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Robert Towne (1934-2024)

Alias:
P. H. Vasak
Роберт Таун

Birthplace:
San Pedro, Los Angeles, California, USA

Born:
November 23, 1934

Died:
July 1, 2024

Biography from TheMovieDB

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).

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Additional information:

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Film Performances

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Film Production

Additional Writing:
1967  Bonnie and Clyde
1971  Drive, He Said
1971  McCabe & Mrs. Miller
1972  Cisco Pike
1972  The New Centurions
1974  The Parallax View
1978  Heaven Can Wait
1983  Deal of the Century
1986  8 Million Ways to Die
1987  Tough Guys Don't Dance
1988  Frantic

Characters:
1967  Bonnie and Clyde
1971  Drive, He Said
1971  McCabe & Mrs. Miller
1972  Cisco Pike
1972  The New Centurions
1974  The Parallax View
1978  Heaven Can Wait
1983  Deal of the Century
1986  8 Million Ways to Die
1987  Tough Guys Don't Dance
1988  Frantic
1990  The Two Jakes

Director:
1967  Bonnie and Clyde
1971  Drive, He Said
1971  McCabe & Mrs. Miller
1972  Cisco Pike
1972  The New Centurions
1974  The Parallax View
1978  Heaven Can Wait
1982  Personal Best
1983  Deal of the Century
1986  8 Million Ways to Die
1987  Tough Guys Don't Dance
1988  Frantic
1988  Tequila Sunrise
1990  The Two Jakes
1998  Without Limits
2006  Ask the Dust

Executive Producer:
1967  Bonnie and Clyde
1971  Drive, He Said
1971  McCabe & Mrs. Miller
1972  Cisco Pike
1972  The New Centurions
1974  The Parallax View
1978  Heaven Can Wait
1982  Personal Best
1983  Deal of the Century
1986  8 Million Ways to Die
1987  The Bedroom Window
1987  Tough Guys Don't Dance
1988  Frantic
1988  Tequila Sunrise
1990  The Two Jakes
1998  Without Limits
2006  Ask the Dust

Producer:
1967  Bonnie and Clyde
1971  Drive, He Said
1971  McCabe & Mrs. Miller
1972  Cisco Pike
1972  The New Centurions
1974  The Parallax View
1978  Heaven Can Wait
1982  Personal Best
1983  Deal of the Century
1986  8 Million Ways to Die
1987  The Bedroom Window
1987  Tough Guys Don't Dance
1988  Frantic
1988  Tequila Sunrise
1990  The Two Jakes
1998  Without Limits
2006  Ask the Dust

Screenplay:
1960  Last Woman on Earth
1964  The Tomb of Ligeia
1967  Bonnie and Clyde
1968  Villa Rides
1971  Drive, He Said
1971  McCabe & Mrs. Miller
1972  Cisco Pike
1972  The New Centurions
1973  The Last Detail
1974  The Parallax View
1974  The Yakuza
1978  Heaven Can Wait
1982  Personal Best
1983  Deal of the Century
1986  8 Million Ways to Die
1987  The Bedroom Window
1987  Tough Guys Don't Dance
1988  Frantic
1988  Tequila Sunrise
1990  Days of Thunder
1990  The Two Jakes
1993  The Firm
1994  Love Affair
1996  Mission: Impossible
1998  Without Limits
2000  Mission: Impossible II
2006  Ask the Dust
????  Battle of Britain

Story:
1960  Last Woman on Earth
1964  The Tomb of Ligeia
1967  Bonnie and Clyde
1968  Villa Rides
1971  Drive, He Said
1971  McCabe & Mrs. Miller
1972  Cisco Pike
1972  The New Centurions
1973  The Last Detail
1974  The Parallax View
1974  The Yakuza
1978  Heaven Can Wait
1982  Personal Best
1983  Deal of the Century
1986  8 Million Ways to Die
1987  The Bedroom Window
1987  Tough Guys Don't Dance
1988  Frantic
1988  Tequila Sunrise
1990  Days of Thunder
1990  The Two Jakes
1993  The Firm
1994  Love Affair
1996  Mission: Impossible
1998  Without Limits
2000  Mission: Impossible II
2006  Ask the Dust
????  Battle of Britain

Writer:
1960  Last Woman on Earth
1964  The Tomb of Ligeia
1967  Bonnie and Clyde
1968  Villa Rides
1971  Drive, He Said
1971  McCabe & Mrs. Miller
1972  Cisco Pike
1972  The New Centurions
1973  The Last Detail
1974  Chinatown
1974  The Parallax View
1974  The Yakuza
1975  Shampoo
1978  Heaven Can Wait
1982  Personal Best
1983  Deal of the Century
1984  Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes
1986  8 Million Ways to Die
1987  The Bedroom Window
1987  Tough Guys Don't Dance
1988  Frantic
1988  Tequila Sunrise
1990  Days of Thunder
1990  The Two Jakes
1993  The Firm
1994  Love Affair
1996  Mission: Impossible
1998  Without Limits
2000  Mission: Impossible II
2006  Ask the Dust
????  Battle of Britain

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TV Performances

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TV Production

Screenplay:
2012  Welcome to the Basement

Writer:
1962  The Lloyd Bridges Show
1963  The Outer Limits
2012  Welcome to the Basement

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About the Movie Section

Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).

Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.

Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)

While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:

  • I added "runners up" to Top 10 lists, treating them as ties where applicable and numbering them accordingly at the bottom of each list.
  • Regarding those polls wherein "franchise" movies were submitted as one project until BFI's policy changed to regard them separately, I treated them as ties and renumbered the affected lists accordingly (e.g. the Godfather films).

Regarding profile removals and data corrections:

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  • For additional corrections and profile removals, please e-mail The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).

Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.

Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.