Adventures In The Screen Trade

If you are interested in the sausage-making of movies, the stuff the fan doesn't see, and maybe doesn't want to see, then certainly one of the key books to read is William Goldman's Adventures In The Screen Trade. Goldman died last year and I'm just getting around to reading the book.

Goldman was a novelist who, for a good twenty years, was one of the most prominent screenwriters in the business. He won Oscars for Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and All The President's Men (the latter he says he wished he had never written). He is as good a person as any to give us insights into Hollywood over that period. But beware that the book was written in 1982, so some of it may not be accurate today, given the changes over the years. For instance, he gets one thing wrong right out of the gate, when he assures us that E.T. The Extraterrestrial will win Best Picture that year. He didn't figure on Gandhi.

Goldman's most famous maxim is "Nobody knows anything," which he employs during the first third of the book, which is a discussion of the various players in the movie business. He discusses stars, agents, executives, directors, and writers: "In terms of authority, screenwriters rank somewhere between the man who guards the studio gate and the man who runs the studio (this week). And there is a whole world to which we are not privy." He says that studios both love stars and hate them, as they are essential but cause all sorts of problems. "Stars will not play weak and they will not play blemished, and you better know that now."

The second third of the book goes over his screenplays, both produced and not. "Statistically, in my own case, I suppose half of the screenplays I’ve written have actually seen production. And I am being dead honest when I tell you this: I have absolutely no more idea as to why some of them happened than why some of them didn’t." It was Cliff Robertson who tapped the then unknown novelist to write a screenplay for the film that would end up being Charly, but Goldman's script wasn't used. He did write Butch Cassidy, Marathon Man, The Stepford Wives, and others. The most entertaining chapters are those that are about films that didn't succeed, such as A Bridge Too Far (Goldman was sure it would be a hit) and those that didn't get made, such as a musical remake of Grand Hotel that was to be set in the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, directed by Norman Jewison. He was also the first writer on The Right Stuff, but when it saw a change of directors (Philip Kaufman) there was an artistic disagreement--Kaufman wanted to include the character of Chuck Yeager, and Goldman didn't, so he left the picture. The movie would come out after this book was written, and it turned out Kaufman was right.

The last third of the book is Goldman taking one of his short stories and going through the thought process of how to turn it into a film. He gives us the story, the screenplay, and interviews others in the movie process about how they would go about doing it. He talks to George Roy Hill, who directed a few of the films he wrote, who basically tells him it's unfilmable.

Though the book may be dated, it is essential reading for anyone interested in writing screenplays, or playing the Hollywood game, with plenty of warnings: "But if you are the kind of weird person who has a need to bring something into being, and all you do with your life is turn out screenplays, I may covet your bank account, but I wouldn’t give two bits for your soul." Written in a conversational style, he may prompt you to decide to never write a screenplay, or to roll up your sleeves and give it a go.