{"id":24720,"date":"2024-07-03T19:47:35","date_gmt":"2024-07-03T23:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=24720"},"modified":"2024-07-03T19:49:12","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T23:49:12","slug":"chinatown-bonnie-and-clyde-writer-robert-towne-is-dead-at-89","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=24720","title":{"rendered":"Iconic ‘Chinatown,’ ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ Writer Robert Towne Died at 89"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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Photo by Don Simpson\/Jerry Bruckheimer Films – \u00a9 1990<\/div>\r\n
\u00a0<\/div>\r\n
Robert Towne<\/a>, the legendary Oscar-winning auteur noted especially for scripting <\/span>Chinatown<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, died on July 1 in Los Angeles at the age of 89.<\/span><\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/main>
Over a career spanning more than half a century, Towne scripted some of the most iconic films of his generation. His writing went a long way toward crafting the cinematic image of his native Los Angeles as a locus of creativity and possibility as well as intrigue and corruption.

In 2006, he was quoted by an interviewer as saying \u201cIt\u2019s a city that\u2019s so illusory. It\u2019s the westernmost west of America. It\u2019s a sort of place of last resort. It\u2019s a place where, in a word, people go to make their dreams come true. And they\u2019re forever disappointed.\u201d

Towne\u2019s original name was Robert Bertram Schwartz. His father, who owned a dress shop that was shuttered during the Great Depresstion, changed the family name to Towne.<\/div>\r\n

Towne won an Academy Award for Chinatown<\/strong> <\/em>and was also nominated for an Oscar for The Last Detail<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, Shampoo<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, and Greystoke<\/strong><\/em><\/a>. Responding to his passing, Shampoo<\/strong> <\/em>star Lee Grant posted this tribute on X (formerly Twitter): \u201cHis life, like the characters he created, was incisive, iconoclastic and entirely (original).\u201d

Towne, who received a lifetime achievement award in 1997 from the Writers Guild of America, got his start writing for television and low-budget movies for producer Roger Corman. Among the television shows he wrote for in the 1960s were The Man from U.N.C.L.E.<\/em> <\/strong>and The Lloyd Bridges Show<\/strong><\/em>.

He transitioned into film through his friendship with actor Warren Beatty, to whom he was introduced by his psychiatrist. Beatty asked Towne to help revise the script for Bonnie and Clyde<\/strong><\/em>, which had originally been written by Robert Benton and David Newman.<\/p>\r\n

As a ghostwriter, Towne\u2019s contributions to the script often went uncredited. Describing himself as \u201ca relief pitcher who could come in for an inning, not pitch the whole game,\u201d Towne also contributed his talents to other films of the era, including The Godfather<\/strong><\/em>, Heaven Can Wait<\/strong><\/em>, and The Parallax View<\/strong><\/em>.

But it was his work on Roman Polanski\u2019s 1974 film Chinatown<\/strong> <\/em>that elevated Towne to iconic status in Hollywood. Influenced by the fiction of Raymond Chandler, Towne brought a noir sensibility to the project, a detective story set in the Los Angeles of the 1930s, one that famously ended with the words as suggested by Polanski, \u201cForget it, Jake, it\u2019s Chinatown.\u201d

In a 2009 interview, Towne said his vision for the film was largely influenced by Carey McWilliams\u2019s 1946 book Southern California: An Island on the Land<\/em>. \u201cInstead of a jewel-encrusted falcon, make it something as prevalent as water faucets, and make a conspiracy out of that,\u201d Towne said. \u201cAnd after reading about what they were doing, dumping water and starving the farmers out of their land, I realized the visual and dramatic possibilities were enormous.\u201d

In 1990, Towne penned the script for Days of Thunder,<\/strong><\/em> a race-car epic starring Tom Cruise and Robert Duvall. It included another memorable quotation, when Duvall says to Cruise, \u201cHe didn\u2019t slam into you, he didn\u2019t bump you, he didn\u2019t nudge you. He rubbed you. And rubbin\u2019, son, is racin\u2019.\u2019\u201d

Towne also worked on Cruise\u2019s The Firm<\/strong><\/em> as well as his the first two Mission: Impossible<\/strong><\/em> movies. Most recently, he scripted Ask the Dust<\/strong><\/em>, another Los Angeles film that debuted in 2006. Robert Towne is survived by his second wife, Luisa Gaule and their two daughters, as well as his brother.<\/p>\r\n

Check out more of Edward’s articles.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo by Don Simpson\/Jerry Bruckheimer Films – \u00a9 1990 \u00a0 Robert Towne, the legendary Oscar-winning auteur noted especially for scripting Chinatown, died on July 1 in Los Angeles at the age of 89. Over a career spanning more than half a century, Towne scripted some of the most iconic films of his generation. His writing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,20471],"tags":[23120,9440,23123,23121,23118,1237,23119,23122,3786,8671],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n'Chinatown,' 'Bonnie and Clyde' Writer Robert Towne Died at 89<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Robert Towne, the legendary Oscar-winning auteur noted especially for scripting Chinatown, died on July 1 in Los Angeles at the age of 89.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=24720\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"'Chinatown,' 'Bonnie and Clyde' Writer Robert Towne Died at 89\" \/>\n<meta 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