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

nypost.com:

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.”Towne won an Academy Award for the neo-noir mystery “Chinatown” and was nominated three other times: for “The Last Detail,” “Shampoo” and “Greystroke.” In 1997, he received a Lifetime Achievement award from the Writers Guild of America.“His life, like the characters he created, was incisive, iconoclastic and entirely (original),” “Shampoo” actor Lee Grant wrote on X.Recognizable by his large forehead and full beard, Towne began his career working on hit TV shows such as “The Man from U.N.C.L.E” and “The Lloyd Bridges Show” as well as on several low-budget movies with producer Roger Corman.Through their shared psychiatrist, Towne met Beatty, who gave him his big break in the biz working as a script editor for his 1967 film “Bonnie and Clyde.” Towne did not receive any credits for his work on the Robert Benton-David Newman script.He became a sought-after ghostwriter in Hollywood, helping out on “The Godfather,” “The Parallax View” and “Heaven Can Wait” among others.

He referred to himself as a “relief pitcher who could come in for an inning, not pitch the whole game.”He finally earned credits with Nicholson — his former roommate — in “The Last Detail” and Beatty’s “Shampoo.”Towne became Hollywood royalty, however, for screenwriting Roman Polanski’s enigmatic 1974 thriller “Chinatown,” set in LA during the Great Depression and starring Nicholson as private detective Jake Gittes.While Gittes unravels a web of corruption involving his client’s husband, he experiences the insidious side of old Los Angeles in classic film noir.