No one could rescue a troubled movie like Robert Towne

Thus spake screenwriter Robert Towne to his then-girlfriend, Julie Payne, one night in 1970. And therein lies the seeds not only of “Chinatown” , one of the greatest dark fables America has ever told about itself, but the legend of Towne himself, the most celebrated screenwriter of the New Hollywood era of the 1970s and a shadowy, mercurial figure behind the titles.

“The Parallax View” , “The Missouri Breaks” , “Marathon Man” , “Heaven Can Wait” , “Reds” , “Fatal Attraction” , “Crimson Tide” , “Armageddon” — all undercover Robert Towne rewrite jobs. Said a producer who worked with him on “The Last Detail,” according to Peter Biskind’s 1999 book, “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls”: “He had this ability … to leave a sense of moisture on the page, as if he just breathed on it in some way.

Flashback to a few years earlier, when Towne was pitching the script to producer Robert Evans. According to Wasson’s book,Advertisement

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