Most remembered for his screenplay for Chinatown (1974), for which he won an Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe.
https://deadline.com/2024/07/robert-towne-dead-chinatown-screenwriter-1236000262/
RIP
shareBeing a film enthusiast who can usually recall the year and director of many favorite films, there are only a comparatively few screenwriters I can name from memory. Robert Towne is certainly one of those. RIP Mr. Towne.
shareIt rare that screenwriters become stars without ALSO become directors. Writer-directors Mel Brooks, Woody Allen and Quentin Tarantino accomplished that. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin went a couple of decades before directing , recently -- Molly's Game(2017) and "The Trial of the Chicago 7"(2020.) But until he racks up some more directing gigs, Sorkin will remain better known as a writer(and a "showrunner" with The West Wing.)
But Robert Towne made his very, very big name with the script of one 70's classic movie and hit: Chinatown. He seemed to have joined the movie's star Jack Nicholson(for whom Towne wrote the script for as the ONLY casting as detective Jake Gittes), producer Robert Evans(also a movie studio head at Paramount) and Director Roman Polanski as part of the 'team of cool womanizing creative men" behind the project (with poor ol' Faye Dunaway getting the diva press plus an Oscar nomination in consolation.)
Chinatown came out in 1974. The very next year, Towne took CO-writer credit with star Warren Beatty on Shampoo(Towne's linkage to BOTH Nicholson AND Beatty gave him all the cooler -- and sexy -- reputation. Womanizers, all.)
The year before Chinatown, in 1973, Towne got co-writing credit(with the book's author, Darryl Ponicsan) for the movie of The Last Detail, also starring Nicholson.
The Last Detail got Towne an Oscar nomination(adapted Screenplay) shared with Ponicson, thta they didn't win(The Exorcist beat them.) But Chinatown got Towne the win all to himself -- he's the ONLY credited screenwriter on Chinatown -- it was all HIS idea (the water politics, the slashed nose, the incest) and a certain stardom followed.
Over time, we learned that when his name wasn't going on great scripts, he was DOCTORING other great scripts.
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Famously, at Coppola's request, Towne wrote a scene for the two Dons -- Vito and Michael , father and son -- near the end of The Godfather where the father confesses that he didn't want this life for this ONE of his sons but.. no dice.
Less famously -- I just read it this week -- Towne wrote a powerful moment in Beatty's Bonnie and Clyde(without screen credit) in which Bonnie and Clyde visit Bonnie's mother seeking to live near her and the old mother replies: "You try to live three miles from me and you won't live long, honey. You best keep runnin', Clyde Barrow." I REMEMBER the sting of that line from decades ago. Now I find out Towne wrote it.
After that 70s' trifecta of The Last Detail, Chinatown, and Shampoo, Towne found himself where a LOT of screenwriters found themselves after a few famous hits: kind of struggling, not able to recapture past glory. His only credited scripts in the 80s were for Personal Best(which he directed) and Tequila Sunrise(which he also directed.) He took his name off Greystroke: The Legend of Tarzan and took credit as PH Vazak...his dog's name.)
Tequila Sunrise was perhaps the biggest disappointment of his post-Chinatown career. He got to direct it and got three major stars to be in it -- Mel Gibson, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Kurt Russell. But it had little historic classic impact at all, despite a contemporary L.A. setting (positing Gibson's drug dealer character as a HERO might have been part of the problem.)
Also famously in the 80s, Towne's attempt to direct his own script of a sequel to Chinatown ('The Two Jakes") got cast and into pre-production before falling apart. Jack Nicholson returned as Jake Gittes -- ROBERT EVANS was cast as the "new Jake" -- and Towne refused to direct Evans and the whole thing collapsed. (Nicholson saved The Two Jakes by direct it himself in 1990 with Harvey Keitel as the Other Jake -- it had no impact and made little money -- DESPITE a Robert Towne script.) CONT
In the 90s, Robert Towne got a Big Save: Tom Cruise. I guess we can figure that Cruise really LIKED Chinatown, because he hired Towne to write Days of Thunder, The Firm and the first Mission: Impossible.
In the 2000s, Towne turned to a script about 1930s LA again -- "Ask the Dust" with a script by Towne from John Fante's novel, and directed it, too. That was in 2006 -- Towne's last major credit.
By happenstance, I attended a preview of Ask the Dust in 2006 with a Q and A with Robert Towne. The movie was shown in an art museum from a small projector projected at the wrong size, with tinny sound. Towne was infuriated by the presentation and it took him awhile to calm down and talk about the movie. I'd also seen Towne in person at a discussion of Chinatown back in the 70s, with Jack Nicholson and Robert Evans on separate days. A much better time for him.
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But back to Chinatown. 11 Oscar nominations it got, but it only won one: for Robert Towne's screenplay. That's great -- most Best Picture near-misses win Best Screenplay Oscars instead: Fargo, LA Confidential, Pulp Fiction. Ironies though: Roman Polanski - unbilled as a screenwriter -- famously changed the ending. And a recent book, The Big Goodbye, wrote of the making of Chinatown and seemed to have the proof that ANOTHER man -- uncredited -- helped Towne a lot with research AND writing of the Chinatown screenplay.
No matter. It was fitting. Towne doctored so MANY scripts without credit(Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather...The Missouri Breaks, Heaven Can Wait..) that if one of HIS was doctored (Chinatown) so be it: HIS sole name is on the script, he won the sole Oscar won by Chinatown, that's the all time movie classic that originated in his mind.
And Chinatown shall be his legacy.
Fascinating write-up, thank you! Yeah, while checking his credits, I noticed he was an "uncredited" writer on a bunch of movies I was fond of, so figured something akin to the story you describe had gone on. But as you say, if all he had done was Chinatown, it would suffice to make his career, it's *that* good.
shareThank you for reading.
Yes...pretty much any ONE given classic movie is "enough" for the legacy of the stars or the director...its a bit more rare when the WRITER becomes so famous from one.
Robert Towne did that with Chinatown(which again, was HIS original idea..not from a book or a play)...and evidently just kept on earning big bucks for "polishing" scripts without taking credit.
It is an interesting way to make a living but...so many of us get paid for work WE do that nobody hears about. So what's the big deal. Ha.