Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting

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Actors in interviews always present themselves as charming, poised, and self-deprecatingly humorous. Over the years I have met and worked with a dozen prize-winning American directors, and there is not one whose “philosophy” or “worldview” remotely interests me. Goldman's insider's approach is still compelling, though I wondered how much of what he says about how Hollywood works is still true 36 years later. Perhaps the best Hollywood story in the book concerns the courtroom drama The Verdict, a movie that Goldman didn’t work on but one that perfectly illustrates the perils of working in Hollywood. PPPS-Don't confuse this author, WILLIAM GOLDMAN, with the other author named WILLIAM GOLDING, who wrote: Lord of the Flies (1954).

Part One: Hollywood Realities—Goldman's scathing take on the stars, studio executives, directors, agents, and producers of Hollywood. Goldman starts by telling readers that Nobody Knows Anything in Hollywood, by which he means that the movie business is extremely hard to predict, marked by frequent failures and occasional big hits.Goldman launches his first fart rocket within the opening 20 pages, tattling four anecdotes to illustrate that movie stars are bad people. Goldman ably discusses his own methodology for writing and digs into the nuts and bolts of the movie business - going so far as to include a short story and subsequent adaption - with notes and comments from other's in the industry about how they would handle specific problems or complications presented in the word-to-screen transition. My only gripe about an otherwise insightful book is that the author is very hard on schlock horror b movies - a staple of my life for as long as I care to remember. But then he goes on to redact the identities of the deadies, while going right ahead and smearing the two performers who still have careers left to ruin. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

He has won two Academy Awards for his screenplays, first for the western _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_ (1969) and again for _All the President's Men_ (1976), about journalists who broke the Watergate scandal of President Richard Nixon. Quiconque est sérieux à l'idée d'être scénariste se doit de lire cette Bible de Bill Goldman, scénariste de Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, The Princess Bride, etc. But if you're interested in the movie industry and are willing to weed through 600 pages (and twice as many ellipses), it's sometimes fun to watch the spray of Goldman's vindictive bloodletting.Goldman won two Academy Awards: an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay for All the President's Men. The last section of this book where he goes from a short story to a screenplay and then tears it to shreds, is brilliant.

It's an interesting tutorial on the craft of screenwriting, but I'm not sure it belongs in this book. I'm not quite enough of a film buff to really care about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or Marathon Man. No one knows how to make a successful film, so the safe bets will always be to attract stars and make sequels. In 1978, Goldman wrote the screenplay for Magic, which was based on his novel, starred the great Anthony Hopkins, and was directed by Richard Attenborough. Goldman has many funny stories to tell about Hollywood insiders and a lot of the silliness that is present in the industry.His other notable works include his thriller novel Marathon Man (first published 1974) and comedy-fantasy novel, The Princess Bride (first published 1973), both of which Goldman adapted for film.

He finds page space to belittle the auteur theory and anyone who subscribes to it, insisting that all movies are a team effort, while still blaming his failed movies on everybody else that worked on them. Dustin Hoffman refused a scene in Marathon Man that required his character to keep a flashlight in his nightstand, Goldman insists, because Dustin thought it would make him look weak on screen, and every male movie star, deep down, will never allow himself to look weak on screen.

However, the inclusion of the screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid makes the book even more valuable, especially since he also analyzes the screenplay and what works and what doesn't. If you want to work (and succeed) in Hollywood, then this is a book that you must carry around with you. After detailing the vast amount of work it takes to bring a script all the way to the big screen, it's no wonder Goldman gets so angry at the Auteur theory.