Robert Towne, Screenwriter of ‘Chinatown’ and ‘Shampoo’ Dies: NPR

NEW YORK — Robert Towne, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Shampoo, The last detail and other films, including the screenplay for Chinese district He became a role model in the art form and helped define the jaded appeal of his hometown of Los Angeles. He died at the age of 89.

Towne died Monday surrounded by family at his Los Angeles home, his publicist Carri McClure said. She declined to comment on the cause of death.

In an industry that has given rise to disparaging jokes about the status of the writer, Towne had for a time a prestige comparable to that of the actors and directors with whom he worked. Through his friendships with two of the biggest stars of the 1960s and 1970s, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, he wrote or co-wrote some of the seminal films of an era when artists held an unusual level of creative control.

A rare “auteur” among screenwriters, Towne managed to bring to the screen a very personal and influential vision of Los Angeles.

“It’s such an illusory city,” Towne told The Associated Press in 2006. “It’s the western edge of America. It’s kind of a place of last resort. It’s a place where, in a word, people go to fulfill their dreams. And they’re always disappointed.”

Recognizable in Hollywood for his high forehead and full beard, Towne won an Oscar for Chinese district and has been nominated three other times, for The last detail, Shampoo And GreystokeIn 1997 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Writers Guild of America.

“His life, like the characters he created, was incisive, iconoclastic and entirely (original),” he said. Shampoo actor Lee Grant in X.

Towne’s success came after a long period of work in television, including The man from UNCLE And The Lloyd Bridges Show, and on low-budget films for B-movie producer Roger Corman. In a classic show-business story, he owes his breakthrough in part to his psychiatrist, through whom he meets Beatty, a fellow patient. While Beatty was working on Bonnie and Clyde, He brought Towne in to revise Robert Benton and David Newman’s script and had him on set while the film was being shot in Texas.

Towne’s contributions were not credited for Bonnie and Clyde, the historical crime film released in 1967, and for years he was a favorite ghostwriter. He helped on The Godfather, Parallax View And Heaven can wait among other things, and described himself as a “relief pitcher who could come on the field for an inning, but not for the whole game.”

But Towne was credited by name for Nicholson’s macho The last detail and Beatty’s sex comedy Shampoo and was immortalized by Chinese district, the 1974 thriller set during the Great Depression.

Chinese district The film was directed by Roman Polanski and starred Nicholson as JJ “Jake” Gittes, a private investigator assigned to follow the husband of Evelyn Mulwray (played by Faye Dunaway). The husband is the chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and Gittes finds himself caught in a chaotic spiral of corruption and violence, played by Evelyn’s ruthless father, Noah Cross (John Huston).

Influenced by the fiction of Raymond Chandler, Towne has resurrected the menace and mood of a classic Los Angeles film noir, but has presented Gittes’ labyrinthine odyssey through a grander, more insidious portrait of Southern California. The clues pile up in a timeless detective story and lead helplessly to tragedy, summed up in one of the most repeated lines in cinema history, words of grim fatalism that a devastated Gittes receives from his partner Lawrence Walsh (Joe Mantell): “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”

Towne’s screenplay has since become a staple of film-writing classes, though it also serves as a lesson in how movies are often made and the perils of crediting a film to only one point of view. He acknowledges working closely with Polanski to revise and tighten the story and arguing with the director over the film’s despairing ending—an ending that Polanski requested and Towne later agreed was the right choice. (No one has been officially credited with writing “Forget It, Jake, It’s Chinatown.”)

But the concept began with Towne, who had turned down the opportunity to adapt Gatsby the magnificent for the screen so he can work on it Chinese district, partly inspired by a book published in 1946, Carey McWilliams Southern California: an island on earth.

“There was a chapter called ‘Water, Water, Water,’ which was a revelation to me. And I thought, ‘Why not make a movie about a crime that’s happening in front of everyone’s eyes?'” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2009.

“Instead of a jewel-encrusted hawk, make it something as common as water faucets and make it a conspiracy. And after reading about what they were doing, dumping water and starving farmers who were losing their land, I realized the visual and dramatic possibilities were enormous.”

The background story of Chinese district has itself become a kind of detective story, explored in producer Robert Evans’ memoir, The child remains in the image; in Peter Biskind Eastern Riders, Raging Bulls, a history of Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s, and in Sam Wasson The big goodbye, entirely dedicated to Chinese district. In The big goodbye, published in 2020, Wasson claimed that Towne was greatly assisted by a ghostwriter – his former college roommate, Edward Taylor. According to The big goodbye, for which Towne declined to be interviewed, Taylor did not ask for credit on the film because his “friendship with Robert” mattered more.

Wasson also wrote that the film’s famous closing line came from a vice cop who told Towne that crimes committed in Chinatown were rarely prosecuted.

“Robert Towne once said that Chinatown was a state of mind,” Wasson wrote. “It’s not just a place on the map of Los Angeles, but a state of total awareness almost indistinguishable from blindness. To dream you’re in heaven and wake up in the dark, that’s Chinatown. To think you’ve got it all figured out and realize you’re dead, that’s Chinatown.”

The studios took more power after the mid-1970s and Towne’s reputation declined. His own efforts as a director, notably Personal record And Tequila Sunrise, had mixed results. The Two Jakes, the long-awaited sequel to Chinese district, was a commercial and critical disappointment upon its release in 1990 and led to a temporary breakup between Towne and Nicholson.

Towne’s biggest regret, he said in a 2006 interview with AP, was how Greystoke turned out. Towne wrote the adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel Tarzan of the Apes and I wanted to make it happen. But production problems occurred Personal record bled in his hopes for Greystoke. Hugh Hudson, instead, directed the 1984 film. And while Greystoke Although he received three Oscar nominations, including for Towne’s screenplay, he was unhappy with the outcome. Towne took the name of his dog, P. H. Vazak, for his screenplay credit, making Vazak an unlikely Oscar contender.

At the same time, he agreed to work on a film far removed from the aspirations of art-house cinema of the 70s, the production of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. Days of thunder, The film starred Tom Cruise as a race car driver and Robert Duvall as his crew chief. The 1990 film was notorious for going over budget and being widely panned, though its admirers include Quentin Tarantino and countless racing fans. And Towne’s script popularized a phrase Duvall used after Cruise complained about being hit by another car: “He didn’t hit you, he didn’t bump you, he didn’t push you. He brushed you.”

“And to rub, my son, is to run.”

Towne later worked with Cruise on The company and the first two Impossible mission films. His most recent film was Ask the dust, a Los Angeles story he wrote and directed, which was released in 2006. Towne was married twice, the second time to Luisa Gaule, and had two children. His brother, Roger Towne, also wrote screenplays, including Natural.

Towne was born Robert Bertram Schwartz in Los Angeles and moved to San Pedro after his father’s clothing business closed in the Great Depression. (His father changed the family name to Towne.) He always loved writing and was inspired to work in film by his proximity to the Warner Bros. Theater and by reading the critic James Agee. For a time, Towne worked on a tuna boat and often spoke of its impact.

“In my mind, I’ve associated fishing with writing, in that every screenplay is like a journey that you take — and you’re fishing,” he told the Writers Guild Association in 2013. “Sometimes both involve a leap of faith. … Sometimes it’s pure faith that sustains you, because you think, ‘Gee, nothing — not a bite today. Nothing’s happening.’”