Events Calendar

Chinatown with Robert Towne and Kevin Starr

Admission is free.

Screenwriter and director Robert Towne mined the bitter conflicts over land and water rights that raged in Southern California during the early twentieth century to fashion Chinatown, an American cinema classic for which he won the 1974 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The film will be screened as part of a two-part series entitled "It’s All True?," which will explore how filmmakers have translated true stories into feature films and how those films have impacted our sense of history, events and politics. Following the screening, Towne and USC university professor Kevin Starr, the preeminent historian of California, will join cinematic-arts professors Mark J. Harris and Ted Braun to discuss the interplay between fact and fiction and Chinatown’s complex relationship to our sense of Los Angeles as a place.

In addition to Chinatown, Towne has written numerous film scripts, including Chinatown’s sequel, The Two Jakes; the Oscar-nominated screenplays The Last Detail and Shampoo; and the first two Mission: Impossible films. Towne also wrote and directed Personal Best, Without Limits and Tequila Sunrise, starring Mel Gibson, Kurt Russell and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Organized by Ted Braun and Mark J. Harris (Cinematic Arts).

For further information on this event:
visionsandvoices@usc.edu

Location: School of Cinematic Arts 108

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Daria Yudacufski