The Writer Speaks: Robert Towne Part 2

with Chinatown all my early childhood memories of LA just the sights the sounds and the smells were something that drew me to that project I know that sounds peculiar we were having trouble with getting the last detail being made and there'd been an article and the old this week magazine or West magazine whatever it was in the LA Times and it was a piece called Raymond Chandler's LA and in it there were photographs that had been taken in 1970 but Madonna Ziff they were taken in 1930 in the 1930s you know a Plymouth convertible in the rain under one of those old stippled street lamps outside of JW Robinson's there was a Packard parked under a Porte cochere in Pasadena and a house and I thought my god I hadn't really read Chandler at that point I said you know you could still recapture the LA that I vaguely remembered by the judicious selection of locations around the city many of which I knew in many of which were in San Pedro because as I indicated before said Peter hadn't changed much and that got me started thinking and I was in a battle with a building developer who was trying to destroy really trying to flatten out a canyon in Benedict Canyon and all around where I lived and in particular we're poor Quincy Jones lived he lived in this little Bowl out there we're gonna build around him and I got to see the exquisite corruption in City Hall ramming this thing through which I found fascinating and appalling I went for walks where I remembered you know you know just the smells of the city as a I remembered as a child and felt a great sense of loss of everything that was passing so that had a personal impact for me I quickly realized that detectives at that time were not tarnished Knights who refused to do divorce work but the successful ones were the guys who didn't do much of anything else working for movie stars and and people here trying to catch their mates in bed and talk to guys like Freddy Oh - it was a name that probably nobody remembers anymore but he was one of those kinds of detectives and so I made my character in a way based upon Jack and upon a character that was like the actual detectives that worked were ins but we're in some ways the very opposite of principle private-eye characters very concerned about the way dressed and standing in the community so yes all those elements are part of it you know it's always it's never not personal and it's never totally personal and and I think research and an immersion in the world that you're going to write about I think gives you a ceiling that you can't that really is so helpful to film which you know there's a lot to cover on their canvas and and you want it to have a certain reality that the script can suggest to the director and the actors Chinatown was such a tremendous success and particularly a terrific success for you with an Oscar and I only recently found out that it was its number three on the list of 101 best films ever built screenplays ever in the writers guild those are all really you know very exciting things to have happen besides how it must have felt at the time did it change the your career life very much at that time oh yeah and it didn't I mean it seemed it had an air of unreality about it at the time because you know when you're working on something I all I could see was everything that was going wrong with it arguing with Roman about the script looking at dailies and figuring they were all screwed up nothing was working but I had you know like the you know many people I I was kind of an anonymous character who had I'd been rumored to have done the script doctoring work on Bonnie and Clyde on The Godfather and all these other things but I hadn't been anything in my on my own and the last detail Chinatown and shampoo were all scripts that for one reason or another were languishing and not being made Columbia was worried about the language in in the last detail because while films had and had begun to enjoy a new freedom David bigger one at that time was worried that there was a sort of counter-reformation and he called me in one day and said Bob you know wouldn't it be better if we had wouldn't it be more dramatic if we had 20 instead of 40 you know and just say no David it wouldn't be actually the whole point of it is is that these men are lifers in the Navy and swearing is not a sign that they're going to act but it's kind of proof of their impotence that they can't do anything but swear so it would be highly destructive to remove the swearing or minimize it in any event all these scripts were languishing and then all of a sudden they were all done in consecutive years so you know between the last detail which came out first and then Chinatown and and and then shampoo which has it happened fell in different years but we're all done within a period of about 14 months that had a real impact on my my life everything of course is it going back to earlier early days for a minute from the sublime I don't think I ever knew before I started reading about you for today that you had worked a little in television oh god yes I had worked in television I was the worst person to television is a whole different thing now and and you know I would hardly be the first person to say some of the very best writing in entertainment is in television now but it was not so then all of my training had taught me or suggested to me that so much of what I did as a screenwriter was to try to keep from writing something was to try to keep from saying something how to show it without saying it and how to use dialogue you know kind of contrapuntal into what was going on when in when in last detail is an argument in a cafe between Jack and Randy Quaid and Otis about sending a hamburger back so Randy Quaid could have it the way you wanted it and that was really in and how about the way you want it you know that was really a an argument about you know stand up for yourself live your life you know don't be afraid to assert yourself hee hee otherwise you will be a perpetual victim and spend your life in situations that cause you to be going to jail for stealing $40 for eight years you know not much dialogue was needed for that it was the situation that was important in television at that time whatever the shows were they were always insisting that you spelt everything out and I was in agony over that I just had a horrible time and I did not do well with television it's as I said it's entirely different now I mean are there things that you watch now well I certainly was watching The Sopranos and yes there are things that I watch but I can't and there's so much of it that's good I can't keep up with all of it so I'm kind of reduced to watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report how I work I could say it as little as possible I mean you know I mean like a lot of writers I avoid writing as much as possible and I think that has gotten more pronounced over the years partly because of the fact that that that as as one's family grows I'm not somebody who is good at being able to stop my child from asking you about her homework or you know some domestic problem in the house because you always look like you're doing nothing as a writer and I had an office that I gave up when my younger daughter was 5 or 6 and was very unhappy when I wasn't home when she came back from school I couldn't stand that so I moved back to the house and a separate house but life is gets more rather than less intrusive and the more your family grows and the more it comes to mean to you the more reality reality has and that ability to immerse yourself in fantasy and shut the worldand becomes progressively more difficult so that changes I used to you know I used to just sit and agonize and agonizing and that moment where you know that first moment where a story starts to carry you I mean you're constantly struggling it's a like a dance where you are the leader and you're trying to move this clunky clumsy Kreacher around the floor and then there comes a point where that creature sort of comes to life and starts to move you well at that point you become fascinated and you're drawn to it and so I would just work until I couldn't work and then I go to sleep and then I keep working it so it was not unusual at all for me to work to 3:00 4:00 in the morning in fact on the firm I would work all night and David Raphael and Sydney would I would turn the pages at the pages in his mailbox and when I came home in the morning from my office and they would work during the day so and and then give me pages back or so and so it went that was the closest collaboration I think that was but as time has gone by I mean my hours have gotten more regular and you know I don't necessarily think it's better for a life I don't think it's necessarily better for writing I'm not something that somebody who you know sits down does this three or four hours and gets up and goes about his business you know I need to believe in the world that I'm in and that's how I've always worked best starting and stopping has always been tough for me and I've always had a hard time the biggest kick that I have ever gotten out of writing and I suspect it's true of most writers is are those are those times when you really don't know what's gonna happen next but you do know that you're gonna find out that a material is yielding and you're gonna find out I mean that's exciting that you know if you extend the analogy to fishing you know that their fish are there and you're gonna catch one you know know what it's gonna be that's the best possible feeling you said that this Sydney experience was the best it was the closest collaboration that you had had well in that way I've certainly worked with people and had people talked the story over and having people would be very instrumental in and helping me shape history I have a close friend but I remember when we were working on the firm he was saying I don't see how you can let them off you off the hook and I came up with that scene with the morolto brothers at the very end races we've overcharged human they're looking for him and if I can just get my hands on this mitch mcdeere this lawyer who's turning us in and then two hoods if secretary says excuse me there's so much like there to see you cinnamon and and I wrote that scene in I don't know I was half dead I had I wrote a 14 page scene and and I don't know I it had to be in about an hour I made just and I gave it to my wife and I said you're gonna have to edit it I don't know what she did but there was a four-page scene and I read it to Sydney and he laughed and that became the scene and I and I realized I mean she was literally collaborating with me I don't I did no I do know that you know people can object to saying in principle something is wrong but it's never wrong if I've seen works I mean that's finally it you really don't know and the scene itself is the answer to whether something works or not now I'm struggling because to get some traction and doing a rewrite of it of my own script but yeah I don't know that that's terribly useful because all of that's about is trying to find the time between things like this and and parents night the nephew of my wife's cousin here from Italy and taking him to the gym and my daughter is having a hematoma on her foot that needs looking I mean just all the things that that that the real world just you know comes crashing in on your fantasy world and people are more important but when you're younger and you're more selfish you have to be able to shut that out I mean one of the great things about directing I mean I think the best single thing about directing is nobody expects you to be anywhere else but on this set and somebody can say well you've got to stop and look at this event so there's no guilt associated with it there you are when you're rewriting something that you're going to direct is that different from rewriting something that you're handing off in terms of having to push yourself and not getting notes from someone or collaboration well it's always good to have somebody who can help you whether you I mean I mean one of the dangerous things about moviemaking is that I think whether you want to own up to it or not we all mean collaborators and we all do and and the more successful you become the more successful the your peers have become that you've worked with and you tend to go off and start doing your own movies and and sometimes the collaborations are not as prickly they're not as adversarial they're not as tough people are more deferential I didn't want to bother you you know and that doesn't always help for work you know I think that that's a problem sometimes as you look back now what are some of the best experiences that you've had and if you have any not-so-great ones that you'd like to share well the two kinds of experiences are experiences as a writer and experiences as a director I had I've had I enjoyed I mean my purse first directing experience personal best as always will be very special to me for Dickens it was the best of times it was the worst of times it was a and it took place over two and a half years it was quite a saga I mean we can easily do two hours on on that movie starting and stopping because of strikes with athletes and not actors and trying to get them together financing changing from studio to independent financing and having difficulties with the financier having the film shut down my stealing the film because of an argument with the producer and not getting them to charge me with it because that would be a quick way into court and they didn't want to do that just that one I mean it was that's a fascinating experience but I mean it that's a long story it is it's it's a story with a worth I mean actually it's a story worth telling the I loved working on without limits I'd love to Oregon Eugene and and that's where I first didn't personal best and came back and did without limits years later with a very dear friend Kenny Moore who i co-wrote without limits with he had been a teammate of Steve Prefontaine and what was interesting about that was that in 1975 a girlfriend of mine now Donna D Verona the Olympic swimmer called and said there's a friend of hers that wanted to talk to me about a movie and it's all I called me about a guy called Steve Prefontaine this was in 75 and I said no I'm busy in and several years later I found myself in Eugene and because of the nature of personal bests and because of the kind of reverence with which track is dealt with in Eugene the idea of doing a track sports story there about two women who had a lesbian relationship scandalized the campus and I was unable to get any traction and the fellow that was helping me was on the phone to talk to the Oregon Track Club and that turned away from him and I heard the voice and then I realized I said Kenny you called me this was five years ago about Steve Prefontaine and he said yeah you know and I said well why didn't you say so I know so it was a fellow who had called me about Prefontaine and then 20 years later we did Steve Prefontaine story together and and of course Kenny ended up being in personal path to but it was a great time I mean and I love the in athletes and you know I loved everything about it my biggest disappointment in film was a Greystoke which I still feel is you know even though it's unfinished it's my favorite script it was not the script of a shot that's the film that you took your name it's someone that my dog my dog was nominated for an Academy Award and I always felt that bad about that because I felt that he deserved a better screen credit but that was a fascinating experience as far as it went no took me to Africa but I got caught between the writers it was an actress strike and I'd started personal bests and I ended up losing the ability to do Bristow and which was ironic because I had started directing because of Greystoke and I doesn't certain tests on it because I the script that I wrote about an hour in 20 minutes of it was basically with without dialogue it was silent it's a child being raised by Apes that was two or three minutes in the finished movie and I realized that it seemed unreasonable to give a script like that to a director and then complain about what he did with it you know I mean it's very clear that fellow who wrote it and imagined had to do it and in a way personal best was began as a sort of study for Greystoke the movement of the athletes because it occurred to me very quickly the way it does to all of us I mean if you can remember back to your high school days and in gym class and you look at everybody usually wears the same you know great gym shorts and a white t-shirt I don't care if they're two or three hundred yards away you instantly know who's who just by the way they're moving and if you're going to be dealing with Apes you really want to specify the way each one moves and how much character can be suggested by movements or character isn't just action it's movement when if you're in any I mean the way that three athletes moved in their scripts with Jodie Anderson and Petraeus timely and Marielle very indicative of their characters one who is just like John Henry is overpowering one who is kind of perfect but limited in power and one who's sort of like an ungainly cult who can't quite get her legs underneath anything but the day that she does there's gonna be something but you know when you look at Cagney Henry Fonda hambling down the streets and My Darling Clementine and you realize how much characters delivered through movement I loved working on both personal bests and and without limits and and I also had a great time on tequila sunrise although I was bitter about the fact that the studio insisted on an ending in which the hero lived and the script he died and that would have made a world of difference to me because I think they're moving from my point of view it would have been infinitely better had the original ending had I been able to have the original ending But notwithstanding that I had a great experience on it ask the dust as is another matter it was a fascinating experience I'd written the script years before and had a of a time getting it made originally I was gonna do it with Johnny Depp I ended up doing it with Colin it was very good but I don't know whether it was a passage of time there's some things about the movie that are quite beautiful but it's the only it's the only regret I have had in terms of casting and all of the films that I've done I felt Billy was everybody everywhere served the material very well and it wasn't his fault but in the event Colin was just too pretty for that character it was too distracting you know I think he was who we can get it made with and I liked him and liked him and think he's really a fine actor I just realized that I needed a runt and or you know it should have been much closer to an Italian Cagney you know and I think that I missed that part of the film I've never said that before but I sure thought it and but the truth of the matter is I couldn't have gotten a made without Colin he was loyal to the project he ensured that it got made and they did a really fine job I just you're asking me what I think after the fact balancing act to make something with somebody you know it's I think it's right and it's that it's just that you know it's Mahad press to find somebody as attractive in his way that selma hayek isn't hers and it was almost too much beauty John had a question he said that a friend of his heard you speak somewhere and you said that or something to the effect of that you try to find the fear in every character is that accurate well I I have said it I think it's true but one way of ensuring that a character has a certain level of reality is to try to figure out what that character is afraid of but it's surprising how little what happens what's going to happen to you if you end up in movies is that your life experiences are going to become progressively narrower unavoidable I mean you know ours is a banana republic and those life experiences that you bring to film with the exception of the research that you're able to do in the world which were able to see which are wonderful you're gonna be limited and progressively more limited your exposure to civilian world you know whatever it is I think you have to fight as long as you can to avoid that I know this is not the normal advice given to young writers but there was a dry cleaners near the place where I got my scripts typed years ago and I remember going in there and they also dry-cleaned that mink coats and Stoll's and things like that and they would you know also did work sewing the pills and it came up that to these ladies and this was 40 years ago we're getting five six seven hundred dollars a week to sew these pelts and I said Jesus Christ I mean it was that was a lot of money I said how come I get so much money and and she said well if I can only do it for so long they start to lose their vision of the finest work and it's an inevitable part of of working in film if you're not careful you start to lose your vision cannibalize yourself things like that I mean I think you've got to do everything you can to stay in touch with the world around you that would you know I mean you know the usual vice about keep writing write what you know about work with your friends all of that's true but I mean if you haven't can't figure that out it you know I mean just then it's the advice I think you need when you get beyond that and you start working that I would prefer I mean the the unwillingness oh it's good enough I've done this before I mean you know so many directors and people it's just so hard fighting to get a movie made fighting to get it finished fighting for everything about it that that extra bit of work that you do to argue with one another to get every bit of nuance that you're capable of bringing to it there just begins to be a very tough struggle and you gotta fight to to keep doing that before I even knew that I was gonna work that's what I'm talking about when I was seven or eight years old and going to films I used to be driven crazy by those things that I knew were not so I knew that well something told me even though I lived in San Pedro that you couldn't always drive up to the Waldorf Astoria and park your car then there wasn't always a parking space for somebody I thought that's just not so I knew from going to restaurants with my father that he always asked for the change you know he didn't it was never just giving the money in and I knew what my mother and father looked like when they woke up in the morning and they didn't sleep in separate beds and she didn't wake up with her hair done and her makeup on you know I remember thinking god damn it when I do this I'm gonna make sure its real and sure enough you know one way or another whether it was in Bonnie and Clyde where she was counting out to change or you know you know whatever it was all of those things that drove me crazy were the things that you know the point is that I was determined to try to bring real quote real life or life as I thought it was real in the movies the way people really spoke yeah you know using language that would make a sailor blush you use the language you didn't you know I mean I wanted to bring a real life into movies I didn't really have an interest and even when I did Greystoke I wanted to try to see what it was like to have a child raised by Apes really as if it could really happen i met with jane goodall minh all of those things I wasn't interested in doing what say George did when he did Star Wars I wasn't interested in and and you know trying to revive in an interesting way and old John R which is something that interested in which is great you know but it's just not something that that held my interest I certainly enjoyed his take on it as I did with Indiana Jones I liked American that's in terms of directing versus writing the totality of the experience is as such that and inevitably I think of that whereas I think of the writing is you know certainly meaningful to me and the results of the successes of those films were very meaningful to me and also what I learned in writing them but the experience of directing [Music] which calls everything into play is is something that is one thinks about it one talks about it is overwhelming I think that I remember being very frightened by the thought of oh god where do you put the camera you know I had never gone to film school I didn't that much to do with cameras and and I remember Arthur and Warren arguing and boning fighting Arthur's saying when he just wait'll you feel you have to where to put the camera and I realized when I got onto the set that I didn't know where not to put it because I'd so thought about it as I was writing it and then the other thing that's worried me about it is often writers have this place would appreciate probably more than anywhere else an adversarial relationship with the director who in the water and the words of Philippe de Broca a wonderful director once said to me was when we were working he said Oh Bob that is such a good idea but please you must allow me to think I thought of it myself and and m'm with with certain directors you know I mean and they can be autocratic and and I was you know [Music] feeling depressed about having to be the you know the you know another in a long line of sadistic creeps you know which is you know in my darker moments I feel about certain directors and I ran into as I was brooding about this Roger Vadim who was a wonderfully charming man and he said Bob what's wrong I said no I'm gonna direct Friday I'm wonderful but now I you know I don't want to feel like some jackbooted fascists doing this shipping I said whoa Bob they said you know as a director it's possible not just to be as a father but one may also be as a mother and I thought that's interesting you know and you know the nurturing type or someone who you know who deliberately doesn't cut people off and allows people to say what they think because you learn a lot of it from the most surprising places and I remember directing and personal best with my little four-year-old my older daughter in my arms because I could do that a lot there's a lot of that was shooting the running and I realized the runners were acting and sometimes acting too much and and so that you know I would say to my daughter know daddy's going to make his shots with her and it kind of made the set looser and encourage other people to help this poor daughter and guy with his kid and I got a lot of of help that I think I would not otherwise have gotten and I also found and felt that in many ways in terms of traditional gender identity that directing is a more feminine experience than writing you are a reactor you are someone who has to be able to to find out how you feel in time for the next take to tell somebody how you feeling is simple in articulate way you are reacting to how people make you feel whereas in writing you're generating things very often so it's an interesting it was an interesting and revelatory experience and I think it always is you

Channel: Writers Guild Foundation

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Keywords: writers guild foundation, writing, writers guild, screenwriting, screenplay, writers, screenwriters, television writers, chinatown

Id: AYw4phPs0XE

Length: 44min 13sec (2653 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 26 2018