Background
Born in Los Angeles, California, Robert Towne was raised in the seaport town of San Pedro.
("Chinatown," generally regarded as the Great American Scr...)
"Chinatown," generally regarded as the Great American Screenplay, follows a seedy private investigator, Jake Gittes, as he becomes involved in a case far more complicated than he ever imagined. Instead of adultery and divorce, he uncovers a conspiracy reaching to the economic foundations of Los Angeles. Set in the 1930s, the film was directed by Roman Polanski and stars Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston. "Chinatown," generally regarded as the Great American Screenplay, follows a seedy private investigator, Jake Gittes, as he becomes involved in a case far more complicated than he ever imagined. Instead of adultery and divorce, he uncovers a conspiracy reaching to the economic foundations of Los Angeles. Set in the 1930s, the film was directed by Roman Polanski and stars Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802134017/?tag=2022091-20
(A scholarly analysis of the films of legendary Hollywood ...)
A scholarly analysis of the films of legendary Hollywood screenwriter Robert Towne including a case study of Chinatown (1974).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KCL3YXQ/?tag=2022091-20
(The author describes his archeological excavation of a se...)
The author describes his archeological excavation of a seventeenth-century English settlement in Virginia and his discovery of evidence of the early colonial way of life.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813913233/?tag=2022091-20
([(Chinatown / the Last Detail / Shampoo: Screenplays )] [...)
[(Chinatown / the Last Detail / Shampoo: Screenplays )] [Author: Robert Towne] [Dec-1997] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0140DECCO/?tag=2022091-20
(Winter 1914. Sara Lee Kennedy reads the newspaper account...)
Winter 1914. Sara Lee Kennedy reads the newspaper account of the war in Europe and is appalled. Others in her sheltered Pennsylvania home are interested only in her coming marriage to solid, self-centered, Harvey. Struggling with compassion, Sara Lee feels compelled to help the suffering Belgian Army whose country is overrun by Germans. She defies her parents and travels alone to the front lines to help anyway she can. It is there she meets Henri, a Belgian officer. Eventually Sara is forced to choose between two admirers, Harvey and Henri.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LACP43K/?tag=2022091-20
Born in Los Angeles, California, Robert Towne was raised in the seaport town of San Pedro.
Robert Towne studied at Pomona College.
Towne is one of the picture business’s great talkers and wisest seers myet. let it be said, lie understands the business rather in the way of a hypochondriac who believes he is ahead of his OVVTI doctors. He is a fascinating contradiction: in many ways idealistic, sentimental, and very talented; in others, a devout compromiser, a delayer, so insecure that he can sometimes seem devious. The novelist John Fante, who hoped for years that Towne would write and make Fante’s novel The Brotherhood of the Grape, once called Towne “as tender as a kitten, and as crafty as a fox.”
Thus, he has two careers, above and below the credit line. It is safe to assume that Towne has been available to be talked to about most of the films of his circle Warren Beatty, fack Nicholson. Roman Polanski, at least. This doesn't mean he has doctored everything; that he wants to own up to every choice; or that he does not cannily leave some doubt. There is also the point that talk¬ative writers do not always know just when or how they’ve had an influence. Sometimes, Towne has been in the air, like the scent of eucalyptus, or fluorine in the water. And, generally, he's been as sweet and beneficial.
The official Towne worked on The Last Woman on Earth (Roger Gorman) and The Creature from the Haunted Sea (Gorman). He also acted in those films under the name Edw'ard Wain. He helped write The Torn!) of Ligeia (Gorman); Villa Bides (Buzz Kulik); and Drive,
His three breakthrough scripts were all done for friends, and for two actors, Beatty and Nicholson. They show a deft command of narrative structure and natural dialogue in the service of a warm, untidy humanism and a special love of southern California. Chinatown was especially close to his heart, not just as a tribute to private-eye fiction, but as a magnificent portrait of Los Angeles as it came of age and as maybe the last of the great complicated storv lines that movies dared. Even in the 1970s, Towne dreamed of carrying his hero, |ake Gittes, into the 1940s and 1950s as L.A.’s water problems turned into the story of gasoline and automobiles. We should add, however, that Polanski toughened up the ending of Chinatown. Towne meant for Evelyn Mulwray to get away with her daughter. Polanski guessed that the picture had to end badly for the paranoid mood of the seventies to be fulfilled.
Over the next few years, Towne was a largely uncredited writer: The Yakuza (Sydney Pollack), where he was credited; Marathon Man (John Schlesinger); The Missouri Breaks (Penn); Orca . . . Killer Whale (Michael Anderson); Heaven Can Wait (Beatty and Buck Henry); and Reds (Beatty).
He had worked vears on the script of what became Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (84, Hugh Hudson), researching Africa and the apes with fanatical care. The picture was finally taken from him and Towne took his credit as P. H. Vazak (the name of his dog). He had gotten himself in the predicament of needing to trade it away because of the way Personal Best had exceeded budget and schedule and led to a bitter conflict with producer David Geffen. Townes first film was odd and original, and it had a pioneering eye for athletic erotics. But it was softer and more cliched than anything Towne had written for others.
It was in 1985 that he began, and then lost, his sequel to Chinatown, The Two Jakes. The script for that film was very promising more comic, more human, more Renoir-like than Chinatown. The cast was aces, except for Townes choice of Robert Evans to play opposite Jack Nicholson. Shooting began, but Evans was ill-prepared, Nicholson was less than full) supportive, and there were wider anxieties about Townes authority. This was his second great loss, in no way redeemed by the eventual film, directed by Jack Nicholson, whose friendship with Towne had been sundered.
The reputation Towne had once enjoyed for mysterious power was now sadly altered, lie seemed more like a loser, someone who could not quite take charge in a crisis. Tequila Sunrise was a very disappointing follow-up, and Townes more recent writing has lacked character as often as credit: Swing Shift (Jonathan Demme), where lie was called in by Goldie Hawn; 8 Million Ways to Die (Ashby); The Bedroom Window (Curtis Hanson), on which he was executive producer; Frantic (Polanski); The Pick-up Artist (James Toback), in which he also acted; and the lamentable Days of Thunder (Tony Scott), lie was cowriter on The Finn (Pollack). For Beatty, he wrote the script of Love Affair (Glenn Gordon Caron)which was then discreetly doctored by others. Paranoids are always right.
And so, one way and another, Towne had lost friendships with Nicholson and Beatty, who were the twin engines of his work. But Days of Thunder and The Finn showed a new' motor alliance with Tom Cruise. Thus, Towne came to be the screenwriter on two massive hits. Mission: Impossible (Brian De Palma) and Mission: Impossible II (John Woo). At the same time, Cruise produced Townes second athletics film and the second film on the runner Steve Prefontaine Without Limits. This was a real achievement, for a sports film, but Townes recent “success” is a sad measure of where talent has gone in I Hollyood. One somehow longs to hear Jake Gittes’s candid opinion on the Mission pictures, and on films with colons in the title.
("Chinatown," generally regarded as the Great American Scr...)
(The author describes his archeological excavation of a se...)
(A scholarly analysis of the films of legendary Hollywood ...)
([(Chinatown / the Last Detail / Shampoo: Screenplays )] [...)
(Winter 1914. Sara Lee Kennedy reads the newspaper account...)
Towne’s parentage was Romanian on his mother’s side, Russian on his father’s; the family was Jewish. He grew up in San Pedro, Los Angeles, the son of Helen and Lou Schwartz. His father ran a ladies clothing shop called the Towne Smart Shop, and changed the family name to Towne. Lou then moved into real estate and moved his family to the affluent Rolling Hills, a gated community in Palos Verdes, where Robert attended Chadwick School. He graduated from Pomona College in Claremont, California.
Robert has a brother Roger, who is six years younger. He is married to Luisa Gaule. His former father-in-law is late actor John Payne, star of the western series, The Restless Gun. Towne's daughter (with actress Julie Payne) is Katharine Towne. He is a former father-in-law of Charlie Hunnam.