text:  I've heard dozens of jokes about screenwriters that I can't repeat here. The Punchline suggested in the hierarchy of Hollywood screenwriters come last, after producers, directors, stars, and probably the caterer. But Robert Towne, who died this week at the age of 89, was something rare, a star screenwriter. "'There are no novels or plays I'm itching to write, and there never have been,' he wrote for Esquire magazine in 1991."