RIP - William Goldman

William Goldman, who won Oscars for his original screenplay for “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and his adaptation of “All the President’s Men,” died on Friday in his Manhattan home, according to the the Washington Post. He was 87.

His daughter Jenny Goldman cited complications from colon cancer and pneumonia as the cause of his death.

-Variety

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

RIP

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Nice little Twitter thread, worth clicking through:

Damn. RIP.

wow

All the President's Men and Butch Cassidy...both classics, even if I discovered the latter about a year ago...first class screenwriter.

Through various film festivals and screenings over the decades I have managed to meet quite a few of my screenwriting heroes, including Robert Towne, Joel & Ethan Coen, Buck Henry, John Sayles, Shane Black, Ernest Lehman, and Barry Levinson, among others. I never got a chance to meet William Goldman. But through his autobiographies, essays, interviews, audio commentary tracks and of course his novels and screenplays he is one of those writers I feel like I know, without ever having had the pleasure.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (original screenplay) and The Princess Bride (novel and screenplay) are amazing, peerless pieces that will live forever, and his career in total is impressive and diverse including Adventures in the Screen Trade, Hype & Glory, Marathon Man (novel and film), All the President's Men (adapted screenplay), Misery (adapted screenplay), Harper (adapted screenplay), The Hot Rock (adapted screenplay), The Great Waldo Pepper (original screenplay), Magic (novel and film), and The Ghost and the Darkness (original screenplay). His words, characters, humor, artistry, humanity, wit, and honesty are things I have enjoyed my whole life and will continue to do so.

R.I.P.

Fadeout.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Sorry for the late response. When I learned of Goldman’s passing I just had to commemorate it in some way; but rather than popping in one of his movies, I decided to re-read Adventures in the Screen trade. The problem once you become a major Hollywood success is that you are obviously being rewarded for your raw cunning and intelligence. And the thing that separates you from the unwashed hordes is that you know what is going to work. You can pick the hits, unfortunately, movies are a gold rush business and nobody knows anything. What worked last year won’t necessarily work today.

And his gotcha moments are always interesting. Like when he had a meeting with a studio head the same week Life magazine had world’s biggest movie star on the cover. The studio exec hadn’t seen the cover and just for fun asked him: who is on the cover? Strike one. Strike two. Strike three. Strike four. Finally he told before it became embarrassing, but if the head of a Hollywood studio doesn’t even know who the biggest box office draw is for his business. There is lots of wiggle room.

The book was written during the first 6 months of 1982 and already then he was despairing that the movies for an intelligent audience was disappearing, being made extinct by the comic book movie, which he defines as:

• Generally, only the bad guys die. And if a good guy does kick, he does it heroically.
• There tends to be a lack of resonance: like the popcorn you are munching, it’s not meant to last.
• The movie turns in on itself. Its reference points tend to be other movies. If, for example, there had been no Saturday afternoon serials, there would have been no frame for Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• And probably most importance: the comic book movie doesn’t have a great deal to do about life as it exists, as we know it to be. Rather it deals with life as we would as we would prefer it to be. Safer that way.

The book is a wealth of information about creating stories for the Hollywood dream factory from a great craftsman; he is aware of the fragile gossamer (moments in time - believability) that movies are made of. He keys the reader in on certain realities of the movie business; this is certainly one of the top ten books one should read about cinema.