OSCAR-WINNING SCREENWRITER OF CHINATOWN WAS HIRED BY TOM CRUISE FOR MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE
David Koepp: Once the movie [Mission: Impossible] got up and running, or once Paramount greenlit it, Tom [Cruise] got rather anxious, and wanted to bring [Robert] Towne in to work on it. And then Towne came in, and Brian didn't want-- [Koepp throws his hands in the air] yeah, there was a lot of fighting. And then Towne came in and threw all the pages up in the air. And things stayed quite chaotic. And then three weeks before shooting, they said, "Will you come back... you know, try and put it all back together. But Bob's going to keep working, and you're going to keep working, and we'll just figure out what we shoot." I was like, "Okay... this oughta be interesting."