He was part of the cadre of 70s iconoclasts who took advantage of a Hollywood system that was still willing to let young filmmakers call the shots. Nowadays, it's much harder to get studio funding for a movie, but for Towne, persistence has paid off. With a little help from Tom Cruise, Towne's long-time dream project, Ask the Dust, is now reality.
Now 71, Towne has a handsome mane of white hair, looking fully the part of artist and intellectual. He smokes thin cigars, speaking between puffs, which makes his speech slower, more deliberate, and more confident. He recently spoke about his early career, about the writing life, and about the book that took 35 years to make into a movie.
He recalls the first rays of sunlight in his career. "The first breakout came in '67 with Bonnie and Clyde. I rewrote that and got a little reputation. Then in '71 I did a rewrite on The Godfather. Meanwhile I had written Last Detail and Shampoo and was about to write Chinatown, none of which I could get made. I remember thinking, 'Jesus Christ, who do I have to f**k to get one of these things made? Or is my life over with?'"
And then, within about a year, three of his screenplays (The Last Detail, 1973; Chinatown, 1974; Shampoo, 1975) were produced and well-received, and Towne became a name, not just a struggling writer.
One of Towne's projects from that era -- one that never got off the ground -- was a screenplay based on John Fante's book Ask the Dust, a semi-autobiographical account of a young man trying to make it as a writer in Los Angeles in the 1930s.
Asked about his own days as a starving writer in L.A., he responds "'Starving' is perhaps too strong a word.... Hungry." Nevertheless there were parallels to his own life and that of Arturo Bandini, the protagonist in Ask the Dust.
"First of all, he is a writer, in Los Angeles, hoping to become rich and famous, hoping to live the Great American Dream. He's also self-absorbed. He's narcissistic. He's manic depressive. He's thin-skinned. He's hypochondriacal. I can identify with all of those. And what writer can't?
"And also he feels nuts being unknown and being in a room and calling himself a writer. That's something with which I can identify perhaps more than anything else. I was unknown when I read the book. I'd had a number of screenplays that I couldn't get made. I felt unappreciated. All those things."
Ironically, Towne was still a struggling "Bandini" when he approached Fante about adapting the book, a fact that Fante held against him. Towne recalls their first encounter: "I was looking for material that could fuel my recollections of an early Los Angeles, and I found it [in Ask the Dust]. I was immediately struck by it. I found out that John was alive and well and living in Malibu. I told him that I wanted to adapt his book into a movie. He was less than thrilled. I was utterly unknown, and that was part of it. I mean...
"-- Who the hell are you that says you can adapt anything. What have you done? I've written screenplays; you've done nothing.
"-- But I think your book is great.
" -- And who are you to tell me what you think of my book?
"So we started out that way, and I must say I liked it. If there was any doubt as to who wrote this book... I'm facing Bandini - right now; absolutely this is John [Fante]; this is Arturo [Bandini]. In a strange way, as abusive as he was, I kind of fell in love with him the way I did with Bandini in the book. Because you suspect that underneath he was a very sweet man. And he was."
Luckily, Towne persisted. He also probably got some help from the inside. He says "I think [Fante's] wife prevailed on him, said 'John, it's not like people are beating a path to your door, and he obviously admires you. [He] seems like a nice enough boy; why don't you just talk to him?'
"I thought of John and Joyce in the end of [Towne's adaptation] when Camilla says 'Arturo, in the future, be nicer to people when you meet them.'"
Between those early meetings and finally producing Ask the Dust, Towne has had quite an interesting and successful career. In the 1980s Towne broke into directing. His debut was 1982's Personal Best, about two lesbian Olympic hopefuls trying to emotionally support each other while still having to compete. The frank sexuality was groundbreaking and much-discussed at the time, but even with that novelty 25 years gone, the movie is still excellent; it has aged very well.
Towne went back to writing screenplays in the 1990s, including several for the Tom Cruise machine. In fact, it was Cruise (as producer) who helped Towne finally bring Ask the Dust to the screen. Variety was perhaps a bit cynical when it said "Repeated work-for-hire on Tom Cruise projects such as Days of Thunder and the Mission: Impossible pics evidently earned Towne enough points with Cruise/Wagner for the company to back the venture at Paramount."
But Towne generally agrees, "I mean, look, it was not a quid-pro-quo, ever. But [they're] right to the extent that if I had not done films like The Firm, it would have been harder to attract Tom's attention. And for that matter, he was a producer on [Towne's 1998 film] Without Limits, too."
Towne began shooting Ask the Dust in 2004. In doing so, he created a Los Angeles that looks nothing like the L.A. in, say, Collateral. Towne seems to have captured the time and place incredibly well, granting that I didn't know 1930s L.A. first-hand.
"Believe me, it's accurate," he assures. "I lived in L.A. in the 30s. I was alive in the late 30s. I don't remember that," Towne pauses -- he was born in 1934 -- " but I do remember by 1940, and it was the same."
"One of the things that most impressed me when I read the book is it reminded me that there was dust in the air when I was a child. It was a desert. All that foliage had not grown up and you could see dust in the air. There was no pollution, no tall buildings, no tall trees."
In order to create the bygone L.A., he traveled all the way to South Africa. Why there? Towne ticks off the two big reasons: "There was the climate, and the cost. One of the reasons that we were drawn to South Africa was because of all of the commercials that had been shot there. Very film-friendly."
"We built [L.A.] from the ground up. That was the only way it could be done because there's nothing left of it in L.A. We just found two football fields in the middle of Cape Town and built the city from the ground up."
The result is a marvel of texture and atmosphere, particularly if you're familiar with Fante's gritty, urban book. Towne credits cinematographer Caleb Deschanel ("one of the best cinematographers in the world"), production designer Dennis Gassner ("a hell of a production designer"), and costume designer Albert Wolsky, before realizing he'd have to praise everyone on the set.
You can see for yourself what L.A. might have looked like at theaters this spring. Towne wrote and directed his 35-year labor of love. Ask the Dust was produced by Cruise/Wagner (et al.). It stars Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek as the aspiring L.A. writer and his muse.
