Robert Towne, Oscar-winning writer of ‘Chinatown,’ dies at 89

Robert Towne, a legendary screenwriter who won an Academy Award for “Chinatown,” has died. He was 89. 

Towne died at his home in Los Angeles on Monday surrounded by his family, his publicist Carri McClure said.

Along with “Chinatown,” (1974) which starred Jack Nicholson as a private eye hired by Faye Dunaway to investigate her husband, Towne also wrote “Shampoo” (1975) starring Warren Beatty and “The Last Detail,” (1973) for which he also received Academy Award nominations. 

“Robert Towne once said that Chinatown is a state of mind,” Sam Wasson, author of “The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood,” once wrote. “Not just a place on the map in Los Angeles, but a condition of total awareness almost indistinguishable from blindness. Dreaming you’re in paradise and waking up in the dark — that’s Chinatown. Thinking you’ve got it figured out and realizing you’re dead — that’s Chinatown.”

“Shampoo” actress Lee Grant said she was “shaken” by the news of his death.

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She wrote on X of Towne: “His life, like the characters he created, was incisive, iconoclastic, & entirely originally. He gave me the gift of ‘Shampoo’. He gave all of us the gift of his words & his films. There isn’t another like him. There won’t be again.”

The American Film Institute (AFI) left a tribute to the “legendary” writer on its social media page. 

“Farewell to the legendary Robert Towne,” AFI wrote. “From writing masterpieces like CHINATOWN, SHAMPOO & countless others, his influence is everlasting. Honored with an AFI honorary degree in 2014 for his contribution to the art form, his legacy will continue to inspire filmmakers everywhere.”

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Towne became reflective on his career in 2009 while discussing his turn at directing 2006’s “Ask the Dust.”

“I’ve got enough regrets in (my career) that I don’t need this one,” he told The Associated Press. “This does not make my creative life complete. I mean, I’m very happy to have done it and it meant a lot to me to do it, but I have other regrets of things that I wanted to do that didn’t work out — most dramatically `Greystoke,’ which was then, is now, and always will be the biggest creative regret of my life.”

Towne famously used the pseudonym P.H. Vazak, his dog’s name, for the 1984 film “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes” because he was unhappy with Hugh Hudson’s direction of his script. 

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He ended up receiving his fourth Oscar nomination for the film. 

In 1997, he also received a lifetime achievement award from the Writers Guild of America.

“He knows how to use sly indirection, canny repetition, unexpected counterpoint and a unique poetic vulgarity to stretch a scene or an entire script to its utmost emotional capacity,” film critic Michael Sragow wrote in 1998, according to the Hollywood Reporter. “He’s also a lush visual artist with an eye for the kind of images that go to the left and right sides of the brain simultaneously.”

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Towne also wrote “Tequila Sunrise” (1988), “The Firm” (1993), “Days of Thunder” (1990) and “Mission: Impossible” (1996) and contributed to “The Godfather” (1972) – Francis Ford Coppola even thanked him from the stage in his acceptance speech – and “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967).