Los Osos is …“Chinatown”

By ED OCHS

Asked to reveal the deep, dark secret behind the long-running and strange goings-on inside the Los Osos sewer saga, a few owls in Los Osos have been known to whisper “Chinatown.” Now, “Chinatown” screenwriter Robert Towne sheds light on more than a few historical points in common between LA of the early 1930s and Los Osos today, starting with the water, who owns it, how much it’s really worth – and land grabs. Los Ososans should read Towne’s comments and then see how many chilling similarities they can come up with…

Screenwriter Robert Towne’s Oscar-winning script for “Chinatown” (1974), according to Wikipedia, was “set in Los Angeles in the 1930s and inspired by the historical disputes over land and water rights that had raged in southern California during the 1910s and ’20s, in which William Mulholland (“Hollis Mulwray” in the movie) acted on behalf of Los Angeles interests to secure water rights in the Owens Valley.”

Starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston, “Chinatown” is a story within a story: Mulholland’s historic quest for new water to fuel LA’s rapid growth in the early 1930s, and how the rich got richer forming a real estate syndicate to buy up near-worthless San Fernando Valley land, just before diverted water greened the Valley into an agricultural oasis that would turn into tract homes for millions -- and fortunes for a few.

Here, excerpted from the DVD “Cadillac Desert: Water and the Transformation of Nature” is Robert Towne talking about “Mulholland’s Dream,” interspersed with key dialogue from “Chinatown” (which “Cadillac Desert” filmmakers call “bad, contorted history … but powerful myth”). Towne’s comments are in bold. Movie scenes are in italics:

You could make a case for this being this incestuous cabal of hidden Jonathan Club, California club oligarchy, Old Boy’s WASP network – no Jews, dogs, blacks, Mexicans allowed.

Jake Gittes: There are going to be a lot of irate citizens when they find out that they’re paying for water they’re not going to get.”

Noah Cross: Aw that’s all taken care of. See, Mr. Gittes, either you bring the water to LA or you bring LA to the water.

What (Cross) simply meant was that you would bring the water to where you want to bring it and call that place LA. And therefore you could get Los Angeles taxpayers to pay -- what in effect was a cabal of real estate spectators – to have the city pay millions of dollars for them to pump water down to land that was not in fact part of the city and then cause them to vote that as part of the city, and thereby increase the value of that land, which they had purchased and held, a thousand fold. So they were causing one city in effect to pay them to develop another city and then say, well, it’s really the same city.

Jake: They’re conning LA into building it, but the water’s not going to go to LA, it’s coming right here (to the San Fernando Valley).

Evelyn Mulwray: What?

Jake: Everything you can see, everything around us. I was at the Hall of Records today.

The original title for “Chinatown,” I actually was going to call it “Water and Power,” because that’s what it was. Water was power, it was money, and those who knew how to manipulate it, much more adroitly than anybody could ever manipulate a stock market, could make money off of it. And you could see it. It was a palpable thing, running through your movie, like a river of greed.

Jake: Do you have any idea what this land would be worth with a steady water supply? About $30 million more than they paid for it.

As Jean Renoir said, everyone has his reasons, and I’m sure (Mulholland) had his reasons and he justified it, because he had to. I can see how it would have been very easy to get carried away by powerful men saying, “See what you can do for the city”... you know… “What a great man you’ll be.”

Jake: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can’t already afford?

Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes, the future!

And the crime that he committed in the name of the future, against the future, is really the history in California, here in LA, I mean it’s just the supreme irony.

Cross: See, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact, at the right time, in the right place, they are capable of anything!

Sometimes there’s some monsters that they can’t figure out how to punish them, so they actually sort of reward them. Mulholland’s name is on the scene route of the city (Mulholland Drive), and criminals’ names are on plaques as city founders, rather than in jail where they belonged.

The Mystery of “Chinatown”: When Jake was a young police officer on the beat in LA’s Chinatown, he once tried to protect a woman, but she died as a direct result of his intervention. This made Jake cynical and apathetic. Years later, Jake again tries to protect a woman, Evelyn Mulwray, and once again, she is killed as a direct result of his intervention. Never forgetting what happened to him before, Jake finds no consolation in the final irony of a former colleague’s advice, “Forget it, Jake; it’s Chinatown.”

LA “Chinatown” Rogues Gallery Then: Mayor Fred Eaton; Businessmen Henry E. Huntington and Moses Sherman; Los Angeles Times Publishers Harrison Gray Otis and Harry Chandler.

Los Osos “Chinatown” Rogues Gallery Now: Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee; Regional Water Board Chairman Jeffrey Young and Executive Director Roger Briggs; Board Supervisors Bruce Gibson and Jim Patterson; Public Works Director Paavo Ogren; Former Public Works Director Noel King; Former Supervisor Shirley Bianchi; County Counsel Warren Jensen; Assistant County Administrator Gail Wilcox; former LOCSD director Pandora Nash-Karner and recalled directors Stan Gustafson, Richard LeGros and Gordon Hensley; current LOCSD board member Maria Kelly; Carollo Engineering’s Lou Carella; Wallace Group President/former County Public Works Director John Wallace and LOCSD District Engineer Rob Miller; Tribune Publisher Bruce Ray and VP Sandra Duerr; global engineering conglomerate Montgomery Watson Harza (MWH).

Los Osos is not alone. There are more “Chinatowns” in California and all across America.

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Thanks to Ann Calhoun and Susan Shaw for pointing the way to “Chinatown” in Los Osos.