Writer Robert Towne, producer Robert Evans and director Jack Nicholson founded the production company T.E.N. in 1985 just to produce this film. When legal and financial problems occurred, Nicholson finished the project alone.
Cameo: [Tom Waits] policeman
Producer Robert Evans was tapped early on to play the "second" Jake. Writer Robert Towne (who had hoped to direct the film) didn't think that Evans was up to the job and fired him, and Jack Nicholson became the picture's director. This film is/was the second in a planned trilogy of films.
Robert Towne had originally planned a trilogy of movies chronicling at eleven-year intervals (in narrative terms) the development and decline of southern California as the result of rapacious developers and tycoons. Chinatown (1974) had been water rights, The Two Jakes (1990) was to deal with oil, and a third movie, set in the '50s, would deal with pollution caused by the building of the freeway system. The final movie was to be called "Cloverleaf".
Kelly McGillis and Cathy Moriarty were considered for the female lead.
Dennis Hopper and Joe Pesci were considered for the role of Jake Berman.
18 months elapsed between the film's US release and its first (minimal) appearance in UK cinemas.
Harrison Ford and Roy Scheider were Robert Towne's choice for the part of the older Jake Gittes.
John Hackett, who appears briefly as the murdered Mark Bodine, is Jack Nicholson's stand-in.
Jake Gittes:
Get on your knees, put your ass in the air and don't move until I say to.
Jake Berman:
You know something, Jake, you might think you know what's going on around here but... you don't.
Jake Gittes:
You can't trust a guy who's never lost anything.
Jake Gittes:
What I do for a living may not be very reputable. But I am. In this town I'm the leper with the most fingers.
Walsh:
Does that mean he wants you to prove your own client is guilty of murder?
Jake Gittes:
Yeah.
Walsh:
Well, 's that ethical?
Jake Gittes:
Larry, he's a lawyer.
Khan:
You are very successful.
Jake Gittes:
Oh, I can't complain.
Khan:
Does that mean you are happy?
Jake Gittes:
Who can answer that question off the top of their head?
Khan:
Anyone who's happy.
Jake Gittes:
You can follow the action, which gets you good pictures. You can follow your instincts, which'll probably get you in trouble. Or, you can follow the money, which nine times out of ten will get you closer to the truth.
Jake Gittes:
I wouldn't extort a nickel from my worst enemy. That's where I draw the line.
Loach Jr.:
Well, I'll tell you, Jake. I knew a whore once. For the right amount of money, she'd piss in a guy's face. But she wouldn't shit on his chest. You see, that's where she drew the line.
Jake Gittes:
Well, Junior, all I can say is: I hope she wasn't too much of a disappointment to you.
Jake Gittes:
The problem with you, kid, is you don't know who you're kiddin'.
Captain Lou Escobar:
How do you know he didn't have the gun with him?
Jake Gittes:
Oh, I'd never frisk him before I let him walk in on his wife hanging on the headboard while some guy was slammin' her into the wall, Lou!
Kitty Berman:
Does it ever go away?
Jake Gittes:
What's that?
Kitty Berman:
The past.
Jake Gittes:
I think you have to work real hard on that one.
[last lines]
Jake Gittes:
Katherine?
[she turns to look at him]
Jake Gittes:
It never goes away.
Anachronisms: Set in 1948, Jake strolls past an automatic teller machine.
Continuity: A frightened Det. Lt. Loach relieves himself on the floor of the police room with his trousers on. In all subsequent shots his trousers are dry.
Anachronisms: The stamp on the letter wasn't issued until 1949.
Anachronisms: On the homes under construction in the B&B subdivision, the mottled texture of the sheathing indicates it to be Oriented Strand Board (OSB) and not plywood. OSB did not appear in construction until the Late 1970s and early 1980s.
Follows
Chinatown (1974)
References
Chinatown (1974)
- Jake Berman sayin to Jake Gittes, the same quote that Cross said to Jake; "You may think you know what's going on around here, but you don't".