Time & Perspective Quote by Robert Towne

Towne’s line is a small masterclass in Hollywood self-defense: dignified, slightly bruised, and quietly hilarious. “Time has caught up with it” flips the usual narrative. Films don’t age; audiences do. The implication is that the movie wasn’t “wrong” when it landed awkwardly, viewers were simply unready for what it was trying to do. “Vindicated” isn’t just praise, it’s exoneration, the kind of word you use when a reputation has been on trial. Towne is arguing against the tyranny of opening-weekend consensus, betting on the long game where ambition eventually reads as vision.

Then he undercuts his own seriousness with “Shampoo, too.” That little add-on is doing a lot of cultural work. It’s the casual flex of someone with receipts, but it also acknowledges how fickle canon-making is: today’s “important” film can be yesterday’s punchline, and vice versa. Calling Shampoo “very dark, very ambitious” rebrands a movie many remember as glossy sex comedy into something closer to a political hangover. It’s a reminder that 1970s Hollywood smuggled bleakness into mainstream packaging, and critics (and viewers) often needed distance to see the bite.

The subtext is Towne staking a claim for complexity in an industry that rewards clarity. He’s not begging for reappraisal; he’s noting, with a dry shrug, that the culture eventually grew into the films’ intelligence.