Could David Fincher and legendary screenwriter Robert Towne (“The Last Detail,” “The Parallax View,” “Shampoo”) collaborate in the future?
In the most recent issue of Time Out New York discussing the new, weirdly-timed deluxe DVD edition of Roman Polanski’s classic, “Chinatown,” which the 75-year-old screenwriter Robert Towne wrote, Towne says he and Fincher would love to work together. Fincher is such a huge fan of “Chinatown,” he’s on one of the commentary tracks with Towne “thoroughly geeking out” on the film according to TONY.
“I’m a huge fan of David’s work.” Towne said. “I enjoy the meticulous way in which he attacks material. We’re trying to make a movie together. “
What is the movie they’re trying to make? The piece doesn’t go on to mention any details of the film they’re “trying” to make, but presumably the mutual admirers have some sort of idea of what project they’d like to tackle. Maybe Fincher can bring out the best in Towne, he hasn’t written a seminal work in years unless you consider the writing on “Mission: Impossible II,” some kind of perverse masterwork. If you really want to be tough about it, Towne hasn’t written a classic since the 1970s, but then again he did to an uncredited re-write of Polanski’s 1988 classic with Harrison Ford, “Frantic.”
Since they both have an obsession and fascination with detail, let’s hope they don’t deliver something like “Zodiac,” which started out well and then devolved into the unfun tedium of doing midterm homework or filling out multiple-page paper work.
Update: A faithful reader has given us a a head’s up. In a March 2007 interview with MTV, discussinng several potential projects Fincher said, “There’s a World War II movie that Robert Towne is writing that I really love. All kinds of stuff.” This leads to more revelations via AWN. Apparently Brad Pitt was going to be involved.
And I’ve got a beautiful World War II story that I want to do with Robert Towne and Brad Pitt [based on the biography of Wendell Fertig, a civil engineer in the Philippines, who led a guerilla force in the Japanese-occupied island of Mindanao]. So who knows?
Could be way out of date, considering the date on that MTV story, but the AWN interview is actually from January this year, so we’re pretty confident that this is the same project. Update 2: Yes, it’s called, “Fertig” and or “They Fought Alone,” and a script was once written by William Nicholson who helped co-write “Gladiator.” Perhaps the idea was to bring Towne onboard to rewrite it.