Thomas Mauser

“‘Chinatown’ is a sort of eulogy for me.” Robert Towne

The 1974 neo-noir mystery film, Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, is widely considered by many cinephiles and film critics to be a classic of 1970s American filmmaking and the benchmark for all neo-noir films.

Central to the enduring legacy of this film is the screenplay, written by the late Robert Towne, legendary Hollywood screenwriter and ‘script doctor.’ Receiving near universal praise, the screenplay is considered to be one of the best ever crafted.[1] Robert Towne wove a complex plot involving municipal corruption and a family tragedy, receiving for his efforts an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay at the 47^th Academy Awards in 1975.

Towne’s method in crafting his screenplay resulted in what the Writer’s Guild of America has ranked as number three in its list of the top 101 greatest screenplays.[2] Aspiring screenwriters and fiction writers who are seeking to master the craft of writing in their chosen fields might benefit from studying Towne’s approach.

First Phase – Historical Research and Cultural Inspirations

Born in southern California in 1934 and raised in the multicultural port town of San Pedro, Robert Towne’s childhood experiences growing up in California in the latter 1940s always stayed with him. Similar to John Steinbeck’s youthful exposure to the geography of northern California, especially the Salinas Valley, the young Towne’s exposure to the geography – the landscapes, the Santa Ana winds, the weather, and the ocean tides – of southern California left an indelible impression on him. In a revealing Los Angeles Times article published in 1994, Towne reflected on how, “. . . childhood is never a memory. You may grow up and cover up but now and then the blanket slips away, the child in you is naked and memories become new and frightening again . . .”[3]

Memories of his California upbringing came back to him in 1971 when he came across a public library copy of Carey McWilliams’ book, “Southern California Country: An Island on the Land,” a book that, along with Raymond Chandler’s series of detective novels set in 1930s and 1940s Los Angeles, spoke strongly to him about his home.[4] While his childhood memories and his readings of Raymond Chandler and Carey McWilliams served as inspirations, the true catalyst for his memorable screenplay was a photo essay in West magazine titled, “Raymond Chandler’s L.A.,” that highlighted Los Angeles’ storied historical and architectural past. As Towne stated, the photo essay, “. . . reminded me there was still time to preserve much of the city’s past on film . . . .”[5]

Historical, cultural, personal memories, and geographical elements may have inspired him to give serious thought to his screenplay, but everything else that followed for Robert Towne was only sweat, toil, and tears. He began his research efforts by driving around Los Angeles at night, searching for his story.[6] He visited garage sales and junk stores across southern California, seeking out reminders of an older L.A that was slowly and inevitably disappearing, leaving behind only his and other peoples’ memories of what L.A had once been. As he remarked:

An old postcard from Riverside featuring a promenade of pepper trees would be thrust under my nose: Suddenly I remembered walking back from school with their messy green shade overhead, tiny dry leaves and red-green bees-bees crunching on the cracked sidewalk the roots would have already raised and cracked beneath my feet. I was six years old . . . .[7]

His diligent and painstaking research efforts resulted in hundreds of pages of notes, character profiles, backstories, and outlines; and the complex plot he drew up – fighting over water rights, land schemes, and family tragedies – nearly overwhelmed him.

Second Phase – Write, Re-Write, Re-Write . . .

Beginning in the fall of 1972, Towne took nine months to write his first draft – isolating himself at a lodge on Catalina Island where he produced a disorganized 180-page manuscript. This first draft and a second draft written by Towne were used by both Towne and director Roman Polanski to write a third draft over a period of six weeks, work that involved writing a one-sentence description for each of the scenes and moving them around to re-adjust the structure of the screenplay repeatedly until it all made sense. This third draft became the shooting script for the movie.

The screenplay’s ending became a source of tension between director and writer. In the end, Polanski’s version that the character of Evelyn Mulwray would die at the end, not Towne’s (Evelyn Mulwray would kill her father and take her daughter to Mexico) became the accepted ending to the story of ‘Chinatown.’[8] And the rest, as they say, is history.

[1] For an alternative view of the ‘Chinatown’ screenplay, the reader is directed to Evan William Cameron, “Robert Towne, CHINATOWN, and the Bewitchment of ‘Tone,’” URL https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/items/f370a389-f7a5-4f67-9f7a-f5da13eb44c3.

[2] Writer’s Guild of America, https://www.wgaeast.org/101-lists/101-greatest-screenplays/list/

[3] Robert Towne, “It’s Only LA, Jake,” Los Angeles Times, May 29, 1994, URL https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-05-29-bk-63320-story.html.

[4] Towne, “It’s Only LA, Jake.”

[5] Towne, “It’s Only LA, Jake.”

[6] Towne, “It’s Only LA, Jake.”

[7] Towne, “It’s Only LA, Jake.”

[8] John Brady, The Craft of the Screenwriter (Simon and Shuster, 1981), 410.