Robert Towne
Robert Towne
Robert Towneis an American screenwriter, producer, director and actor. He was part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking. His most notable work was his Academy Award-winning original screenplay for Roman Polanski's Chinatown, which is widely considered one of the greatest movie screenplays ever written. He also wrote its sequel The Two Jakes in 1990, and wrote the Hal Ashby comedy-dramas The Last Detail, and Shampoo, as well as the first two Mission Impossible films...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth23 November 1934
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
Robert Towne quotes about
You're dumber than you think I think you are.
I'm not in business to be loved, but I am in business.
I'm not supposed to be the one that's caught with his pants down.
It was not possible to film in California, because all the areas are heavily built up now. Coming to Cape Town is an invitation to step into the past and recreate Los Angeles of the 1930s.
The straight roads are the roads of progress, the crooked roads are thee roads of genius.
Larry Grobel senses there are no answers in life, only questions. Good ones.
Either you bring the water to L.A. or you bring L.A. to the water.
But time has caught up with it and I think vindicated it. Shampoo, too: very dark, very ambitious movie.
But, uh, censorship at that time said that you just absolutely couldn't do anything involving children and so we had to go from there. I don't remember what I changed it to. Duvall is just excellent in it.
And I think one way or another it's evident to those who work with me that as a writer, a director, a friend, as somebody's there that's very anxious to get the movie made.
If you have a good ear for dialogue, you just can't help thinking about the way people talk. You're drawn to it. And the obsessive interest in it forces you to develop it. You almost can't help yourself.
Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.
People who can't think of anything else but whether the person you love is indented or convex should be doomed not to think of anything else but that, and so miss the other ninety-five percent of life.
To the extent of wanting me there and wanting to know everything about the scene, I think he realized it was important.