Robert Towne

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.

Known For: Writing

Born: San Pedro, Los Angeles, California, USA, 1934-11-23

Died: 2024-07-01

No.	Year	Title	Role	Vote Average
1	1960	Last Woman on Earth	Martin Joyce	44
2	1961	Creature from the Haunted Sea	Sparks Moran / Agent XK150 / Narrator	35
3	1971	The Zodiac Killer	Man in Bar #3	48
4	1971	Drive, He Said	Richard	60
5	1975	Shampoo	Party Guest (uncredited)	60
6	1987	The Pick-up Artist	Stan	57
7	1997	Cadillac Desert: Water and the Transformation of Nature	Self - Screenwriter, 'Chinatown'	0
8	1998	Billy Wilder: The Human Comedy	Self	60
9	2001	A Sad Flower in the Sand	Self	0
10	2001	Rescued from the Closet	Self	60
11	2002	Reel Radicals: The Sixties Revolution in Film	Self (uncredited)	0
12	2003	A Decade Under the Influence	Self	80
13	2004	The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made	Agent XK150 (archive footage)	46
14	2004	Suspect Zero	Professor Dates (uncredited)	55
15	2005	Budd Boetticher: A Man Can Do That	Self	70
16	2008	Revolution! The Making of 'Bonnie and Clyde'	Self	46
17	2008	You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story	Self	85
18	2013	Salinger	Self - Screenwriter	63
19	2019	What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael	Self	66

No.

Year

Title

Role

Vote Average

1960