 Pauline Kael, the New Yorker critic, once wrote that Robert Towne had an ear for unaffected dialogue and a gift for never forcing a point. He reportedly touched up the scene in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather where Don Corleone and his son Michael, whom he never wanted to join his crime family, discuss mob hits and treacheries. Then the Don looks up to ask, how's your boy? He's good, Michael tells him. He's smarter than I am, three years old, and he can read the funny papers.