Robert Towne
1934-11-23 (1934)San Pedro, Los Angeles, California, USAWriting
Biography
Robert Towne (born Robert Bertram Schwartz; November 23, 1934 - July 1, 2024) was an American screenwriter, producer, director and actor. He was part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning original screenplay for Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), which is widely considered one of the greatest screenplays ever written. He later said it was inspired by a chapter in Carey McWilliams's Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (1946) and a West magazine article on Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles. Towne also wrote the sequel, The Two Jakes (1990); the Hal Ashby comedy-dramas The Last Detail (1973) and Shampoo (1975); and the first two Mission: Impossible films. Towne directed the sports dramas Personal Best (1982) and Without Limits (1998), the crime thriller Tequila Sunrise (1988), and the romantic crime drama Ask the Dust (2006). Description above from the Wikipedia article Robert Towne, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Known For
The Story of Film: An Odyssey
TV • 2011
Billy Wilder: The Human Comedy
MOVIE • 1998
Suspect Zero
MOVIE • 2004
Salinger
MOVIE • 2013
Shampoo
MOVIE • 1975
A Decade Under the Influence
MOVIE • 2003
The Pick-up Artist
MOVIE • 1987
What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael
MOVIE • 2019
Drive, He Said
MOVIE • 1971
Rescued from the Closet
MOVIE • 2001
You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story
MOVIE • 2008
Last Woman on Earth
MOVIE • 1960
Revolution! The Making of 'Bonnie and Clyde'
MOVIE • 2008
Creature from the Haunted Sea
MOVIE • 1961
Budd Boetticher: A Man Can Do That
MOVIE • 2005
The Zodiac Killer
MOVIE • 1971
Cadillac Desert: Water and the Transformation of Nature
MOVIE • 1997
A Sad Flower in the Sand
MOVIE • 2001