Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade

by William Goldman

  CUT TO

  BUTCH AND SUNDANCE, alive in the water. Music begins, the same music that went on during BUTCH and ETTA's bicycle ride, and as the music picks up, so does the speed of the current as it carries them along, spinning and turning and

  CUT TO

  THE SUPERPOSSE, frozen in the twilight on the mountainside.

  If you were in movie theaters back in those days, it was not hard to tell the scene worked--as Butch and Sundance jumped, as the cry of "Horseshiiiit" echoed. There were shouts of joy and surprise and laughter, and, yes, applause. Audiences loved the two guys so much now they would follow them anyplace. They wanted to know the crucial question from all audiences since we left the muck: What happens next?

  They never questioned South America. And guess what--the movie runs a little out of steam halfway through South America. Didn't matter.

  The people wanted to be there.

  When that happens, and it happens rarely, at least for me, it's very hard to screw up your movie. I believe it would have been easy to screw it up if that scene had not worked. People might have felt uneasy about the trip the guys were taking, or might have said, well, the first stuff was fun but the rest of it wasn't as good. Might have said a million things.

  But they didn't. They wanted to be there.

  The movie became a phenomenon, changed a lot of lives. Redford, so marvelous, became, soon after, the biggest star in the world. Newman, already the biggest star in the world, and a joy to work with, had a terrific time, began a relationship with George Roy Hill that later encompassed both The Sting and Slap Shot. Hill, for me the most underrated director of the last thirty years, became one of the two Giant Apes in the world of moviemaking, along with David Lean.

  And I became, well, you fill in the blank. Doesn't matter. All that does is: I'm still here ...

  * * *

  Originals

  An original screenplay? Nothing to it, really.

  Just come up with a new and fresh and different story that builds logically to a satisfying and surprising conclusion (because Art, as we all know, needs to be both surprising and inevitable).

  Do you know how hard that is?

  I've tried a bunch and I'll talk about some of them briefly, but remember this--those two crucial questions that need answering for an adaptation? Well, they must both have already been answered positively by you before you embark. Yes, you love it and yes, you can make it play.

  Butch--what I loved was the fun and games, the sadness, taking the girl with them, all that--but mostly I loved the becoming legends again. Plus, of course, the confidence their dying gave me.

  I researched it for eight years before I'd sucked up enough. Articles on the west, books, etc. Basically what enabled me to go after it was my love of westerns. From Stagecoach on. To be able to write the guy who really really was the fastest gun in all our history, well, how often does that happen?

  The Great Waldo Pepper--not something I would have written had George Roy Hill not loved old airplanes so much. It was his need that drove me, plus we had done Butch.

  I made up this guy--Waldo--who looked golden and was golden except really he was a failure. And finally gave him his shot at having a dream come true, even if it killed him.

  The other confidence builder was that it fell logically into three acts. The barnstorming first act, the air-show second act, the Hollywood-stunts third act. That was what happened to a lot of pilots in those days, and I followed along. I fucked up some and Hill and I had a huge falling-out for a year in the middle of the screenplay, but I can look at the movie now and feel glad that I went there.

  The Year of the Comet--if Butch had its basis in my love for westerns, Comet was my shot at romantic comedy: Grant and Kate, Grant and Audrey, Grant and Roz, Fred and Ginger, dozens of others from the '30s into the '50s.

  There aren't so many these years. Cleese's Wanda, Curtis's Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, I think Ramis's Groundhog Day. Ephron's Harry and Sally, Peter and Bobby Farrelly's Mary. I think those are my main five for the last dozen years.

  I love the form, I love red wine, I invented with plausibility what would logically be the most valuable bottle of wine in history. I had a decent-sounding mismatched pair of lovers, I set the chase in the most romantic places I know, London, the French Riviera, the Scottish Highlands.

  I did everything right--and it all just lay there.

  Conclusion? I did next to nothing right. That's why it all just lay there.

  I can be very tough with my own work since I don't like it all that much--and I have thought a great deal about how I screwed this up. I cannot come up with a satisfactory answer.

  I guess, to quote Frank Gilroy's great line from The Gig, where one character yearns to be a wonderful jazz musician but isn't: Passion ain't enough.

  The Sea Kings--my pirate flick. The audience has to love those, and I don't think kids do today. Who could blame them? Errol's dead.

  So what made me write it was the genre, plus this: as great a kernel for a movie as any I've known (see the "Leper" chapter for a recap of my passion for the idea).

  And the script, you will have to take on faith, is not so terrible. But it never got made.

  After Joe Levine failed with it in the '70s, Dick Donner took a run at it in the '90s.

  I don't expect it to ever happen. Expensive as hell, and each time you think, well, just maybe, something like Cutthroat Island comes along and you're dead for another decade.

  Mr. Horn. If that title rings even a little bell, yes it was a four-hour miniseries starring David Carradine and Richard Widmark.

  Hope it was good. Never saw it. Couldn't bring myself to.

  Tom Horn. Bounty hunter. (A rock under a dead man's head was his signature.) Indian fighter. (Brought in Geronimo.) Sentenced to death for a murder he never committed. (Escaped at the last minute; it was impossible but he did.) Gave himself up. Finally got hanged. (He lost so much weight in jail that he hung alive at the end of that rope for half an hour.)

  Just some of the high spots.

  In terms of the talents that were needed to survive in the Wild West, this was the most talented man who ever lived there. Redford (wrote it for him) was going to do it, didn't.

  This was one of my bad experiences. What I regret so terribly was that this great story never had its shot. I remember deciding that it would be the last original I'd ever work on. And I prayed I'd never come across anyone as blazing as Tom Horn again.

  But it wasn't the last original I ever worked on, because we are all slaves to material, and when I heard the story of the Tsavo lions, I was hooked again. You can read the chapter on The Ghost and the Darkness to find out what happened. I think of all six, I regret most that this story never found its proper audience. No, I regret most that Tom Horn is still unknown to most of America. No, I regret--

  --when we write scripts and they don't happen or happen less well than we want, we regret them all. And always will.

  The last one really broke my heart. Danny DeVito came to me and wondered if I wanted to do a basketball movie he could direct. I lucked out, wrote Low Fives, for Danny and John Cleese. Danny was to play a down-and-out coach at the antithesis of an Ivy League school. (I think in Texas, but I remember it was somewhere hot.) Danny, on a recruiting trip in Africa, discovers an amazing basketball talent, enrolls him in his school.

  John Cleese was to play the dean of this awful place, who was in deep agony there, and just as desperate to get out as Danny. A lot of nice stuff happened. We had a cast reading and Barry Sonnenfeld, now a star director, then with just Addams Family behind him, was set to direct. I remember a fabulous actor, now dead, J. T. Walsh, read the part of a racist basketball coach.

  Was Low Fives perfect? Nope. Did it work? Bet your ass. One of my all-time movie afternoons, listening. Then Barry got offered a ton to do the Addams sequel, took it, Danny began to cool, it died.

  I still have hope. Someone has to.

  As I look back on
these seven, I realize my age. If you are thirty or under, all you know about westerns might be David Peoples's glorious Unforgiven. (Aside: I remember reading the rave review given by Roger Ebert in Cinemania. He talks about Eastwood and Jack Green's shooting, mentions Hackman and Harris and Freeman and Fisher and Wayne and Ford and even gets around to Godard. Never mentions Peoples, though. Why should he? All Peoples did was make it up. Jesus, Roger, it was an original screenplay. You know why that's such a disgrace? Because you expect ignorance from most, but Ebert's supposed to be one of the good ones.

  There are no good ones.)

  Back briefly to my age. I doubt any of you would be interested in the genres that hooked me into films. But the basic pulse still must be there: if you want to write The Matrix--and I liked The Matrix--go with God.

  Just care.

  Pitching

  There is a reason pitching comes right after original screenplays--people don't usually pitch adaptations.

  (But how would you like to have been in the room when Van Zant pitched his vomitous Psycho carbon? You must remember that--because if some asshole executive can say, "Gee, what a fresh and great idea that is, wait'll I get home tonight and tell the wife"--the point being that if Psycho got greenlighted, there's hope for us all.)

  Okay, what do I know about pitching? First thing, find a teacup. Then barely cover the bottom with water. No, that's too much.

  I know nothing about the subject. I have only, in a third of a century, pitched once--and this to friends--and I was so awful I quit halfway through.

  But truth to tell, it doesn't matter what I know because you are not going to be pitching to me.

  I think I would accept every pitch made to me. Because I remember my panic when I tried to do it. But it is a definite part of Hollywood now. A writer has an idea and in the old days, he might have written it. Sometimes he still does. But more and more, the agent gets his client a meeting with a studio exec in which the idea is discussed, i.e., pitched.

  Hollywood, as we know, has zero sense of history and there is a feeling pitching is relatively new. Total nonsense. If you've read any history at all, you know it was invented by Torquemada to make his days pass more happily during the Spanish Inquisition. He would tell imprisoned playwrights that if they could interest him in an idea, he would let them live long enough to write it. If they didn't, he dropped the fellow into a large vat of boiling tar, which of course is where the term "pitch" comes from.

  The Ten Commandments of Pitching

  1. Never forget whom you are talking to. The studio executive views you as an impediment to either his lunch or his tennis game. But some part of him also knows you might help his career. He doesn't want to listen to you, he would rather he lived in a world where he didn't have to listen to you. So do not bore him. Rule one is this: Be brief.

  2. Brief means this: in and out in five minutes. Unless the executive asks you to stay.

  3. Remember you are not telling the story, you are throwing out a hook.

  3a. Keep it simple.

  3b. Not a lot of detail.

  3c. One or two lines. What you tell the executive is this: "Here's the setup, boom." If they buy the setup, there is a real chance they will buy the movie.

  4. Grab them. You want them to think, "Yeah, I get that."

  5. People are busy. (Same as rule one but I thought you ought to be reminded.)

  6. Do not pitch more than one idea per meeting.

  7. If you can, leave an outline. Executives love this. Not a detailed shot-by-shot deal, but a couple of pages where you start with what you hit them with and thicken it a bit, embellish it; if you have any glorious scenes in mind, put those in. (Likewise, if your ending sucks, leave it out.) Giving them something to read can only be a plus. It helps them fill out your pitch. It also makes them think you actually care about the piece of shit you are selling. (Piece of shit, as you should know, is the way executives refer to screenplays Out There.)

  8. Never read a pitch. Some writers are more comfortable doing it that way, but the meeting is about your future, not your comfort. Learn to tell your story. Practice it by yourself or on friends until you are comfortable. Executives like eye contact.

  9. Pitch the same idea ten times in one day. Obviously, keep that news to yourself. Do not say to Mr. Fox, "I would love to talk more but I'm late for my meeting with Mr. Time Warner."

  9a. Be aware of the values of multi-pitching. It is good to get your idea out there. Especially if you are new, because more people will know of your existence.

  9b. Be aware of the risks of multi-pitching. It is not good if your goal is to have a relationship with a particular studio, which you might actually want. There are no secrets in the movie business. Everybody knows somebody. Be aware that your multi-pitch day will get out. Never tell anyone you are giving them an exclusive if you aren't. Your word actually has a certain value in Southern California. Even if theirs doesn't.

  10. Never forget that even if they buy your pitch, most studios are planning on firing you as soon as you hand them your first draft.

  Okay, let's try something. I will attempt to pitch for you a couple of the originals I talked about a few minutes before. See what you think.

  Butch: "It's a western, it's about these two guys, one of them is the leader of this huge gang and the other is his sidekick who's a great shot and this millionaire forms this posse to stop them from robbing his railroads and--"

  I'm gasping already.

  Try again. "It's a western, kind of a modern-day Gable-Tracy adventure flick about these two guys who take off for South America with one of the girlfriends and--"

  Worse. I'm dead now.

  I don't think Butch lends itself to pitching. Doesn't mean it's good or terrible, just that the story doesn't compress easily.

  The Sea Kings: "It's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on the high seas--these two great pirates who actually sailed together, one's the most dangerous in history, Blackbeard, and the other's the only rich pirate ever, kind of as if Bill Gates decided he was done being a computer nerd and wanted a life of adventure.

  "See, Blackbeard has had all the adventure in the world and what he wants is to retire rich, and Bonnet, the rich guy, what he wants is to have all the adventure in the world. And when they meet and sail together, what I want this to be is the story of these two amazing guys who are each other's dream."

  What do you think? I don't mind that so much. What I hope I did was make you want to know more.

  The Year of the Comet: "A Cary Grant-Audrey Hepburn romantic comedy about this great couple who meet and just hate each other but they're both chasing a ten-million-dollar bottle of wine across London and the French Riviera, where they have wild adventures. And no, they don't hate each other at the end."

  I don't think that's too terrible. Might hook someone. (Maybe at the end of the day, if they were tired.) How's by you?

  My personal feeling is that neither The Great Waldo Pepper nor Mr. Horn lend themselves easily to this process. They are more character studies, they are darker, their heroes die.

  You pitch them for me, see how you do.

  One last crucial thing: the better known your work is, the higher your reputation, the more likely you are to receive a positive response. This whole deal is a ridiculous crapshoot, thriving today because most executives do not know how to read screenplays. And hate having to read them.

  But if you are starting out, it's a quick way to solvency. So get your story comfortably inside you. And tell yourself you're going to go into that office a nothing but you're coming back a star!

  Stay in Your Genre

  You must always be aware of the kind of movie you are telling: romantic comedy, high adventure, family drama, bloodbath action (don't), special-effects thriller, horror, farce, whatever.

  Each genre has a set of unwritten constraints. If you're writing a farce, you must be skilled at basic plotting, because farce, to be really funny, has to be really real. The minute you stretch t
hings in a farce, it shatters. If I am visiting my best friend and my wife is hiding in a closet because she's been having an affair with him, there must be a totally sound reason for me to be needing to get into that closet right now. The minute it's a frivolous reason, the farce dies.

  I know you must be sick of the jump-off-the-cliff scene, and this is the last time I will mention it, but as terrific as it was with Butch, it would have totally destroyed a movie such as, say, Casablanca.

  You could set it up in that picture very easily. At the end, the Nazi Conrad Veidt is chasing Bogie and Claude Rains. They are in cars racing across the airfield. The cars crash into each other and they are forced to continue the chase on foot.

  And Rains is old and let's say Veidt was a runner at Nazi school, and he's closing the gap, closing the gap--

  --when up ahead is this cliff and down there is Vichy France and freedom and the chance to battle injustice and they shout Horseshit and over they go, splashing down into the river and the current carries them to safety while old Conrad can only snarl down from the top of the cliff.

  Kills the movie, right?

  When you are dying in the night trying to plot your screenplay, you might do well to remember Bogie and Claude, so ridiculous. And remember the kind of story you are telling.

  And don't go wandering, you'll kill the babe while it's still in swaddling clothes.

  The Two Hollywoods

  Two war movies help us understand the duality of the movie business: one, Saving Private Ryan, written by Robert Rodat, directed by Steven Spielberg; the other, Shame, Ingmar Bergman handling both chores. (If you have never heard of Shame, sad for you, and please believe that.)

  The Spielberg gets more and more awful for me the more I think about it; the Bergman is just what it was when I first saw it: shattering. It deals in eighty-eight minutes with a married couple, musicians (Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman) whose country has become a battlefield. Never mind which side is advancing or retreating, they don't know, why should we? In the course of their story, Von Sydow, the wuss of the duo, toughens up, kills. Ullman, the strength, weakens. The movie ends with the two of them trying to escape, in a crappy boat stuffed with other desperate people, going nowhere across an unforgiving sea.