The Two Jakes (1990) on Netflix
In 1948 Los Angeles, private eye Jake Gittes takes a job from Jake Berman, who suspects his wife Kitty of infidelity. Gittes ends up holding a wire recording that others want.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.1/1015,846 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes63%
Trailer
Plot summary
Real estate developer Jake Berman wants proof that his wife Kitty is unfaithful, so he hires private investigator Jake Gittes. The man she meets is Mark Bodine, Berman's partner in a housing development, and Berman shoots him at the meeting Gittes arranges. Gittes finds himself pressed from every side for the wire recording he made that night; Berman's attorney Cotton Weinberger and his friend Mickey Nice both want it, and police Captain Lou Escobar questions Gittes's part in the killing. Lillian Bodine, the dead man's widow, confronts him. Earthquakes have shaken the Valley tract the partners were building, and oil man Earl Rawley denies drilling beneath the land.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Two Jakes (1990)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Amid existing problems between Jack Nicholson, Robert Towne and Robert Evans, 120 crew members who had not been paid filed grievances, over $500,000 from Screen Actors Guild and Directors Guild of America members and $1.5 million from suppliers of sets, props, costumes and sound stages, and the project was postponed indefinitely.
- With the sets built and filming ready to begin, Robert Towne's lack of confidence in Robert Evans's acting exploded into a final argument when Evans objected to getting a 1940s-style haircut, mostly because recent plastic surgery scars would be visible.
- The film broke up relations between Jack Nicholson, Robert Towne and Robert Evans; Towne said in 1998 he had not spoken to Nicholson in over ten years, and Evans checked into a hospital for mental health and substance abuse issues.
- In 1976 producer Robert Evans, who held the rights to a Chinatown sequel, negotiated for Jack Nicholson to reprise his role and Dustin Hoffman to act alongside him; that version fell through.
- In a later attempt, Kelly McGillis stayed in the cast while Harrison Ford was set to take over as Jake Gittes and Roy Scheider was attached to play the other Jake, for a tentative mid-1986 start.
- Robert Towne planned a trilogy about J.J. Gittes; per Jack Nicholson, the third film, Gittes vs. Gittes, was meant to be set in 1968, when no-fault divorce took effect in California, and after The Two Jakes flopped the plans were scrapped.
