  Screenwriter Robert Towne has a new movie called Ask The Dust, which he also directs, hitting theatres this Friday. (Mark O'Neill/Sun)
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Like so many movies he's been involved with, you can trace Robert Towne's directorial effort Ask The Dust to the beginning of a beautiful friendship -- in this case with Colin Farrell.
The legendary screenwriter and occasional director (Personal Best, Without Limits) is known as much for the company he's kept -- Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Tom Cruise et al -- as for the modest little films in his resume (Bonnie & Clyde, The Godfather, Chinatown, etc.)
As for Farrell, they've been pals since the day the unknown Irishman showed up looking to play an Italian-American in the adaptation of John Fante's cult novel about Depression-era L.A.
"He showed up on my doorstep," Towne said of Farrell while on a promotional visit to Toronto. "It was 2001, he was completely unknown, and his agent had given him the screenplay. And as my wife's girlfriend said when she saw him in our house 'Whatever he wants, give it to him!' "
Towne and Farrell clicked, which paid off "when he became a movie star. That's the only reason we got it made," Towne says of the project he's sat on for decades. "Not only that, he did it for no money, as did Salma (co-star Salma Hayek)."
The thinly veiled autobiography Ask The Dust needed all the friends it could get, being a decidedly dialogue-heavy movie in a video-game world. It's the story of an aspiring author starving his way to his first novel, and balancing the affections of a tempestuous Mexican immigrant and an East Coast Jewish girl with a traumatic secret.
"Given the direction in which movies have gone, protracted dialogue scenes has not been something that's encouraged," Towne says. "And I just say the hell with it. It's about a writer, writers write and language for writers is important."
Towne first came upon the novel while researching Chinatown. "In a way, Chinatown started with Ask The Dust. I was looking for something emblematic of the time and place, a quality of life I remembered that no longer existed," says Towne, who grew up in L.A. "And it also captured the disparity between the uncomplicated feelings I had about the city growing up, and the increasingly complicated feelings I've had over the years. And Chinatown was nothing if not a description about how that part of the city I loved was destroyed."
I mention a scene in the movie where Colin's character, Arturo Bandini, hops a streetcar in Hollywood to visit a girlfriend in Long Beach -- a rather lengthy trek down the freeway today. "They had streetcars going everywhere for a dime," he says. "And it didn't take that long. You could go from downtown L.A. to the beach in Santa Monica in 15 minutes on a streetcar. The transportation was cheap and very pleasant.
"And everybody took them. I remember a writer friend of mine, went with John Garfield to get their physicals in the (World War II) draft and they took a streetcar."
While absorbing its vibe, Towne kept Ask The Dust in mind and befriended author Fante (who died in 1983), continuing the association with the project through his widow.
It was yet another friendship that translated into a movie. "The project comes out of affection and willingness and the desire to share a common dream, which is to make this movie," he says. "It's like a transaction, but I think there's a purity about it. Neither money nor greed are part of the equation.
"I think it's a factor in everybody's career, who they work with and the friendships that form because of it -- particularly when you're very young. Shared ambitions, shared hopes, shared experiences ... not shared girlfriends, although that can happen, but shared love-life problems, bitching about this that. All the things you do when you're growing up."
And it affects the movies "by filling out the fantasy. Those real relationships give it balance and give it life. You know each other so well, you use aspects of one another, you loan personalities to the character you're portraying."
At least that's the way it was done when it was Robert and Jack and Roman and Warren.
