'Without Limits': Finishing First, Even When He Didn't  
 By JANET MASLIN  

Though the link between the mercurial track star Steve Prefontaine, who died in 1975 at 24, and the veteran Hollywood screenwriter Robert Towne is not immediately obvious, Towne's Prefontaine biography is the most stirring and unmistakably personal film he has directed. In "Without Limits," a writer famed for enriching screenplays (his own and others') with the gift of unruly, unpredictable life has taken on a curiously amorphous subject and invested it with deep, reflective power. And precisely because this sports story is not about winning, losing or even how you play the game, it becomes a broader parable than the viewer has any reason to expect. Its wisdom, and clearly Towne's, lies in the film's way of filtering a young man's headstrong nature through an older man's more rueful point of view. 

On an Oregon hillside, with a tranquil unspoiled landscape in the background, the film's two principals match philosophies so intensely that they might be discussing Eastern religion, even if their ostensible subject is Prefontaine's running career. The renowned coach Bill Bowerman, played by with great, wry authority by Donald Sutherland, appears to have met his match in Prefontaine's enigmatic nature. As a maverick who could rebel his way to the finish line (and set seven American speed records in the process), the track star is seen here as captivatingly arrogant in ways his coach can neither resist nor really change. In a role originally intended for Tom Cruise, handsome Billy Crudup shows an insouciant charisma to match the real Prefontaine's, along with a sly elusiveness that's just right for a character with such innate star quality. 

Though it has been the basis for two films (Steve James' "Prefontaine" conveyed much of the same information), Prefontaine's story is nobody's idea of sure-thing movie material. He didn't always win, he didn't trumpet his principles and there's no real evidence that he would have lived happily ever after if not for the car crash that ended his life. But it's this very stubbornness to the story that Towne explores most effectively, presenting a glimpse of the athlete's complicated experience and appreciating how life often confounds expectations. A long, bravura re-creation of Prefontaine's race at the 1972 Munich Olympics becomes a fascinating display of strategy and determination, with the Prefontaine and Bowerman ideas about running visibly at war as the race unfolds. Unlike virtually any other film about sports, this one doesn't pretend to be certain who was right. 

 It is Bowerman, often seen tinkering with the waffle-patterned rubber he would use to invent the Nike running shoe, who advocated taking the longer view, advising Prefontaine to gauge his strength and think about the whole race. It is Prefontaine who can't bear to be anywhere but out in front of the pack, and who lives in the moment with stoical determination. ("I can endure more pain than anyone you've ever met," Towne's screenplay has him saying. "That's why I can beat anyone you've ever met.") Ordinarily, this contrast between a young man's brashness and an older man's experience might play out in predictable, sentimental ways, but "Without Limits" sees a bigger picture. Though Towne's graceful writing never resorts to obvious pronouncements, the film seems to say that both pushing limits and knowing them are eventually vital parts of anyone's truest nature. 

 While immersing itself in the world of running, and in the golden aura surrounding the University of Oregon and its Hayward Field in the 1970s, the film dwells avidly on the sight of athletes in glorious slow motion (though it does this a lot less lecherously than Towne's "Personal Best"). It also observes the shy courtship between Prefontaine and Mary Marckx (Monica Potter, seen as Nicolas Cage's generically pretty wife in "Con Air"), another relationship presented in a light of ambiguity and struggle despite the sun-kissed Hollywood look of the actors. 

Towne especially excels at the smaller touches that bring such connections to life, whether it's an ear for pop music or a clear familiarity with college girls, circa 1970, or the group of bonsai trees that presumably occupy Bowerman when he isn't measuring feet and molding rubber. His proudly unconventional "Without Limits" is filled with such souvenirs of the real world. 
 

1st ...September 8, 1998, Tuesday  
Section: The Arts/Cultural Desk  

Giving Screenplays a Sense of Reality  
By BERNARD WEINRAUB 

Robert Towne still recalls his fascination with movies as a young boy in the coastal town of San Pedro, Calif., and his yearning to write screenplays -- so he could correct all the wrong things he saw on the screen. 

''When I was a kid, it seemed wrong that anytime anybody pulled up at the Waldorf-Astoria there was always a place to park,'' said Mr. Towne, one of the most influential screenwriters in Hollywood. ''It seemed wrong that nobody in a restaurant ever got change when they paid the waiter. When my dad took us to dinner, he always counted out the change. And it seemed wrong that married people slept in twin beds and when the women woke up their lipstick and hair were perfect. I knew that wasn't true.'' 

''So I made up my mind that when I wrote movies it was going to be real,'' added Mr. Towne, 62, sitting in his rambling English-country-style home in Pacific Palisades. His newest film, ''Without Limits,'' which he also directed, opens on Friday. 

In fact, a sense of reality stamps the best Towne screenplays -- ''Chinatown,'' for which he won an Academy Award, as well as ''The Last Detail'' and ''Shampoo,'' which he wrote with Warren Beatty. Mr. Towne has also been a highly paid script doctor for years, on films ranging  from ''Bonnie and Clyde'' and ''The Godfather'' to ''Crimson Tide'' and ''Armageddon.'' 

His career and personal life stumbled in the 1980's: he had a ''hideous'' and very public custody  battle with his first wife, and he endured a series of studio battles over his first directorial effort, ''Personal Best,'' and his script for ''Greystoke.'' But Mr. Towne, through good films and bad ones, remains a screenwriter known for his dazzling craftsmanship. 

The new film, ''Without Limits,'' about the charismatic and tragic track star Steve Prefontaine, has, like several of Mr. Towne's other projects over the last three decades, consumed him for years. The film was written with Kenny Moore, one of Prefontaine's close friends and a world-class runner as well as a writer. 

The film, released by Warner Brothers, is the second to be made about Prefontaine, whose competitive ferocity and free-spirited independence ignited crowds and turned him into a sports legend before he was killed in a car accident in 1975 at the age of 24. His early death turned him into a cult figure, somewhat like James Dean. A Disney film, ''Prefontaine,'' which opened last year, failed at the box office. 

The Towne film stars Billy Crudup as Prefontaine and Donald Sutherland as his coach, Bill Bowerman. Initially, Tom Cruise, a friend of Mr. Towne, wanted to play Prefontaine, and they worked on the film off and on for years until Mr. Cruise dropped the idea of starring in the movie. ''Finally last year he said, 'I'm 35 years old, I've got a wife and two kids -- nobody's going to believe I'm 17 or 18,''' Mr. Towne recalled. ''I was in despair. But Tom saw to it that we got the movie made.'' (Mr. Cruise and his partner, Paula Wagner, are the film's producers.) 

Mr. Towne, who was an athlete at Pomona College and whose film ''Personal Best'' dealt with female track stars training for the Olympics, said he became interested in Prefontaine as long as 20 years ago. 

''What I came to realize was that, in an insanely material time now, when athletes are getting $20 million a year and are more concerned about that than their performances, here was a guy who was enormously appealing, who had a pure love for the sport, who just wanted to shave a few seconds off the distance record,'' Mr. Towne said. ''And Steve was not a classical distance runner -- he was relatively short, built like a fireplug, and was capable of dramatizing his feelings to the crowd and the world in virtually every step he ran. In a word, he was a spectacular showman.'' 

''I've always been interested in men who were obsessed by their work, whose identity is shaped by what they do and how well they do it,'' Mr. Towne added. ''I suppose I am obsessed too.'' 

Though his life and career have been a bit turbulent, he is one of only a handful of screenwriters whose past work has given them statesman status among other writers. 

After growing up in San Pedro, where his father sold women's dresses, Mr. Towne and his family moved to Los Angeles in the early 1950's. In the 60's he began writing for Roger Corman, the B-picture director who played a role in training Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Jack Nicholson. This led to Mr. Towne's career as a film doctor, which in turn resulted in his writing ''Chinatown'' and his other classics. 

Mr. Towne said that the notion that screenwriting is somehow an easy process, in which one readily finds a pot of gold, was laughable. ''People see it as sort of the California lotto; everybody thinks they can cash in,'' he said. ''Part of it is the fact that people think screenwriting  is just dialogue -- I can talk, I can write dialogue.'' 

But dialogue, he said, is in some ways ''the least important part'' of the screenplay. ''What makes screenplays difficult,'' he said, ''are the things that require the most discipline and care and are just not seen by most people. I'm talking about movement -- screenwriting is related to math and music, and if you zig here, you know you have to zag there. It's like the descriptions for a piece of music -- you go fast or slow or with feeling. It's the same.'' 

At the same time, Mr. Towne said he doubted that ''Chinatown'' or ''The Last Detail'' or for that matter Mr. Scorsese's ''Taxi Driver'' would be made today by Hollywood studios. A portion of the blame for this, he said, lies with the 1975 film ''Jaws.'' 

''It's a superb film, but it made an irrevocable change in the way movies were marketed,'' he said. The instant success of ''Jaws,'' he said, led studios to demand that films open big on their first weekend, and this, in turn, led to the increased demand for movie stars to sell the films. 

''Everything is pinned to the first throw of the dice, and if it doesn't go on that opening weekend, it's gone,'' he said. 

An additional issue for writers now, he said, was that in the 1960's and 70's, screenwriters like him would write a movie and then present it to a director or a star. To a degree, a screenwriter like Mr. Towne had some control over the process. Nowadays, he said, the situation is almost reversed. ''Much of the packaging of films comes from the director and star,'' he said. ''The screenplay is fitted to the elements, and this runs the real risk of being more disjointed and less of a piece than it was when someone had a clear idea of the story.'' 

Mr. Towne, whose other writing credits, either alone or with partners, include ''Tequila Sunrise'' (which he also directed), ''Days of Thunder,'' ''The Two Jakes,'' ''The Firm'' and ''Mission Impossible,'' had something of a personal meltdown in the early 1980's. His first directorial effort, ''Personal Best,'' led to a bitter conflict with the producer, David Geffen. He then worked for years on the script that became ''Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes,'' but it was taken away from him. Then the prolonged custody battle took its toll. 

Mr. Towne has been married for 13 years to a former restaurateur, Luisa Towne. (She was the basis for the Michelle Pfeiffer character in ''Tequila Sunrise.'') They have a 7-year-old daughter, Chiara. He also has a daughter from his first marriage, Katharine Towne, 19, who is an aspiring actress. 

Mr. Towne said he was now completing an untitled screenplay for Mr. Cruise: ''an old-fashioned tale of love, revenge and high adventure.'' 

Assessing his career, Mr. Towne said the most successful films were those intertwined with the mood of the nation. Such dark films as ''Chinatown'' and ''Taxi Driver'' would probably meet studio resistance now, he said. 

''By the 1960's and 70's, there was a common assumption that something was wrong in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate and assassinations and riots -- and films like 'Taxi Driver' and 'The Godfather' and 'Chinatown' spoke to that,'' he said. ''But by the 80's the feeling was that one almost felt impotent in the face of what was wrong, and this gave rise to 'Rambo' and Stallone and Schwarzenegger, superheroes who were invulnerable, who wanted to get the bad  guys because we couldn't.'' 

Now, he said, there seems to be a reaction to those 1980's films, and heroes are becoming more human and less like supermen. ''Heroes can partially succeed now and fail nobly and in some cases die,'' he said. ''Stories can unfold on a more human scale, and that's a positive sign,  isn't it?''