Robert Towne

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.

Most Known For

The Story of Film: An Odyssey

as Self

Salinger

as Self - Screenwriter

Shampoo

as Party Guest (uncredited)

Suspect Zero

as Professor Dates (uncredited)

The Pick-up Artist

as Stan

Last Woman on Earth

as Martin Joyce

What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael

as Self

Creature from the Haunted Sea

as Sparks Moran / Agent XK150 / Narrator

A Decade Under the Influence

as Self

Drive, He Said

as Richard

The Zodiac Killer

as Man in Bar #3

You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story

as Self

Reel Radicals: The Sixties Revolution in Film

as Self (uncredited)

Billy Wilder: The Human Comedy

as Self

Budd Boetticher: A Man Can Do That

as Self

Rescued from the Closet

as Self

Revolution! The Making of 'Bonnie and Clyde'

as Self

Cadillac Desert: Water and the Transformation of Nature

as Self - Screenwriter, 'Chinatown'

A Sad Flower in the Sand

as Self