On October 4: Chinatown—notes 1971, Charles Lederer Family Papers, 3-f.1, Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles.
“Dad, where are you going?”: Katherine Andrusco to author.
a wingback chair: Julie Payne to author.
with Edward’s help: Julie Payne to author.
nearly five hundred pages: Chinatown—notes 1971, Charles Lederer Family Papers, 3-f.1, Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles.
“Edward was in the room with Robert”: Julie Payne to author.
his Godfather additions: Sarah Naia Stier to author.
Towne referred to Taylor as “my editor”: Julie Payne to author.
cache of Chinatown notes: Chinatown—notes 1971, Charles Lederer Family Papers, 3-f.1, Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles.
generative intelligence: Ibid.
“on Robert’s scripts”: Virginia Kennerley to author.
“To say Edward Taylor”: Mike Koepf to author.
“They would discuss down” Lauren Weissman to author.
“suggestions, not changes”: Edward Taylor, email to Nicolas Coster.
“It was a given”: Katherine Andrusco to author.
“Robert never wrote on his own”: Julie Payne to author.
“So many times I would ask Edward about it”: Lauren Weissman to author.
“Do you write dialogue?”: Sarah Naia Stier to author.
“What are you doing?” Katherine Andrusco to author.
“did brood for sometime”: Virginia Kennerley, email to author.
“saved my life”: as reported by Taylor to Kennerley.
“like a lump”: Julie Payne to author.
“And of course the police” Virginia Kennerley to author.
Was it an abortion: confidential source, emails provided to author by Virginia Kennerley.
“Robert and Eddie”: Katherine Andrusco to author.
“Edward, freely and without”: Nicolas Coster to author.
term papers: Ibid.
“Robert always liked”: Ibid.
“something of a mystery,” Virginia Kennerley to author.
“there was a certain lack”: Ibid.
“would have solved his money problem”: confidential source, emails provided to author by Virginia Kennerley.
“It happened at the same time”: Ibid.
“I want never to hear another word”: Edward Taylor, email to Nicolas Coster.
“His father was very successful”: Nicolas Coster to author.
“Be careful”: Barrie Chase to author.
“Central problem I have”: Chinatown—Notes 1971, Charles Lederer Family Papers Undated legal period 3-f.1, Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles.
“It was Eddie”: Julie Payne to author.
“ACT I,” Taylor began: Edward Taylor’s Chinatown script notes and step outlines provided to the author by Virginia Kennerley.
dozens of such outlines: Chinatown—notes 1971, Charles Lederer Family Papers, 3-f.1, Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles.
“formless and abstract”: Chinatown—Notes 1971, Charles Lederer Family Papers, letter dated November 4, 1971, 3-f.1, Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles.
three in the morning: Julie Payne to author.
“In those days”: Ibid.
“How’s it going?”: Ibid.
hold the audience’s interest: Towne, “Dialogue on Film.”
“Luck, my friend”: Robert Evans to author.
Capote’s script: Ibid.
“Love stories,” Evans announced: Ibid.
“Sounds perfect for Irish”: Evans, Kid Stays in the Picture, 257.
“So much of [the novel]”: George Stevens Jr., Great Moviemakers, 676.
“was mystified”: Towne, “Dialogue on Film.”
Payne went to see Ziegler: Julie Payne to author.
“a man of incomparable elegance,”: Marcia Nasatir to author.
“Chinatown is worth three Gatsbys”: Julie Payne to author.
“I don’t think writers work”: Ibid.
Lost, he wandered down: Marcia Nasatir to author.
In June 1972: Robert Towne Chinatown contract with Paramount pictures Corporation, dated June 15, 1977.
“He never thought Robert”: Julie Payne to author.
Julie exiled him to Catalina: Ibid.
He walked the coves: Towne, “It’s Only LA.”
summers on a tuna boat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6r7exIYOo8.
“and when [it] drops”: Ibid.
“and you can’t believe”: Ibid.
“I always thought that Hemingway’s”: George Stevens Jr., Great Moviemakers, 676.
“Each script”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6r7exIYOo8.
“One afternoon,” he said: Projections 6, edited by John Boorman, 110.
“Then,” he said, “I realized”: George Stevens Jr. Great Moviemakers, 666.
Every week, on his days: Julie Payne to author.
“He spoke of himself as working”: Virginia Kennerley to author.
“So what his friends saw”: Ibid.
Taylor was a kind of Hollis Mulwray: Mike Koepf to author.
“since college my Jiminy”: Towne, “It’s Only LA,” 1.
“The one thing [Evelyn] had”: Towne, “Dialogue on Film.”
“And, in a sense”: Ibid.
“They wrote the script”: Mike Koepf to author.
“dreaming a dream”: Engel, Screenwriters, 203.
“very tricky thing happens”: Towne, “Dialogue on Film.”
“a natural antipathy”: Rainer, “Chinatown’s Robert Towne.”
“Classically, a director”: Ibid.
“trotting the corridors”: http://www.avclub.com/article/robert-towne-13978.
“The image inevitably conveys more”: Rainer, “Chinatown’s Robert Towne.”
“The only way a screenplay”: Robert Towne, “On Moving Pictures,” Chinatown/The Last Detail (New York: Grove Press, 1997), ix.
“It occurs to me”: Schiff, “Talk of the Towne.”
“For the world”: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/director-roman-polanski-discusses-the-great-calamities-of-his-life-a-932931.html.
“In order to survive and function”: Kenneth Tynan, “The Polish Imposition,” Esquire, Sept. 1971.
“I skied for four months”: Weinraub, “If You Don’t Show Violence.”
“The measure of his loneliness”: Tynan, “Polish Imposition.”
“untapped reserves of intelligence and imagination”: Polanski, Roman, 331.
more and more like his father: Giesbert, “Roman’s Novel” in Roman Polanski: Interviews, 107.
the emotional distance: “Roman Polanski by Thom Mount.”
profoundly Jewish superstition: Giesbert, “Roman’s Novel” in Roman Polanski: Interviews, 107.
“Why are you crying?”: Flax, “Exclusive.”
“What’s your name?”: Tynan, “Polish Imposition.”