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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsRobert Towne, the Oscar-winning screenwriter whose work on Chinatown helped define his reputation—and whose uncredited rewrites shaped other Hollywood films—died at his Los Angeles home on July 1, 2024. He was 89. His publicist, Carri McClure, confirmed his death; a cause was not disclosed, according to CBS News, reporting from the Associated Press.
Why Robert Towne mattered
Towne’s career joined celebrated credited screenplays with less visible work revising other writers’ scripts. He won the Academy Award for Chinatown and received screenplay nominations for The Last Detail, Shampoo, and Greystoke, according to the Los Angeles Times. His best-known work sits alongside a filmography that includes Tequila Sunrise, Days of Thunder, The Firm, Mission: Impossible, and Mission: Impossible II.
Before and alongside those projects, Towne worked in television and wrote for low-budget filmmaker Roger Corman. He also contributed uncredited script work to films including Bonnie and Clyde and The Godfather. Those jobs help explain his reputation as a script doctor: a writer brought in to improve or extend a screenplay without necessarily receiving an on-screen credit.
What made Chinatown a landmark
Released in 1974 and directed by Roman Polanski, Chinatown stars Jack Nicholson as private investigator Jake Gittes. Gittes’s murder investigation opens onto a larger web of land and water corruption in Depression-era Los Angeles. The screenplay’s mix of mystery, character, and civic power helped make it a lasting reference point for screenwriters. The Writers Guild of America ranked it No. 3 on its 2006 list of the 101 Greatest Screenplays, as reported by the Los Angeles Times; that is a historical ranking, not a current poll.
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Towne resisted treating the screenplay as a formula. Discussing its use in film-school classes, he told Ryan Gilbey of The Guardian: “We weren’t trying to write a screenplay that was perfectly structured. We were just trying to make it make sense.”
A famous ending shaped by disagreement
Towne and Polanski disagreed about the ending. Towne favored a different resolution; Polanski pressed for the bleak ending the film ultimately used. The dispute is an important part of the film’s history, and a reminder that a credited screenplay can still emerge from a contested collaboration. The Los Angeles Times also reported that the introduction Towne wrote for a 1983 limited edition of the screenplay acknowledged visits from his friend Edward Taylor during drafting. Later claims about Taylor’s role have been disputed, so the available accounts do not support reducing the screenplay to a simple sole-author story.
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The credited scripts and the invisible rewrites
Towne’s credited work ranged across genres and decades. Along with Chinatown, his writing credits include The Last Detail and Shampoo, as well as later films such as Tequila Sunrise, Days of Thunder, The Firm, and the first two Mission: Impossible films. He also directed Personal Best, Tequila Sunrise, Without Limits, and Ask the Dust, according to the Television Academy biography.
Script doctoring is harder to chart because the work often went uncredited. Towne described the restraint he tried to bring to it this way, in an interview quoted by Gilbey in The Guardian: “You must adopt the first precept of Hippocrates, which is to do no harm.” He said the aim was to extend the material without imposing himself on it. That distinction matters: a film may bear his uncredited contribution without establishing that he wrote the screenplay in full.
Towne’s view of Los Angeles
The city at the heart of Chinatown also remained central to Towne’s understanding of his work. In a 2006 interview with the Associated Press, quoted by CBS News, he described Los Angeles as a place built around ambition and disillusionment: “It’s a city that’s so illusory,” Towne told The Associated Press in a 2006 interview. “It’s the westernmost west of America. It’s a sort of place of last resort. It’s a place where, in a word, people go to make their dreams come true. And they’re forever disappointed.”
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