Legendary screenwriter Robert Towne, who won an Academy Award for “Chinatown,” has passed away at the age of 89.
Towne died Monday at his Los Angeles home surrounded by his family, his publicist Carrie McClure said.
In addition to Chinatown (1974), starring Jack Nicholson as a private investigator hired by Faye Dunaway to investigate her husband, Towne also wrote the screenplays for Shampoo (1975) and The Last Detail (1973), both starring Warren Beatty, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.
“Robert Towne once said that Chinatown is a state of mind,” Sam Wasson, author of The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Year of Hollywood, once wrote. “Not just a place on the map of Los Angeles, but a state of full consciousness nearly indistinguishable from blindness. Dreaming of being in paradise and waking up in darkness — that’s Chinatown. Thinking you have it all figured out and then realizing you’re dead — that’s Chinatown.”
“Shampoo” actress Lee Grant said she was “devastated” by the news of his death.
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Robert Towne, who co-starred with Warren Beatty in the 1975 film “Shampoo,” has died. (Getty)
She wrote in X of Towne, “His life story was as edgy, iconoclastic and utterly original as the characters he created. He gave me the gift of Shampoo. He gave us all the gift of his words and his films. There is no one like him, and there never will be another.”
The American Motion Picture Institute (AFI) paid tribute to the “legendary” writer on its social media pages.
“We say goodbye to the legendary Robert Towne,” AFI wrote. “Having penned masterpieces like Chinatown, Shampoo, and countless others, his impact is eternal. Awarded an AFI Honorary Degree for Contributions to the Arts in 2014, his legacy will continue to inspire filmmakers around the world.”
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Robert Towne won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Chinatown. Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway appear in a scene in the 1974 film. (CBS via Getty Images)
Towne reflected on his career in 2009, when he directed the 2006 film “Ask the Dust.”
“I have so many regrets[about my career]that this isn’t necessary,” he told The Associated Press. “This doesn’t mark the end of my creative life. I mean, I’m very happy that I did it, and it meant a lot to me, but I also have regrets about other things that I wanted to do that didn’t work out, the most dramatic being ‘Greystoke,’ which was then, is now and will always be the biggest creative regret of my life.”
Towne famously used the pen name PH Vazak, the name of his dog, in the 1984 film Tarzan, King of the Apes, after being unhappy with the direction of Hugh Hudson’s script.
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Robert Towne with Martin Scorsese, record executive David Geffen and Marlo Thomas at a screening of the 1976 film “Taxi Driver.” (Frank Edwards/Photos International/Archive Photo/Getty Images)
He received his fourth Academy Award nomination for this film.
In 1997, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Writers Guild of America.
“He knows how to stretch scenes, or entire scripts, to their emotional maximum with subtle indirection, subtle repetition, unexpected counterpoint and a unique brand of poetic vulgarity,” film critic Michael Sragow wrote in 1998, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “He’s also a gifted visual artist with an eye for images that reach both sides of the brain simultaneously.”
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Towne also wrote the screenplays for Tequila Sunrise (1988), The Firm (1993), Days of Thunder (1990) and Mission: Impossible (1996), and contributed to The Godfather (1972) (Francis Ford Coppola thanked Towne from the stage during his acceptance speech) and Bonnie and Clyde (1967).
