Robert Towne is an American screenwriter and director. He started with writing films for Roger Corman including The Tomb of Ligeia (1964). Later, he was a part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking. He wrote the Academy Award-winning original screenplay for Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), which is widely considered one of the greatest screenplays. Towne also wrote the sequel, The Two Jakes (1990), and the Hal Ashby comedy-dramas The Last Detail (1973) and Shampoo (1975). He has collaborated with Tom Cruise on the films Days of Thunder (1990), The Firm (1993) and the first two installments of Mission: Impossible franchise.
Towne in 2006
Roger William Corman was an American film director, producer, and actor. Known under various monikers such as "The Pope of Pop Cinema", "The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood", and "The King of Cult", he was known as a trailblazer in the world of independent film. Many of Corman's films were low-budget cult films,
Corman in 1978
Corman in 2006
Drive-in advertisement from 1957 for the double feature, Attack of the Crab Monsters and Not of This Earth. Corman films were popular on the drive-in circuit, and generally marketed towards a teenage audience.
Barboura Morris and Susan Cabot in a scene from The Wasp Woman (1959)