Forget It, Jake: It’s Robert Towne
Posted on July 5, 2024
by Eric P
Hey! You just wrote what many acclaim as the greatest screenplay of all time – what are you gonna do next?
If you’re Robert Towne, you write another one. And another one. Repeat as needed until you’re a Hollywood legend.
Towne, who died July 1 at the age of 89, is particularly famous for writing Chinatown, a gripping neo-noir built improbably around municipal water management. But that Oscar-winning script was just one installment in Towne’s forty-plus-year career during which he wrote both intimate character dramas and explosive action tentpoles, was responsible for box-office flops and major blockbusters, and worked with iconic schlockmeister Roger Corman and A-list superstar Tom Cruise.
Like many artists, Towne was a tumultuous personality – at home he contended with addiction and domestic upheaval, while on the job he was notorious for missing deadlines. He was so dissatisfied with the film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes that he insisted his script be credited to his dog.
And there’s a sense in which the evolving diversity of Hollywood eventually came to pass Towne by – his subject, typically, was men of a certain background and temperament. Not for nothing was one of his last jobs as a consulting producer on the prestige midcentury-dudes-in-crisis TV show Mad Men. Still, with a legacy that includes timeless classics like Chinatown, he left a mark on his chosen medium as indelible as the bandage on Jack Nicholson’s nose.
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