Everett Collection
Finding a good ending is often the hardest thing for a writer. For Robert Towne, who died Monday after writing and revising some of the most important films of the 1970s, figuring out the best way to end a movie was a long-term challenge. In the screenplay that won him an Oscar, the moody “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown” finale was a famous idea by Roman Polanski.
And yet there is an undeniable poetry in Towne’s passing: The Oscar winner died 50 years (and two weeks) after “Chinatown” was released, riding high on the new wave of appreciation that the half-century anniversary brought him. Towne was a natural storyteller whose stories were every bit as rich as his scripts, as evidenced by an in-depth article Variety an interview that aired last month — and whose best writing often went uncredited.
For those who missed Towne’s transformative impact on 1970s American cinema, it’s fair to say that he brought reality to an industry built on fantasy. That didn’t stop him from later working on the first two “Mission Impossible” films, but his instincts told him to make films that reflected the world he knew — to write characters who swore (“The Last Detail”), stumbled (“Chinatown”) and seduced (“Shampoo”) the way real people do.
For many, these three films, released in the space of 14 months, sum up Towne’s talent, representing a clear-eyed critique of American culture at a time of moral and political turbulence.
In “The Last Detail,” the sailors speak like real sailors—that is, they curse a storm—even as they push back against a system that values obedience above all else. (Years later, Towne’s longtime friend Jack Nicholson would yell, “You can’t stand the truth!” in “A Few Good Men,” though that line might as well have been the tagline for Hal Ashby’s brutally honest film.)
The film may not be set in Vietnam, but it indirectly alludes to that war, just as Chinatown, set in the 1930s, uses a decades-old case of institutional corruption to indict the greed Towne sees in his backyard (specifically, shady developers trying to crush his corner of Benedict Canyon). Whereas previous studio noirs often blamed lone criminals and femmes fatales, Towne blames the entire system. And because the film focuses entirely on Jake’s experience, the audience discovers the extent of the betrayal as the character does, sharing in his shock.
Released in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Shampoo wasn’t as well-received upon its release as it is today, perhaps because Towne and co-writer/lead actor Warren Beatty tempered the feather-light sex farce (about a straight hairdresser who sleeps with half his female clients) with a timely critique of the presidential election. For nearly two hours, Beatty’s character seduces all the girls, but by the end, when the classic formula would have it that love conquers all, the hairdresser watches Julie Christie drive off with her Nixon-looking lover.
Towne was central enough to the New Hollywood scene that Peter Biskind dug up many malicious rumors about him in his book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Rather than repeat them here, what rings true are the rumors that Towne was known for writing 250-page screenplays (double the length of a typical feature film). In Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye , the film historian claims that one draft of Chinatown ran 180 pages.
He was a talented man who could evaluate other people’s scripts and offer suggestions that vastly improved the final result, as he did as an uncredited script doctor on “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Godfather.” But when it came to his own work, he hoarded ideas, achieving a kind of impossible perfectionism. The resulting films, including ones he directed, such as “Personal Best” and “Without Limits,” demonstrate that these scripts could be whittled down and shaped into rock-solid movies, which is ultimately what matters.
Towne has worked with three Hollywood megastars on multiple occasions over the course of his career: Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and Tom Cruise, knowing what each of them could bring to a role. With Nicholson (whom he met while the actor was Hanna Barbera’s assistant), Towne tapped into the actor’s ability to play fiery, incendiary characters, even going so far as to write a sequel to “Chinatown” so Nicholson could direct “The Two Jakes.” According to Towne, Beatty was incredibly aware of the effect his physical good looks had on audiences, and so he called on Towne several times over the years (on “Heaven Can Wait,” “Reds” and “Love Affair”) to help ground his characters. Impressed by Towne’s work on “Days of Thunder,” Tom Cruise came to trust the screenwriter to help him shape films that mirrored his on-screen persona, determined and self-assured. The determination of “The Firm” and the first two “Mission: Impossible” films is largely due to Towne.
Over the decades, Towne continued to work on other people’s screenplays, while developing a handful of passion projects of his own. One of them, an unconventional Tarzan project called “Greystoke,” which he envisioned as being largely dialogue-free, meaning that most of the film would focus quietly on how a human boy might have been raised by apes. Towne realized that he would have to direct “Greystoke” himself for his vision to work, and so chose “Personal Best,” a female-driven drama, to prove himself as a director.
The plan failed: “Personal Best” was a challenge to make (obstruction of justice and the actors’ strike), so much so that he ended up giving his “Greystoke” script to Warner Bros. in order to finish the film. Towne was devastated by what became of “Greystoke,” and ended up removing his name from the script and replacing it with his dog’s.
In the end, Towne worked on more films that didn’t include his name than those that did. But his influence on Hollywood is no secret. Towne wanted his characters to be as nuanced and multidimensional as real people, bringing complexity and carefully considered texture to the spheres they inhabited. Other writers admired the density with which Towne built worlds and raised their game. Some, like Francis Ford Coppola (who cited Towne in his acceptance speech for “The Godfather”), acknowledged his influence directly—even if the credit didn’t seem as important to Towne as making the best movie possible.