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.
19 movies · 2 shows
What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael
2019·6.7
Salinger
2013·6.4
Mission: Remarkable - 40 Years of Creating the Impossible
2010·0.0
You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story
2008·8.5
Revolution! The Making of 'Bonnie and Clyde'
2008·4.6
Budd Boetticher: A Man Can Do That
2005·7.0
Suspect Zero
2004·5.5
A Decade Under the Influence
2003·7.9
Reel Radicals: The Sixties Revolution in Film
2002·8.0
Rescued from the Closet
2001·6.5
A Sad Flower in the Sand
2001·0.0
Billy Wilder: The Human Comedy
1998·6.0
Halloween Monster Bash
1991·0.0
The Pick-up Artist
1987·5.7
Shampoo
1975·6.0
Drive, He Said
1971·5.6
The Zodiac Killer
1971·4.8
Creature from the Haunted Sea
1961·3.6
Last Woman on Earth
1960·4.4