March 9, 2026
The brilliance of the Chinatown screenplay by Robert Towne is on display in the very first scene. A slobbering husband named Curly is looking at photos of his wife being unfaithful and starts crying and says, "I think I'll kill her. They don't kill guys for that." To which the private dick who procurred the photos, Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) says, "Oh, they don't?" To which Curly says proudly, "Not for your wife. That's the unwritten law." Jake sneers, "I'll tell you the unwritten law, you dumb son-of-a-bitch, you gotta be rich to kill somebody, anybody and get away with it. You think you got that kind of dough, you think you got that kind of class?" And, that my friend is the entire theme of the movie you're about to see, right there in one run-on sentence.
We're doing a Paul Hedren excerpt in the next issue from his stellar book, "Sitting Bull's War" on the night before the battle of the Little Bighorn. . .
In old Arizona "dust buster" had an entirely different meaning.
Daily Whip Out:And, speaking of guys who have been swallowed up and spit out multiple times, you would have to go far and wide to find a more hearty group than these grizzled frontiersmen. . .
Every year asks a question and every season has an answer."
—Old Vaquero Saying
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