
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.
Filmography

What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael

Salinger

You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story

Revolution! The Making of 'Bonnie and Clyde'

Budd Boetticher: A Man Can Do That

Suspect Zero

The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made

A Decade Under the Influence

Reel Radicals: The Sixties Revolution in Film

Rescued from the Closet

A Sad Flower in the Sand

Billy Wilder: The Human Comedy

Cadillac Desert: Water and the Transformation of Nature

The Pick-up Artist

Shampoo

Drive, He Said

The Zodiac Killer

Creature from the Haunted Sea
