Editing Chinatown (1974 film) (section)

===Background===
In 1971, producer [[Robert Evans]] offered Towne $175,000 to write a screenplay for ''[[The Great Gatsby (1974 film)|The Great Gatsby]]'' (1974), but Towne felt he could not better the [[F. Scott Fitzgerald]] [[The Great Gatsby|novel]]. Instead, Towne asked Evans for $25,000 to write his own story, ''Chinatown'', to which Evans agreed.<ref name="dvd">{{cite video |people = Robert Towne, Roman Polanksi and Robert Evans |date = April 11, 2007 |title = Retrospective interview from Chinatown (Special Collector's Edition) |medium = DVD |publisher = Paramount |ASIN = B000UAE7RW}}</ref><ref name="Thomson">* Thomson, David (2005). ''The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood''. {{ISBN|0-375-40016-8}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=https://lamag.com/film/robert-evans-chinatown | title=In a Never-Before-Published Interview, Robert Evans Talks 'Chinatown': 'We Weren't Sure if We Had a Disaster on our Hands' | date=October 29, 2019 }}</ref> Towne had originally hoped to also direct ''Chinatown'', but realized that by taking Evans' money, he would lose control of the project's future and his role as a director.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wasson |first=Sam |title=The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood |publisher=Flatiron Books |year=2020 |isbn=9781250301833 |location=New York |pages=100, 114}}</ref>

''Chinatown'' is set in 1937 and portrays the manipulation of a critical municipal resource—water—by a cadre of shadowy oligarchs. It was the first part of Towne's planned [[trilogy]] about the character J. J. Gittes, the foibles of the Los Angeles power structure, and the subjugation of public good by private greed.<ref name=inter>{{cite web |url=http://thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.com/2009/10/robert-towne-hollywood-interview.html |title=Robert Towne: The Hollywood Interview |author=The Hollywood Interview |access-date=November 7, 2009 |archive-date=December 16, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171216223651/http://thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.com/2009/10/robert-towne-hollywood-interview.html |url-status=live}}</ref> The second part, ''[[The Two Jakes]]'', has Gittes caught up in another grab for a natural resource—oil—in the 1940s. It was directed by Jack Nicholson and released in 1990, but the second film's commercial and critical failure scuttled plans to make ''Gittes vs. Gittes'',<ref>{{cite news | url=http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/09/29/chinatown.towne.movie/index.html | work=CNN.com | title='My sister! My daughter!' and other tales of 'Chinatown'  | access-date=April 28, 2010 | date=September 29, 2009 | archive-date=January 23, 2018 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180123062920/http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/09/29/chinatown.towne.movie/index.html | url-status=live}}</ref> about the third finite resource—land—in Los Angeles, circa 1968.<ref name=inter />