 Hello, welcome to Soloid Mirror. I'm your hostess, Betty St. LeVoe. Baby is a cold outside of day, which is one of the reasons why I wear a hat. But here on Soloid Mirror, we're once again going to Sunny LA. This is part three of our City of Angels series. It's here at Soloid Mirror. So today we're going to start off with the hauntingly beautiful Chinatown, written by Robert Town, produced by Bob Evans and directed by Roman Polanski. And of course, if you've seen the movie, know that it's Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, James Hong, Bruce Glover, Crispin Glover's father, John Hillerman, who even though he played the Butler there whatever on Magnum PI, back in the day with the British accent, he's actually from Arkansas. And some other people will mention, including our director, who did a Hitchcock turn in the movie. Okay, so I showed Duxbury Posse this movie years ago and they hated it, like hated it, because it wasn't just the ending. It was, it's a pretty gritty movie. And this is a side of LA that, as we've seen in our other movies that we've watched, Concern City of Angels, the movies consist of power, greed, the seedy underside, and just survival stuff. And this movie has all of that and more. So Jack Nicholson plays J.J. Gittis. He's a detective and a Mrs. Evelyn Mulray hires him because she believes that her husband is stepping out on her. After tailing the man for a day or two, he happens to be the water commissioner of LA, he goes into the office and an inappropriate moment for him is introduced to the real Mrs. Evelyn Mulray. The first Mrs. Mulray is played by Diane Ladd, who I have a soft spot for. And the second real Mrs. Mulray is played by Faye Dunnway, who gives, of course, a stunning over-the-top performance. All right, so let's start off with how this movie was made and its conception. So basically, Robert Towne, who has done plots like this before he's an excellent, excellent scriptwriter, he'd grown up in the City of Angels. And he read a book called Southern California Country, An Island on the Land by Casey McWilliams. And he said that the book changed his life. And he started to look at LA in a different way, not just as his hometown, but in discovering the history, he discovered a lot about himself, the city, and that he knew that he wanted to write about it one day and make a movie about it. So, pardon Parcel, with this is that a Hungarian vice cop explained to him that because of the many dialects and gangs in Chinatown, the LAPD didn't know if they were helping or hindering those who asked or who did not ask for help. And one of the best quotes in this movie is, you may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don't. So, as I was watching this movie, I've been watching it, I don't look at it as an innocent 30-something, wow, great mystery movie. Now I look at it 20 years later as it's chilling. And this movie sort of isn't for the scrimmage, but it's still great entertainment. But it does view the City of Angels in a totally different way. The component is history here. So, some of the characters, the water commissioner as a good heart is a combination, historically speaking, of both the good and bad parts of water and power back then. And then the big bad guy who's played by one of the city elders is a combination of the combined who made the desert happen so that the city could survive. So, it's a pretty intense plot. Now, Mr. Towne wrote this movie with Jack in mind. They were all friends who were hanging out then. And Roman Polanski wanted to do a project with Jack and then he found out about this, so then he was on board. And of course, Mr. Evans was friends with all of them. So, when you have a combination of these four personalities making a movie, there's that special, special magic that does not happen all the time. This movie is well respected by film historians and national archives alike. What isn't respected is Mr. JJ gets, he can't get a break. The LAPD doesn't like him because he used to work for them. And I think he was an honest cop. But if you look at, get his character, he must have done some underhanded stuff. He's sort of slimy. And then who else can he get respect by? He's not getting any respect from those rich folks who've hired him to find out what the water commissioner is up to. And there's somebody else. I can't remember, but it'll come up. So, anyway, Bob Evans was awed by Polanski's genius. If you ever watch the great movie, The Kid Stays in the Picture, it's Bob's documentary narrative about his life. And the way that he compliments Roman, they all stayed rosemary's baby together, he loved the man. He totally loved them. They had a falling out, though, after this movie was completed. And as I tried to find information on the falling out, I guess I wasn't just looking hard enough, but I can find anything anyway. They had a falling out. And I guess that happens in Hollywood too, even though you can be really good friends. So they'veverted on decision concerning the ending. So, let's talk about part of the plot. All right, so the water in LA is being the waters being diverted to towards LA, but it's also being diverted, I think, towards the ocean. And historically, what happened was the man who built the St. Francis Dam, the day that he inspected it, it blew. And it was the largest man-made disaster in the history of California. It's still the largest. So in the movie, they substitute the St. Francis Dam for Vanderlip. And then Mulray is sort of being forced by his father-in-law, Noah Cross, who's played by John Huston, who he owns Water and Power, to build the Alto Vallejo Dam, but he doesn't want to build it because the slope is one to two. Farmers won't be able to get water in a certain place. It's a very messy political situation. So as I was watching this movie, I realized that I was going to have to crash courts in the history of LA. So I sort of have to skip that part. But the famous historian Tom, let's see, I've got a couple books here that mention this. There's the, oh, Tom Anderson wrote a book called Los Angeles Plays Itself. And he relates that the time period that the movie's in 1938, all this actually happened in 1905. And in the movie, the San Fernando Valley Farmers had to sell their land cheap. In real life, it was the Owens Valley's farmers. So he tries to explain to the viewer that this is the, and I think that I've got the right author, the movie's subtext is the history of LA. And a lot of people will think, oh, this actually really did happen. It's not a documentary, but some of the facts actually did occur. So if you want to find out more in real life, please read Cadillac Desert by Mark Reisner in 1984. And they did a four part documentary on it in 1997. It's called Cadillac Desert. Please read Los Angeles Plays Itself by Tom Anderson. And that book by, I'll roll over in a minute, but that other book that I just mentioned that Mr. Tan Red. So Mollery in the movie is explaining the bedrock is faulty. The slopes are two and a half to one. He is not going to make the same mistake twice. And he gets into hot water with the powers that be because he does not want to build that dam. Okay. So then he has to deal with Noah Cross, Mr. Gettys, Jack Knookson, the detective has deals with Noah Cross, who not only owns well, water and power, he sort of owns Mr. Malway and his daughter Evelyn Malway. So as we see John Huston's performance in this movie, he is reptilian. He's amiable. And he's really, really, really, really a bad dude. He's up there top 25 villains. No problem. He makes like top five. All right. He's not a good guy, which is one of the reasons why Duxbury Posse did not like the movie. They were extremely uncomfortable watching Mr. Huston do his thing. Now, Faye Dunway, she's beautiful. This movie garnered 11 Academy Award nominations. Faye and Jack were both nominated and Mr. Towne got a best Oscar for best screenplay. Okay. So years ago, Faye Dunway, she's doing a phone conversation with George Wayne who does interviews for Vandy Faire. And Mr. Wayne stepped over. He stepped the line with Faye and she hung up on him, which George Wayne had never happened to him. This lady is not only a formidable actress, she's a formidable woman. All right. So one story I read, and I think it was my book, Flesh and Fantasy, is that it's the last shot of the movie. Faye says her lines and Roman pops her. Now, Roman is a genius, but he's troubled. And we all know he has trouble. So I'm not going to go into that. But on top of that, he's a one meter. Okay. Number one. Number two, Roman is a famous smart net. You have to do the shot this way. That way it's got to be perfect. So at one point, Faye's in a car and she has to go to the bathroom. And Roman's not going to let her go to the bathroom. And so, you know, she stays in the car. And finally, you know, he goes by the car and she throws a cup at him. Now, you know what was in that cup. Okay. So they start to curse each other out. So not only do we have Bob Evans, Robert Town, Roman and Jack in the mix, we also have Faye, who I think gave as good as she got. And for just her performance alone, check it out. It's a little bit hammy, but I don't mind it. Now, and also check around Bonnie and Clyde and Barfly. Now, that being stated, the history of Laurel Canyon and in particular, the history of the West is painted with examples of Southerners moving from Warthorne, southern south of, you know, that part of America, to the West. And they're not going to let blacks and they certainly don't want Mexicans in. Okay. And that was especially apparent as California was getting settled. So if you check out grim prairie tales with Brad Dorough and James Earl Jones, you'll see the history of the greater West. If you read about the history of Laurel Canyon by David McGill, you'll see another history of the West. So in this part of California, Southern California, we see how we don't really see any Mexicans, but we do see Perry Lopez there play a bit in the wall of JJ Gettys. And we do see James Hong, but we don't see a lot of Chinese people except at the end. So right here and there, this is another movie that says The City of Angels, okay, that's God's racism, and it's God's misogyny, it's God's bigotry, but it was made that way. All right. So Jack Nicholson, a lot of people say that this is one of his finest performances. I'd rather watch him in Five Easy Pieces or The Terror. Now, I first watched Five Easy Pieces at Hanover High in Hayward Crew's film crick class when I was a junior. And Hayward is sort of, he's one of my film saints, but I didn't understand the movie. And I was glad to watch it when I got older. He sort of plays the same type of guy he's playing as the gum shoe in this movie. Not so much a loser, but he's given a lot and he doesn't know what to do with it, and it makes him a jerk. Now, I think JJ Gettys is a jerk for different reasons, but as we see a lot of Jack's movies, only until he hit like maybe 60 did he play the romantic lead. Usually he's playing somebody who is up to something. And believe me, in this movie, everybody else is up to something beside, not Jack. Jack's trying to solve a case, but everybody's trying to get one over on him. So I can watch this movie, and I'm not really a Jack Nicholson fan. I think he belongs to my parents' generation. But I can watch this movie without not liking his acting style, because I'm always sympathetic towards somebody who's going to get in the end. Yeah, and I also checked out a lot of his biker movies, Hell's Angels on Wheels. Jack is a little easier to take when he's younger. That's just me as a filmgoer, not when he's older. But this was pretty much for me, I would say like his last good movie until Stardom went to his head. I guess that's the best way to say it. So yeah, this movie just, it's something else. I'm so surprised that it's been 20 years later, and I don't like it as much as I did, but I do appreciate it as another creation of Mr. Robert Town. All right, okay. So this being Cellaradmire's City of Angels, I have two other movies that I want to discuss very briefly. The first one is, I don't know which one I'll do first, but I guess we're going to do, I guess I'll talk about Wonderland. This has everyone. It's got Thal Kilmer. It's got Kerry Fisher. It's got Kate Boswick. I mean, it's got everybody. It's got Eric Bogosian. It's an ensemble cast type movie. And it's about one of the most brutal murders that happened in L.A. back in Laurel Canyon. So I watched it when it came out. And for some crazy reason, I actually did think that they were going to solve the case in the movie, because the case is intriguing, but it's particularly upsetting. The people who were killed, there were four of them, they called the four on the floor. It was a brutal murder, but they're constantly depicted in the media as being bad people. And there's always another side to the story. So the movie kind of showed the seedy side of them. Number one. Number two, it sort of focused more on Thal Kilmer's character, John Holmes, who, again, we got a reference to the L.A. movie, Boogie Nights, sort of based on the same character, Mark Wahlberg, was playing in that movie. So it wasn't really satisfying. And it sort of paints them as being part of the murder entourage. So I watched it again. Thank you, Kellogg Hubbard and Scott there for getting it for me. And I'm watching it this past month. It's not that good. It's actually a horrible movie. The acting's a little bit too over the top. I think that's Aaron Eckhart as Brunette, I'm not sure. But at any rate, watch it at a friend's house. Don't bother to rent it. If you can catch it, if you're interested in crime, Hollywood history, that's fine. But they left it all open-ended. I mean, they didn't really finish the movie. They just did some, they flashed up what happened to them after the whole murder thing. And everybody who was connected with the case didn't get caught or indicted or tried or nothing. And I'm like me, mom, I like to see the bad guys get it in the end. So the other movie I'd like to briefly, briefly discuss is Hollywood Land. And I think we're going to wrap up City of Angels next week. So I'm going to talk about this one a little bit more than. But it has Ben Affleck, Robin Tooney. And that's so many people I can remember offhand. But it was my first Ben Affleck movie that I actually enjoyed watching him. He plays George Reeves, who was Superman back in the 40s and 50s on TV. And Reeves was killed in a mysterious accent. It happens a lot in Hollywood. So I would say, check out that movie. We're going to go more into that next week. But it was nice to see Mr. Affleck sort of, I could see him acting. He wasn't just being like a movie star, but he was acting. So check that one out. Everyone sort of knows the end of that story. So I'll probably blow the end next week. So check it out. And that's sort of like a afternoon, middle morning type, if you can catch it on TNT or something. Okay, so I think that wraps it up for me. Ms. Betty St. LeVoe. You've been watching Saloud Meir here at AUCA. I'd like to thank my crew today for helping me out with the camera and Gendron Building for its continued support. And also my first film professor, Sharon Adela Walfield-Paris, which is on your clear to taught me to appreciate and articulate my thoughts on a silver screen. Until next time, babes, stay away from those bad movies. Ciao.