Chinatown, Roman Polanski, Doc Erickson, Dick Sylbert, James Hong

Written by Joe D on July 20th, 2007

Here’s the trailer for Roman Polanski’s masterpiece Chinatown. I worked with several individuals from this film on the film Mobsters. Doc Erickson, a producer who also played the banker in the barbershop that Jack Nicholson almost gets in a fight with and Dick Sylbert, the genius production designer. James Hong, the great actor who plays Kahn, Faye Dunaway’s faithful manservant appears in my film One Night With You. I’m hoping to do a podcast interview with James sometime soon and I’ll post more on that soon. I also am working on a post featuring an interview with Dick Sylbert about the locations used in Chinatown. Keep your eyes peeled for that one. Finally I’d like to offer a bit of information about the last line in the movie, the scene takes place on North Spring Street just south of Ord Street, in front of the old Yimmy Lu’s. One of Jake’s operatives is leading a dazed Jack Nicholson away when he turns to him and says “Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown.” This line was spoken to Jacob Riis, a photographer and reformer working to help poor immigrants at the turn of the century in New York City. He tried to infiltrate Chinatown and bring about some changes but he had no luck penetrating the closed off culture of the Chinese immigrants. A detective uttered those exact same words to Mr. Riis in an attempt at consolation.

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