Robert Towne, Oscar-winning writer of ‘Chinatown passes away at 89
Robert Towne, Oscar-winning writer of ‘Chinatown passes away at 89
Robert Towne, Oscar-winning writer of ‘Chinatown,’ dies at 89
He holds prestige comparable to the actors and directors he worked with.
Robert Towne, the Oscar winning screenplay writer of ‘Shampoo’, ‘The Last Detail’ and other acclaimed films breathed his last on Monday. As per hus publicist Carri McClure, he was
was surrounded by family members of the his home in Los Angeles. She declined to comment on any cause of death.
In an industry which gave birth to rueful jokes about the writer’s status, Towne for a time held prestige comparable to the actors and directors he worked with. Through his friendships with two of the biggest stars of the 1960s and ‘70s, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, he wrote some of the signature films of an era when artists held an unusual level of creative control. The rare ‘auteur’ among screen writers, Towne managed to bring a highly personal and influential vision of Los Angeles onto the screen.
Recognisable. around Hollywood for his high forehead and full beard, Towne won an Academy Award for ‘Chinatown’ and was nominated three other times, for ‘The Last Detail’, ‘Shampoo’ and ‘Greystroke’. In 1997, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Writers Guild of America.
His success came following a long stretch of working in television, including ‘The Man from UNCLE’ and ‘The Lloyd Bridges Show’, and on low-budget movies for ‘B’ producer Roger Corman.
In a classic show business story, he owed his breakthrough in part to his psychiatrist, through whom he met Beatty, a fellow patient. As Beatty worked on ‘Bonnie and Clyde’, he brought in Towne for revisions of the Robert Benton-David Newman script and had him on the set while the movie was filmed in Texas.
Towne’s contributions were uncredited for ‘Bonnie and Clyde’, the landmark crime film released in 1967, and for years he was a favourite ghost writer. He helped out on ‘The Godfather’ and ‘Heaven Can Wait’ among others and referred to himself as a ‘relief pitcher who could come in for an inning, not pitch the whole game’. But Towne was credited by name for Nicholson’s macho ‘The Last Detail’ and Beatty’s sex comedy ‘Shampoo’ and was immortalised by ‘Chinatown’, the 1974 thriller set during the Great Depression.
Roman Polanski’s directorial
‘Chinatown’ featured Nicholson as JJ ‘Jake’ Gittes, a private detective asked to follow the husband of Evelyn Mulwray (played by Faye Dunaway).
The husband is chief engineer the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Gittes finds himself caught in a chaotic spiral of corruption and violence, embodied by Evelyn’s ruthless father, Noah Cross (John Huston) convinced by the fiction of Raymond Chandler, Towne resurrected the menace and mood of a classic Los Angeles film noir, but cast Gittes’ labyrinthine odyssey across a grander and more insidious portrait of Southern California. Clues accumulate into a timeless detective tale, and lead helplessly to tragedy, summed up by the one of the most repeated lines in movie history, words of grim fatalism a devastated Gittes receives from his partner Lawrence Walsh (Joe Mantell): “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”
Towne’s script has been a staple of film writing classes ever since, although it also serves as a lesson in how movies often get made and in the risks of crediting any film to a single viewpoint. He would acknowledge working closely with Polanski as they revised and tightened the story and arguing fiercely with the director over the film’s despairing ending — an ending Polanski pushed for and Towne later agreed was the right choice (No one has officially been credited for writing “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown”
News Edit K.V.Raman
