I'm Paul Iorio, an arts and entertainment writer/reporter whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Toronto Star, Newsday, The Village Voice, Spy magazine, Details magazine, New Times, Cash Box magazine and other publications. (This list does not include the many international publications that have published my reporting for Reuters or the papers that have syndicated my stories over the years.)
I've also contributed photography to The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle and others, and am based in Berkeley, California.
(Here is a link to a website that displays my original photography: http://paulioriophotos.blogspot.com.
)
Here are samples of my published writings and my resume.
I can be reached at pliorio@aol.com, 510-204-9417 (cell: 510-229-0407) and 2923 Florence St.
in Berkeley 94705.
__________________________________________________________________
BELOW ARE A FEW HUNDRED PAGES OF MY PUBLISHED WORK
(ALONG WITH SEVERAL UNPUBLISHED PIECES PRESENTED ON THIS
WEBSITE EXCLUSIVELY). RESUME FOLLOWS AT THE END.
-------------------------
SAMPLES OF PAUL IORIO'S PUBLISHED WRITINGS
(ALONG WITH A FEW WEB EXCLUSIVES)
* * *
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Los Angeles Times: Three-part feature on Roman Polanski's movie "Chinatown," featuring a rare exclusive interview with Polanski. (Part two presented here for the first time.
).
2. Los Angeles New Times: Cover feature on comedian Richard Pryor that includes my own eyewitness account of Pryor's last full-length concert ever.
I'm still the only journalist anywhere to have ever written about it.
3. Toronto Star: The only story anywhere to have covered, comparatively, the immediate coverage by the major television networks of the 9/11 plane crashes.
4. Washington Post: A popular feature in which physicians assess the accuracy of the medical and health information in feature films. (A lot of publications wanted to publish this one, and The Post won!
)
5. San Francisco Chronicle: A one-on-one interview with poet Lawrence Ferlighetti, who reveals new details about Beat-era writers. (Hard to believe, but editors were against running this story at the time.
)
6. Washington Post: A tour of notable San Francisco locations in the history of Beat poetry (particularly Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"). (I have to thank my editor at The Post for encouraging me to expand the piece with quotes from Ginsberg's personal journals.
)
7. The Chicago Tribune: A satiric piece on Katie Couric. (I'm really grateful that my editor got the joke and ran the story, because readers seemed to truly enjoy this one.
)
8. New Times: The very first audiotaped interview with Trey Anastasio, the leader of the rock band Phish. (In the interview, I introduced Anastasio to a band he hadn't heard of before, Widespread Panic, who (with Phish) would soon go on to form the core of the hugely popular "jam band" movement of the 1990s.
) I conducted the interview in January 1989, when he was still years away from success -- and years away from his first taped press interview. I must admit it feels like a near miracle that I thought to record such an unknown as Anastasio in January 1989 and that I managed to save the tape for so many years.
By the way, coming soon to this website: the entire transcript of my January 1989 interview with Trey Anastasio!
9. New York Times: A satiric piece on How Not to Blow Your Oscar Speech. (Nicely improved by an editor who rightly deleted a speculative section of the piece!
)
10. San Francisco Chronicle: Five separate mini-profiles of celebrities Dick Cavett, Edward Norton, Anne Heche, Daphne Rubin Vega, Carroll O'Connor and Jessica Alba.
My Anne Heche profile marked the first time Heche had ever been linked to Ellen DeGeneres in print.
For the record, I spotted Ann and Ellen together on April 5, 1997, and interviewed Heche about Ellen on audiotape the next day. I filed my story on April 7, and the article was available on newsstands in the San Franicsco area on April 17. The story was released elsewhere on April 20, 1997.
11. Also, Dick Cavett's childhood remembrance of fellow Nebraskan Johnny Carson (my piece later formed the basis of a 2005 People magazine article).
12.
The Austin American-Statesman -- One-on-one interview with moonwalker Alan Bean, published (and later syndicated) by the paper (July 18, 2004).
13. Spy Magazine: The popular "Dylan-o-Matic," which presents a method by which anyone can create their own Bob Dylan lyrics.
It's still circulated on the Internet, even though it was published in the pre-Internet era by a publication that is (alas) now defunct. From 1992. It can be found by cutting and pasting this link: http://groups.
google.com/group/rec.music.
dylan/browse_thread/thread/51cfbf16a11d33f9/b1b81d3e87492fae?lnk=st q= rnum=1 hl=en#b1b81d3e87492fae
14. VARIOUS PUBLICATIONS: Reviews of performances by Tracy Chapman, The Pogues, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Ordinaires, and The Replacements.
1985 to 1989.
15. (NEW!
) -- Published here for the first time, a story that reveals new details about the recent private life of reclusive author J.D. Salinger.
You'll read it only here.
16. (NEW!
) -- A one-on-one interview with Woody Allen, conducted in Beverly Hills on December 3, 1999. (Unpublished until now, though a small part of it was used in a story I wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999.)
17.
Cash Box magazine -- Exclusive interview with Ray Davies, leader of The Kinks.
18. THE WASHINGTON POST -- Exploring Kurt Cobain's Seattle, 2002.
19. UNPUBLISHED -- My audiotaped interview with activist Abbie Hoffman, several months before his suicide. In the interview, one can see how Hoffman was rapidly unraveling.
20. The San Francisco Chronicle -- A profile of film director Pedro Almodovar. (From the manuscript I submitted via email to the Chronicle.
)
21. LOS ANGELES TIMES, OTHER PUBLICATIONS -- Brief profiles of Barry Sonnenfeld, John Woo, Andy Partridge, Warren Zevon, Troy Garity (the first story about Garity in any publication) and David Rabe.
22.
The San Francisco Chronicle -- An essay on The Paranoid Movie genre.
23. (NEW!
) -- Unpublished interview with Robert Goulet.
24. The San Francisco Chronicle -- The Making of "Jaws.
" Fresh interviews with the filmmakers reveal new details about the film.
25. New York Newsday -- The Recycling of Woody Allen.
(Note: This was wholly my piece, from idea to execution, and bears my sole byline, though in the print edition there is a nearby byline of another writer, in larger type, referring to other articles adjacent to mine, yet that other byline sort of makes it look like this was a co-written or co-researched piece, which it was not.)
26. SPY MAGAZINE -- Why It's Not So Smart To Be Smart Anymore.
Humorous (but solid) investigative reporting.
27. REUTERS -- My scoop about the reunion of Sly Stone's band The Family Stone.
Reveals new details about the reclusive Sly Stone. Syndicated in major publications, including Billboard magazine.
28.
NEW! -- THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- Profile of film director Mimi Leder.
29.
NEW! -- THE NEW YORK TIMES -- A Jack Nicholson Quiz.
30.
NEW! -- NEW YORK NEWSDAY -- Yet another Jack Nicholson Quiz.
31.
NEW! -- PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED -- Exclusive interview with film director M. Night Shyamalan.
The only interview with Shyamalan about "The Sixth Sense" conducted before the release of "The Sixth Sense" (apparently nobody else thought the movie would be a hit!).
32.
NEW! -- PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED -- Exclusive interview with the late Nigerian pop star Fela Kuti (it may be the first one-on-one conducted after his release from prison in 1986).
33.
NEW! The East Coast Rocker -- "WE MUST SEND THESE FUNDAMENTALISTS A CLEAR AND SHARP MESSAGE." An editorial on the Salman Rushdie affair (and on religious fundamentalists from Falwell to Khomeini), which I wrote in March of 1989 after attending a PEN reading of Rushdie's work in Manhattan that had been interrupted by a bomb scare.
Published in The East Coast Rocker newspaper on March 29, 1989. (Thanks to editor Jay Lustig for allowing this controversial piece to run as I wrote it.)
Some of the articles are presented here in original manuscript or updated versions.
All writing, reporting and research in all stories presented here by Paul Iorio (and there were no co-bylines on any of these pieces). All research in all Q As by Paul Iorio. (Resume follows at the end.
)
My journalistic methods and work habits were most accurately described by a senior editor at The San Francisco Chronicle -- my main editor at The Chronicle -- who wrote this assessment in a letter of recommendation after working with me for three years in '00:
"Paul has an original way of approaching a story. His writing rarely needs much editing. And best of all, he is completely reliable.
"
Here are the stories!
Everybody quoted in all stories spoke on the record and on audiotape.
__________________________________________________
And Now.
...
A FEW HUNDRED PAGES OF
PAUL IORIO'S PUBLISHED WORK (AND SOME UNPUBLISHED ONES)
* * *
[PUBLISHED IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES]
A THREE-PART STORY ON THE MOVIE "CHINATOWN" (THE COMPLETE
VERSION PRESENTED HERE FOR THE FIRST TIME).
PART ONE
Roman Polanski on "Chinatown"
(Polanski, Towne and Evans Reveal Backstage Secrets)
By Paul Iorio
Several months ago, director Roman Polanski
watched "Chinatown" on laser disc with his wife
at their home in Paris. It had been a long time
since Polanski had seen the landmark film, which
he directed and didn't like very much at the time
of its 1974 release.
At first, they planned to
watch only a half-hour of it but were soon hooked
and saw it through to the gruesome
finale.
Polanski's reaction to the film, 25-years after
its release, is inexplicably modest. "I like it
more now than I did then," Polanski
said in a rare, exclusive interview by phone from
a ski resort in the Dolomite
mountains in Italy.
Of course, many critics and fans have been far
less restrained over the decades, hailing "Chinatown"
as a near-perfect gem, one of the great
movies of the last thirty years, a film that
seems to improve with time and
repeated viewing. It's also arguably the
highest peak of Polanski's own
career, which includes such formidable peaks
as "The Pianist" (2002),
"Rosemary's Baby" ('68), "Repulsion" ('65),
"Tess" ('79), and "Frantic" ('88).
The film's plot centers on private eye
Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson), who is
hired to investigate a supposed case of marital
infidelity.
Gittes soon
stumbles on a government (and family) scandal
in which the former head of
the Los Angeles Water Department and
others are found to be diverting
water, stealing land, and committing murder,
while nefariously re-shaping the
city's boundaries.
Besides Nicholson, the film also stars
Faye Dunaway as Evelyn Cross
Mulwray, the wife of a slain Water
Department chief; and John Huston as
venal tycoon Noah Cross, Evelyn's
father.
What does Polanski admire about the
film today?
"When [Nicholson] comes
up to the door [of Evelyn's house] and
knocks on the door [and it slams in
his face]...
And nothing happens. And we
hold like this for a long time," says
the director. "I [also] liked the
scene when [Evelyn] walks out of the
Brown Derby, when [Nicholson] says,
'I like my nose, I like breathing
through it.
' Remember? I like that
shot when it starts with the page
going to fetch the car and doing
it in two profiles..
.[Today], maybe
I would cut two close-ups. I don't
know whether I would actually.
Maybe I wouldn't."
He is momentarily distracted by
his baby son Elvis, who is
crying loudly. "They brought my son
here.
You want to talk to him? He's
[fourteen] months [old]," says Polanski.
What would he now change about
the film?
"Little details here and
there," he says. "The lousy reflection
in the lens of [Nicholson's camera]
when he's photographing Hollis and
Katherine from the roof [at El
Macondo]..
.I wanted to [film] it
upside down and [was told], 'Oh
they will never understand it.
Why is it upside down?
' Shit
yes, when you see something
reflected in the lens, it's always
upside down! It should be
upside down, it should be slightly
concave. That could [have been] better.
"
Robert Towne, 64, who won an
Academy Award for his "Chinatown"
screenplay, also likes the film
now more than he did when it was
released. He cites his own
favorite scenes. "[I like] the way
in which we worked the scene
with that wonderful character
actress [Fritzi Burr] who
was the secretary for Yelburton
in the Water department:
[imitating her]
'Yes, yes, they own the water
department!
' [Imitating Nicholson]
'I take a long lunch hour --
all day sometimes.' That
willingness to irritate her in
order to get information: very
few directors would insist on
that," says
Towne.
Both Polanski and Towne were not fans of the picture when they saw
the rough cut of it in the spring of '74.
"I finished the film and I looked at
the rough cut and as usual the rough cut is this very depressing moment for
a director," says Polanski. "And a director who does not have experience
[with] it is close to suicide at that stage. But even knowing that that very
difficult moment would pass, I still was tremendously depressed seeing the
rough cut.
I showed it to a friend of mine...
and was so ashamed when the
lights came up. And he said, 'What a great movie!' I said, 'Jesus, is
something wrong with him?
' I truly didn't think that he could be right."
Polanski says he never once thought during the making
of the movie that it would become a classic. Neither did Paramount's
Robert Evans, who produced the film.
"Up until the time the reviews
broke, we weren't sure whether we had a disaster on our hands or
something that was just different," says Evans, adding that most Paramount
executives openly predicted the film would fail.
From its birth as a sprawling first-draft script in '73, "Chinatown"
was never considered a commercial sure-shot. At first, even Polanski
passed on the project (at the time, he was busy in Rome).
"I really
felt happy in Rome," says Polanski. "I was working there, I had a great
house and a bunch of friends with whom I worked. It just wasn't interesting
for me to go to make a film in Los Angeles.
"
Besides, Los Angeles reminded him of personal tragedy; four years
earlier, his wife Sharon Tate, pregnant with their child, was sadistically
murdered by members of Charles Manson's gang. "I had too vivid
memories of all those events of '69 [the Manson murders] and I didn't
feel like going to work there," he says.
But the calls from Hollywood to Rome kept coming, first from
Nicholson, who personally asked Polanski to direct the script, and then
from Evans, who apparently made the director an offer he couldn't refuse.
Polanski was soon on a plane to LAX.
What eventually followed was a pivotal eight-week writing session
in which Polanski and Towne dismantled Towne's script and then
painstakingly rebuilt it piece by piece. Their writing workday would
begin around 9:30 or 10:00 in the morning and would last until around seven
or eight in the evening -- and was usually followed by a night of hard
partying.
"I don't think there was a day that we worked that we didn't go out
and play at night," says Towne. "The mood at night was -- it was the 1970s.
We had a good time.
Fooled around. I'll leave it at that." (Apparently, the
after-hours carousing continued even during the shooting: "[Nicholson]
could stay up until six in the morning [partying] but he would be there [on
the set] at eight or nine knowing his lines like nobody else," says Polanski.
"There was never any kind of problem with him.")
In the day, during the eight-week re-writing marathon, Polanski and
Towne were faced with the huge task of making the muddy script filmable.
"[The first draft] was gigantic and could not actually be shot the way it was
written," says Polanski.
"But there were terrific things in it. The second
draft, I remember Robert [Towne] took a long time and then it was even
longer. There were many more characters and it was quite convoluted.
We
sat down and with discipline tried to combine some things." Towne
concedes that if his first draft had been filmed as it was, "it would have
been a mess."
Most of the re-writing consisted of re-sequencing scenes while
organizing and clarifying the complicated plot.
"We took the script and
broke it down into one-sentence summations of each scene," says Towne.
"Then we took a scissors and cut those little scenes..
.and pasted them on
the door of the study at his house where we were working. And the game
was to shift those things around until we got them in an order that worked.
"
"At an early stage in the writing of it, I remember...
thinking, what
should be revealed first: the real estate scandal, the water scandal or the
incest?," says Towne. "As obvious as the answer became, that was the
first question I dealt with.
And I did realize the water scandal had to come
first, a fairly obvious choice when you stop to think about it. But beyond
that, the rest of the structural changes of significance took place with
Roman, shifting them around back and forth."
Polanski says he "did more of a construction, the shaping up of the
plot.
..And also I worked on the dialogue in [a] way that people can go
crazy sitting with me because I like eliminating every unnecessary word.
"
He also put Gittes into sharper focus, partly by using a radical style
of subjective point-of-view (in which he filmed much of the movie over
Nicholson's shoulder). "[Most of] the events that happen are really only
seen by [Gittes]," he says "You never show things that happen in his
absence."
Towne and Polanski argued frequently during their collaboration.
"We fought everyday," says Towne. "We'd fight about how to get to a
restaurant."
"['Chinatown''s success] happened through a lot of arguments,
fights," says Evans.
"There was [backstage] warfare throughout the
picture, but that's healthy."
Their most substantial disagreement was about the ending of the film,
in which Towne wanted Cross to be killed by Evelyn. Polanski insisted on
a more disturbing finale in which Evelyn is shot dead in front of her young
daughter Katherine.
"We were arguing about the end and could not
agree...
I was adamant about it...
I did not believe in a happy ending in this
type of a movie," says Polanski.
With the backing of Evans, Polanski eventually won the battle over
the ending. "I wrote that last scene the way it is now," says Polanski.
"And I sketched the dialogue and I remember in the evening I...
gave
[Nicholson] what I wrote down and said, 'Fashion it into your speech.'
And Jack very quickly jotted a few things of his and then we shot it at
literally five to midnight." (Today, Towne says Polanski "was right about
the end.
")
Many see the tragic ending as an echo of the horror of the Manson
murders on some level. That real-life tragedy also probably helped
Polanski turn Gittes into a credible detective. After all, the murder of
Polanski's wife turned the director into a sleuth for a time; in the months
before the killers were caught, he obsessively tried to find the culprits
himself.
Does Polanski think his own experience trying to track down his
wife's killers informed the film? "I can only tell you that every experience
helps you with your work. This, of course, did to a certain degree," he
says.
"I am unable to tell you how much better the film is because I had
certain things happen to me. Whatever you do, you learn. And each next
movie has one layer more to make it richer.
"
Towne and Polanski made other changes to the script. The opening
scene where Gittes meets with his client Curly was originally written with
Curly saying he wanted to kill his wife, and Gittes telling him he's not rich
enough to get away with murder. And in fact the cut dialogue is missed
under close scrutiny; when Nicholson's character says, "I only brought it up
to illustrate a point," the audience now doesn't know what "point" he's
referring to, because the previous piece of dialogue is gone.
(Gittes's
"point" is that you have to be rich to get away with murder.)
"That exchange I miss probably as much as any in the movie," says
Towne. "Because it really foreshadows [the] 'you've got to be rich to kill
somebody and get away with it' [theme].
He's really foreshadowing the
whole movie in a kind of nice way."
Two other sequences were edited out altogether: in one, Harry Dean
Stanton, playing a seaplane pilot who flies Gittes to Noah Cross's house,
hints at Evelyn's secret past. In the other, Noah talks about his love of
horse manure ("Love the smell of it," says Cross.
"A lot of people do but,
of course, they won't admit it.")
By the end of the eight-week session, Polanski and Towne had
created a final working script. Unfortunately, they were also no longer
speaking with one another.
"By the beginning of the shooting [in
September 1973], Roman and I had argued to the point where I did not go
onto the set. At that point it was just wiser to let him shoot the movie. But
that was really largely because of the end scene," says Towne.
Contrary to rumor, Polanski never tried to bar Towne from the set.
"I never barred him from the set," says Polanski. "He just didn't come,
because we [weren't] on speaking terms anymore by the time I started the
picture.
" (The two have long since patched up their differences
and even worked together again on "Frantic." Towne now says that
Polanski is "virtually..
.the only director that I would willingly work for as a
writer.")
For the most part, the final screenplay was shot almost exactly as it
was written.
"Once Roman and I agreed on the script, he held everyone's
feet to the fire," says Towne. "Whatever disagreements we had, they ended
when the script was written. Nobody said, 'well let's try it another way.
'
That was the way."
During the shooting, changes were frequently suggested by Dunaway
-- and rejected by Polanski. "There were a lot of problems with Faye
Dunaway," he says.
"Faye always wanted to change something. Some
nights I would..
.cross a couple words out. [She'd say]: 'Why are you
taking it out?
I don't want you to.' I'd say, 'Okay, leave it, leave it. It's
not worth the fight.
' Then she would come a half an hour later: 'You know
what? I thought it over, maybe you're right, we should remove it.' It was
like this every day.
Or she would try to add something. 'Actually I don't
think it's a good idea, Faye,' [I'd say]. She would start fighting about it.
And it was like that continuously."
[Dunaway did not respond to repeated requests for an interview for
this article. But she did write about Polanski and "Chinatown" in a recent
book, "Looking for Gatsby: My Life," by Dunaway and Betsy Sharkey.
In the 1998 edition, she writes: "I thought Roman was thwarting me and not
supporting me (during the making of 'Chinatown')," and "Roman was an
autocrat, always forcing things." However, she also calls him "an auteur film
maker of the first order."]
Does Polanski think that Jane Fonda, who was up for the role at one
time, would've made a better Evelyn Mulwray?
"No, he says. "Absolutely
not. I thought [Dunaway] was perfect.
Nobody wanted Faye [initially].
Bob Evans didn't want her because he thought she was trouble. [But] I
knew Faye; she had a fling with a friend of mine.
..I didn't expect to have
any problems with her.
So I fought for her. And I'm still very happy
we had her because whatever problems we had on the set -- who cares?.
..I
think she's terrific when I watch it now.
It's really exactly how I saw the
part; she was the right age, she had the right looks, her acting was just
perfect for this type of character. I don't think anyone else would have
done it better. Same with John Huston.
"
Could "Chinatown" be made today in the current movie-making-by-
committee era? "I don't think it could, actually," says Polanski. " It would
really have to be [made by] someone who has enough muscle to pull
through all those things.
Studios now have an enormous amount of various
executives who need to justify their existence by meddling into the creative
process. And there's a great rift between the creative branch and the
executive branch; [executives] are so envious of not being on the other
side..
.And they call themselves 'creatives.' There wouldn't be an executive
then who would dare to say, 'We are having a creative meeting' or 'We'll
send you the creative notes.
' [Imitating a movie executive]: 'After our
creative meeting we came up with these five pages of creative notes which
we would like you to read.'..
.In those times, nobody would actually use this
language. The fact that they use it is very meaningful.
"
Polanski's apparent disillusionment with Hollywood isn't the only
reason he won't be showing up in town to make a film any time soon. He
still risks possible arrest for having had sex with a teenage girl in the 1970s, if
he returns to the States; he fled the U.S.
in 1977 rather than face a probable
jail term. (He now lives in Paris with his wife, actress Emmanuelle Seigner,
and two children and makes films outside the U.S.
)
And Polanski says he is not close at all to settling his legal problems.
"How can I [return to the U.S.
] with the actual state of the media?,"
says Polanski. "I don't want to become a product.
..Can you imagine what it
would entail showing up suddenly in Los Angeles?
It would take a long time
before...
closure happens. And I don't think I want it enough. I have family to
look after.
I don't want to be in every tabloid."
PART TWO
SOLVING THE MYSTERIES OF "CHINATOWN"'S PLOT
By Paul Iorio
Decades after "Chinatown"'s release, there are still enduring mysteries
about its plot. Polanski and Towne talked with me about a few of them.
WHAT WERE NOAH AND HOLLIS ARGUING ABOUT OUTSIDE
THE PIG N WHISTLE?
Polanski says it doesn't matter what they were arguing
about. "It was probably about Evelyn," he says.
"They had a lot
of things to argue about...
It's not necessary to know what they were arguing
about...
Since it's only someone relating that they were arguing, we don't
have to know what they were arguing about."
Towne has a more specific explanation. "Hollis was saying, 'you
corrupt old fart, you're still fucking around with the water department.
And
I'm not going to deal with you in that matter, I'm not going to build that
dam, and I'm not going to tell you where your daughter is.'"
WHY DOES HOLLIS BRING KATHERINE TO THE EL MACONDO
HIDEAWAY IF THEIR RELATIONSHIP IS COMPLETELY
INNOCENT AND HE HAS NOTHING TO HIDE?
"Because [Katherine] is in town secretly, to see her mother," says Towne.
"She's keeping her from Noah."
WHAT MYSTERY OBJECT DOES GITTES SEE BUT NOT
RETRIEVE FROM EVELYN'S POND NEAR THE BEGINNING OF
THE FILM?
According to Towne, the object was Noah's bi-focals (which Gittes
does retrieve in a later scene).
The fact that it was in the pond at the time of
his first visit means Hollis had already been murdered by that morning.
(Evelyn, of course, had no idea he had been killed.)
WHAT DOES THE PHRASE "AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE" MEAN?
The enigmatic phrase "as little as possible" turns up in the last scene
and in the bedroom dialogue between Evelyn and Jake (incidentally, the two
passages written solely by Polanski, though the phrase was coined by
Towne). In many ways, it's the movie's defining phrase, since it points
to the title, a metaphor for an insular, venal, 'we-take-care-of-our-own'
type of precinct or community.
"A vice cop had said to me [before I wrote the script], 'you know,
you don't do much in Chinatown,'" says Towne.
"He said, 'You can't tell
whether you're helping someone commit a crime or preventing one, so you
just try to not do much.' I said, 'Well, that's kind of an interesting approach
to law enforcement.' And in fact that was the beginning" of the whole
project.
PART THREE
"CHINATOWN" LOCATIONS
Returning to the Scene of the Crime
By Paul Iorio
Of course, one of the big stars of "Chinatown" is Los Angeles itself.
"This is a Los Angeles movie, not a Hollywood movie," says production
designer Richard Sylbert, who chose the locations for the film.
The sixteen main locations in "Chinatown" -- ranging from a
Catalina hilltop to Echo Park Lake -- present a vision of a seductively
urbane -- and corrupt -- city, circa 1939.
"Robert Towne had this thing about Los Angeles, about
the history of the city, and that's what makes it so profound," Polanski told
me. "Without that, you would just have another detective thing. It's
much more than a thriller.
"
As Towne says: "Roman repeatedly stressed the wisdom of
repeating...
locations. In other words, if you've got one scene in
the department of water and power, make sure you've got two. It orients
an audience.
"
Here are some of "Chinatown"'s more memorable locations.
1. Ida Sessions's Apartment.
IN THE FILM: Near the end of the film, the body of the murdered Ida
Sessions is shown in her apartment -- at 848-1/2 East Kensington Street
(onscreen and off) -- sprawled on the floor with a spilled bag of groceries.
(Sessions -- played by Diane Ladd -- was the SAG member who passed
herself off as Evelyn Mulwray to Gittes at the beginning of the film.)
IN REAL LIFE: Set in a hilly Echo Park neighborhood south of Sunset, the
apartment house, painted light green now as then, is split in half by a central
bungalow-corridor, just like in the film.
Ida's place is in the back, now
protected by a screen security door (which the fictional Sessions sure
could've used at the time!).
COMMENTS: "It was picked [because] it was completely symmetrical and
had a long narrow passage in the middle of it, so that.
..you looked at it and
said, 'There can't be any problem here,'" says Sylbert.
"But once you got
into that narrow corridor, the opposite happened, because narrow corridors
produce anxiety. And then, of course, you get to the door and the glass is
broken."
* * *
2.
The Mar Vista Inn.
IN THE MOVIE: The Mar Vista Inn and Rest Home is where one of the
most breathtaking car escapes in the film -- and in film history -- takes
place. Gittes visits the home's elderly residents -- whose names are being
used without their knowledge in a land-laundering scam -- and ends up
fighting thug Claude Mulvihill, a former Ventura County sheriff.
Dunaway
saves the day, swinging her car around the famous semi-circular driveway,
picking up Gittes and racing back onto Sunset as gunfire erupts.
IN REAL LIFE: The Inn is actually the Eastern Star Home (11725 Sunset
Blvd.), near a commercial strip in Brentwood at Barrington, and is
immediately recognizable from the film.
One can stroll along the famous
driveway (and imagine Polanski's gunmen coming up the walk) and climb
the stairs to the entrance where Gittes battered Mulvihill's skull.
COMMENTS: "Every important building in this movie [had to be] white
and Spanish [and] had to be above [Gittes's] eye level," says Sylbert.
"And because it's above his eye level, it's automatically.
..harder for him to
go there visually.
..And he's a detective.
And uphill is where he's [going]."
* * *
3. Noah Cross's Estate.
IN THE MOVIE: Gittes has lunch here with Noah Cross, who tells Gittes
to "just find the girl."
IN REAL LIFE: Cross's house is actually the mountain-top Wrigley estate
and horse farm on Catalina island.
COMMENTS: "When [Gittes] got off the boat, he walked on to that
wonderful dock where you can see the Avalon ballroom in the
background," says Sylbert.
"And we cut [to] the Wrigley Ranch."
* * *
4. Echo Park Lake.
IN THE MOVIE: Gittes and associate Duffy spot Hollis Mulwray with his
"girlfriend" at the north end of Echo Park Lake. Aboard a boat, Gittes
surreptitiously photographs Hollis in a nearby canoe.
IN REAL LIFE: The lake looks exactly as it did 25 years ago.
Its
trademark bridge, visible in the film, is now creaky and red, leading to a
damp island full of pigeons and palms. Located south of Sunset and north
of the 101, it also sports a boat station that rents out peddle-boats by the
hour.
COMMENTS: Sylbert says the lake is the perfect location "if you're doing
1939 and you're after something that says 'California' so clearly, which
that does, with the little bridge in it and the palm trees all around.
"
"When you start a movie like this you begin to understand that you
have to go to the old part of town," he says. "And that's why I came up
with Echo Park, and that's why Ida Session's house ended up in that area,
too."
* * *
5.
City Hall.
IN THE MOVIE: Near the beginning of the film, Gittes spies on Hollis at a
public meeting at L.A.
City Hall in which Hollis states his opposition to the
building of a risky dam project. Meanwhile, Valley farmers, irate over
having their land dried up by illegal water diversion, protest by bringing
sheep into the meeting.
IN REAL LIFE: L.
A. City Hall is located downtown on Spring Street.
COMMENTS: "The meeting was shot.
..in the chamber.
All I did was put a
huge picture of Roosevelt on the wall," says Sylbert.
* * *
6. The Pig 'N' Whistle.
IN THE FILM: The fictional Pig 'n' Whistle restaurant appears in the film
as the backdrop for an argument between Cross and Hollis Mulwray,
captured in clandestine photographs by Walsh, Gittes's associate.
IN REAL LIFE: This is actually the Pacific Dining Car restaurant (1310
West Sixth St.), at Witmar Street and Sixth, just west of downtown L.
A.
(The Dining Car was built in 1921, in the heyday of the Mulwrays.)
COMMENTS: The actual eatery was the place to eat and deal downtown
back when.
(Sylbert took the photographs shown in the film.)
* * *
7. The Brown Derby.
IN THE MOVIE: After Hollis is murdered, Gittes and Evelyn Mulwray
meet over lunch at this swank restaurant. Gittes spends most of the meeting
being unjustifiably suspicious of Evelyn.
IN REAL LIFE: The original Brown Derby, representing the elegance of
old L.
A., is now gone. In its place is a commercial strip called the Brown
Derby Plaza (and a vacant space where the actual Derby used to be) on the
3400 block of Wilshire, across from the old Ambassador.
* * *
8. El Macondo Apartments.
IN THE FILM: El Macondo is the so-called "love nest" in which Gittes
finds Hollis with a mysterious young woman (actually Katherine).
Nicholson
climbs onto the red-tile roof and shoots photos of the two in the courtyard
below. (This is the scene Polanski said he wanted to show upside
down, in the reflection of the camera lens.)
IN REAL LIFE: The apartment building is now called Mi Casa, at 1400-
1414 Havenhurst Drive, between Sunset and Fountain.
The stylish four-story
Spanish structure is on the National Register of Historic Places.
COMMENTS: Sylbert named it El Macondo after the name of a city in a
Gabriel Marquez novel. "It was perfect, " says Sylbert.
"It was Spanish,
it was white, and we could get to the roof tiles and shoot down into the
courtyard."
9. 1712 Alameda, Chinatown.
IN THE MOVIE: Evelyn is shot to death by detective Loach in the final
sequence and Katherine is whisked away by Noah Cross, in front of Khan's
apartment at the screen address 1712 Alameda.
IN REAL LIFE: The final scene was actually shot on the west side of North
Spring Street in Chinatown, just south of Ord Street.
COMMENTS: Polanski says he filmed this scene at five minutes to
midnight on one of the final days of shooting after quickly scripting a new
ending hours earlier.
* * *
10. Evelyn Mulwray's House.
IN THE MOVIE: This is Evelyn's house -- at the non-existent 1412
Adelaide Drive -- where Gittes discovers a tell-tale piece of evidence in the
backyard salt-water pond.
In a later scene here, he's forced to surrender
the evidence to Mulvihill.
IN REAL LIFE: Sources say the house is in Pasadena, at 1315 El Molino,
north of Mission.
COMMENTS: Sylbert says the house was an abandoned wreck before it
was completely renovated and redesigned by the "Chinatown" crew, who
even put in the pond.
"If you watch the scene carefully, you'll notice that when you're in the
backyard, you cannot see [nearby buildings]," says Sylbert. "Because in
1939, the whole image I was after was that there was nothing out there."
Sylbert also chose the place because one can see in a straight line
from the backyard through the house to the front entrance.
"At the end of
the movie, when [Gittes] is waiting for Noah Cross, he's standing at that
back doorway and you can see the car with Cross pull up at the front
door," he says. (The practice of shooting action in one room through the
action in another room is virtually a Polanski trademark.)
* * *
11.
The Oak Pass Reservoir.
IN THE MOVIE: The Oak Pass is where Hollis is found dead and where
Gittes has his nose sliced by a thug played by Polanski.
IN REAL LIFE: The location's real name is the Stone Canyon Reservoir,
one of the major reservoirs near the L.
A. basin. It's in the Santa Monica
mountains above Bel Air and close to Benedict Canyon (not far from
where Polanski's wife was murdered in real-life).
COMMENTS: "The sluice that the body was in when they pulled [Hollis]
up -- that's there, too," says Sylbert.
* * *
12. Point Fermin Park.
IN THE FILM: Early in the movie, Gittes follows Hollis to Point Fermin
and watches him walk down a bluff to the Pacific, where fresh water is
being dumped in the middle of a drought. This is also where Gittes puts
stop-watches beneath the wheels of Hollis's car in a cul-de-sac.
IN REAL LIFE: This is Point Fermin, a public park on the coast of San
Pedro.
COMMENTS: "I made a cut-out [of a lighthouse] about 25-feet high...
It
was a quarter-mile away from the camera so you could make it look like a
lighthouse," says Sylbert, referring to the scene in which Gittes lounges in a
suit on the bluff at twilight. (The real Point Fermin lighthouse was not in
operation at the time.)
* *
Other locations in the film include: the "Hollenbeck Bridge," where
Gittes approaches a boy on a donkey; the place is actually in the Tujunga
Canyon area.
The orange groves in the northwest valley, where Gittes is assaulted
by farmers, are in the Fillmore Orchards, near Santa Clara. Curly's house
was not in San Pedro but in Hollywood, a few blocks from Paramount
studios. And Katherine's house, at the onscreen address 1972 Canyon
Drive, is either in a neighborhood near Paramount or in the Hollywood Hills
(where the real 1972 Canyon looks much like the celluloid one); sources
conflict here.
The only backlot location in the film is the barbershop. "I built a
barber shop..
.so I could put an automobile outside the window and
overheat the engine," says Sylbert about the scene in which Gittes himself
vividly overheats.
The Water Department offices, the Hall of Records, Gittes's office,
and the room where the famous "sister/daughter" scene takes place were all
studio sites.
[From The Los Angeles Times, July 8, 1999; original manuscript and updated; part two of this piece is published here for the first time.]
_____________________________________________
________________________________________________
[PUBLISHED IN LOS ANGELES NEW TIMES]
Richard Pryor, At Twilight on Sunset
An Eyewitness Account of Pryor's Last Two Concerts
By Paul Iorio
It's twilight on Sunset outside The Comedy Store between the billboards of
dead icons James Dean and Frank Zappa and just down the street from where
John Belushi shot his last speedball. Around fourteen comics are scheduled to
perform at The Store tonight, but there are no lines around the block and no ticket
scalpers on the sidewalk, despite the star power of one of the fourteen, the one
whose name appears on the outdoor marquee that reads: "Richard Pryor Tonight.
"
Pryor is about to perform what will become the last two shows of his life. It's
July 17, 1996.
Defying his own multiple sclerosis, he is set to take the stage at The Comedy
Store, the West Hollywood, comedy club where he created his best
material in the 1970s, the birthplace of his codger character Mudbone and a lot of
other prime stuff.
But expectations for a laugh are lower than the setting sun, since Pryor's M.S.
sometimes makes him not just unfunny, but incoherent.
No reporters, except this
one, are on hand to witness Pryor's swan song.
Outside the club, stray Sunset Strip toughs walk and loiter. Inside, a couple
hundred fans file into the place, perhaps to glimpse whatever legendary fire
remains or to pay respect to a bona fide comic genius or to survey the shambles
of a collective youth lost to drugs, illness and the ravages of time.
A solo pianist
plays "We're in the Money" and other jaunty tunes.
Five comics warm up for Pryor tonight. Though none could have touched him
back when, the openers are now the ones evoking most of the laughter, if not the
attention.
The best is stand-up Mark Curry, star of the Nineties television series
Hangin' With Mr. Cooper, who kills live.
"Free Willy: some people thought it was about some brother in jail.
'Willy
didn't do all that s---, 'know,'" jokes Curry, as the crowd explodes.
And there are laughs for Argus Hamilton, the former Tonight Show regular and
writer for Pryor's TV show in the Seventies ("O.J.
says to A.C.: 'I told you Costa
Rica not Costa Mesa!
'").
By 10:00 p.m.
, the place is packed with Pryor fanatics and stand-up
aficionados. Pryor is late but no one seems to mind a bit. An exquisitely
angry set by the very spontaneous Ellen Cleghorne takes everyone's mind
off the delay.
Then, at long last there's commotion at the back of the club as Marvin
Gaye's "What's Goin' On?" blasts from speakers. Two massive guys carry a frail,
thin, dapper man who looks, well, more like Mudbone than the person he used
to be.
The full house stands and applauds vigorously but in a somewhat
ceremonial way, as if he were receiving some sort of lifetime achievement award.
Some in the audience seem to be taken aback by Pryor's physical deterioration.
The music stops, the crowd sits.
It's around 10:50 p.m. and, against enormous odds, Pryor has just reclaimed
the stage at the Comedy Store.
Pryor is wearing a red cap and sits in his wheelchair next to a stool that has
a glass of water on it. A handler puts a pair of glasses on the comedian and then
leaves the stage.
"These are glasses, right?
" Pryor quips, calling the thick lenses "Coke
bottles." The audience, which is primed to laugh, laughs.
"I appreciate that you laugh at me no matter what I say," says Pryor.
The
crowd laughs again. One senses that Pryor, like his early mentor Redd Foxx,
could die onstage clutching his heart, and the audience would roar at the bit.
"I'm gonna die soon," he continues.
Twenty-five years ago, that line might have
kicked off a sidesplitter, like the classic in which he impersonates someone
panicking during a bad acid trip by repeating "I'm-gonna-die, I'm-gonna-die" like
a mantra-turned-tribal-chant. But tonight, it's decades later, and "I'm-gonna-die"
means I'm-gonna-die. A sexy blonde woman in the front center row is quietly
weeping, occasionally wiping tears from her face.
"People ask me, 'Are you p----- off?' I say, 'Yeah!,'" Pryor says.
Pryor tries to sip something but has major trouble bringing the cup to his
lips. There's a long pause.
"I hope you're as nice to other comics as you are to me," says Pryor.
"We love ya, Rich," yells someone.
"Yeah, babe," shouts another.
A waitress serves the front rows, and Pryor spots her.
"What're you doin'? Stealin' drinks?" he jokes.
A hint of the old fire.
He sips and softly says, "S---," at something private.
"Thanks for listening to me.
..It's been weeks since I saw my dick hard," he
says.
This from a guy who used to joke that a part of his anatomy was "hard
enough to cut diamonds."
"Hold the mike up to you, sir," someone shouts. "So we can hear you.
"
"I don't want you to hear me," snaps Pryor. A long silence.
"Life's a bitch," he says, drooling a bit.
"And then you die?" adds a fan.
"Yeah, but when?
" asks Pryor. "I don't mind hanging around, but s---!"
"When they said I had M.
S., I said, 'I don't even know what M.S.
is,'"
says Pryor. "Doctor said, 'Don't worry, you will.'"
A woman in the front row gets up to leave.
"Where you goin', pretty lady?" Pryor asks. The moment recalls a scene from
the movie "Lenny," where the Lenny Bruce character shouts, "Where're you
going?
" to fans leaving a lousy show of his. But this isn't "Lenny," and he isn't
Lenny. Bruce died alone, broke and blacklisted; Pryor is dying with lots of friends
and fans -- and at least some money.
So when he says, "Where you goin', pretty lady?," the woman smiles at him
and says apologetically, "I'm going to the bathroom."
"I told my mom, 'Dad is f------ everyone in the neighborhood.
' She said, 'Just
be glad he isn't f------ you,'" jokes Pryor. Fans laugh.
He pauses.
"Bear with me." The audience is now silent enough that unrelated
laughter from an adjoining room can be heard.
Out of the blue, Pryor says, "Thanks, Jenny," referring to his ex-wife Jennifer
Lee, who he has since re-married and who handles his life and career with the
dedication of a true believer.
"I beat Jenny up sometimes a long time ago," says Pryor. "She's the first
woman who ever hit me in the mouth. [pause] Just because I asked her for some
[sex].
"
The crowd applauds. Then, attendants come to carry Pryor offstage, the
audience gives him a standing ovation, and recorded music plays. He was
onstage for forty minutes.
The applause seems as much for his courage as for
any humor.
And his raw honesty is jarring in this Age of Spin, when celebrities pay
publicists nice money to hide scandals or twist them into something
unrecognizable. Pryor seems proud of his imperfections -- or at least proud of not
hiding them -- and freely jokes about his bad health, his lavish drug use, the
brothels of his childhood, even something as reprehensible as wife-beating.
No
muckraker could possibly expose Pryor's dark side because the comic has
already scooped them.
A week later, on July 24, 1996, Pryor performs another show at the Comedy
Store, literally the last performance of his life.
This time he is feistier and funnier -- at first.
With the small club packed
again, and no journalists present (except this one) again, Pryor gets some genuine
laughs when he refers to fellow M.S. victim Annette Funicello as "that
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E bitch.
"
"Put the mike closer," someone yells.
"F--- you!," snaps Pryor, and people howl.
Pryor actually seems to like it
when the crowd is rude and less reverential, perhaps because he's then under no
obligation to be appreciative, or maybe because he's developed a taste for
hecklers.
After joking about "getting pussy in the rehab ward," the show takes a steep
dive. "I got a mouthful of s---," Pryor says, "and I can't.
.." He trails off.
Pryor pulls out a piece of paper and tries for minutes to unfold it. An uneasy
silence fills the place. It's almost like the scene in the movie "Born on the
Fourth of July" when Ron Kovic starts a public speech smoothly, but suddenly
and inexplicably stops dead as the audience watches in shock.
"Take your time," someone shouts.
Pryor continues trying to unfold the paper but his hands just aren't agile
enough to do it. His body is progressively failing him with every passing minute.
"We're not going anywhere," a guy yells.
"Neither am I," says Pryor, grumbling about not having his "big-ass Coke
bottle" glasses again. After several minutes, he finally finishes unfolding the
paper and stares at it for awhile.
Now there's a new problem: he can't read it.
"This M.S.
s--- is getting to me," he says.
A handler brings Pryor a cigarette. Pryor flicks a bright red lighter once,
twice, and flames it the third time.
"Could you bring me a Number Twenty?" Pryor asks someone. A Number
Twenty, in Comedy Store parlance, is a martini.
"Yessir," comes the response from someone in the audience.
Smoke from Pryor's cigarette fills the air for an elastic, relaxed minute
or so.
In the spotlight, smoke hovers over the front rows like cumulus clouds that
are ready to drench and thunder with electricity.
But the fire and fury don't
come. The crowd is silent.
"You all are very patient," Pryor says.
"We gotta be; we paid ten dollars," says someone, good-naturedly.
"Hey, don't start no s---!," Pryor says.
Through the smoke, Pryor lifts his Number Twenty feebly, as if he's Dave the
aged astronaut in the time travel sequence of "2001: A Space Odyssey." With smoke
and silence everywhere, the whole place seems to be caught in a time warp; a
minute ago we were in 1976 (wasn't that a minute ago?) and suddenly we're
transported to the present-day, where there's this old man onstage in the house
of his prime.
Could this really be the same guy who thirty years ago had such
masterful physical control that he could impersonate a race car, run hilariously in
slow motion, or convince audiences he was having a heart attack by falling to
the floor?
"I know I can't see, but when I wear the Coke bottles, then everybody knows
it," he says. He smokes his cigarette, his breathing now audibly labored.
"I'm glad I've got M.S. -- it's keeping me alive," he says.
"Isn't that what
you said, Jenny?" Pryor was referring to Lee's much-quoted theory that if the
disease hadn't slowed him down, he'd have been killed in the fast lane by now.
Onstage, Pryor's cigarette burns to his fingertips, and he isn't physically
able to remove it.
"Get this motherf------ cigarette out of my hand 'cause it's
burning me!" he blurts, real pain in his voice. A handler bounds onstage to take
it away.
As it turned out, those were Pryor's very last words onstage in a full-length
concert anywhere. He would never attempt another stand-up performance.
The half-hour show ends at 11:20 p.
m., as two muscular guys carry him
offstage. Pryor is driven home.
[Parts of this story first appeared in New Times Los Angeles in October 1996; it's also the first chapter of my book on Pryor, re-written in late 2005. Incidentally, I audiotaped Pryor's last show.]
______________________________________________________________
[FROM THE TORONTO STAR]
The Immediate TV Coverage of the First Two Crashes on 9/11
(The Live Coverage Viewers Missed)
By Paul Iorio
By now, everyone has seen virtually every inch of television coverage of
the September 11th attacks around nine hundred and eleven times.
It
sometimes seems as if every scrap of 9/11 footage ever shot -- whether taken
upside down near Ground Zero or from faraway Rockaway -- has already
been aired more frequently than the Zapruder film.
But most TV viewers never got to see the most riveting 9/11 television
coverage of all: the raw live footage of the seventeen minutes between the
first plane crash at 8:46 and the second at 9:03 am, as seen on the morning
news shows.
In New York, television programming was largely knocked off the air by
the toppling of transmission antennae atop the Trade Center.
And on the west
coast, almost everyone was asleep during the attacks, waking only in time to
see the first tower collapse.
So for those who missed it -- almost everybody -- there's now a website
library that has compiled streaming video of all major U.S.
television news
programs from that morning, shown in real-time with ads intact -- plus a
generous sampling from overseas media outlets. (The site is run by a non-
profit online TV library called The Television Archive and can be accessed at
http://client.alexa.
com/tvarchive/html. Its American network feeds are from
Washington, D.C.
, affiliates; MSNBC and the cable Fox News Channel are
not included in the archive.) [Note: the website has since been deleted.]
The coverage from 8:30-to-9:30-am is among the most engrossing ever
broadcast -- and some of the most inadvertently telling, too, since it clearly
reveals who among the anchors and correspondents got it right and who blew
it, who could think on their feet and who couldn't, as the ultimate breaking
news story unfolded.
There are surprises. For example, Charles Gibson, co-anchor of ABC's
"Good Morning America," did an unexpectedly fine job of covering the
moment when the second plane hit and was the only anchor on the three
major networks to immediately speak up and tell us what had happened.
Others, like Bryant Gumbel, the now-departed anchor of CBS's "The Morning
Show," contributed astonishingly awful reportage.
The first to break the news to America was CNN, which cut into an
advertisement at 8:49, three minutes after the first crash, with a live picture of
the burning north tower and the words: "This just in. You are looking at
obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center
and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into
one of the towers.
"
"Good Morning America" arrived second, at 8:51, with Diane Sawyer
saying, "We want to tell you what we know as we know it. But we just got a
report in that there's been some sort of explosion at the World Trade Center."
(And within a couple minutes, ABC correspondent Don Dahler was providing
terrific first-hand reportage via cellphone from near Ground Zero.
)
Matt Lauer of NBC's "Today" would have been third, coming a half
minute after "GMA," had he not dropped the ball. At 8:51, Lauer broke away
from an interview to announce that there was breaking news but didn't say
what the news was. "I have to interrupt you right now," Lauer told his guest,
the author of a biography on billionaire Howard Hughes.
"We're going to go
live right now and show you a picture of the World Trade Center, where I
understand -- Do we have it? No, we do not." He then cut to 90 seconds of
ads before Katie Couric returned to the airwaves to report what had
happened.
But the real test of anchor mettle came at the moment when the second
plane hit at 9:03.
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