The Future
Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2025 10:06 pm
Douglas Mercer
January 14 2025
Behind every great fortune is a crime
The movie Chinatown (1974) fictionally depicts the founding of Southern California where the City Fathers by foul means stole water from the Northern Part of the state. The stand in for the leaders of the city (played by John Huston) is fictionally painted in the darkest hues possible, a multigenerational incest perpetrator, murderer, and master criminal. Tasked with untangling the web of evil of this conspiracy so immense if a slick and debonair PI (played by Jack Nicholson who in the mid-sixties before he was famous was called dream weaver by his friends). The PI is himself hip deep in corruption as he makes his money in matrimonial affairs, that is he takes pictures of men in sexual congress with women not their wives. Throughout the movie there are a plethora of a water images to put the viewer in mind of that other contemporary conspiracy supposedly so immense, Watergate. The first scene is ham fisted in that it shows nearly indigent farmers releasing pigs in a Court Room as the truth of what the City Father’s are doing is swept under the rug. In case one misses it this means the ones doing the stealing are pigs.
The movie created a byword for any mysterious system of corruption that is so deep and so convoluted that the evil is beyond human understanding and human control: Chinatown.
The PI’s name is Jake Gittes—pronounced Gitt-es but Huston’s character habitually refers to him as Mr. Gits. He knows how his name is said but he intends to demean him.
In the climatic scene (after the PI has unearthed all the wrongdoing) Huston and Nicholson meet at the home of Huston’s daughter. Huston has Nicholson at gun point and seeing that all is nearly lost Nicholson decides to go for broke. The dream weaver then asks Huston how much he is worth. Huston says he has no idea. Nicholson then says that he just wants to know how much he is worth, ten million? Huston laughs and says oh my yes. So he lied, he does have an idea of how much he is worth. Nicholson then asks the undergraduate’s perennial question, the question of the luddites and the naïve, and he thinks it’s a silver bullet. He asks him: why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can’t already afford? Huston speaks to Nicholson as if he is a child who needs to have the facts of life explained to him. He says: the future Mr. Gits. The future.
January 14 2025
Behind every great fortune is a crime
The movie Chinatown (1974) fictionally depicts the founding of Southern California where the City Fathers by foul means stole water from the Northern Part of the state. The stand in for the leaders of the city (played by John Huston) is fictionally painted in the darkest hues possible, a multigenerational incest perpetrator, murderer, and master criminal. Tasked with untangling the web of evil of this conspiracy so immense if a slick and debonair PI (played by Jack Nicholson who in the mid-sixties before he was famous was called dream weaver by his friends). The PI is himself hip deep in corruption as he makes his money in matrimonial affairs, that is he takes pictures of men in sexual congress with women not their wives. Throughout the movie there are a plethora of a water images to put the viewer in mind of that other contemporary conspiracy supposedly so immense, Watergate. The first scene is ham fisted in that it shows nearly indigent farmers releasing pigs in a Court Room as the truth of what the City Father’s are doing is swept under the rug. In case one misses it this means the ones doing the stealing are pigs.
The movie created a byword for any mysterious system of corruption that is so deep and so convoluted that the evil is beyond human understanding and human control: Chinatown.
The PI’s name is Jake Gittes—pronounced Gitt-es but Huston’s character habitually refers to him as Mr. Gits. He knows how his name is said but he intends to demean him.
In the climatic scene (after the PI has unearthed all the wrongdoing) Huston and Nicholson meet at the home of Huston’s daughter. Huston has Nicholson at gun point and seeing that all is nearly lost Nicholson decides to go for broke. The dream weaver then asks Huston how much he is worth. Huston says he has no idea. Nicholson then says that he just wants to know how much he is worth, ten million? Huston laughs and says oh my yes. So he lied, he does have an idea of how much he is worth. Nicholson then asks the undergraduate’s perennial question, the question of the luddites and the naïve, and he thinks it’s a silver bullet. He asks him: why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can’t already afford? Huston speaks to Nicholson as if he is a child who needs to have the facts of life explained to him. He says: the future Mr. Gits. The future.