NEW YORK (AP) — Robert Towne, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “Shampoo,” “The Last Detail” and other acclaimed films whose work on “Chinatown” has become a model Art form and who helped define the jaded appeal of his hometown of Los Angeles, has died. He was 89.
Towne died Monday surrounded by family at his Los Angeles home, his publicist Carri McClure said. She declined to comment on the cause of death.
In an industry that gave rise to snarky jokes about the status of screenwriters, Towne enjoyed for a time a prestige comparable to that of the actors and directors with whom he worked. Through his friendships with two of the biggest stars of the 1960s and 1970s, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, he wrote or co-wrote some of the seminal films of an era when artists held an unusual level of creative control. A rare “auteur” among screenwriters, Towne managed to bring to the screen a highly personal and influential vision of Los Angeles.
“It’s such an illusory city,” Towne told The Associated Press in a 2006 interview“It’s the westernmost part of America. It’s a place of last resort. It’s a place where, in a word, people go to fulfill their dreams. And they’re always disappointed.”
Recognizable in Hollywood for his high forehead and full beard, Towne won a Academy Award He was nominated three times for “Chinatown” and was nominated three more times for “The Last Detail,” “Shampoo” and “Greystoke.” In 1997, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Writers Guild of America.
“His life, like the characters he created, was incisive, iconoclastic and entirely (original),” “Shampoo” actor Lee Grant said of X.
Towne’s success came after a long period of work in television, including “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” and “The Lloyd Bridges Show,” and on low-budget films for Roger Corman, producer of the “B” series. In a classic show-business story, he owes his breakthrough in part to his psychiatrist, through whom he meets Beatty, a fellow patient. While Beatty was working on “Bonnie and Clyde,” he brought Towne in to revise Robert Benton and David Newman’s script and brought him on set while the film was being shot in Texas.
Towne’s contributions were uncredited in the credits of “Bonnie and Clyde,” the iconic 1967 crime film, and for years he was a favorite ghostwriter. He helped on “The Godfather,” “The Parallax View” and “Heaven Can Wait,” among others, and described himself as a “relief pitcher who could come in for an inning but not pitch the whole game.” But Towne was credited by name on Nicholson’s macho “The Last Detail” and Beatty’s sex comedy “Shampoo,” and was immortalized by “Chinatown,” the 1974 thriller set during the Great Depression.
In Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski, Nicholson plays JJ “Jake” Gittes, a private investigator assigned to follow the husband of Evelyn Mulwray (played by Faye Dunaway). The husband is the chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and Gittes finds himself caught in a chaotic spiral of corruption and violence, played by Evelyn’s ruthless father, Noah Cross (John Huston).
Influenced by the fiction of Raymond Chandler, Towne has resurrected the menace and mood of a classic Los Angeles film noir, but has presented Gittes’ labyrinthine odyssey through a grander, more insidious portrait of Southern California. The clues pile up in a timeless detective story and lead helplessly to tragedy, summed up in one of the most repeated lines in cinema history, words of grim fatalism that a devastated Gittes receives from his partner Lawrence Walsh (Joe Mantell): “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”
Towne’s screenplay has since become a staple of film-writing classes, though it also serves as a lesson in how movies often get made and the dangers of crediting a film to only one point of view. He acknowledges working closely with Polanski to revise and tighten the story and arguing fiercely with the director about the film’s despairing ending—an ending that Polanski demanded and Towne later acknowledged was the right choice (no one has been officially credited with writing “Forget It, Jake, It’s Chinatown”).
But the concept originated with Towne, who had turned down the opportunity to adapt “The Great Gatsby” for film so he could work on “Chinatown,” which was partly inspired by a 1946 book, “Southern California: An Island on the Land” by Carey McWilliams.
“There was a chapter called ‘Water, Water, Water,’ which was a revelation to me. And I thought, ‘Why not make a movie about a crime that’s happening in front of everybody’s eyes,'” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2009.
“Instead of a jewel-encrusted hawk, make it something as common as water faucets and make it a conspiracy. And after reading about what they were doing, dumping water and starving farmers who were losing their land, I realized the visual and dramatic possibilities were enormous.”
The story of Chinatown has itself become a kind of detective story, explored in producer Robert Evans’ memoir The Kid Stays in the Picture; Peter Biskind’s East Riders, Raging Bulls, a history of Hollywood in the 1960s and ’70s; and Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye, which is entirely about Chinatown. In The Big Goodbye, published in 2020, Wasson claims that Towne was largely aided by a ghostwriter, his former college roommate Edward Taylor. According to The Big Goodbye, for which Towne declined to be interviewed, Taylor did not ask to be credited on the film because his “friendship with Robert” mattered more.
Wasson also wrote that the film’s famous closing line came from a vice cop who told Towne that crimes committed in Chinatown were rarely prosecuted.
“Robert Towne once said that Chinatown was a state of mind,” Wasson wrote. “It’s not just a place on the map of Los Angeles, but a state of total awareness almost indistinguishable from blindness. To dream you’re in heaven and wake up in the dark, that’s Chinatown. To think you’ve got it all figured out and realize you’re dead, that’s Chinatown.”
Studios gained more power after the mid-1970s, and Towne’s reputation declined. His own efforts as a director, including “Personal Best” and “Tequila Sunrise,” had mixed results. “The Two Jakes,” the long-awaited sequel to “Chinatown,” was a commercial and critical disappointment when it was released in 1990 and led to a temporary falling out between Towne and Nicholson.
Around the same time, he agreed to work on a film far removed from the artistic aspirations of the 1970s, the Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer production “Days of Thunder,” starring Tom Cruise as a race car driver and Robert Duvall as his crew chief. The 1990 film went over budget and was widely panned, though its admirers include Quentin Tarantino and countless racing fans. And Towne’s script popularized a phrase Duvall used after Cruise complained about being hit by another car: “He didn’t hit you, he didn’t bump you, he didn’t push you. He brushed you.”
“And to rub, son, is to run.”
Towne later worked with Cruise on “The Firm” and the first two “Mission Impossible” films. His most recent film was “Ask the Dust,” a Los Angeles-set story he wrote and directed that was released in 2006. Towne was married twice, the second time to Luisa Gaule, and had two children. His brother, Roger Towne, also wrote screenplays, including “The Natural.”
Towne was born Robert Bertram Schwartz in Los Angeles and moved to San Pedro after his father’s clothing business closed in the Great Depression. (His father changed the family name to Towne.) He always loved writing and was inspired to work in film by his proximity to the Warner Bros. Theater and by reading the critic James Agee. For a time, Towne worked on a tuna boat and often spoke of its impact.
“In my mind, I’ve associated fishing with writing, in that every screenplay is like a journey that you take — and you’re fishing,” he told the Writers Guild Association in 2013. “Sometimes both involve a leap of faith … Sometimes it’s pure faith that sustains you, because you think, ‘Gee, nothing — not a bite today. Nothing’s happening.’”
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AP film writer Jake Coyle contributed to this report.