Robert Towne: Tribute to the publisher of Chinatown and Venture: Unattainable

Robert Towne, who wrote motion pictures akin to Chinatown and Venture: Unattainable, is remembered as considered one of Hollywood’s largest screenwriters after his demise on the age of 89.

Towne received an Oscar for the 1974 crime and corruption mystery Chinatown, starring Jack Nicholson as a non-public detective.

Throughout his occupation he used to be nominated for a complete of 4 Oscars, together with co-writing the 1975 movie Shampoo with movie megastar Warren Beatty.

Lee Grant, who received the Highest Supporting Actress award for her position in that movie, Tributes paid to Towne on Christmas“His lifestyles, just like the characters he created, used to be incisive, iconoclastic and totally unique [sic],” she wrote.

“He gave me the reward of shampoo. He gave all folks the reward of his phrases and his motion pictures. There’s no one else like him. There’ll by no means be any other.”

Towne additionally had a prime recognition as a script physician, solving or including to present scripts, akin to 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde and 1972’s The Godfather.

Towne ceaselessly didn’t obtain authentic credit score, however The Godfather writer-director Francis Ford Coppola thanked him in his Oscar acceptance speech for absolute best tailored screenplay for writing a pivotal and “very gorgeous” scene between Al Pacino and Marlon Brando’s characters in a lawn.

“That used to be the Bob The town scene,” Coppola mentioned on the 1973 awards rite.

Towne additionally earned Oscar nominations for writing 1973’s The Ultimate Element — which additionally starred Nicholson — and 1984’s Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.

On the other hand, he had outsourced the writing on Greystoke to any individual else and didn’t like the end result such a lot that he got rid of his title from the credit and as an alternative used the pseudonym P.H. Vazak. Vazak used to be the title of his Hungarian sheepdog.

Towne had no such proceedings about Chinatown, however he did admit to having heated arguments with director Roman Polanski throughout the writing and filming.

“We fought on a daily basis, about the whole thing,” he mentioned.

Towne’s Chinatown sequel, The Two Jakes, didn’t make the similar affect upon its unlock in 1990.

He additionally wrote the 1990 racing drama Days of Thunder and the 1993 prison mystery The Company, each starring Tom Cruise.

And when Cruise introduced the Venture: Unattainable movie franchise in 1996, Towne co-wrote the primary installment and used to be given sole writing credit score on the second one.

He additionally served as publisher and director of a number of motion pictures, together with the 1982 athletics drama Non-public Highest. The New York Occasions reported He had affairs with movie stars Patrice Donnelly and Mariel Hemingway, which ended in the breakdown of his first marriage, which used to be to actress Julie Payne.

Towne additionally wrote and directed 1988’s Tequila First light, starring Mel Gibson and Michelle Pfeiffer; and he used to be credited as “consulting manufacturer” at the 2014–15 season of TV’s Mad Males.

Towne is survived via his 2d spouse, Luisa, and daughters Chiara and Catherine.