Adventures in the Screen Trade. Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman. Boys and Girls Together by William Goldman. Marathon Man by William Goldman. Adventures in the Skin Trade by Dylan Thomas. Screenwriters on Screen Writing by Joel Engel. The Temple of Gold by William Goldman. Bernstein by William J. Add a review Your Rating: Your Comment:. The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Marathon Man by William Goldman. Don't buy this book if: 1.
You don't have nerves of steel. You expect to get pregnant in the next five minutes. You've heard it all. William Goldman, who holds two Academy Awards for his screenwriting Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Men , and is author of the perennial best seller Adventures in the Screen Trade , scrutinizes the Hollywood movie scene of the past decade in this engaging collection.
In The Tyranny of Experts, renowned economist William Easterly examines our failing efforts to fight global poverty, and argues that the "expert approved" top-down approach to development has not only made little lasting progress, but has proven a convenient rationale for decades of human rights violations perpetrated by colonialists, postcolonial dictators, and US and UK foreign policymakers seeking autocratic allies.
Demonstrating how our traditional antipoverty tactics have both trampled the freedom of the world's poor and suppressed a vital debate about alternative approaches to solving poverty, Easterly presents a devastating critique of the blighted record of authoritarian development.
In this masterful work, Easterly reveals the fundamental errors inherent in our traditional approach and offers new principles for Western agencies and developing countries alike: principles that, because they are predicated on respect for the rights of poor people, have the power to end global poverty once and for all.
A fantastic, fun, informative guide to breaking into? Here is a must-read for new writers and established practitioners whose imagination could use a booster shot. Reading this book is like having a good, long lunch with your two best friends in the TV business. Accept no substitutes! Unlocking Creativity Author : Michael A. In many organizations, creative individuals face stubborn resistance to new ideas. Which, I grant was an unusual film.
Raiders is the number-four film in history as this is being writ ten. I don't remember any movie that had such power going in It was more or less the brainchild of George Lucas and was direeled by Steven Spielberg, the two unquestioned wunderkin der of show business Star Wars, Jaws, etc.
Probably you al knew that. But did you know that Raiders of the Lost Ark was of fered to every single studio in townAdventures in the Screen Trade 41 -and they all turned it down? All except Raramount. Why did Paramount say yes? Because nobody knows anything. And why did all the other studios say no? And why did Universal, the mightiest studio of all, pass on Star Wars, a decision that just may cost them, when all the sequels and spinoffs and toy.
Because nobody, nobody-not now, not ever-knows the least goddam thing about what is or isn't going to work at the box office. One additional anguish executives must cope with is that hot streaks don't last. A recent newspaper article mentioned how the other studios were gloating over what was happening at Columbia. Columbia had been sizzling, but then Annie went wildly over budget. And an expensive action film wouldn't cut together coherently. And everybody knew that the set of Tootsie was not where you wanted to spend your summer vacation.
And they had passed on E. Columbia had had it, developed it for a million dollars, look a survey, and discovered the audience for the movie would be too limited to make it profitable. So they let it go. Universal picked it up and may make back the billion they didn't earn by dropping Star Wars.
David Picker, a fine studio executive for many years, once said something to this effect: "If I had said yes to all the projects I turned down, and no to all the ones I took, it would have worked out about the same. It goes with the territory. Mostly, today, they are agents. Ex-agents, more accurately. And a lot of people interviewed tor this book feel that that accounts, more than any single thing, for Hollywood's present plight.
I'm not at all sure I agree with the conclusion, but I can summarize the wisdom behind it. Let's begin with some agent jokes; there are always agent jokes in Hollywood and the most recent ones I've heard are these: A patient goes to see a surgeon about having a heart transplant.
The surgeon says, "I'll give you a choice: You can either have the heart of a twenty-five-year-old marathon runner or a sixty-year-old agent, which do you want?
Now, in point of fact, this is not true. I'm serious. Most of the major agents I've come in contact with are decent human beings. But probably one can make a certain valid generalization about agents, and it's this: Their primary interest is not in the art object but in the deal. That's not criticism, that's basic logic--if a man makes his living, offten percent of his client's earnings, the more those earnings, the more meaningful his percentage.
That's his job. As an agent. But it's not his job when he changes hats. Agents become studio heads primarily for one reason: No one else will undertake the occupation. It's terrible work. It's seven days a week, it's mornings and evenings, it's getting killed by agents who are still agents. It's escalating costs, it's getting killed by their boards of directors, who are screaming that costs are too high, So why do agents accept the responsibility?
Because, in many ways, it's better than being an agent. There's more power and generally there's more money. So we've got an ex-agent running our studio. What can we say about him? A lot of good things. He's hardworking. He's shrewd as hell. He's got a lot of contacts in the business. He understands a great deal about how the business operates. What he doesn't understand, generally speaking, is passion.
Just as in the old days, when he didn't care about the film as much as the deal, the same holds true now. He never, most likely, has worked on a film, never written one or produced one, most certainly never directed one. People are coming at him day and night with projects-"I must make this. You must give me my chance. Because they never cared about passion, and because they, at least in theory, know what will sell and what won't. Business people do know one thing: what they can book into theatres in advance.
Theatre owners often don't sec the product they're buying until it's too late, so if they are given a choice between a Steve Martin musical and a movie about two English guys running in the Olympics, logic dictates which way they swing. I think it's safe to say that today, more than ever in Hollywood history, the business types hold sway. They are kept in close touch on every conceivable project that the studio may contemplate. And what they say matters.
Matters crucially. In the old days, a studio head might have said, "Let's make the goddam movie and hope the business guys know how to sell it. An ancient survivor told me: "When I was a fifteen-hundred-a-week writer, it was understood I didn't associate with another guy who only got seven-fifty. And the twenty-five-hundred-dollar guys didn't want me contaminating them.
And it's the same with the other jobs-top directors knew top directors, big stars didn't pal around with unknowns. Oh, maybe they'd keep them as gofers, but when it was a heavy social situation that needed attending, the gofers were gone. They tend to know each other-they may have worked at the same agencies at the same time. And naturally, they are all competitive, one with the other. Out of this situation comes their reliance on stars. And that need can be divided into thirds, which can be called the three S 's.
S Number One: Social This is more than one executive or his wife being able to say, casually, "Just made a two-picture deal with Burt. If you've got nobody to talk about, it can make for grim going at a cocktail party. A deeper need for parity comes not from individual social needs but from those of a studio itself.
One example: When the Arthur Krim group left United Artists to form Orion, there were rumors all around the industry that the new United Artists people weren't in the big time anymore. This was dangerous to United Artists because it meant that major "elements"-stars, directors, producers-might avoid going to UA with their projects. Studios rarely initiate projects anymore. A package of sorts will be put together and brought to them and they will decide whether to put up the money.
This abdication of what was once the essential role of the studio is as big a change as any in Hollywood. Anyway, here's UA, shunned and forlorn. So what did they do? They bought, for the record-breaking sum of two and a half million dollars. Gay Talese's sex book, Thy Neighbor's Wife.. There was great publicity and the studio announced they would make not one but two major films out of the material.
They have made, to this date, a grand total of none and things seem likely to stay that way. Now, the thing that made the Talese buy remarkable wasn't just the incredible sum. The book was famous long before publication, and the logical assumption would be, to grab such a property at such a price, you have to outbid competition.
I mean, the reason you pay two million five has got to be that someone else bid two million four. Well, the rumor around town was that nobody else bid anything for the Talese.
UA paid that amount for two reasons: The first, obviously, was to acquire the property. But the most important was the second: They were announcing to the Hollywood community, "Hey, we 're still here. But that wouldn't have served their purpose-they needed to blow the money. It served to put them back up there with their peers. A sadder example of this social need for equality was a move the Orion people made. They also had to prove they were still heavyweights, so they made a zillion deals.
Including one where they gave John Travolta control of any movies he did for them. Travolta was then maybe twenty-five with two leads behind him. Giving someone with that lack of track record control only betrayed Orion's desperation. Which was sad, at least for me, because they were, when at UA, maybe the top group in the business. But maybe it was worth it to them, since they could then say, "Look, everybody, we've got John Travolta. If you say, "We're doing a Goldie Hawn picture," you don't have to go on.
The performer sets the framework of the product. If you say you've got Chariots of Fire, you're going to have to go on and on explicating just what it is that you're talking about. This shorthand is especially helpful to the business people at the studio.
This past holiday season, UA had four pictures out in the marketplace. A different UA group, by the by, than the people who bought the Talese book-who'd come and quickly gone.
It was a tremendous lineup and quickly describable: "We've got Peter Fslk in a raunchy comedy. And with those fabulous bookings what did they achieve? But they got booked in theatres. Which is the name of the game for the business people at the studios. Should we be surprised at the theatre owners grabbing those movies?
Of course not, they'd have been out of their gourds not to. Should we be surprised at the failures of the films? A very faint maybe. Clearly, this is hindsight, which never fails. And again, nobody ever knows. But each of these films had a giant problem attached. Let's take them in the order in which they opened. The Ffeter Falk film. All the Marbles. In description it still sounds terrific. It's a raunchy comedy in which Falk plays the manager of two gorgeous girls who are tag-team wrestling partners.
It takes place, for the most part, in raunchy tank towns, with Falk always the hustler. And no one plays that kind of sleazy character better than Peter Falk.
The problem: The movie takes pro wrestling seriously. We know that when Bruno Sammartino enters the ring, he's pretty much a shoo-in. He may get pounded, he may be beaten almost senseless. But one way or another, he's going to triumph.
Whether pro wrestling is actually rehearsed or not, I have no idea. But the outcome is not in doubt. All the Marbles treated each match as if it were the pro football playoffs leading toward the Superbowl.
The matches, we were asked to believe, weren't fixed or phony, any more than the seventh game of the World Series. Would an audience buy that premise? When I saw the movie they sure didn't. The Richard Dreyfuss film. Whose Life Is It Anyway? This was certainly a famous show on Broadway: Tom Conti won the Tony for his performance, and then, with tremendous publicity, Mary Tyier Moore took over the part, for which she was also awarded.
But it was never much of a commercial hit. I don't think it ever had a single sellout week. It was well reviewed-as was the movie-but perhaps the problem was the subject matter. Whose Life deals with a young sculptor who is totally crippled in an auto accident. He's incapable of moving from the neck down. And the story is that of his right to have himself killed. Coming Home dealt with a cripple, too, and it did business.
But it was a romance. And no matter how the ads for Whose Life tried to sell you that it was about life, it wasn't - The ads on F. But hey, that man was a labor union organizer. And Whose Life dealt with death. Would the audience want to see such subject matter? Maybe treated as a fantasy-Heaven Can Wait-but treated realistically? They never have. Buddy, Buddy. Lemmon and Matthau have proved a superb comedy team, most successfully in The Odd Couple back in ' And Billy Wilder?
Unquestionably one of the great directors and one who is most skilled at comedic material. But his last major success was lrma la Douce, and that in Problem: Could their commercial skills be resurrected?
Alas, they could not. The Steve Martin musical, Pennies from Heaven. Martin is a cult figure for young people, and his only previous movie, The jerk, was one of the most successful comedies ever. Martin and Richard Pryor I would think are the top two young comics in the business. But Pennies from Heaven was a musical.
And it wasn't meant primarily to be funny. Set in the Depression, Martin played a down-and-out song plugger who eventually gets sent up for murder. The actors simply mouthed all the songs: The actual voices were real records of the Depression era. So the emphasis on the musical numbers fell, naturally enough, on the dances.
And the simple fact is that Steve Martin isn't much of a dancer. Oh, he tried, he executed steps, he obviously worked his buns off learning to be a hoofer. But it was a case of the dancing bear-it's not that he does it well but that he can do it at all.
For the truth is, there has never been a Broadway musical in the history of the world for which Steve Martin would have been good enough to get cast in the chorus. Problem: Can you have a musical succeed in which the main character can't thrill you?
I happen not to think so. With Kelly or Astaire, Pennies from Heaven might have gone through the roof. The audience I saw it with began wanting desperately to love it, and they ended-those who didn't walk out-whipped and silent.
To repeat, this was hindsight. And I think if I had been the studio executive that had a shot at these projects, I would have grabbed them all. Maybe they didn't work on the screen. But they sure sounded great in shorthand.
S Number Three: Salvation As staled, the knowledge of their eventual decapitation is central to the life of the studio executive. And as also stated, when that happens, they will "go indie-prod," which is both easier and more lucrative.
So why do the executives care at all if their movies succeed? Because there is a giant caveat involved: the better they've done as executives, the longer their life span, the fatter the deal they can strike for themselves when they're canned.
None of the Heaven's Gate group at UA got rich when they were told to get lost. So it's essential to the studio executive to be, at least for a time, successful. And since nobody knows anything, and since the studio heads today haven't got a lot of faith in their creative instincts since they've never been creative , they turn, for salvation, to the one thing that got them where they are: stars. If you have a slate of films that are low budget and successful, as Frank Price had recently at Columbia, you're obviously in great shape.
But if you have a slate of low-budget films that stiff, you're not just a failure, you're a double disaster: Not only did your pictures die, you couldn't even attract "elements. Which is why the cry of every studio executive on the way to the guillotine has been the same: "You can't do this to me, I got you a Charles Bronson picture. I was the one who signed Stallone. Ryan O'Neal only did our movie because we have a strong personal relationship.
Kris Kristofferson thinks I'm creative. Jimmy Caan told me personally he wants to work for me again. And so did Donald Sutherland. And Chuck Heston. Liza and Ali and I are buddies. And Lee Marvin and I have dinner together. One fact of movie life must always be faced: Stars are kept in orbit by studio executives who are trying to save their own jobs I'm sure even the biggest stars have some pet subject or another they can't get off the ground-Jane Fonda has been trying for years to make a movie about industrial cancer, for example.
We've also noted that they, like the rest of us, don't know what will work. But there is one thing they absolutely, do know, and that is what has worked.
Which is why it is safe to say that movies are always a search for past magic.
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