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
It made me alive to the fact that the most important thing sometimes is what isn't said - to prepare for moments of revelation that can be read entirely on actors' faces without dialogue.
There was no scene between father and son, and there was a deep-seated need for the two protagonists in the story to face each other with the consequences of what had happened. Now he was able to express to his son that his whole life had been a struggle to prevent this very thing from happening.
Now they're attracted to one another, but repelled by their ethnic origins, so that there was something to overcome. They had to overcome their own prejudices, which had been imposed by the culture - their own shame at being Mexican and Italian.
Initially I was weary of it. When something is first done you're looking at all the things you wanted there that are not there.
I started doing it and I couldn't stop. It really tired the patience of the people around me.
I think that those are the things that you can uniquely do with film that are difficult to do anywhere else: they can bring a picture to life, give it a natural and historical context and make you feel that everything else is suddenly credible.
But in the end we were guided by my memory of the place.
Colin, Salma, me - none of us took salaries in order to make this movie, in order to get it on film. So it was a movie made on spec.
What makes screenplays difficult are the things that require the most discipline and care and are just not seen by most people. I'm talking about movement - screenwriting is related to math and music, and if you zig here, you know you have to zag there. It's like the descriptions for a piece of music - you go fast or slow or with feeling. It's the same.
If you can find meaning in the type of running you need todo to stay on this team, chances are you can find meaning in another absurd pastime: Life.
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.