Robert Towne
Born: 1934-11-23
Place of Birth: San Pedro, Los Angeles, California, USA
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
Salinger
Suspect Zero
The Pick-up Artist
Shampoo
Last Woman on Earth
Drive, He Said
Creature from the Haunted Sea
Cadillac Desert: Water and the Transformation of Nature
Rescued from the Closet
You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story
The Zodiac Killer
A Decade Under the Influence
What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael
Budd Boetticher: A Man Can Do That
Revolution! The Making of 'Bonnie and Clyde'
Billy Wilder: The Human Comedy
