Considered the greatest American script, Chinatown (1974) was Robert Towne's masterpiece. He won an Oscar for it but Roman Polanski, the director, helped shaped the script and especially the downbeat ending.
Too bad they didn't do the third movie (Cloverleaf), but with the failure and fights over the sequel, The Two Jakes (2000), Towne and Jack Nicholson's friendship (who offered to direct!) had a huge fallout. They got over it eventually.
His great script of the early 70's were The Last Detail and Shampoo for Hal Ashby. He wrote uncredited scenes for Bonnie and Clyde and The Godfather, The Missouri Breaks, Warren Beatty's films (he was also great friends with Beatty and later on with Tom Cruise, who hold him in high esteem).
When they messed up his script for Greystoke, the Legend of Tarzan (directed by Hugh Hudson), so he signed the screen credit with the name of his dog (P.T. Vazak), and that name got nominated for an Oscar !!!!
He was considered the best script doctor in town and did great rewriting work on A list films for Big Bucks, and got to (co)write humdrum big budget High concept bonanzas like Mission: Impossible and Mission: Impossible 2 (The Chimera gimmick) or troubled productions like Days of Thunder. for Simpson/Bruckheimer and Tony Scott. Also on Crimson Tide for Scott and the same producers (dictated famously over the phone !!!).
Towne also directed four films, with mixed results, from the sports-themed Personal Best (1982) to Tequila Sunrise (1988, what that menage a trois was about?), Without Limits (1998, another sports-themed flick) and Ask the Dust (2006, based on the John Fante novel, which he wanted to do since the early Seventies !), that was also his last work.
He started in Hollywood working for Roger Corman. He wrote the Tomb of Ligia for Corman, on his series of Poe adaptations.
Bob Towne was 89. He was more like a Rock star in Hollywood than the reclusive screenwriter type. There won't be guys like him anymore, that's for sure...
