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Robert Towne
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Biography
Robert Towne (born Robert Bertram Schwartz; November 23, 1934 - July 1, 2024) was an American screenwriter, producer, director and actor. He was part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning original screenplay for Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), which is widely considered one of the greatest screenplays ever written. He later said it was inspired by a chapter in Carey McWilliams's Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (1946) and a West magazine article on Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles. Towne also wrote the sequel, The Two Jakes (1990); the Hal Ashby comedy-dramas The Last Detail (1973) and Shampoo (1975); and the first two Mission: Impossible films. Towne directed the sports dramas Personal Best (1982) and Without Limits (1998), the crime thriller Tequila Sunrise (1988), and the romantic crime drama Ask the Dust (2006). Description above from the Wikipedia article Robert Towne, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Notable films
Where to start
Highlights from credits and KinoChain journeys.
Days of Thunder
Appears in a KinoChain journey
Chinatown
Appears in a KinoChain journey
The Firm
Appears in a KinoChain journey
The Tomb of Ligeia
Appears in a KinoChain journey
Mission: Impossible
Screenplay
Mission: Impossible II
Screenplay
The Bedroom Window
Executive Producer
Last Woman on Earth
As Martin Joyce
Chains
KinoChain journeys
Public chains that pass through their films — or name them as a bridge.
The Reckless Edge - Talent as a Double-Edged Sword
Forty years after Top Gun roared into cinemas, Maverick's need for speed still feels as exhilarating as ever. But Pete Mitchell is part of a much bigger movie t...
7 films
Double Trouble
From the Academy's rare double nods to the performances that earned them, this chain celebrates actors who competed against themselves in a single awards season...
8 films
Shadows and Velvet: A Gothic Journey Through Poe's Legacy
From the crumbling castles of Roger Corman to the baroque nightmares of Jean Rollin, this chain traces the evolution of literary gothic horror through eight fil...
7 films
The Mind's Eye: Crime Films of Obsession and Interiority
From a detective's haunted pursuit to a killer's fractured psyche, this chain traces cinema's most intimate crime stories, where the real action happens inside...
8 films
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