There was a one-of-a-kind cinematic event on Saturday in San Francisco. Following a screening at the Roxie theater of the 1974 classic Chinatown, director Roman Polanski beamed onto the screen via Skype (at around 11:30 p.m. Paris time) for a Q&A with producer Thom Mount, with whom he collaborated on several subsequent film projects.

Freelance writer Pam Grady notes in her weekend coverage that Polanski bristled at Mount’s suggestion the the LA featured in the film was make-believe. “That LA existed,” he said. “We were trying to be historically correct. Bob [Robert Evans] loves the city of Los Angeles and he was inspired by it.”

Meanwhile, today, SF Weekly fellow attendee Casey Burchby highlights an infamous exception to Polanski’s smooth-sailing leading lady experiences:

Mount observed that Polanski’s career has been marked by outstanding performances by actresses: Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion, Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, Nastassja Kinski in Tess — and Faye Dunaway in Chinatown. Polanski said that in each case, he’d enjoyed good working relationships with those women, with the exception of Dunaway.

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Five-time Oscar nominee Kenneth Branagh has made his way to the San Francisco International Film Festival to accept the Founder’s Directing Award (last night) and participate in a Q&A screening of his 1991 film Dead Again (tonight).

Branagh told San Francisco Chronicle regular contributor Pam Grady that after the success of Henry V, he had hoped to convince Hollywood to let him adapt Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native. Instead, Paramount pointed him in the direction of Scott Frank’s long-in-development tale of a modern-day Los Angeles private detective juxtaposed with a 1940s-era German composer. Which led to this spring 1990 moment:

At the time, Branagh was playing Edgar in King Lear at the Mark Taper Forum in LA. While waiting for the curtain to go up that night, he read the first page of Dead Again aloud to then-wife Emma Thompson, vowing to put the script aside if it didn’t grab their attention immediately. He kept reading through the night, stopping only to step onstage.

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As far as FishbowlLA is concerned, there can never be too many clever references to the granddaddy of all cinematic achievements, Citizen Kane. A film critic friend of ours in San Francisco, Pam Grady, recently launched a blog called Cinezine Kane. Then there’s this laugh-out-loud lede capper from Salon.com staff writer Mary Elizabeth Williams:

Call off your dogs, spoiler police. A new study from the University of California at San Diego suggests that knowing the outcome of a story doesn’t ruin it–in fact, it increases its pleasures. Rosebud is a sled, bitches!

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