“Evans was a great marketer”: Hawk Koch to author.
Barry Diller sat with Towne: Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, 262.
Well, Towne thought, maybe we’ll get away: http://www.macleans.ca/uncategorized/robert-towne-looks-back-on-chinatown/.
“This is a great fucking”: Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, 269.
“Evans has a bomb”: Howard Koch to author.
No prepublicity: Gordon Gow, “The Cool Bonanza,” Films and Filming, Jan. 1975.
“What kind of dreck is this shit?”: Robert Evans to author.
“How could you make this picture?”: Ibid.
“Sorry, kid”: Ibid.
headed to Chasen’s: Jean Cox, “Fortune’s Cookies,” Women’s Wear Daily, June 16, 1974.
“After Chinatown”: Rex Reed, “Robert Evans,” Southland Sunday, Jan. 1974.
Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times: Charles Champlin, “‘Chinatown’ Tour de Force,” Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1974.
Roger Ebert plainly hailed: “The Inscrutable ‘Chinatown,’” Roger Ebert, Boston Globe, Aug. 11, 1974.
“The film holds you, in a suffocating way”: Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1982), 135.
“vision of a time, a place, and a life-style”: Champlin, “‘Chinatown’ Tour de Force.”
“Longing on a large scale”: Don DeLillo, Underworld (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 11.
Evans was elated: Robert Evans to author.
“We had something”: Ibid.
“[They] hated each other”: Peter Bart to author.
something of a relief to Evans: Evans to author.
“I’ve always been a proponent”: A. H. Weiler, “Film Box-Office Receipts in ’74 a Record $1.9-Billion,” New York Times, Jan. 26, 1975.
“gaudier and more lurid”: Stephen Farber, “Hollywood’s New Sensationalism: The Power and the Gory,” New York Times, July 7, 1974.
“cinema of attractions”: David A. Cook, Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970–1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 43.
“One thing,” Evans told Bludhorn: Robert Evans to author.
He had no intention of working for Diller: Peter Bart to author.
“didn’t really know the movies”: Ibid.
“We’re gonna do great work together”: Robert Evans to author.
Julie Payne felt a change: Julie Payne to author.
“She was allergic to the sun”: Ibid.
“Los Angeles itself, the sprawl-city”: Pauline Kael, “Beverly Hills as a Big Bed,” The New Yorker, Feb. 2, 1975.
The phone at Hutton Drive: Julie Payne to author.
For the BAFTAs in London: Ibid.
“I said I wouldn’t work with him”: Ibid.
“He would just give his friends”: Ibid.
a record $1.9 billion: Weiler, “Film Box-Office.”
“there was a common assumption”: Bernard Weinraub, “Giving Screenplays a Sense of Reality,” New York Times, Sept. 8, 1998, 1.
“a hunger on both sides”: http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2013/03/towne-country-ffc-interviews-robert-towne.html.
“did their jobs too well”: Sarah Morris film Robert Towne.
“the futility of good intentions”: Casey Burchby, “Investigative Screenwriter,” Cineaste 37, no. 3 (Summer 2012): 20, 51.
“The American has not yet assimilated”: William Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (New York: Doubleday, 1958), 10.
“a mix of nostalgia and parody”: Kael, “On the Future of Movies.”
“Perhaps no work of art is possible”: Ibid, 55.
“It’s good for who it’s good for”: Svetkey, “Jack on Jack.”
“I didn’t think we would get any awards”: Roman Polanski gmail to author.
talk shows and interviews: Ibid.
“I’ve only heard two opinions”: https://www.cigaraficionado.com/article/on-his-own-terms-6022.
this wasn’t going to be his year: Hawk Koch to author.
It was still drizzling: Julie Payne to author.
“It’s your night”: Evans, Kid Stays in the Picture, 267.
“Hiya, Bullhorn”: Hawk Koch to author.
“Yes, ladies and gentlemen”: the Academy Awards broadcast.
“He was very excited”: Sarah Naia Stier to author.
Payne, still waiting: Julie Payne to author.
“I did not want to do that”: Beverly Walker, “Film Comment,” New York 23, no. 5 (Sept. 1987): 24–26.
“Frankly,” Sylbert said: Hollywood Reporter 45th Anniversary Edition, 1975.
“have never dealt with with those day-to-day”: Ibid.
Sylbert would confer with Evans: Robert Evans to author.
“There is still an audience for pictures”: Hollywood Reporter 45th Anniversary Edition, 1975.
“With all the difficulties this book presents”: Richard Sylbert Papers, Sylbert letter re: Falconer, May 30, 1976.
Sylbert took A Piece of My Heart: Sharmagne Leland-St. John to author.
“Science-Fiction is an escalating area”: Richard Sylbert Papers, Sylbert to David Picker re: Puma by Anthony Burgess, Oct. 13, 1976.
“It is the longest 125 pages”: Richard Sylbert Papers, letter re: Days of Heaven, June 8, 1976.
“When he’d lose”: Fleming, High Concept, 17.
slaughter them with bare hands: Debby Bull, “Don Simpson on Don Simpson,” Smart, May 1990.
“He used to pick me up”: Ibid.
“He’s the brightest, most interesting guy”: Fleming, High Concept, 15.
leave the ending open: Richard Sylbert Papers, Don Simpson letter re: Oliver’s Story, Dec. 7, 1976.
appalled at the suggestion of one: Sharmagne Leland-St. John to author.
“even the best Bergman”: Richard Sylbert Papers, Don Simpson letter re: The Merry Widow, Dec. 1, 1976.
“a picture like this should”: Richard Sylbert Papers, Don Simpson letter to David Picker re: The Bomb, July 19, 1976.
“strong enough to make this”: Richard Sylbert Papers, Don Simpson letter re: Moontrap, Nov. 22, 1976.
“It is to the West”: Richard Sylbert Papers, Sylbert letter re: Moontrap by Alan Sharpe, Nov. 14, 1976.
“Dick knew he made a mistake”: Susanna Moore to author.
“Dick never played the game”: Peter Biskind, “The Joy of Sets,” Premiere, Dec. 1993.
“someone who likes to be the center”: Michael Cieply and Elaine Dutka, “Paramount’s Big Spin: A Look Inside the Changing Studio, the People Who Run It and the 1990 High-Profile, Big-Money Movie Strategy,” Los Angeles Times, Mar. 18, 1990, 9.
“When Eisner came in”: Biskind, “Joy of Sets.”
“fundamental”: Hawk Koch to author.
“The picture’s only villain”: Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, 279.
“Vietnam is like cancer”: Guy Flatley, “At the Movies: Producer Sets Hoffman’s Sail for ‘Popeye,’” New York Times, Oct. 14, 1977, 58.