Chinatown

All right, Curly, enough's enough.

You can't eat the Venetian blinds. I just had them installed on Wednesday.

Down the hatch.

- She's no good. - What can I tell you, kid? You're right.

When you're right, you're right.

And you're right.

I'll pay you the rest next week.

We only caught 60 ton of skipjack down in San Benedict.

And they don't pay you the same for skipjack as they do albacore or tuna.

Forget it, will you, Curly?

I only brought it up to illustrate a point. I don't want your last dime.

What kind of a guy do you think I am?

- Thank you, Mr. Gittes. - Call me Jake.

Careful driving home, Curl, huh?

Mrs. Mulwray's waiting for you with Mr. Walsh and Mr. Duffy.

Mrs. Mulwray, may I present Mr. Gittes?

- Mrs. Mulwray, how do you do? - Mr. Gittes.

Now, what seems to be the problem?

My husband,

I believe, is seeing another woman.

- No. Really? - I'm afraid so.

I am sorry.

Mr. Gittes, please, do you think we could discuss this alone?

I'm afraid not, Mrs. Mulwray. These are my operatives,

and at some point, they're going to have to assist me.

I can't do everything myself.

Of course not.

Now,

what makes you certain that your husband is

involved with someone?

A wife can tell.

Mrs. Mulwray, do you love your husband?

Yes, of course!

- Then go home and forget everything. - But, I...

I'm sure that he loves you, too, Mrs. Mulwray.

Do you know the expression, "Let sleeping dogs lie"?

You're better off not knowing.

I have to know.

Very well.

What is your husband's first name?

Hollis.

Hollis Mulwray.

- Water and Power? - He's Chief Engineer.

Chief Engineer?

Mrs. Mulwray, this...

This type of investigation can be hard on your pocketbook.

It takes time...

Money doesn't matter to me, Mr. Gittes.

Okay, we'll...

We'll see what we can do.

Gentlemen, today you can walk out that door,

turn right, hop a streetcar, and within 25 minutes,

end up smack in the Pacific Ocean.

Now, you can swim in it and you can fish in it, but you can't drink it,

and you can't irrigate an orange grove with it.

Now remember, we live next door to the ocean,

but we also live on the edge of a desert.

Los Angeles is a desert community.

Beneath this building, beneath our streets, is a desert.

And without water, the dust will rise up and cover us

as though we never existed.

Now, the Alto Vallejo can save us from this,

and I respectfully suggest that $8.5 million

is a fair price to pay to keep the desert from our streets

and not on top of them.

Hear, hear!

Mayor Bagby, let's hear from all the departments again.

I suppose we'd better take Water and Power first.

Mr. Mulwray?

In case you've forgotten, gentlemen,

over 500 lives were lost when the Van der Lip Dam gave way.

Core samples have shown that beneath this bedrock

is shale similar to the permeable shale in the Van der Lip disaster.

It couldn't withstand that kind of pressure.

And now you propose yet another dirt-banked terminus dam

with slopes of 2.5:1, 112 feet high,

and a 12,000-acre water surface.

Well, it won't hold.

I won't build it. It's that simple.

I'm not going to make the same mistake twice.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Quiet! Quiet!

What the hell do you think you're doing? Get those goddamn things out of here!

- Hold some of them. - Tell me where to take them!

You don't have an answer for that so quick, do you?

You steal water from the Valley, ruin the grazing,

starve the livestock!

Who's paying you to do that, Mr. Mulwray?

That's what I want to know!

- Jeez, he was there all night. - That's right.

I had to go back three times to pick up the watches.

Yesterday he went to three reservoirs,

a men's room at a Richfield gas station, and The Pig'n Whistle.

The guy's got water on the brain.

So what do you got?

This?

Well, they got into a terrific argument outside The Pig'n Whistle.

What about?

I don't know. The traffic was pretty loud.

I heard only one thing, though.

"Apple core."

- "Apple core"? - Yeah.

My God, Walsh, is that what you spent your day doing?

Look, you tell me to take pictures, I take pictures.

Let me explain something to you, Walsh.

J.J. Gittes and Associates.

This business requires a certain amount of finesse.

What is it, Sophie?

Duffy's on the phone.

- Yeah, Duff, where are you? - I got it!

He's found himself some cute little twist, the old buzzard...

Okay. Slow down. Where are you?

I'm at Glendale and Douglas.

They're in Echo Park in a rowboat. A rowboat!

Okay.

Echo Park.

Water again.

Okay, pal, let's have us a big smile.

You'll love it.

Here. Let me...

When you get so much publicity, you got to get blasé about it.

Let's face it, Jake, you're practically a movie star.

- Just look at that, Barn. - Yeah, the heat's murder.

Sure is.

Fools' names and fools' faces.

- What's that, pal? - Nothing.

You got a hell of a way to make a living.

Oh? And what do you do to make ends meet?

Mortgage department, First National Bank.

Tell me, did you foreclose on many families this week?

We don't publish a record in the paper, I can tell you that.

Neither do I.

No, you have your press agent do it.

Who is this bimbo, Barney? Is he a regular customer or what?

Hey, listen, pal, I make an honest living.

People only come to me when they're in a desperate situation.

I help them out. I don't kick families out of their houses

- like you bums down at the bank do! - Jake, can I tell you about the guy who...

Maybe you'd like to step down out of the barber chair

and maybe we can go outside and discuss it.

- What do you think? - Oh, come on.

Jake, let me tell you about the guy who got tired...

I don't know how that thing got in the newspaper.

It was so quick, I didn't even know it myself.

- Thank you. - I make an honest living!

- Of course you do. - Huh?

Anyway, this guy who got tired of screwing his wife

- said to his friend, "What do I do?" - An honest living, you understand?

So the guy says, "Why don't you do what the Chinese do?"

He says, "What do the Chinese do?"

He says, "The Chinese they screw a little and they get tired..."

Duffy. Hey, Walsh!

Sophie, go to the little girls' room for a minute, okay?

- But, Mr. Gittes... - Sophie...

Yes, Mr. Gittes.

- Jake... - Duffy, listen to me, man.

I want to tell you a story.

So, there's this guy, Walsh, you understand?

He's tired of screwing his wife.

- Jake, there's a problem... - Wait a second, Duffy.

You're always in such a hurry.

So his friend says to him,

"Hey, why don't you do it like the Chinese do?"

So he says, "Well, how do the Chinese do it?"

The guy says, "Well, the Chinese, first they screw a little bit,

"then they stop and they go and read a little Confucius.

"Come back, screw a little bit more, then they stop again,

- "go back and they screw a little..." - Jake.

Walsh, just listen to me for a second.

I mean, you'll love this.

Now, then they go back and they screw a little bit more,

and then they go out and they contemplate the moon

or something like that. Makes it more exciting.

So, now, the guy goes home and he starts screwing his own wife, see.

So, he screws her for a little bit, and then he stops.

He goes out of the room and reads LIFE magazine.

Then he goes back in, he starts screwing again,

and he says, "Excuse me for a minute, honey"

and he goes out and he smokes a cigarette.

Now, his wife is getting sore as hell.

He comes back in the room, he starts screwing again,

he gets up to start to leave again to go look at the moon,

she looks at him and says, "Hey, what's the matter with you?

"You're screwing just like a Chinaman!"

Jesus!

That Barney!

Mr. Gittes?

Yes.

Do you know me?

Well,

I think I would have remembered.

Have we ever met?

Well, no.

Never?

Never.

That's what I thought.

You see, I'm Mrs. Evelyn Mulwray.

You know, Mr. Mulwray's wife?

Not that Mulwray?

Yes, Mr. Gittes, that Mulwray.