Robert Towne, Oscar winner for his Chinatown screenplay, has died aged 89

An unfortunate coincidence of the calendar. Although Chinatown was recently re-released in a lavish 4k print, its screenwriter Robert Towne recently passed away at the age of 89. A great Hollywood writer, he also won an Oscar for this film, and he won three other citations in his remarkable career, for Shampoo, The Last Job (also with Jack Nicholson) and Hugh Hudson’s masterpiece, Greystoke.

From tuna fisherman to actor

Before he began studying philosophy at Pomona College in Claremont, Robert Towne was a tuna fisherman in San Pedro, the town where he grew up. She started out in the seventh art as an actress in B horror films such as The Last Woman on Earth and Creature from the Haunted Sea. It was during these two shootings that he met director-producer Roger Corman, who named him one of the best screenwriters in Hollywood.

Their first director/screenwriter collaboration came in 1964 with the horror film The Tomb of Ligeia. In the following years, he participated in the writing of several masterpieces without credit. Thus, the scripts of Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather and Frantic, among others, bear his mark… but not his signature.

Considering his filmography as a screenwriter, we notice that he is especially fond of the detective and thriller world. He signed the scripts for Cops Don’t Sleep at Night, Chinatown and for murder. Recent work, Shampoo, two Hal Ashby films and Hugh Hudson’s Greystoke, The Legend of Tarzan, earned him three new Oscar nominations.

Famous screenwriter

By the early 80s, his reputation as a screenwriter was well established. He then began his career as a director in 1982 with Personal Best, a film for which he wore the triple hat of director, screenwriter and producer. He would later wear the director’s hat with Tequila Sunrise in 1988, Without Limits in 1998, and Ask the Dust in 2006.

Proof that his reputation as a screenwriter is great in the Hollywood microcosm, he has collaborated several times for the same director: twice with Sidney Pollack (The Firm and Yakuza), twice with Tony Scott (Days of Thunder and USS Alabama) although he is not credited with the latter). Twice by Roman Polanski. A fan of detective films, he also wrote the screenplays for some blockbusters such as Mission Impossible, the first two parts of Armageddon.

In 2019, Netflix announced that Chinatown There would be a prequel series written by Robert Towne in collaboration with David Fincher. According to Towne, the script was ready. Unfortunately, he will not have the chance to see this project come to fruition.