Deleted Scene: That's Where She Drew the Line

 

Lieutenant Escobar and Jake discuss moral and ethical boundaries.

 

GITTES 

I don't think I need a day or 

two -- you're even dumber than 

you think I think you are.

Not only that, I'd never extort a nickel out of my worst enemy, that's where I draw the line, Escobar. 

ESCOBAR
Yeah, I once knew a whore who for
enough money would piss in a
customer's face -- but she'd never
shit on his chest. That's where
she drew the line.  

GITTES
(smiling)
Well, I hope she wasn't too much
of a disappointment to you, Lou.

 Escobar manages a thin smile.

"The point I was trying to make with that exchange was that, for all his apparent cynicism, Gittes is a rather naive person. He thinks there are limits to how bad people can be. I believe that, generally speaking, that was the kind of feeling which existed prior to World War II: a feeling that there were limits to human wickedness. The cynicism then had a kind of insane optimism about it - they knew everything was a scam but thought people were basically decent. And so in Chinatown Gittes really miscalculates how monstrous his enemy, played by John Huston, is capable of being; the enemy is, as Huston says, 'capable of anything.'"

- Robert Towne, 'A Screenwriter on Screenwriting', Anatomy of the Movies

 

Although the more profane part of this exchange was, ultimately, removed from Chinatown, it found its way back, word for word, into The Two Jakes, occurring between Gittes and Detective Loach Jr.

 

According to Phillip Lambro, the initial composer for Chinatown, he was on set the day this scene was shot, and Perry Lopez, who played Lou Escobar, found the dialogue so distasteful that he refused to say it. Jack Nicholson objected, claiming to have written the lines himself. This account is somewhat questionable, as are many of Lambro's recollections, particularly given that the dialogue exists in earlier drafts of Chinatown, prior to Nicholson's involvement.

 

Nevertheless, if this was ever shot in its entirety, it's most likely that the latter part of the exchange was excised for just that reason - far too vulgar for the average audience, who certainly wouldn't be able to grasp Towne's all-too-subtle point when confronted with such language. It didn't work in The Two Jakes, either - Loach just comes across as an obnoxious, overbearing moron spitting a dirty story into Jake's face, not someone with a point to make about the way the world is.