Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting

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If there's any profession where some perspective is required on your importance to the engine that pays you, it's screenwriting. If survival in the Hollywood film industry is possible, then there is no better "survival guide" than this book, because Goldman tells it like it is. Although written in 1983, with many films he cites from this era, I am sure the process is little changed.

In the 1980s he wrote a series of memoirs looking at his professional life on Broadway and in Hollywood (in one of these he famously remarked that "Nobody knows anything"). It includes the entire screenplay of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, followed by a section with Goldman's opinion of what worked and what didn't. Quiconque est sérieux à l'idée d'être scénariste se doit de lire cette Bible de Bill Goldman, scénariste de Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, The Princess Bride, etc. BTW, I was saddened to learn in this book that Goldman regrets his involvement with All the President's Men, for which he won his second Academy Award for adapted screenplay in 1977. The recent sad news of the death of William Goldman reminded me of an episode (October 2017) of the wonderful Backlisted Podcast about his book Adventures in the Screen Trade.This] is that big, sad, funny, incisive, revelatory, gossipy, perception-forming book about Hollywood that publishers have been promoting for years -- and now the real thing is finally here. He's so irritating, in fact, that after a two-week break away from Adventures in the Screen Trade I cashed in with over 100 pages left, because I couldn't stand the thought of going back to have him bitch at me like my worst film school instructors used to, bitter that a lack of work forced them into talking about their job instead of doing it. This collection of anecdotes, advice, and essays is one of the most engaging pieces of writing that I’ve read. He talks a lot about Hollywood and there are some darling little stories about particular stars and directors, then he shows you the actual screenplay for the movie with directions to the actors etc. Bill Goldman is painfully frank about his struggles, his weaknesses, and the seamy underbelly of the business that has paid his bills for decades.

His most famous axiom, that “nobody knows anything” is one of those things that grow truer with time and experience. In addition to movies for which Goldman earned screen credit, he includes chapters on two movies that were nightmares. Billy also loves to explain other people's decisions and character traits he dislikes by ascribing thought processes to them, while managing to ignore the fact that he's making shit up out of boogers and ego.The last section of this book where he goes from a short story to a screenplay and then tears it to shreds, is brilliant. Adventures in the Screen Trade is a sparkling memoir and every bit as entertaining as some of the landmark films he helped create (including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, and Marathon Man). It's easy to recommend the first hundred pages of Adventures in the Screen Trade because Goldman's commentary on the industry is easy to apply to films today.

Written in 1982, but evidently Hollywood anxieties are eternal: sequels, television, IP, fragile egos of specific stars that are still with us. But then he goes on to redact the identities of the deadies, while going right ahead and smearing the two performers who still have careers left to ruin. Each of those section manages to take a swipe at individuals, groups, or imagined coteries of robed gnomes William perceives of having wronged him, the targeted loogies flying from behind a shield forged of "Oh well, what do I know? Anyway, Goldman goes on to cheerfully disparage studio execs, actors, directors, actors, audiences, and also actors. Art Kleiner wrote, "This is one of the three most engrossing 'creative confessional' books I've ever read.I think they should consider giving Oscars for meetings: Best Meeting of the Year, Best Supporting Meeting, Best Meeting Based on Material from Another Meeting.

Some of Goldman's answers were edited into a magazine piece for Esquire; this was read by an editor at a publishing house who contacted him about writing a book on screenwriting. T. The Extraterrestrial would win the Academy Award for Best Picture (at the time, Gandhi wasn't out) to his casual comments about women in action movies (i. Written almost forty years ago, so many of the trials and tribulations Goldman describes, as well as his larger concerns about the where the business is heading, feel like they could have been written yesterday. Goldman was referring to success in the movie business, the idea being that when something worked and was a hit, it just kind of worked and nobody really knew why, though everyone with a hand in the production would claim otherwise.You can read this book this book as a Hollywood tell-all, although having been written in the early 1980s, it's a bit dated now; but its real value is Goldman's insights about the business of writing for movies, which are like taking a master class. He finds page space to belittle the auteur theory and anyone who subscribes to it, insisting that all movies are a team effort, while still blaming his failed movies on everybody else that worked on them.