Editing Robert Towne (section)

===''The Last Detail'', ''Chinatown'', and ''Shampoo''===
Towne received acclaim and was nominated in the Best Original and Adapted Screenplay categories for his scripts ''[[The Last Detail]]'' (1973), ''[[Chinatown (1974 movie)|Chinatown]]'' (1974), and ''[[Shampoo (film)|Shampoo]]'' (1975).
He won for ''Chinatown''.<ref>McDougal, Dennis (2008) [https://books.google.com/books?id=FMkTJzvSUqQC&pg=PA416 ''Five easy decades''] pp.146, 182, 416</ref><ref name="nyt1">{{cite news | url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/27/movies/film-robert-towne-s-hollywood-without-heroes.html | title=Robert Towne's Hollywood Without Heroes | first=Kenneth | last=Turan | author-link=Kenneth Turan | date=1988-11-27 | work=The New York Times | access-date=2020-03-29 | archive-date=3 July 2024 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240703025950/https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/27/movies/film-robert-towne-s-hollywood-without-heroes.html | url-status=live }}</ref><ref>Nicolas Cage, DVD commentary, ''The Rock'' Criterion Collection</ref> He later said it was inspired by a chapter in Carey McWilliams's ''Southern California Country: An Island on the Land'' (1946) and a ''West'' magazine article on Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles.

According to [[Sam Wasson]]'s ''The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood'', Towne "secretly employed an old college friend named Edward Taylor as his uncredited writing partner for more than 40 years." (Taylor died in 2013).<ref name="Sam Wasson book">{{cite news |last1=Horowitz |first1=Mark |title=Once Upon a Time in Hollywood |issue=Book Review p. 21 |publisher=The New York Times Company |date=March 15, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://themillions.com/2020/04/does-robert-townes-chinatown-oscar-need-an-asterisk.html |title=Does Robert Towne's 'Chinatown' Oscar Need an Asterisk? |date=17 April 2020 |access-date=3 July 2024 |archive-date=22 June 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240622120028/https://themillions.com/2020/04/does-robert-townes-chinatown-oscar-need-an-asterisk.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

Towne was credited for his work on ''[[The Yakuza]]'' (1975) and did script doctoring on ''[[The Missouri Breaks]]'' (1976), ''[[Orca (1977 film)|Orca]]'' (1977) and ''[[Heaven Can Wait (1978 film)|Heaven Can Wait]]'' (1978).