They were shooting in one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, Angelino Heights, a hilly enclave of Victorian and gingerbread houses in turn-of-the-century colors, soft red and orange, turquoise and sea green, with ornate wraparound parapets and spangled Moorish filigrees, the grand promise of an earlier Los Angeles. Since then, most had faded. The lawns had browned.
The lime-green bungalow apartment at 848 East Kensington Road, where Gittes finds Ida Sessions dead on her kitchen floor, was locked and the key was missing. The production had been waiting for a solution, costing Polanski valuable time at the location. He was “exasperated,” according to Los Angeles Times reporter Priscilla English.
“Bernie!” called Howard Koch in the big voice that earned him a Nicholson nickname, Bullhorn. “Bring a hammer!”
Polanski wouldn’t wait any longer. He made for the front door, ready to smash in the glass with an empty Coke bottle.
“No! Not that way, Roman,” Koch shouted. “No, Roman, the back door.”
But Polanski was already breaking in. “I like it,” he told Koch, reaching in for the doorknob. “See? That’s the way the murderer got in.”
Polanski stepped over the pile of broken glass and walked inside.
“Bernie! Bring a broom!”
“Hey, guys,” Polanski said to the crew behind him, “keep this glass, okay?”
Nicholson, hands in his pockets, strolled up in a gray suit and fedora. A Latino boy tugged at his sleeve. “Hey, mister, do you know what kind of mystery this movie is about?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Well, what is it about?”
The kid trailed him into the bungalow.
“It’s about murder—and ladies.”
Inside, Diane Ladd as Ida Sessions was stretched out “dead” on the kitchen floor. Polanski hovered over her body, inspecting it for real life.
“I want it like this,” he said, helping her elbow up to the side of her face. “And the leg”—he bent the leg unnaturally and stood up to assess the results—“it is right.”
Ladd had been on the floor, sensing something ominous. “Everyone thought Roman was replaying the death of his wife,” she recalled. “It was a very scary day.”
A production assistant produced a jar from a high shelf and passed it off to Polanski.
“Roman, what is that?” asked Ladd.
“Ants.”
“No, Roman, please, no ants, please!”
She was terrified, but he was laughing.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Kill the ants!”
“Kill the ants!” someone shouted.
“Kill the ants!” echoed down the line.
“Roman,” Ladd said, “I need some cotton. For my ears.”
“Cotton for Diane!” Polanski called behind him.
“Cotton for Diane!” echoed down.
“Do you know why I need cotton?” Ladd asked Polanski, not wanting to appear wasteful.
“Because you are a Method actress and you don’t want to hear anything because you are dead.”
Watching Polanski conscientiously arrange props in the shot, turning a head of lettuce into and away from the light, then checking with Alonzo for his reaction, USC student intern Maggie Parker observed a change, the impress of creation, come over his face. “When it came to ‘This is what I want,’ Roman was so focused and intense,” she said, “but he never created tension. He kept things light and fun.” A fan of Polanski’s work, Parker had called his office every day, talking to Thelma Roberts, his secretary, asking to please let her, a twenty-year-old film student, observe the workings of a Polanski movie up close. Finally, Thelma arranged a meeting with Polanski. A former film student himself, he consented to let Parker observe on the condition that she never miss a class and get her degree “or I couldn’t step foot on the set,” she said. He gave her a front-row seat, right next to script supervisor May Wale Brown. “Everyone was so wonderful to me,” she said. Parker was amazed by how thoroughly Polanski and his crew, the entire Chinatown production, really, welcomed her every day, especially considering they didn’t have to. Moreover, she was tended to. They took her as seriously as she took them. Bernie Schwartz, key grip, would go out of his way to ask Parker if she had any questions. “I got to have a hundred wonderful big brothers,” Parker said. “I felt like they would protect me, like if I dated somebody who wasn’t nice to me.” The mood of joy and inclusion, she learned, was the emotional by-product of three people on a film set: the director, star, and first assistant director. “[Howard Koch Jr.] and Roman and Jack,” she said, “kept that crew happy.” Happy, and then, again, the look of creation setting over Polanski’s eyes: “When you see somebody like Roman using everything available to him to express his vision,” Parker said, “you realize [filmmaking is] about the details. This is the most all-encompassing art form in the world—musicians, painters, costumers, cinematographers, actors, every kind of talent—and Roman was a master of all of them. He was on top of every single detail in the frame of every single shot.”
Nicholson hung around as they worked. Other stars would retreat to their Winnebagos, but Nicholson, enjoying the atmosphere, would settle into Polanski’s director’s chair, his feet kicked up on the chair in front him, and peruse the sports pages, a lighted Camel—he wouldn’t quit again after this movie—in his hand. Sure, it was work, but he loved it; he loved film sets. Five years of movie stardom since Easy Rider and he still relished the low hum of intent professionals, the camaraderie, the team spirit of group creation. “I look at acting as a team effort,” he said, “where everyone’s doing their best to try to make the team win. I don’t want to sit in my trailer. I’m there to work and have fun. There’s also the professional dynamic of it. It’s good to disarm people by coming on the set with a non-star, let’s-have-fun attitude.” As long as they wrapped on time (he had Lakers tickets, dinner reservations at Dan Tana’s, a drink at the Rainbow), he could sit there all day. No more lines needed memorizing; he had already prepared. The trick now was to relax and receive the stimulus, to enjoy. He loved the storymaking process as much as he loved acting, and here he was, here they were, making another story for the world. “And it’s just like I’ve always said,” he explained, “that John Wayne—an actor—was more important to the mass psyche than any single American president.… And in that sense, I consider what I do to be writing in a very modern sense—the modern writer is the screen actor.” Not a bad way, he thought, to spend one’s life, banging around with friends, writing for the world. Why go back to the trailer?
“Jack,” Polanski said, “was one of the easiest actors I ever worked with. Everything seemed natural to him. He never ever interfered with my directorial decisions. He felt comfortable.” If power was one of Chinatown’s central themes, its personal effects should be reflected, even subtly, in Nicholson’s performance, “so I had him talk differently to each [character],” Polanski said. “He talks differently to John Huston, different to Faye, differently to the other characters.”
Directors had asked Jack to talk faster before, and though they were probably right, the technicality of the request rankled him. When Polanski broached the subject on Chinatown, Nicholson recoiled.