“Chinatown” Oscar winner and “Shampoo” screenwriter turned 89

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Robert Towne, who won an Oscar for his Chinatown Original Screenplay and was nominated for his The final detail, shampoo And Greystoke Scripts, died at home on Monday. He was 89 years old.

Public relations firm McClure & Associates announced the news on behalf of Townes’ family.

Towne also received BAFTA, Golden Globe and WGA awards for Chinatown, the 1974 Los Angeles-set thriller starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. It was one of three Writers Guild Awards he won during his career, along with shampoo and the drama series Mad Men. He was also nominated for The final detail (1973) and Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1985). In 1997, he was awarded the Guild’s Laurel Award for outstanding achievement as a screenwriter.

Towne was born on November 23, 1934 and began his career with the screenplay for The last woman on earth before he wrote for television series in the early 1960s, including The Outer Limits, The Man from UNCLE And The Lloyd Bridges Show. He then worked with Roger Corman on films such as The Tomb of Ligeia (1964) and later co-wrote the 1968 Mexican revolution film Villa trips, with Yul Brenner, Robert Mitchum and Charles Bronson.

Towne revised the script for The Godfather and some other important films of the era, but his breakthrough came with The final detail. In this military dramedy, Nicholson plays a Navy private tasked with bringing a rookie (Randy Quaid) to prison who has been court-martialed for a minor offense. The film also stars Otis Young, Clifton James and Carol Kane. This film would provide Towne’s career-defining screenplay the following year.

The film was directed by Roman Polanski and produced by Robert Evans. Chinatown told the story of the California water rights wars of the early 20th century. The film was nominated for 11 Oscars, including Best Picture, but only Towne won, although another Paramount Pictures classic prevailed that year. The Godfather – Part II.

At the start Chinatown seemed like a dream project. As Peter Bart wrote in a 2020 column for Deadline, Nicholson – then a rising young star – had developed a friendship with Towne during the production of Simple driver and now begged him to write a detective novel in the Raymond Chandler genre for him. Towne entrusted this idea to Evans, then head of production at Paramount, who was keen to expand his portfolio as a producer with the additional compensation.

Although Evans was looking to collaborate with Towne and Nicholson as his first solo production, there was a catch: he didn’t want to make a film about China, nor about Chinatown. Towne patiently explained that Chinatown was just “a state of mind” whose intricacies included incest, murder and a plot to steal a city’s water supply.

Undeterred, Evans instructed Towne, Chinatownand instead offers a payday of $175,000 for the adjustment The Great GatsbyTowne angrily pointed out that a screenplay based on the Gatsby novel would be even more confusing than Chinatown.

To prove his point, Towne turned his back on Paramount and borrowed $10,000 to rent a bed-and-breakfast cabin on Catalina, where he planned to start writing. Although he enjoyed his freedom, it proved to be deceptive.

Over time, Towne revised his story again and again, seeking advice from a number of contributors with strong opinions. First there was Nicholson, who had ideas about the characters but felt the details of the dialogue were irrelevant. Next came the Polish-born Polanski, who admitted he was baffled by the subplots about Los Angeles politics. And finally there was Evans, who found the narrative inscrutable.

A recurring theme of disagreement: violence. Just two years earlier, Polanski had witnessed the murder of his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, by the Manson family, and now he insisted that the violence in his new film would be explicit, not implied. “If a filmmaker tries not to upset people, that would be immoral,” he argued. Even the physical fight between Nicholson as Harry Gittes and Dunaway as Evelyn Mulwray would be graphic in its execution.

After production was completed, further disagreements arose. The ending was rewritten and the original music was discarded. Nicholson found the overall “look” of the film to be “too bright”. When it was finally shown to critics, the doubts disappeared. The reviews were enthusiastic and the film was immediately declared a classic.

Towne then wrote together with Paul Schrader The Yakuza, Sydney Pollack’s crime drama with Mitchum, Ken Takakura and Brian Keith.

His next film was also a commercial and critical success shampoo (1975) starring Warren Beatty as a Beverly Hills hairstylist and playboy who dreams of opening his own salon. The star-studded cast also included Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Lee Grant and Jack Warden.

In the 1970s, Towne also served as script doctor for Beatty’s directorial debut. Heaven Can Wait, and other screenplays, including Orca, The Missouri Breaks And The Parallax View.

Towne later wrote the screenplay and made his directorial and producing debut with Personal recordThe 1982 sports drama starring Mariel Hemingway and Patrice Donnelly as lesbian athletes trying to make the US Olympic team, much to the dismay of their coach (Scott Glenn). It was named one of the 300 best sports films of all time by AFI.

Towne continued to write screenplays in the 1980s and 1990s, including the Chinatown Consequence The two Jakes, again with Nicholson in the lead role. He wrote the screenplay for the 1984 Tarzan story Greystoke with regard to the direction. But the poor financial performance of Personal record Warner Bros gave the direction to Hugh Hudson, who had just won the Oscar for Best Picture. The hour of the winner in 1981.

Towne was upset about the move and dropped his name from the Greystoke screenplay – and instead decided to credit his dog PH Vazak for the screenplay. The dog “Vazak” subsequently received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. It was the first Oscar nomination for a Tarzan film.

Information regarding a celebration of life will be announced at a later date.

THERE’S MORE TO COME…

Peter Bart contributed to this report.