53 Quotes by Robert Towne

To the extent of wanting me there and wanting to know everything about the scene, I think he realized it was important.

I started doing it and I couldn't stop. It really tired the patience of the people around me.

Roman is hands-down the best director I've ever worked with, ... But all of the 1970s was a great era because the studios really left you alone. What has come to be called 'independent film,' you could really do within the studio system at that time.

Colin, Salma, me - none of us took salaries in order to make this movie, in order to get it on film. So it was a movie made on spec.

You're torn between wanting to fill in all the spaces and knowing that's really going to screw up the screenplay. And yet, how are you going to communicate it to people who really don't understand the process?

There was no scene between father and son, and there was a deep-seated need for the two protagonists in the story to face each other with the consequences of what had happened. Now he was able to express to his son that his whole life had been a struggle to prevent this very thing from happening.

There must have been something inevitable about it because we got it done. I lived with (the book) for 20 years when I didn't write (the adaptation), and when I did write it, I lived with it for the next 10, 12 years.

It made me alive to the fact that the most important thing sometimes is what isn't said - to prepare for moments of revelation that can be read entirely on actors' faces without dialogue.

I'm excited and encouraged to see people getting involved with their public lands and forests. We really need the public's help to repair these heavily used recreation sites.