Academy Award-winning screenwriter, director, and occasional actor Robert Towne has made a career out of being the most inside outsider on Tinseltown's A-List. After more than a decade of working on TV shows and uncredited movie scripts Towne won the Oscar for 1975's Chinatown. He then went on to work with the top names in Hollywood and wrote and/or directed "Shampoo", "Heaven Can Wait", "Greystoke", "Tequila Sunrise", "Days of Thunder", "The Firm", and the recent "Mission Impossible" films for his buddy Tom Cruise. Cruise is also the producer behind Towne's newest film "Ask the Dust" which opens in theatres locally in March. Towne not only wrote the screenplay for "Ask the Dust" but he also directed the movie and I got to sit for a chat with this Hollywood legend on a recent visit to Boston to publicize the film.
Life is a constant audition
It seems hard to believe that such a major Hollywood player would be worried about his new movie but Towne is concerned that because this film doesn't have any of the box office bravado that many of his pervious projects have contained that it may get lost in the shuffle. Towne said "In some ways this is a real old-fashioned movie but with modern sensibilities. This is a movie in which two people actually talk to each other in long scenes." Paramount Pictures, the studio behind the film, is not exactly enthusiastic about the film's chances at the box office which seems very short-sighted in an era of small Oscar nominated movies that touch on potent themes like "Brokeback Mountain", "Capote", and Academy Award-winner "Crash".
Ask the Dust, based on a 1939 book by John Fante, is a stylish, highly emotionally charged story about an Italian-American writer and a Mexican waitress in Hollywood in the 1930s. The film features a subtle, powerful, and memorable performance from Colin Farrel and a staggering performance from the dazzling Salma Hayek. Both of the main characters have ended up in Los Angeles trying to find their place in the sun in the land of movies and dreams. The two star-struck lovers are both down on their luck and trying to better their stations in life. In spite of all there best intentions they are drawn to each other in spite of the fact that they are both exactly what each one fears the most. When discussing this emotionally charged situation Towne said "Add to that the fact that their very desire for the wrong person is going to be an obstacle that will stand in the way of any chance these characters have of finding the success they are searching for."
Towne said he found Fante's book in 1971 when he started doing looking into materials that might be developed into a movie project. Having been born and raised in Hollywood Towne became interested in doing a film about the era of the 1930s and 40s in L.A. and in order to do so he needed to find a source for what that time period looked and sounded like. He had his own childhood memories but finding Fante's book jogged his memory of that era and was just the hook Towne needed to get a real feel for interplay between characters and how people talked to each other.
Fante was at first hostile to Towne and gave the then unknown writer a hard time when Towne approach him to turn the movie into a book. "Who are you? A nobody! For all I know you can't even write your name!" was Fante's reply which later soften and the two became friends until Fante's death in 1983.
What goes around comes around
Towne's initial research took a few unexpected turns and eventually became the movie "Chinatown". Towne had tried to put "Ask the Dust" together in the early 1990s with Johnny Depp but things did not come together and the project was shelved but Towne never forgot about Fante's book and now seemed like as good a time as any to try again.
When it came to casting the movie Towne says he literally had no idea where to start looking for the male lead. Farrell was recommended to Towne by a friend and was invited to come by the Towne house for a beer to say "Hi". What Towne intended to be a brief half-hour 'meet-and-greet' tuned into a 12-hour session in which Farrell and Towne bonded and the young actor revealed a passion for the script and the character. Towne commented "His sensitivity is usually hidden by his public persona. Collin has amazing charisma and, believe me, people take notice when he walks in the room. You can almost fee the temperature rise. One of the people in my house at the time said I don't know who that guy is but whatever he wants, give it to him!"
Hayek's involvement in the movie was another story altogether. "If I hadn't been able to get her I couldn't have done the film. I simply have no idea who else could have played that role" said Towne. In 1993 when Towne was trying to get the movie together he had approached Hayek for the role but she turned him down. She told him that she was trying to expand and get beyond her reputation as a Mexican soap opera actress and for her to play a Mexican waitress would just be a step backwards. Town elaborated "She said that she had just been turned down for a sci-fi movie because the producer told her there was no such thing as Mexicans in space!" Ah, Hollywood! This time around when Towne approached Hayek she said "Yes" and the project went ahead. "She said that she read the script again and couldn't figure out why she turned me down the first time" said Towne. "She is really one of the world's great beauties and she's so violently passionate. I've spent my career working with beautiful actresses but Salma is in a league of her own. I told her that whenever she walks into a room I am stunned by how beautiful she is" said Towne. I commented that I thought Hayek in "Ask the Dust" projected a luminous sensuality that reminded me of Marilyn Monroe Towne replied "Oh my god, Yes, exactly! She has that quality in person as well and she is a remarkable actress too!"
Alas Los Angeles, we hardly knew ya'
Ironically the locales and situations that Towne needed to recreate from 1930 Los Angeles no longer exist and the pivotal location neighborhood of downtown LA's Bunker Hill and the 3rd Street Tunnel were torn down and reconstructed in the 1950s. Unable to find anything in modern day L.A. that looked like 1930s era L.A. Towne and, based on the recommendation of his production designer, the crew shipped off to Capetown, South Africa where they found what they were looking for. "I needed to make the city of Los Angeles a character in the movie so it was important that we got it to look right. The light and the feel of Capetown was how I remembered Los Angeles from my childhood" said Towne. Using a couple of abandoned football stadiums the film crew beautifully recreated downtown Los Angeles circa 1933 with buildings and trolley cars. When I commented that I honestly couldn't tell if what I saw in the movie was real or computer generated Towne replied " The downtown neighborhoods in the movie were all build for us in full scale. All the money we had went up on screen. None of us made any money from this film - it's all up on the screen. The only computer art pieces we used were a few pieces along the very top of the screen to mask out some bits and pieces."
The desert outside of Capetown also provided a remarkably similar looking backdrop to California's Mojave Desert for the movie's later scenes. When asked about the desert filming Towne commented "The South African desert outside of the city looks like the Mojave, except for the baboons running around - that's how we knew we weren't in California. We all stayed in a hotel located out in the desert in the middle of nowhere that was build to house the British Army during the Boer Wars. Beautiful place in the middle of nowhere."
Next up for Towne is an updated version of the classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller "The 39 Steps".
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