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"'Course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough"-- Noah Cross (John Huston) in Chinatown.

There are a number of reasons why I am kicking off this week's Chapter Two with that particular quote. The first and most obvious is that The Two Jakes, the sequel to Chinatown, is the focus of the column and I have found that a relevant (and catchy) epigram at the beginning of any essay helps keep me focused on what it is precisely I am attempting to communicate. Secondly, it is my favorite quote from a Robert Towne screenplay that abounds with any number of similarly juicy "kickers." Last, and perhaps most importantly, it deftly (though quite accidentally) captures the peculiar kind of critical limbo which The Two Jakes fell into almost upon its release in 1990 and continues to inhabit two decades hence

As the fairly belated follow-up to a multiple Oscar winner and (to boot) a film whose stature as a "classic" was already fairly well enshrined by the late 1980s, The Two Jakes would seem to have been a likely candidate for a film that would be swiftly eviscerated and then writ large in the ignominious hallows of "Unnecessary Sequels." The box office and early critical reception bears out this thinking. Released wide in August of 1990, The Two Jakes lasted all of three weeks and made just over $10 million. Reviews were mixed and interest just wasn't there for an audience to turn up in the summer months for more adult film making.

Although it certainly wasn't intended as such, The Two Jakes wound up being Jack Nicholson's follow-up to Batman and now stands as a fascinating contrast between the wild success of the former and the faint commercial ripples of the latter. Consider this as well: at the tail end of 1990, The Godfather III would be released to a respectable final gross of $67 million but a legacy wherein it is regularly accorded status as an abomination (i.e. when people list their top five favorite films and many inevitably choose The Godfather and The Godfather Part II as a single entity and take great pains to flush GF III down the proverbial toilet. Much more will be said on this when GF II makes its appearance in this column at some undetermined point in the future).

The Two Jakes has escaped GF III's fate by the simple virtue, I feel, that many people continue to be unaware of its existence or practice a particular kind of amnesia and choose to forget that it is out there (regardless of whether they have seen it or not.) Either way, it escapes notice by not always being compared, favorably or otherwise, to Chinatown at every turn. By default, then, this has helped it achieve a peculiar form of respectability, akin to Noah Cross' definition. However it may have been viewed 20 years ago, it has taken on neither the air of an underrated masterpiece nor that of a unqualified train wreck. In viewing it for the first time since catching it on its initial video release back in 1991, I find this to be an accurate and fair representation. The film has much to recommend it for and should be sought out, but with the understanding that its pleasures are fleeting and in the final analysis, ephemeral.

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