Tuesdiy, July 13, 1974
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by Susan Fordham
Features Wrtter
We got to the Farmers Market early, but the talking had already '
begun.
The bushels of produce were lined up on the tables, the
homemade breads and jams, cakes, pies and cottage cheese set up in
each booth. The sugar-cured ham was being weighed, and prices
put on the huge blackboard on the center wall.
The sellers were sweeping, or slicing or fixing up their plants.
And everywhere there was talk. A special sort of talk, from special
people. Timeless.
Surely it's the workers who create the mood. Like one girl told
me, they're a hardworking bunch of people. Most of them are up at
5 Saturday mornings, after a week of picking, packing, canning and
baking. Some hold down full-time jobs; some are retired. They all
have an old-fashioned graciousness, a friendliness that seeks and
finds its response in the customers.
The sellers warned us of the stampede that was about to occur.
The lot behind Brady's restaurant had its usual line of expert
market-goers, some looking through windows to better prepare
themselves for the attack.
A coin-purse full of change, a front place in the 8:30 line, and a
good eye for tables is a well-worn strategy, one customer told me.
Energy is essential. The rush isn't to get in and out quickly, but to
get the buying over with, so that the wandering can begin. From
counter to counter, and friend to friend.
The bell rang, the crowds broke in. The townsfolk descended.
Some said it was the wildest since the war. Twenty minutes after the
bell was rung, the most part of the booths were empty. The cottage
cheese was gone. And the talk kept going.
Some sellers told me they enjoy their job. They're there mainly
for the social aspect of the day. Others don't mention it. It sure
seemed that way, watching the patience of the sellers, their careful
explanation of how to turn a green pepper red (let it sit), or sugar
cure ham.
It could be the heritage of the market that brings out the pleasure
and pride that goes into the work. It started out 38 years ago, as a
home demonstration club. With the hard times that came with the
war, they began doing more selling than buying.. There are still
original charter members who sell each Saturday.
The food-heavy counters are a worthy attraction of the Farmers'
Market, but it's the sellers themselves, their welcome, that brings
back week after week regular custormers "to stampede the place
like cattle" with the mere ringing of a bell.
i
Two pizzas, hot, crisp and bubbly from
Peppi's Pizza Den were awarded and duly
eaten by the two "winners of last week's
Gerald Ford contest, Jacob Turner and
Larry Stryder of Purcfoy Road in Chapel
Hill.
The decision was made after careful
scrutiny of the many entries and the two best
jokes are hereby presented two days after
Gerald Ford's 61st birthday. What a.
coincidence!
Q. Why doesn't Gerald Ford like music?
A. He doesn't know how to operate a
jukebox. And,
Q. What's Gerald Ford's conception of
abstract reasoning?
A. Watching a T.V. test pattern.
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(Staff photo by Ted MeHnik)
Weighing sugar-cured ham at Chapel Hill's Farmer's Market.
by Tyler Marsh
Features Writer
Roman Polanski has returned. Or was he
ever here in the first place? No matter, he has
arrived. Chinatown serves as his
announcement to the film industry and to
the viewing public as well. After such non
descript and or flawed efforts as Repulsion
and Macbeth, Polanski has created an
astounding, forceful movie that manages to
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by CO Gaines
Features Editor
It's really so simple. Here is a book with
unusual tragic flaws. And it's such a good
book too, already in its third printing after
being only three weeks on the market. What
a pity.
A word to the wise. Reader beware, this
book should more aptly be titled, After the
Good Gay Times; The Memoirs of Tony
Buttitta. Good. Now don't be expecting a
smashing tale about Fitzgerald either.
Because, after all, by 1935 the Jazz Era of all
night drinking and dancing was dead, over.
But the book is easy to read. It's short
chapters and first-person style make it a one
nighter. Imagine the satisfaction of having
read a book in one day. Imagine the chargin
of having paid eight dollars for a book read
in only one day. This is one of the book's
tragic flaws.
But the subject matter of the book is
interesting nd certainly entertaining.
Buttitta certainly doesn't beat around the
bush. By page 1 1 he writes of some men in
the Grove Park Inn tossing down brandies
until it's their turn with Lottie, who is
upstairs with their friend, the winner of the
toss.
The problem is that with the first person
style, Buttitta often gets in the way of the
story. The story is moving along smoothly,"
and pow, all of a sudden he's talking about a
letter he got in 1965, or how he ran his
bookshop, or what Fitzgerald was doing the
previous winter a fact Buttitta mentions he
picked up in one of the many Fitzgerald
biographies. "There are many, I was to learn
later..."
That's another one of the flaws in this
book. And it's due, at least in part, to the'
advice Buttitta received from the editors at
Viking Press. When they bought the story
from him several years ago, they told him to
de-emphasize the Fitzgerald aspect of the
story. They wanted a nostalgia-type of book
about Asheville and the era of the
depression. It wasn't until after The Great
Gatsby came out and all the apparent
Fitzgerald-boom, that Viking decided to put
Fitzgerald back in the title and display
name prominently on the cover of the book
by changing the background color from
orange to brown.
So what they have you expecting is a
perfectly good story about Fitzgerald in
Asheville. And what you get is a perfectly
good memoir of Buttitta's summer in
Asheville with Fitzgerald. And Fitzgerald's
summer with Lottie and with Rosemary, a
woman who fell in love with him that
summer. At times it reads like a sort of
literary Peyton Place.
In order to appreciate the book you have
to know a little about Buttitta. With this in
mind, prepare to be informed.
Tony Buttitta was a graduate student here
in Chapel Hill in the 30's. From 193 1 to 1933
he helped edit a literary publication called
Contempo; a review of books and
personalities. He lived in a small bookstore
above what is now PJ's, what was then
Cavalier cafeteria. It was during this time
that he met many literary figures, some of
whom enter this memoir. The chapter on
William Faulkner's drunken days in Chapel
Hill is one of the best in the book.
The death of Faulkner in 1962 got Buttitta
on the road to writing about literary figures
he met. He was living in San Francisco at the
time, and The Chronical called him and
r
asked him to do a story on Faulkner for
them. Buttitta also had written before he
entered the career of publicity. He wrote a
series of articles for The Saturday Review of
Literature, a novel, No Resurrection, and a
play Singing Piedmont, the tragedy of a
black tobacco worker.
He was in Chapel Hill for the first time in
40 years last Saturday. He said, "This town
has gotten too elegant for me." He talked
about his bookshop called The Intimate
Bookshop compared to the one now. "It was
really an intimate bookshop, this is a
supermarket. I'm glad to see people are still
reading, though."
He's into Ching and he's also glad to see a
comeback in jazz. This book is about the
historian and living figure of The Jazz Age.
"The Great Gatsby is outselling the Bible
now," he said. "It's the first time I've been
with the times." He said that he saw
Fitzgerald over-taking Hermann Hesse's
role as the college students' philosopher.
About his own book, due to the work of
Mai com Cowley, whom he calls a "master
editor," the book is "like riding a jet rather
than a freight train." Unfortunately, the
price of the book calls for the same analogy.
Maybe soon it wihcome out in paperback.
string you along for over two hours,
somehow never giving you time to finish
your popcorn.
The film takes place in 1937 in the county
of Los Angeles. Jack Nicholson plays J.J.
(Jake) Gittis, a former L.A. flatfoot who left
the force after a troublesome stint on the
Chinatown beat; he heads a private
investigating business, which at the film's
start is decidedly small-time and seamy but
lucrative. A sudden change makes Jake's
business become big-time and seamy and
very lucrative, as he is approached by the
wife of Hollis Mulwray, the water and power
commissioner for the county. Mrs. Mulwray
suspects her husband of cheating and hires
Jake and company to verify the fact. Jake
produces the requested evidence only to find
himself in the middle of a lawsuit, courtesy of
the real Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway).
In attempting to rectify the situation, Jake
accumulates information that reeks of foul
play. In the middle of a drought, someone is
diverting L.A.'s water supply, Hollis
Mulwray knows too much and is murdered,
drowned no less. Mrs. Mulwray engages
Jake to find out who and why. So begins
Jake's real dilemma of being caught in
between a political machine and its strong
arm, the police investigating the affair, and
Evelyn Mulwray who strings him along with
half-truths and deceit.
Chinatown is really Jake's story. His
curiosity motivates him to move from the
outside into the center of the drama; he
becomes the protagonist. Chinatown
becomes emblematic of his frustration, a
place where everyone "does as little as
possible," where Chinamen still "spit in the
laundry," and where no one really
comprehends what's going down. For Jake,
Chinatown is the seat of his troubles, the
place where his life took a bad turn; it's the
part of L. A.- he knew well, but in which he
somehow got lost.
This film holds together very well; there
are virtually no weak points, no flaws in the
finished product. Chinatown captures the
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highlights of the Philip Marlowe genre of
detective story, but renders them pertinent to
the here and now. .
It seems that Chinatown has everything;
humor, irony, dramatic tension and, not
least of all, the Polanski touch the violence
and brutality intrinsic to the story.
Polanski's purpose was to blend all these
elements into a coherent if not concise
treatment. He succeeds; the film is fast,
definitive and moving.
Jack Nicholson delivers a solid
performance, fleshing out the film with his
cockiness, subtlety, anger and frustration.
Faye Dunaway, too, manages very well with
her part, one of her best portrayals to date.
She is convincing indeed as a woman
threatened on every side, on the brink of
collapse.
John Huston plays the part of Noah
Cross, Evelyn Mulwray's father, who is
inextricably bound up in the chain of events
by his own greed and acts of infamy. The
characterization from this former director is
adroit and capable, lending further credence
to the whole drama.
Roman Polanski acts as well as directs,
appearing briefly as a dimunitive but sadistic
thug who performs surgery on Jake's nose,
to show "what happens to nosey people."
The direction is more than adequate, more
than professional. Polanski has taken the
rather non-artistic screenplay of Robert
Towne and given it a flourish and substance
that produces a kind of cinematic
metamorphosis into something quite
profound and significant.
Chinatown puts a certain pressure on the
viewer by means of unresolved conflicts and
an uncontrived sense of mystery. Herein is a
network of plots and subplot involving
people groping for all the money, power,
land, gusto and whatever else they can. The
progressive complexity of deception and
chase creates a kind of mental hunger
uncommon in contemporary film.
Do yourself a .favor and take it in.
Chinatown is sure to be one of the year's
best; it's an evening's entertainment and
then some.
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