Script To Screen: “Chinatown”
The memorable ending of the classic 1974 movie Chinatown, written by Robert Towne.
Setup: In his investigation, private eye Jake Gittes has uncovered a web of deceit involving the Noah Cross family… and now destiny intervenes.
Here is the movie version of the scene:
There are many significant changes between script to screen:
- Evelyn doesn’t just point the gun at Cross, she shoots him in the shoulder.
- The fatal shot doesn’t come from a “uniformed officer” down the block, but one of the policemen standing with Gittes.
- Katherine plays a bigger role in the ending as she freaks out wailing over the death of her mother. Plus, Cross leads her away. This is a big change as it makes the tragedy much more intense: Evelyn just doesn’t die, her death is in vain as the indication is Katherine will end up in Cross’s care.
The biggest single note is this: A bunch of dialogue is cut from the movie scene. The effect combined with the compressed action is to up the tension considerably.
Robert Towne originally intended to have a happy ending. However, during pre-production Roman Polanski and Towne argued over it, with Polanski insisting on a tragic ending. Polanski won the argument and, when the picture was re-released in 1999, Towne admitted that he had been wrong.
Can you imagine Chinatown with a happy ending?
One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a Go Into The Story series where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.
For more articles in the Script To Screen series, go here.
