By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: the late Robert Towne, who was famed for his screenwriting but far less celebrated for his directing on films like Personal Best and Tequila Sunrise.
Wait a minute! Robert Towne? Unsung Auteur? One of the most high-profile screenwriters in Hollywood history? The man who wrote Chinatown, Shampoo, and The Last Detail? The guy who has more “uncredited” work on bona fide movie classics than just about anyone else? One of the essential 1970s figureheads, and a classic “character” in and of himself? Well, yeah, that guy. But the recent and very sad passing of Robert Towne at the age of 89 instantly made FilmInk think about his work as a director. Though Towne’s behind-the-camera output was only limited, with just four films to his credit, they are all interesting, intriguing works that kind of make you wish Towne had taken a little time off from all that lucrative script doctoring to actually direct a few more films. So, in lieu of all the usual biographical details – which you’ve likely just read in all of the eloquent eulogies published in his honour – we are just going to focus on Robert Towne’s work as a director, for which he has been sorely under-celebrated.
“I didn’t want to paralyze people with authority,” Robert Towne told Rolling Stone in 1982 of his reticence to take his seat in the director’s chair. “Movies require a great deal of skill and coordination; the director usually has to be a quasi-military figure. I was only a writer for a long time, and as a writer, you’re often in the traditional woman’s position – fretting over details at home, being supportive to the men actually making the movie. I was bothered about suddenly having to be this tough guy ordering 200 people around on a set. Then I realized that a director could also be seen as a protector.”

For a screenwriter so adept at documenting male foibles and anxieties, Robert Towne’s debut as a director came as something of a surprise. 1982’s Personal Best (which Towne also penned) is all about women, and it’s an incredibly insightful piece of work that not only crackles with the director’s trademark punchy dialogue, but which also provides a fascinating look into the world of female athletics. Mariel Hemingway (who would follow Personal Best with 1983’s extraordinary Star 80, a truly great one-two punch) is at her low-key, loose-limbed best as Chris, an athlete who falls into a sexual relationship with her friend Tory (well played by hurdler and first-time actress Patrice Donnelly) while also making time with the duo’s coach (the always excellent Scott Glenn in an essential role). A rare film of its time to treat a lesbian relationship with sensitivity and a lack of sensationalism, Personal Best was born of Towne’s friendships with various female athletes, and the film resounds with authenticity and narrative tenacity. “This movie is about everything I’ve ever loved in women,” Towne told Rolling Stone.
Though sold and remembered somewhat erroneously as a glossy 1980s thriller, 1988’s Tequila Sunrise is much, much more than that. A film all about moral ambiguity and shades of grey, the film copped a little heat on its release for daring to position a drug dealer – albeit one trying to go straight – as its hero. The film turns on the love triangle that develops between two old high school friends – Mel Gibson’s aforementioned drug dealer and Kurt Russell’s cop – and a beautiful woman played by Michelle Pfeiffer. Stylishly made and pithily written, Tequila Sunrise is one of the least black-and-white Hollywood crime dramas of its era, and is also a fascinating treatise on America’s famous war on drugs. “Very often, not just with old buddies, the people that cops are closest to are the criminals,” Towne told Pop Culture Classics of his wonderfully morally murky movie. “They have a great deal in common. Even though the cop hates what the criminal stands for, and thinks he’s dirty, there is a link there. They have shared experiences. They understand each other’s problems. The most manipulative guy in the movie is the cop. He’s fundamentally a decent man, but he has to lie and cheat in order to do the right thing. In his own way, his profession is just as personally corrupting as a hideous job like dealing drugs.”

As a man for whom physical fitness proved to be something of a life-changer, Towne had an enduring fascination with athletes, which was once again on show in his criminally overlooked 1998 biopic drama Without Limits. Very, very far from your typical sports movie, this is the tragic story of Steve “Pre” Prefontaine (played brilliantly by Billy Crudup), a feisty, fiery long-distance runner who fought the establishment at every turn and ran on his own terms, much to the frustration of his coach Bill Bowerman (beautifully played by the late, great Donald Sutherland), the man who would eventually co-found Nike. Prefontaine’s life was cut tragically short by a road accident when he was just 24, and Towne’s deeply moving drama chooses to focus on the often-complex relationship between athlete and coach, which the writer/director elucidates superbly. Without Limits was somewhat cancelled out by Stev James’ Pre (with Jared Leto in the title role), which was released the previous year; the gritty, emotionally layered Without Limits is now largely forgotten, which is very, very sad indeed.
Robert Towne’s final film as director was 2008’s Ask The Dust, an adaptation of John Fante’s novel, and another of the writer/director’s meditations on the city of Los Angeles. “I had not ever read anyone who had really captured the Los Angeles that I remembered as a child,” Towne told Filmmaker Magazine of Fante’s book. “He got the look, the ambience of the city, really right down to the dust in the air. There wasn’t a lot of foliage then, and the sun would beat down. LA’s right on the edge of a desert, and its impermanence was much more apparent then. I had forgotten that that Los Angeles really existed until I read Fante. His novel really threw you into the idea that Los Angeles is, basically, a state of mind.”

Like all of Towne’s directorial efforts, Ask The Dust is finely tailored, astutely written, and very well performed, but it also differs from his other films in many ways. It’s a period piece, and it’s also a tale of immigrants in America, which instantly marks it out. Set during The Great Depression, the film tells of the romantic relationship that develops between two LA immigrants – Salma Hayek’s Mexican waitress and Colin Farrell’s Italian wannabe writer – desperate to improve their station in life. The characters are richly realised, and their hardscrabble struggles are the type rarely seen in American cinema; Towne really loves these difficult, desperately ambitious people, and it shows in every frame of his admirably downbeat drama about the city he loves. Barely released, and completely forgotten today, Ask The Dust is another fine example of Robert Towne’s skill behind the camera…a skill for which he was way too rarely celebrated.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.