Robert Towne

How could I add to the heaps of praise for Robert Towne? He passed away on July 1 at the age of 89 and plenty of people have been writing tributes since then. But just go to YouTube and search for "Chinatown screenplay analysis" and you can see people have been singing his praises at length for many years.

Nothing quite equalled Chinatown. He'd done solid work on the Mission Impossible movies, The Yakuza, and Days of Thunder, but Chinatown set a high water mark nothing in his career approached before or since. It's likely the few crucial changes made by Roman Polanski, most notably the film's ending, that played a big part in what made Chinatown great but Towne's accomplishment is still considerable. Chinatown is a complex story requiring research and insight into human nature, intricately woven to be experienced equally well as a pulp detective yarn and a sobering view of cruel reality.

A scheme to exploit local bureaucracy, a culture obsessed with sex, one man's belief in personal glory and another's increasing belief in the destructiveness of his own existence, a woman just trying to salvage some kind of normal existence from brutally perverse circumstance, all of this comes together in Chinatown. It's one hell of a film.

X Sonnet #1860

Surprising cats abused the ferry ride.
With humid days arrayed, the week was wet.
Would grass at last destroy the other side?
The brittle greens comprise a foolish bet.
The country sews its stars in fields of stripes.
Yet banners wave "Hello" at rocket glares.
The flow of spuds could clog the frying pipes.
A condiment's obliged to take the stairs.
A pixel punch deployed aggressive bloom.
Replacement water turned to silt and ash.
An icy castle served to hold the room.
But frigid humans shunned the freezing bash.
A breezy meeting changed to blizzard form.
But few requested help to make them warm.