, which is also a really important and interesting story.

00;46;31;17 - 00;46;37;11

John Walton

Well, Jonathan, I enjoyed talking to you and I look forward to hearing the podcast.

00;46;37;14 - 00;46;54;12

Jonathan Hafetz

John, it's been great to have you on and just wonderful to hear you talk about the film and your work. And I encourage people to check out your article on the film and the Owens Valley Water Wars, and your book on the private eye, which is, you know, important for understanding Chinatown, but also for understanding so many Hollywood films.

00;46;54;13 - 00;46;57;14

Jonathan Hafetz

Film noir, neo noir. So thanks so much, John.

00;46;57;16 - 00;46;59;16

John Walton

You're welcome. And keep in touch.

00;46;59;18 - 00;47;00;06

Jonathan Hafetz

I will.