The movie’s central metaphor came from a Los Angeles Police Department vice cop who sold Towne his beloved sheepdog, Hira.18 After the man told Towne he worked in Chinatown, the writer asked him what he did there. “Probably as little as possible,” the cop told him. “I said, ‘How’s that?’” Towne recalled pressing. “He said, ‘Look, you can’t tell what’s going on because we can’t crack the language. There’s so many dialects and things like that, we can’t tell, frankly, if we’re helping prevent a crime or helping somebody commit one, and so the best thing to do is nothing.’ I said, ‘Nothing?’ He
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