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.

Known For

Sparks Moran / Agent XK150 / Narrator

Creature from the Haunted Sea

Martin Joyce

Last Woman on Earth

Richard

Drive, He Said

Self

Revolution! The Making of 'Bonnie and Clyde'

Self

Budd Boetticher: A Man Can Do That

Party Guest (uncredited)

Shampoo

Professor Dates (uncredited)

Suspect Zero

Self

What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael

Stan

The Pick-up Artist

Self - Screenwriter, 'Chinatown'

Cadillac Desert: Water and the Transformation of Nature

Man in Bar #3

The Zodiac Killer

Self

Billy Wilder: The Human Comedy

Self

A Sad Flower in the Sand

Self - Screenwriter

Salinger

Self

Rescued from the Closet

Self

You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story

Self

A Decade Under the Influence

Self (uncredited)

Reel Radicals: The Sixties Revolution in Film