For the most part, I can’t tell if famed screenwriter Robert Towne and prolific character actor Bill Cobbs ever worked on the same movie or TV show throughout their decades in the business. Both of them didn’t really get started until their 30s at a time in which many people would’ve given up on their dreams and stuck to the humdrum life.
Towne, who also produce, directed and acted, spend much of the 1960s writing for TV shows before Warren Beatty asked him to do some uncredited rewrites on Bonnie and Clyde. He would be credited as a consultant. But he continued to mostly work as a script doctor until The Last Detail (with its then unbelievable amount of profanity) seemed to make him more popular in Hollywood. The next year, he reunited with Detail actor Jack Nicholson on Chinatown, for which he won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and many other awards associated with the movie.
He could now write his own ticket and continued to work with both Beatty and Nicholson on several of their movies throughout the rest of the 1970s and into the 1980s. Most of it was uncredited work. He directed Mariel Hemingway in Personal Best and then butted heads with Hollywood executives over an adaptation of the Tarzan legend that would become Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. Towne was so upset with what happened on the production, he removed his named and replaced it with P.H. Vazak, which was the name of his Hungarian sheepdog. Thus, it is the only time in Oscar’s history that a dog has been nominated.
In the late 1980s, he collaborated with Nicholson for the last time on a Chinatown sequel The Two Jakes which would sour their relationship. When his 1998 Steve Prefontaine movie Without Limits came out, Towne had said he hadn’t spoken with Nicholson in 10 years. Tom Cruise helped produce that movie and Townes had been working frequently with the actor on many projects throughout the 1990s. However, Mission: Impossible 2 would be his last credited movie as a writer.
Towne would continue to work on projects both for David Fincher and Scott Free Productions. However, these projects would remain unproduced. Towne died on July 1 at the age of 89.
Cobbs on the other hand spent most of the 1970s and 1980s, like most black actors, just happy to get a gig here and there. He reportedly had over 200 acting credits in movies and TV with his first as an extra on the 1974 movie The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three. Mostly he was cast in minor roles as a bartender arguing with Eddie Murphy’s character in Trading Places. Or he worked with Cruise and Paul Newman as Orvis, the proprietor of Chalky’s Pool Hall in The Color of Money. This is during the scene where Cruise’s Vince Lauria screws up and shows off too much as he plays 9-ball to Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London.”
Then, in 1991, things turned around. Cobbs was cast as Old Man in New Jack City. While that role might have not seemed like much, it ended up being very memorable. Cobbs’ character is a resident of the neighborhood where Wesley Snipes’ mobster Nino Brown has control. He can’t get any help from the police and even the clergy are crooked. In the end, Cobbs shoots Nino moments after he made a plea deal to turn state’s evidence, thus getting a slap on the wrist for murder and drug trafficking.
That same year, he would be cast in Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs. In his late 50s, Cobbs was finally getting cast in crucial roles in big movies. He played Zachary Lamb who worked alongside characters portrayed by Sylvester Stallone, Sandra Bullock and Benjamin Bratt in Demolition Man and worked alongside Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard. The Coen Brothers cast him in a crucial role in their screwball comedy The Hudsucker Proxy.
He continued to appear on TV and in movies for the rest of the 1990s, such as Air Bud, and into the 2000s before he was cast as Reginald, one of the aging security guards alongside Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney in Night at the Museum. It would probably be one of his most memorable roles as one of the retired security guards who wants the secrets of the museum’s magic. He would reprise his role in the second sequel Night of the Museum: Secrets of the Tomb.
He continued to work up until his death on June 25 at the age of 90. There are reportedly 4-5 movies either still in production or set to be released at a later date. Cobbs proved to us all that you’re never too old to change careers and you’re never old to stop working as long as you can.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 