When a resume spans Chinatown and a couple of entries in the Mission: Impossible franchise, with a raft of awards and script doctor assignments in between, then you know you are talking about a special career. That career belonged to Robert Towne, who has sadly passed at the age of 89.
Towne was an Oscar winner for his 1974 thriller Chinatown, which starred Jack Nicholson. In his career, he would be nominated four times, including for co-writing 1975’s Shampoo alongside star Warren Beatty.
Towne was also in high demand as a script doctor, and in Hollywood he is quietly credited with saving both 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde and 1972’s The Godfather. Writer-director Francis Ford Coppola even thanked Towne for writing the pivotal scene between Al Pacino and Marlon Brando’s characters in a garden in his Oscar acceptance speech.
Other Oscar nominations came for Towne for writing 1973’s The Last Detail and 1984’s Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan.
Famously, he disliked what was taking shape via the studio on Greystoke so much that he took his name off the credits and used the pseudonym PH Vazak instead, Vazak being the name of his own Hungarian sheepdog.
In 2006, Chinatown was ranked third on a Writers Guild of America list of the greatest screenplays ever, and later Vulture would place him at number three on its list of the best screenwriters of all time.
Even with his pedigree, he was never averse to creating blockbuster material. He wrote 1990s Days of Thunder and the 1993 legal thriller The Firm, two Tom Cruise vehicles.
So when Cruise and his production company launched the Mission: Impossible franchise, they came calling for Towne once again. He co-wrote the first movie and had the sole writing credit on the second.
Towne was both writer and director on a number of movies including 1982s Personal Best. It was reported at the time that he had an affair with both Patrice Donnelly and Mariel Hemingway on that production. Legendary!
Towne also wrote and directed 1988’s Tequila Sunrise, starring Mel Gibson and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Towne is survived by his second wife Luisa, and daughters Chiara and Katharine.