Robert Towne: The Screenwriter of the Auteur Era

It is not even a slight overstatement to say that Robert Towne is one of the handful or greatest screenwriters in the history of film. To fully understand the significance of his work, you have to consider not only the films he received an official screenwriting credit for, but the uncredited work he did doctoring scripts for films of great significance.

Beginning in 1960, Towne began his career writing for episodic television (The Outer Limits, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and others) and B-movies. It wasn’t until 1967 that Towne contributed to a film that mattered, but his uncredited work on Bonnie and Clyde soon made him in demand whether his name made the poster or not. 

Over the next five years, Towne had only one official screenplay credit (the forgotten Robert Mitchum / Charles Bronson film, Villa Rides), but the unofficial work was more than a little substantive: Jack Nicholson’s directorial debut Drive He Said, Robert Altman’s classic Western McCabe & Mrs. Miller, the underrated noir Cisco Pike, John Schlesinger’s Marathon Man, and Richard Fleischer’s cop drama The New Centurions, and most notably contributing crucial dialogue to The Godfather (particularly a scene late in the film between Michael and Vito).

Finally, in 1972, Towne would have his name credited to a classic film: Hal Ashby’s fabulous, comi-tragedy The Last Detail. Towne and Ashby were a match made in the upper levels of the higher place all filmmakers aspire to ascend to. Along with co-writer Darryl Poniscan, he created a hilarious and heartbreaking film about two Navy men (Jack Nicholson and Otis Young) transporting a simple ne’er do well (Randy Quaid) to a Naval prison, but not before showing him one last good time before his incarceration. During Ashby’s hot streak during the ‘70s, he was an expert at mixing humor with pathos, and with the help of Towne and Poniscan, The Last Detail is a perfect melding of those two elements (in fact, Director Alexander Payne looked to The Last Detail as inspiration for The Holdovers). 

After polishing Alan J. Pakula’s great 1974 paranoid thriller The Parallax View starring Warren Beatty, Towne solidified his legend that same year as the screenwriter (along with the film’s Director Roman Polanski) of one of the greatest film noirs (and greatest films ever), Chinatown. The construction of the film is extraordinary in its own right – Towne and Polanski’s complex structure never loses you despite the depth of information to keep up with, but, my god, the dialogue. “My sister, my daughter” is one of the most stunning lines (delivered by an extraordinary Faye Dunaway) to ever be uttered on screen. Of course, the most oft-quoted line from the film is “Forget about it Jake, it’s Chinatown” that closes the film’s bruising finish, but there’s also the words written and spoken by John Huston, that reveal a level of venality and evil that knows no bottom. Had Towne done nothing other than Chinatown, he would be a legend for that film alone.

But Towne did carry on brilliantly, brushing up Sydney Pollack’s underrated The Yakuza, and creating another masterpiece by reteaming with Ashby as director and co-writer, and Warren Beatty in front of the camera, with the 1978’s melancomedy Shampoo. A film  which may have appeared to be on the surface about a randy hairdresser (Beatty) getting his groove on with various beauties (including Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn), but somehow found a way to define the decline of the ‘70s and the Nixonian era. 

Towne next provided some uncredited work to the oddball Western The Missouri Breaks, and the Jaws knockoff Orca, and the wonderful comedy Heaven Can Wait (starring Beatty and co-directed by Buck Henry), before taking four years off to create his directorial debut, 1982’s Personal Best. A drop-dead masterpiece that is rarely spoken of as such, if it’s spoken of at all. Towne’s first film as both writer and director tells the story of a track athlete’s (Mariel Hemingway at her absolute best) sexual awakening while preparing to compete in the 1980 Olympics. It’s one of the very rare studio films from its era to deal with issues of sexual identity (Hemingway’s character has an affair with a fellow athlete played by Patrice Donnelly, while also mixing it up with her coach played by Scott Glenn). The portrait of what is required to be a world class athlete is exacting and precise, the love triangle frank and affecting, and the ending, which works in then President Carter’s decision to boycott the 1980 Olympics due to the Cold War and the event taking place in Moscow, adds a real gut punch to the finale. Towne does a brilliant job of depicting a very personal story against the backdrop of a “sports movie” and the political consequences of the day. Personal Best is a film that deserves a complete and total re-evaluation. It’s one of the very best films of the ‘80s. But the studio had no clue how to market the film, and Personal Best disappeared with barely a trace. Now would be a great time to retrace those steps.

The failure of Personal Best may or may not have had an impact on Towne’s output over the next half-decade after the film’s commercial cratering, but the quality of the film’s he worked on took a notable dip. The polish work he performed on William Friedkin’s bomb Deal of the Century, Hal Ashby’s disappointing final film 8 Million Ways to Die, and Writer Norman Mailer’s folly of a directorial debut Tough Guys Don’t Dance did him no favors. Towne did score an Oscar nomination for his screenplay Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, although one wonders how proud of the film he was considering he credited his dog P.H. Vazak for the screenplay – and yes, if you are wondering, P.H. is the only pooch ever nominated for an Oscar. 

1988 would prove to be a better year for Towne, if still short of the starry heights he once scaled. His Days of Thunder screenplay has a number of pithy lines, even if the Tom Cruise NASCAR is a bit silly overall. Still, the film has no small number of fans to this day. Better yet, was Towne’s second film as a writer/director from that same year, Tequila Sunrise. Led by a cast that included the peak of popularity trio Mel Gibson, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Kurt Russell, Sunrise is a glossy, but wildly entertaining noir with great work in front of the camera by its stars and gorgeous cinematography from Conrad Hall. Despite the film’s many virtues, critics (wrongly) shrugged and the film’s box office, while hardly disastrous, was modest considering the expectations.

Towne returned to screenwriting after Tequila Sunrise failed to meet expectations, doing solid to better than that work on the Chinatown sequel The Two Jakes (better than you may remember), Love Affair (also better than you may remember), The Firm and Mission Impossible. Towne and Cruise became so friendly that Cruise co-produced Towne’s next directorial effort, 1998’s Without Limits, another Olympic sports film about the mercurial real life long distance runner Steve Prefontaine (perfectly played by Billy Crudup) whose life ended far too young. The film was well reviewed, but barely seen (although the Golden Globes did recognize Donald Sutherland for his supporting work playing Prefontaine’s coach). Without Limits is a terrific film about a singular character in the history of amateur athletics, whose disappointing box office can partially be blamed on 1997’s Pre, a film about the same subject (starring a perfectly fine Jared Leto) that preceded Limits and was a failure at the turnstiles itself.

Towne then wrote 2000’s Mission Impossible II (largely seen as the runt of the franchise litter) before taking one more stab at directing six years later with Ask The Dust, an adaptation of the well thought of depression era novel by John Fante. Starring Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek, Ask The Dust feels like one of those “last shot” passion projects by a gifted artist, and when it found no purchase with critics or audiences, Towne’s career quietly floated away. Aside from writing two episodes of Welcome to the Basement and serving as a consultant on the modern classic series Mad Men, Towne never put his name on another film or show for the final decade of his life.

The career of Robert Towne is filled with massive peaks (so high that his name was long uttered in mythical tones within the industry) and unbearable lows. Towne was as gifted a screenwriter as there ever has been, and coming along during the auteur era was a perfect match of time and place for the brilliant writer and filmmaker. But times change, and those times became unkind to Towne despite four Oscar nominations – three of which came in consecutive years (1974-76) for writing The Last Detail, Chinatown (for which he won the statue), and Shampoo. He improved many classic projects from behind the scenes, but when he moved front and center and made three terrific films as a director (Ask The Dust is just okay), Towne was not rewarded for his sterling efforts.

But film is forever (well, as long as the pictures are not owned by studios who shelve films for tax breaks), and all of Towne’s output is available to be taken in for the one hundredth time (as in the case with Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, and Chinatown), or for the first time (I plead with you to see Personal Best). 

He was a giant. But even giants must fall. 

Robert Towne died on July 1, 2024. He was 89 years old.