Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman

The Woodward-Bernstein book became a famous and successful film. I saw it at my local neighborhood theatre and it seemed very much to resemble what I'd done; of course there were changes but there are always changes. There was a lot of ad-libbing, scenes were placed in different locations, that kind of thing. But the structure of the piece remained unchanged. And it also seemed, with what objectivity I could bring to it, to be well directed and acted, especially by the stars. It won a bunch of Oscars and numberless other awards besides.

And if you were to ask me "What would you change if you had your movie life to live over?" I'd tell you that I'd have written exactly the screenplays I've written.

Only I wouldn't have come near All the President's Men....

-Adventures in the Screen Trade

William Goldman is the writer behind two movies that I love, The Princess Bride and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. If he'd never done anything else, that would be a pretty amazing legacy to leave behind. But Goldman has logged plenty of time behind the scenes in Hollywood. In Adventures in the Screen Trade, he pulls back the curtain and shows the reader how movies get made.

Adventures in the Screen Trade is divided into several parts. First Goldman offers his perspective on different players on the scene (agents, producers, etc.) and what they actually do. He also dives into the process of working on each of the films he's been involved with*, even if his screenplay ended up not being used. Some editions apparently contain the entire screenplay of Butch Cassidy with Goldman's commentary--mine did not. Either that or I somehow managed to forget reading an entire screenplay, which seems...unlikely, don't you think? Anyway, Goldman concludes the book with an inside look at the process of writing a screenplay; he provides a short story of his own, his proposed screen adaptation, and comments from various production people (cinematographer, composer, etc.) on how they would handle it. It's really quite fascinating.

Goldman is an incredibly lively storyteller, as you might imagine if you've seen any of his films. I particularly enjoyed some of his opinions on how different actors worked. He clearly loved Paul Newman, who comes across as someone entirely uninterested in the politics of being a movie star**. Robert Redford does not come off quite as well—professional and talented, to be sure, but decidedly more invested in his movie star image, especially once his career takes off post-Butch Cassidy.  Goldman's not just in it to dish, but he doesn't pull punches either: a story about Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman on the set of Marathon Man left me wincing.

As someone who is interested in film, I found Adventures in the Screen Trade to be pretty absorbing at points, particularly as Goldman got into his experience with individual films (you might have guessed from the excerpt above that All The President's Men was especially dramatic).  I imagine this would be an invaluable source for someone interested in pursuing screenwriting, particularly the last section. (I especially loved the way director George Roy Hill tore apart the screenplay. He did not mince words. Wow.) I've never read anything that explained filmmaking in such a way. It reminds me of when I took a film class in college and for the first time really began to appreciate the technical elements of film, not just the acting and the story.

Also, it really made me want to watch Butch Cassidy again, and that can't be a bad thing.

Up next: Tales of the City, for real this time.

*Current as of the writing of this book. The sequel, Which Lie Did I Tell? covers his later work. For whatever reason, I read that one first, years ago, and I remember enjoying it thoroughly.

**I love Paul Newman as well, so I was happy to read this. Also excited to add Harper to my Netflix queue, as it sounded quite interesting based on what Goldman described.