He believed what Nietzsche believed: Walker, “The Bird Is on His Own.”
“A lot of the kids were dislocated”: McGilligan, Jack’s Life, 88.
“that what an actor says is not”: Grobel, Above the Line, 123.
Nicholson’s innate mastery of suspense: Ibid.
“in a certain sense”: George Stevens Jr., The Great Moviemakers: The Next Generation (Knopf: New York, 2012), 678.
If Jack was improvising a seduction: Barrie Chase to author.
“I learned to write”: Grobel, Above the Line, 123.
“Jack’s capacity for indignation”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPne0cClrGc.
“One more word out of you”: “Commentary,” Chinatown DVD.
“Kid, you’re going to be a movie star”: McGilligan, Jack’s Life, 123.
“I want to write a movie for Jack”: Payne to author.
“It is this combination of mountain ranges”: Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land, (Utah: Gibbs Smith, 1973), 5.
“As a region, Southern California”: Ibid., 6.
“Virtually everything in the region”: Ibid., 13.
“San Francisco is a consciously”: Ibid., 19.
“Other American cities”: Ibid., 114.
“In the past the region”: Ibid., 3.
“This was the old rural American dream”: Lillard, Eden in Jeopardy, 54.
“Los Angeles, it should be understood”: Morrow Mayo, Los Angeles, 319.
the most advertised city in America: McWilliams, Southern California, 129.
“the largest internal migration”: Ibid., 135.
Angelenos of the thirties were uncommonly lonely: Ibid., 166.
“Quadrangular, reticulated cities”: Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs (New York, Hill and Wang, 1982), 30.
In 1938, the average apartment tenancy in Los Angeles: McWilliams, Southern California, 361.
“I like a conservative atmosphere”: Frank MacShane, Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 11.
the largest number of dog and cat hospitals in America: McWilliams, Southern California, 237.
“The succession of booms”: Ibid., 241.
national leader in embezzlement: Ibid., 247.
Los Angeles led not just in the number of bankruptcies: Ibid., 239.
the divorce and suicide rates: Ibid., 238–39.
“radically reworked the metaphorical figure”: Mike Davis, City of Quartz, 20.
“the absolute power of capitalism”: Ibid., 49.
“[The novel of speed] tends to be short”: David Wyatt, “L.A. Fiction Through Mid-century,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Los Angeles, ed. Kevin McNamara, (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 38.
“the niggers of the studio system”: Nancy Lynn Schwartz, The Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 99.
“Like every writer, or almost every writer”: Edwin McDowell, “Raymond Chandler, A Master Letter-writer, Too,” New York Times, Aug. 31, 1981. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/31/books/raymond-chandler-a-master-letter-writer-too.html.
“I am a writer and there comes”: Raymond Chandler, “Farewell, My Hollywood,” Antaeus (Spring/Summer 1976).
“brief enthusiasms”: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/31/books/raymond-chandler-a-master-letter-writer-too.html.
“Marlowe knows everything”: Raymond Chandler, The High Window, 178.
October chiseled the sun: Robert Towne, “It’s Only LA, Jake,” Los Angeles Times, May 29, 1994.
pepper trees and hay: Ibid.
“Along with Chandler”: Ibid.
only .06% of the state’s natural water: McWilliams, Southern California, 183.
a semi-arid desert: Ibid.
In 1905 and again in 1910: Ibid., 187.
“and,” McWilliams wrote: Ibid.
“the rape of Owens Valley”: Ibid., 190.
“When a crime can no longer contain”: Towne, “It’s Only LA, Jake.”
In Los Angeles, developers were carving: Julie Payne to author.
“That drove me down to City Hall”: Academy Screening, Nov. 18, 2004.
“how crooked and corrupt things were”: Engel, Screenwriters, 216.
“This project is so bad”: Casey Burchby, “The Investigative Screenwriter: An Interview with Robert Towne,” Cineaste (Summer 2012).
“The destruction of the city”: http://www.macleans.ca/uncategorized/robert-towne-looks-back-on-chinatown/.
“Everybody’s out to make a buck”: Warga, “Writer Towne.”
forty “motherfuckers”: “Great to Be Nominated Part Three,” AMPAS Screening, Samuel Goldwyn Theater, Los Angeles, Aug. 14, 2006.
a letter disseminated to the principals: Postproduction interoffice communication from Peter Guber in regard to The Last Detail language consideration, Sept. 4, 1973, Hal Ashby Collection, folder 421, Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles.
“this newfound freedom”: http://thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.com/2009/10/robert-towne-hollywood-interview.html.
“[It] was,” Towne said: Towne, “Dialogue on Film.”
“We lived that way”: Julie Payne to author.
Towne needed money: Ibid.
On the phone, a panicked Coppola: Stephen Hunter, “Towne and City,” Washington Post, March 19, 2006: N01.
The emotion, Coppola said: Phoebe Poon, “The Corleone Chronicles: Revisiting The Godfather Films as Trilogy,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 33, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 187–95.
“Just once,” Brando told him: Hunter, “Towne and City.”
Towne raced back to the hotel: Gene Siskel, “Hollywood’s Mr. Fix-it,” Sunday News, June 13, 1976: 9.
The “string” Towne got: Hunter, “Towne and City.”
“It’s like the relief pitcher”: Siskel, “Robert Towne—Script.”
Coppola wanted him to stay on: Julie Payne to author.
Apprised of Towne’s: Robert Evans to author.
More coveted than an invitation: Julie Payne to author.
“Do you want to come?”: Ibid.
“It should have been a great”: Warga, “Writer Towne.”
“Robert was not working for money”: Julie Payne to author.
“Twelve bloody babies…”: Ibid.
“where they had taken out the oak trees”: Ibid.
“There I was,” he said: http://thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.ie/2009/10/robert-towne-hollywood-interview.html.
He hiked the fire trails: Towne, “Growing Up.”
He breathed in: Ibid.
investigating the origins of life: Towne, “It’s Only LA.”
euphoria and demise: Ibid.
living closer to the ground: Towne, “Growing Up.”
“Memories swell”: Towne,”It’s Only LA.”