Robert Towne – who died Monday at 89 – was more than just an Oscar winner, more than a mere successful screenwriter. He was the acknowledged master of the craft itself who achieved something no other writer has been able to match (before or since): he earned Academy Award nominations for three critical and commercial hits in successive years, all released in a single dizzying 14-month period. There was “The Last Detail” in 1974, “Chinatown” (for which he won his lone writing Oscar) in 1975 and “Shampoo” in ’76. He would also earn a bid in 1985 for “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.” But it was that remarkable run in the Seventies that established Towne as a screen wordsmith without peer.
In fact, Towne would become known as much for his writing on films for which he received no screen credit than the ones he did. A look at his IMDB page shows who sought after he was as a script doctor, the guy you’d go to to get your project back on its feet. That list included “Bonnie and Clyde,” “The Godfather,” “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” “The New Centurions,” “The Parallax View,” “The Missouri Breaks,” “Marathon Man,” “Heaven Can Wait” and “Deal of the Century.” He also penned, for credit, “Days of Thunder,” “The Firm,” “Mission: Impossible” and “Mission: Impossible II” (all for Tom Cruise).
After originally starting out as an actor and writer for B-movie director Roger Corman in the early 1960s, Towne briefly shifted to television, writing episodes for shows including “The Lloyd Bridges Show,” “The Outer Limits,” “The Richard Boone Show” and “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” before becoming an in-demand fixer for other people’s movie projects. His script work as a “special consultant” on “Bonnie and Clyde” was particularly vivid and appreciated by star Warren Beatty along with its director Arthur Penn.
That last assignment would lead to Towne’s breakthrough job writing the expletive-filled script for “The Last Detail,” a military dramedy starring Jack Nicholson as a Navy man escorting a young man accused of petty theft and court-martialed (Randy Quaid) to jail over the course of a week. It was a hit, setting the stage for the writer’s career-defining screenplay: “Chinatown,” directed by Roman Polanski and produced by Robert Evans. The detective noir tale starring Nicholson and Faye Dunaway told the story of California’s water-rights wars of the early 1900s and the corruption that led to the forming of modern-day Los Angeles. It was nominated for 11 Oscars, including Best Picture, but only Towne won opposite the juggernaut that was “The Godfather, Part II.”
Besides the Academy Award, “Chinatown” would also earn Towne BAFTA, Golden Globe and WGA awards. He would also win WGA honors for “Shampoo” in 1976 and as a consulting producer on TV’s “Mad Men” during its seventh and final season in 2016. Towne also had a limited career as a writer-director on a quartet of projects: “Personal Best” (1982), “Tequila Sunrise” (1988), “Without Limits” (1998) and “Ask the Dust” (2006) (also his final feature script).
Beyond the nuts and bolts, Towne was recognized as a perfectionist who did things his way or not at all. His facility in capturing the distinctive voices of individual stars such as Beatty, Nicholson and Cruise was recognized as masterful, one of the leading screenwriters of the so-called New Hollywood. It led to the WGA’s honoring him with the guild’s Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement in 1997. Widely regarded as a master at writing dialogue, he reportedly didn’t have much use for meeting deadlines. He was said to be notorious for delivering long, shapeless scripts way past their due dates.
But Towne’s moodiness and delays were tolerated because he was, by nearly any measure, one of the most gifted film writers of all time. In a result-driven industry, he delivered the goods nearly every time.
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