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Jake, It's Chinatown Brent Chesley We lied to you," the director of the M.F.A. program in film said to the auditorium fiUed with new students on a fall day in 1979. His admission introduced me to Southern Californian culture, a culture that I eagerly wanted to join. Why did he lie to us? I wondered. Minnesotans fabricate from time to time, but when we've fibbed, we don't trumpet that fact in public. I caU myselfa Minnesotan because I grew up in Brainerd, the village that the Coen brothers lampoon in Fargo. In 1979, however, the Coens had yet to give Brainerd its fifteen minutes of fame. Sitting in that auditorium in Los Angeles, I felt ashamed that I had come from a state in which people entertained themselves by sitting on the shores of lakes and listening to loons hoot at each other. I desperately wanted to abandon my Midwesternness and enter the enlightened culture of Los Angeles. The director of the FiUn School explained that the officiai description of the Master of Fine Arts program claimed that a person could earn the degree in two years, but in reality no one had ever managed to do so in less than three. The promotional material had also failed to mention that students would need to pay thousands of doUars from their own pockets (on top of out-of-state tuition) to create three movies in order to earn their degrees. If the Film School didn't withhold these facts, the director stated, no students would enroU. A person with a degree in political science mightVe applauded this confession of realpolitik, but I had only the limited worldly sense of an English major freshly graduated from St. John's University in Minnesota. I had fled the Midwest to come to the promised land ofHoUywood and high culture. In my hometown, high culture consisted of Paul Bunyanland, an amusement park that featured a giant statue of the legendary lumberjack. The statue ofPaul moved its heavily bearded head and actuaUy spoke to children as they entered the park. Although his performance astonished children, I 172 Brent Chesley173 knew Paul's secrets because my roommate at St. John's had worked at Paul Bunyanland for several summers. He had explained to me that a park employee hidden in a smaU log cabin at Paul's feet controUed the giant's motions and spoke for him via a loudspeaker, just as the man behind the curtain does for the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz. I can'tgo back to a place where parents brag that their children have spoken with a statue of a lumberjack, I decided. J belong in Film School. IfI had to pick the moment that I decided to attend Film School, I'd choose the first time that I saw Roman Polanski's Chinatown. The film appeared in 1974, but it must not have made it to Brainerd during its first run. I saw it in a theater in my Uttle town, but at that time I was an undergraduate at nearby St. John's University, which I attended between 1976 and 1979. I mustVe been home during a break, but I can't date the experience more precisely than that. I recaU quite clearly, however, that on the evening that I saw Chinatown, the tiny auditorium had only two other patrons. They were a pair of elderly women who came in together and sat two rows in front of me. Good, I thought. They'll be quiet. I quickly became entranced as the sleazy detective, played by Jack Nicholson, investigated a mystery set in corrupt, Depression-era LosAngeles. In a revelation scene near the end, Nicholson insists that his client, played by Faye Dunaway teU him the true identity of a mysterious young woman. An enraged Nicholson doesn't beUeve Dunaway's first answer—"My sister"—so he slaps her. Dunaway offers another possibility—"My daughter"—but Nicholson slaps her again. During a series of slaps, Dunaway alternates between "sister" and "daughter." FinaUy she admits that the character in question is both her sister and her daughter. Ugh, I thought. Herfather did it with...

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