Towne was in agony. Writing Chinatown was like being in Chinatown. A novelist could write and write—and, indeed, Towne wrote like a novelist, turning out hundreds upon hundreds of pages of notes and outlines and dialogue snippets—but a movie is two hours; in script form, approximately a minute a page. What could he afford to lose? He needed to be uncompromisingly objective, but not so hard on his ideas that he ended up losing what may have been good in them—that is, if there was ever anything good about them to begin with. Was there? The question had to be asked. Was any of this good, and if
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