Helluva Towne

Checked out Robert Towne's talk last night at the Art Gallery of Ontario's Jackman Hall, as presented by the Toronto International Film Festival Group and Cinematheque Ontario.

Host Geoff Pevere reined in his more annoying side, and proved to be a very able moderator. He actually did an excellent job - I've been left twitching in the past at those kinds of things by the double whammy of bad moderator/bad questions from the audience. But mercifully, not this time.

The stories from Towne were definitely worth the journey on a very wet and rainy Vancouver winter night (made marginally more disturbing by the fact that, um, I live in Toronto, so heavy rain in February is...um...out of place.)

They showed a bunch of clips and one of the highlights, of course, was that scene from The Godfather between Michael and Vito in the garden, where Vito expresses regret that he never wanted this life for Michael.

Towne said that he got a call from his friend Francis Ford Coppola to come to New York. They were about to lose Brando from the picture, and they realized that Puzo hadn't written any scenes between father and son. Puzo was in no condition to do it - he had other troubles.

Towne was ushered into a screening room in the Gulf & Western building on Columbus Circle and shown 45 minutes of Godfather footage.

Here's the most interesting part of the story for me: at this point, Coppola was a beaten dog. The studio and everyone was saying that the Godfather was a disaster. When Towne saw it he told Coppola it was "the best daily footage he'd ever seen." And Coppola shook his head. He didn't believe it at this point.

Just goes to show. Those brilliant executives being so supportive of their talent.

Oh, I hope there's a special slab in hell for those types of executives.

Anyway, Coppola said he wanted some sort of scene where the father told the son that he loved him. And Towne immediately said, "I can't do that." And Coppola agreed. Towne took the part that said "at that meeting you will be assasinated" and split the speech, shoehorning all the gold in between about "I never meant this life for you" and all, and then ended with the "whoever comes to you will be the assassin" line from the original script.

When they went out to shoot, Brando made Towne read the scene to him twice. He then went through every line with him and asked what it meant. Then he did the scene.

What a fucking scene.

There were other entertaining blind alleys and half-steps -- Towne got involved with the film version of The Firm, for instance, when his next door neighbor Sydney Pollack asked him for help one day. They were both outside, and Pollack was taking out the garbage -- Towne thought he needed help with the cans. I liked hearing about The Firm because years later just about the only thing I can remember about that film was the jazz score and the fact that Towne's ending in the screenplay was so much better than Grisham's ending in the book. Every time the bookists break out the "how the book is always better" canard, I'm right there with, "Oh yeah? What about The Firm?"

Someone in the audience asked Towne if when he was doing the work on Godfather, Shampoo, Chinatown, etc, if he wanted to direct even then, or if he was happy screenwriting. He replied instantly, "No, I was happy screenwriting. Very happy." That made me feel kind of good. Occasionally I've had friends ask why I don't seem particularly interested in directing right now. I've always had this vague sense that maybe I'd want to direct -- someday -- but I guess it took hearing Towne to realize that my reluctance has nothing to do with fear -- it has to do with marshalling energy. I need to focus my energy and work on making my scripts great first, before I go off on a tangent and start trying to direct. The word at this point in my career is more important to me. That's not fear. That's focus.

After the session, they showed Towne's latest film, which he wrote and directed, called Ask The Dust. That was a bit of a treat because the film isn't supposed to open til March, and they had only said they'd be showing 15 minutes. Also, there was a weird sense of things coming full circle screening that film, since it was shot in South Africa while I was there shooting Charlie Jade.

To my everlasting dismay, I never did see Selma Hayek, but the Cape Times was full of Colin Farrel sightings, and I even saw the guy once as he sidled up beside me to wait for his Sushi order at my beloved Beluga Restaurant, whose bar and fine wine cellar I still miss.

Ask the Dust is an interesting, strange, weird, messy film. It really is all over the place, strangely paced -- but with something compelling at the core. It makes me want to read the book, which Towne apparently has been trying to film for 30 years, and which was one of the inspirations for the L.A. he painted in Chinatown. If you're a Towne buff, I think it's something you have to see -- but it's a strange film. Stranger still seeing a bunch of places that four years ago would have been exotic to me, but now are as familiar to me as my own street.