Adventures in the Screen Trade

by William Goldman

  ON DA VINCI: CONCLUSION

  A lot of the questions I ask, a lot of my attack on a property, is to tear it apart and see if it can stand up under really rigorous assault. Because you're going to be attacked later on, you might as well be your own attackee.

  As far as Da Vinci is concerned, when I was in live tv, I worked on lots of worse things than this....

  Pretty withering.

  But pretty helpful too. Because Hill has as good a story mind as any director I've come in contact with.

  Which is not to say he is without flaw. He does hate what he calls hyping the script--a lot of directors do. John Schlesinger didn't like the hype I stuck into Marathon Man--but he took the job. Hill was driven almost mad by some of the hype in Butch Cassidy. I remember him being furious about the way I wrote the entrance of the Superposse--where I had half a page about the camera zooming like a racing car toward this stopped train. But again, he took the job.

  And I don't think he's right at all about the harmonica scene--it's meant to be stern and tough. That's Bimbaum at his most arrogant, not Captain Kangaroo befriending a puppy.

  There are a lot of things I disagree with in what Hill said--

  --but he may be right.

  I don't think Bimbaum's a shit and I don't think the artist as shit is a cliche--

  --but Hill may be right.

  I don't think this is a screenplay about a kid who knifes his father in the back--

  --but Hill may be right.

  And I think the haircuts can work, I think they can be magical. I think a lot of things in opposition to what's been said here. But when somebody very smart gives you the benefits of his wisdom, you better listen. Of the Da Vinci interviews, Hill was alone in much of what he felt. But that doesn't make him wrong. And if the others had agreed, in part or in whole with his insights, that wouldn't necessarily make me wrong. But it just may.

  If enough people tell you you're drunk, it's not inadvisable for a screenwriter to consider lying down....

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Relay Race

  Inherent with every screenwriting job is a moment of mourning. This moment has nothing to do with the quality of the work experience. It's there, if I am replaced (Charly) or rewritten (The Stepford Wives) or still writing even after the completion of principal photography (A Bridge Too Far). And I'm not sure if the moment exists in any other kind of narrative writing--I don't believe it happens with prays, and it never occurs in any books I've been involved with.

  The moment involves a terrible sense of loss.

  It's possible to conceive of the making of a film as a relay race. A long one, two to three years long. The starter of the race, usually, is the producer. He acquires the property. Then, again usually, he hires the screenwriter and the race is on.

  When a producer hires me, what he is buying, rough rule of thumb, is six months of my life. That's about the length of time from when I first read the property to when I deliver the first draft.

  Most writers, when they are at work on a project, any project, become interested, and then involved, and then obsessed. And when we are in the obsessive phase, our personalities split. We may look the same, act the same, but a very large part of our brain is cut away, intent only on the project at hand.

  We never know when help is on the way. An example from this book: One night I had insomnia and was watching very late-night tv and The Blob was on and I stared at it until that scene, mentioned earlier, where Steve McQueen has that dopey moment in the car with the girl. And suddenly you sit there, thinking, "Shit, I can use that." I didn't know then I was going to write a section on protecting the star, but I knew that car moment was something.

  Not only don't we know when help is coming, we don't know where. A remark by a cabdriver may spark a thought. A book title seen a thousand times may suddenly take on a useful meaning. Help can come from any direction, so we have to stay on the lookout, because we all need, do I have to add, all the help we can get.

  In the months when I'm not writing, sometimes I hear or see things and consciously think, "I ought to remember that, that may come in handy sometime." And then the next instant it's gone. But when I'm in the obsessive stage, I'm a sponge. And not a whole lot of use to anybody. Wherever I am, obviously that's where the physical part of me inhabits space. But always, a large part of my mind is where I am right now, staring at white paper, wondering how in hell to fill it with words.

  Until I have filled enough pages, there is no movie.

  As I said, filling those pages is six months of whatever time I have left. And those first months are as full of research as I can make them. I read and reread the source material, and I fiddle. I interview people and jot down what I hope will help. I read and reread other material that may deal with the same or a similar subject. I listen to music that may jog something. Music is becoming increasingly important to me. I've been alone in my pit for a quarter century now and I can't take the silence anymore. So I constantly put on a stack of records and let them play in the background. For Bridge, to take an example, I bought a bunch of military-oriented records--Sousa marches, etc.--and had them on quietly all day; for Waldo Pepper, pop tunes from the twenties.

  All this, of course, is building up to the moment of actual writing. I am getting myself as full of the material as I possibly can. When I can't stand it any more, I try and write. If the writing goes well X weeks later, I have a first draft. And then I have it mimeoed. And then I get it back and look at it.

  And at that point, I know more about the movie than anybody else in the world. I stand there holding the script, and of course I'm pleased that something exists, and of course I'm frightened that it stinks. But running along with those emotions is the knowledge of my knowledge--I know so much. I've made so many decisions about what to save and what to pitch--I could have written a five-hundred-page screenplay if I'd wanted. I am, as I stand there, the movie.

  And then comes the moment of mourning. Because the relay race must go on and my lap is ending; I must pass the baton to the other technicians.

  And when you give it away, the loss, of course, is the end of your imagination. The movie in my head is going to leave me. Other people's fantasies are going to take over. As they must.

  Generally speaking, at his time of greatest knowledge, conceivably at the time of his greatest usefulness, the screenwriter is cast aside.

  That's the way movies are made.

  I'm not a whiz at transcribing interviews; I have no idea what your reaction to them was. But I can tell you my two reactions and I was totally unprepared for both. They filled me with elation and they filled me with despair.

  Elation because their suggestions improved my screenplay.

  Despair because their suggestions improved my screenplay.

  The elation I think is easy enough to understand--anytime anyone can help you, can make your work better, whether it's a friend reading a book or an editor making cogent comments, that's terrific. We all, I think, want whatever we do to have as much quality as possible.

  The despair I felt comes from this simple fact: Talks such as I had on Da Vinci are simply inconceivable in the actual world of making a movie.

  I have been at the craft for almost twenty years now, and until the past weeks, I've never spent five minutes alone with an editor. Or a production designer. Or a cinematographer. I've never met the composer on any film I've ever done, except once, and that was long after the score was completed.

  Yes, I've met with directors. Often fruitfully. But it's not the same as here.

  Because he has secrets.

  He is fighting wars I never know about. Maybe the producer hates my script and wants to bring in someone else. Maybe the director hates my script and wants to bring in someone else. Maybe the studio is insisting on the use of a star who is suddenly available. Maybe the director took the job because he needs the money or the work or he's always wanted to do a movie on the subject matter I've written about and so he grabbed the
script before someone else could make a movie covering similar ground.

  From the very beginning, I have had an ambition in dealing with a director. I've wanted to do the following: sit down and discuss the script from the point of view of my particular intention. Not shot by shot. But scene by scene. I've wanted to go through from fade-in till fade-out and say, "Here's what I meant by scene one. I did it this way because this is what I was after." And then scene two, etc. Such a talk may take four hours, it may take eight.

  Well, forget about it.

  Never happens. And that's dangerous, because often, when a scene is sludge, it's because the intention of the script wasn't the same as the intention of the director when it went on the floor.

  Now, when I say I wanted to give my intention for each scene, that doesn't mean I want the director to sit there and grunt agreement. Often, very often, I may intend something in a scene, it's clear in my head, but what I put on paper veered off. He would point that out to me. I could change it, fix it maybe.

  Never happens.

  Once we pass the baton, we become, and I don't know why, this weird thing, some vestigial lump, like a baby born with a tail. Get rid of it.

  We are not held in much esteem. Most of us don't deserve to be. But there is an attitude toward us maybe best exemplified by Sam Goldwyn, who used to sneak to the writers' building and listen and get angry if he didn't actually hear typewriters clacking.

  Few of the powers out there know what a cameraman does, but they know they can't do it. Occasionally, a cameraman gets replaced, but not often. The same for the other technicians.

  They don't know what we do, either, but they do know the alphabet, and they also have lists of dozens of other writers who can change what we've done.

  The attitude toward us continues after the picture has finished shooting. I've never seen a rough cut of a picture I've written. And I rarely get invited to sneaks. Marathon Man is a good example, because there were two sneaks, in California. And I live in New York so it's expensive to bring me out. Except I was in California at the time. Wouldn't have cost a whole lot to have me along. I mention Marathon Man because it was a picture that, I suspect, was grievously damaged by the sneak reactions.

  Probably I couldn't have helped. The movie was no longer mine, and many others knew much more about the film than I did.

  But no one knew more about the structure of the film.

  No one ever does or ever will. You keep that inside you. And often the screenwriter will know why a section of the movie is just lying there, gasping for air. He may not be able to fix it, but he may at least be able to articulate the reason for the mess.

  But we are not called on to articulate. We are, after our lap is finished, for the most part, mute. Usually, they don't want us around. As I said, I don't know why, but it's odd.

  And in movies, the screenwriter is the odd man out.

  But there is a trade-off. That beginning lap we run, regardless of what happens later--that lap is ours. We have the privilege, if you will, of the initial vision.

  We're the ones who first get to make the movie....

  Final Fade-In

  I am ending this book--it's now June of '82--at the greatest time of panic and despair in modern Hollywood history.

  A desperate agent said to me yesterday, "It's like living underwater out here." This past January, when I began, is already looked back on with some nostalgia.

  How could things be worse? Remember these?

  The Border

  Personal Best

  One from the Heart

  A Stranger Is Watching

  Shoot the Moon

  Making Love

  Cannery Row

  Evil Under the Sun

  I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can

  Deathtrap

  I Ought to Be in Pictures

  Cat People

  A Little Sex

  Wrong Is Right

  Partners

  And that's a selective list. The fact is that, in the first five months of this year, only Porky's was a runaway hit.

  Events are taking place out there--or not taking place, to be a bit more precise--that were unheard of a year or two ago. Just one example: I know of a best-selling piece of nonfiction that a studio developed. A first-class script was written. The script attracted a world-famous award-winning director. And one of the hottest young stars also committed.

  And the studio put it in turnaround.

  I am not talking about an introverted art film--this is a movie with action, adventure, rich characters. The director is so anxious to get it off the ground that he has agreed to defer his entire salary.

  And no one will touch it.

  The summer is upon us now--thirty-nine pictures will open from the major studios between now and Labor Day. Some feel the summer will be big and the studios will get active again. Some feel the summer won't be big and the studios won't get active again.

  I suppose I'm perverse, but I think the summer will be huge--the biggest in the history of Hollywood--and the studios will still remain immobile.

  Their confidence factor is simply gone.

  They will make sequels--Jaws III was announced today. And they will make rip-offs--sixty clones of Halloween are for sale today from all around the world if anyone in Hollywood wants to buy them.

  There is nothing new about this. After his first film proved successful, Broncho Billy Anderson made 375 more just like it. And we never minded the Andy Hardy movies; I didn't, anyway.

  But that was when Metro alone was turning out fifty films a year. Now the entire industry doesn't make a lot more than twice that many altogether.

  They are not waiting for Godot out there, they are waiting for HBO instead. Cable will save them--not by just buying pictures, but by becoming a giant financial contributor to the actual making of movies.

  That's a theory, anyway.

  I have no idea as to its eventual accuracy, but I believe that we will soon have again what we have come to take for granted--the most vital and vibrant film industry of any country in the world.

  Hollywood has been desperate before, but up till now it's been a technical advance that's brought salvation--sound or color or CinemaScope or Smell-O-Vision. But I don't think so this time.

  This time I think it's going to be talent. Young talent.

  I have just spent the past two days looking at short films made by graduates and undergraduates at the NYU Film School. There were, needless to say, no masterpieces. And probably only two of the ten I saw would be good enough to go into the theatres immediately.

  But they were all so goddam gifted.

  I think there's a wave of talent rising now. Thousands upon thousands of young men and women who literally love film. I realize this is a book about Hollywood, so obviously there has to be a happy ending. Only I'm not tacking this on. I believe that wave is upon us and that it's not going to be stopped. And to all that talent let me say, where the hell have you been and I wish you joy...

  ... and may you ignore the critics when they attack you, and pay no attention to their praise...

  ... and may you please remember when your scenes are sludge, that screenplays are structure...

  ... and may you have peers as willing to improve your project as you must be; treat them kindly, for they will save your ass many times over...

  ... and may you always remember "it's only a movie" but never forget there are lots worse things than movies--like politicians...

  ... and may you be lucky enough and skilled enough to make some glorious moments for all those people sitting out there in the dark, as earlier craftsmen created such moments for you...

  ... and finally and most of all...

  ... may all your scars...

  ... be little ones....

  January-June, 1982

  New York City

  About the Author

  For his work in the screen trade. William Goldman has won two Academy Awards, two Edgar Awards for Mystery Movie of the yea
r, two Writers Guild awards, a British Academy Award, and numerous other honors. In addition to his screenplays he is the author of many bestselling novels, as well as The Season, a highly praised account of the Broadway theatre world.

  Also by William Goldman

  FICTION

  The Temple of Gold (1957)

  Your Turn to Curtsy, My Turn to Bow (1958)

  Soldier in the Rain (1960)

  Boys and Girls Together (1964)

  No Way to Treat a Lady (1964)

  The Thing of it is... (1967)

  Father's Day (1971)

  The Princess Bride (1973)

  Marathon Man (1974)

  Magic (1976)

  Tinsel (1979)

  Control (1982)

  NONFICTION

  The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway (1969)

  The Making of "A Budge Too Far" (1977)

  SCREENPLAYS

  Masquerade (1965) (with Michael Relph)

  Harper (1966)

  Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

  The Hot Rock (1972)

  The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)

  The Stepford Wives (1975)

  All the President's Men (1976)

  Marathon Man (1976)

  A Bridge Too Far (1977)

  Magic (1978)

  Mr. Horn (1979)

  PLAYS

  Blood, Sweat, and Stanley Poole (1961) (with James Goldman)

  A Family Affair (1962) (with James Goldman and John Kander)

  FOR CHILDREN

  Wigger (1974)