The Writer Speaks: William Goldman

bill I think in the books that you've written about screenwriting you've become famous for to to adages what one of which is that nobody knows anything and the other is that screenplays are structure nobody knows anything it's funny it's caught on and what I as I remember what I meant by it was that nobody has the least idea what movie's going to work I mean the big movie that's opening this weekend is Sex in the City - and nobody has delete the first one was a free kid and people loved it and now they've done the sequel and sequels are movies as I've written the only reason you do a sequel is to make money and nobody has the least idea is it going to be a phenomenal success or is it going to be a ten is it going to take I was talking with a studio guy recently and he said we'll make movies that cost under twenty five million in movies that cost over seventy five and I thought total horseshit what he meant was they would make quote quote an art film and they would make special-effects movies but that leaves out a gigantic percentage of what most of us fell in love with movies for I mean it wasn't because of the special effects stuff that they're doing they'll understand that avatar was terrific etc etc but there were other things besides avatar was the movies I like Bela I started my first screenplay I think in 1964 I mean I don't know that Tom Cruise was alive in 1964 if he was he wasn't a lie and it was such a different world than because now the numbers are so terrifying the studio's I think from what I'm told are scared shitless because the amount of money that they're spending on movies I mean the first movie really that I did was Harper and had Paul Newman bless him who was I guess the biggest star in the world in and I think it costs three million now well you figure that was a long time ago monies but it's still you can't you can't get a major stars gym teacher for three million dollars today it's just the prices are I think the big change that's happened right now is the money and and I don't know if it'll ever go back to being where it was a little bit more sane I think if you're a kid and you want to start out in movies you used to be able when I began in the 60s you could pretty much write anything you wanted to write and pray because they weren't you know they wanted romantic comedies which they really think I guess they do know I thought date night was terrific but they don't really you know they wanted westerns they don't want westerns anymore I mean it's very limited as to what they're making because they're panicked as I would be too if I were running a studio because they have no idea what's going to work and they have they've got to keep making their stuff and they just don't know I mean every it always was a crapshoot but now the numbers are so I think the numbers are the biggest difference and if I were a young screenwriter now you can only write this it sounds so we're binnacle but you can only write what you give a about and you've got to keep doing that if for example you don't like special-effects movies don't try and write one because it'll suck and for example I don't like special-effects movies I mean I love jaws but for the most part I don't like you know all the things coming down from the planet to kill us and all that stuff and it would be ridiculous for me to try and write one you've got to try and write something you care about that sounds really corny but it's true when I started there were no schools I never saw in my life not even for a second I never saw a screenplay until I was 30 three years old and a lot of kids are finished with their careers when they're 33 because they've been to film school they got their first movie done when they were 23 or 25 and then now that they're 33 there's some of their directors or whatever else and it was a different world and when I first heard of film schools I thought it was the stupidest idea I'd ever heard of why would anybody you know because we fell in love with movies by going to the Alsea on theater in my little town in Illinois then you went to the movies and they were wonderful and then now movies are important which they never were when I was a kid I was born in Chicago and thirty-one lived there for six years then we moved to Highland Park and I have childhood amnesia so I have no memories whatever are the first six years of my life I have every few memories of the early years at all but the Chicago years and I wish I knew what it was like then we're totally blocked my father was in the clothing business and my mother was his wife and he he worked for a company Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward were the two biggest and my father worked for the third which was not a giant company he was always coming in new york--and and clothing business etc etc and then it was a family business and my mother who was much more powerful in my father became convinced that my father would never be made a head of the company because it would be a family business and they would screw him so she made him retire which I don't think he wanted to do and start his own business and he did and his alcoholism got out of control and his partner in the new business which he started which was doing well closed the business because my father was a hopeless drunk and then he came home to live in the last four years of his life he lived upstairs in the house as I was growing up and then he killed himself when I was 15 and I found his body and know I've never written about it but it was a very fucked-up childhood and yet there was something in that childhood there was something in your upbringing that inculcated but I mean boat you and your brother both became writers yes unusual very unusual and you went to the theatre as a kid I know not to mention the Alsea and you just you know what else illegitimate we did a lot of theater go and my parents liked the theater and we would go to see rub companies of whatever hit musical was in town and I would see and then we came to New York twice like and saw a lot of theater and I loved theater I still do it's just very when it's wonderful it's better than anything but it's not wonderful so much and you have to basically pray when you're going it's going to be something that you'll have memories of and and like that so my upbringing was very up and I guess I might as well talk about my writing I showed no signs of talent I showed no signs of talent and the fact I've been a writer for half a century and more now is insane to me still you were at Oberlin I was at Oman but I was when I went to Overland we had a literary magazine and I was the fiction editor and there was a poetry editor and overall editor and everything was submitted anonymously and these two girls were just brilliant and when my I would submit my short stories to be published in the which I was the fiction editor and they wouldn't you know and it was all anonymous and they would look at it and I was you know something her as my story was coming up and they would say what we can't publish this and I would say no no we can't publish this and I never got anything published I think that must have somewhere in my life a hundred rejection slips from magazines and no one had the least interest I never got a little thing back saying show us your next story I remember once this can't be true but I think it is I submitted something in The New Yorker a short story and I got it back the same day now the males are not dead but I remember as I opened my mailbox that was a story that I just said haunted in New York and I took a I took a writing course at Northwestern and got the worst grade I took a short story course at Oberlin got the worst grade and my dearest old friend is a fabulous figure in my life John Kander who has had an amazing success in Broadway Kandra a.m. they wrote Chicago and cabaret in New York New York you know and Johnny was there and I remember Kander saying one day we're having coffee and that we had to submit a story the next day and I'd written mine for weeks and been working on it and he said well I got to go back to my room now and write the story and I said you haven't started it yet and he didn't then Johnny got B's and A's and I got C's and I was a very bad student at Oberlin and I went in the army in 52 everybody was drafted and in those years the army was 16 weeks of basic training eight weeks of living I throw a hand grenade and marching and how to use your rifle and eight weeks of something else and because I knew how to type I was sent to clerical school and there were seven of us that day who arrived in clerical school the same day and we were all college kids and head of the clerical school was a captain who was a golf nut and he realized heaven and just come because he would have the seven of us run the clerical school while he played golf every day and she will he wrote a letter to the Pentagon requesting we be taken out of pipeline and be given to the clerical school for the next two years because we were fabulous and he wrote this letter and the Pentagon got the letter there was a famous story in World War two about the five Sullivan brothers who were sent overseas after basic training and the ship was sunk and they were all five killed and the government felt that was unfair pain so they passed a rule which i think is still in effect that everybody after basic training in the military gets two weeks to go home and so we all went home the seven of us for two weeks and then met at the Pentagon and we had discovered the Pentagon had gotten the letter and thought if we were so fabulous they wanted us at the Pentagon so we were sent to the Pentagon and in those two weeks the jobs they had for us were filled so they were going to keep us there until the next levee to Korea happened and it never happened because the Korean War was ending so the seven of us had nothing to do for essentially twenty two months and I mean it was amazing that the people who read the civilians who were in our offices loved us because the more people they could have working for them the higher their ranking would be in the civilian world so we had nothing and I remember I was given jobs I was given one job to do to make abbreviations up for every job title in the army and I remember I made the Washington Post on that not by name because some of my abbreviations were longer than the job titles and they thought what kind of an did this and years later the Washington Post would become very important anyway um I would write short shy we were at Fort Myer Virginia across a little thing from the Pentagon and every night I would go to the Pentagon and write my short stories and I never got anything published it was just horrible and then after military I came to New York and I was going to Columbia but my grades at Overland were so shitty I couldn't get into Columbia so I got in a the head of the music department a wonderful man named Douglas Moore got me in and I got a master's at Columbia and I didn't know what I was going to do in my life and then I thought I know what I'll do I'll get a PhD but then I realized I have no language skills and that would have been an extra two years to learn two languages and I desperately I was living with my brother who was at this point a failed playwright we're all in our 20s in candor who was not successful yet he was giving voice lessons and I realized I'd gotten to masters and I wanted to be a writer I'd shown no signs of talent no one ever had the least notion and I would succeed as a writer and I went back to Highland Park and in a frenzy of three weeks I wrote my first novel and I remember so clearly I was on page fifty and I'd never been on page twenty before because the short stories were all short and I wrote the novel I had met a guy in the army who had met an agent so I called up the agent who was just starting wonderful man named Romo krendl and I said can I send you my novel and he said sure and he knew one editor at klav and he sent the novel to the editor and they had a very odd reaction to it they said we'll publish it if you'll double it in length which was very strange so I went frantic and I doubled it in length and sent it back and was waiting to hear now I never had anything published ever ever ever I had shown no signs of talent and I got a phone call that morning I was alone in the apartment in New York that they had accepted the book and candor came home about two hours later and he said have you heard about the book and I said yes and he said and then I said they're going to publish it and he said Oh Billy witches he's the only one who calls me Billy isn't that wonderful as everyone thrilled and I said I haven't told anybody and he realized I've been walking around having a catatonic fit because I didn't know how to deal with his news and candor said would you like me to help and I said how would we do that he'd say well we'll sit at the desk and I'll call people and dial them and tell them your book was taken and that you don't want to talk about it you can say isn't it wonderful and they would say yes and then we dial it next person and that's what we did we tailed everybody we knew and said Billy's book is we'll take and that was how I started and I still am staggered no one remotely found I could ever succeed as a writer and when I when I got my masters the only the only job offer I got I think was from my high school in Duluth Minnesota that said I could come and teach English and I didn't want to do that I didn't want to go to Duluth and teach English and probably what would have happened to me was I had an uncle in who was in advertising in Chicago and I think probably he could have gotten me some kind of menial job in an ad agency if I and then I wrote the novel and that changed everything but it's still freakish to me that any of this happened I felt they'll find me out and what I had to do was write a novel every year so that next year because you know what I did was I was living in New York and I go to the movies every day because it was possible it was wonderful 42nd Street at that time had 17 I think movie theaters that showed double features and you could go down it hadn't become dirty yet and I'd go down there I didn't know what there was a double feature house that played westerns and one that played comedies and what you know was you could go see anything foreign film double features and that's really those years where I got my movie education seriously I mean I went to movies all the time when I was a kid but I just went to a shitload of movies those years and I wrote a novel that was temple ago came out in 57 then I had a novel came out in 58 and I went to Broadway which is a disastrous thing for anybody to do a novel in 1960 and then I wrote a very I wanted to write a long novel don't ever write along though and it took me a long long time it was it was the book club boys and girls together eventually it changed a lot of things in my life and I had gotten to by was a thousand pages typed as a long and I had gotten halfway through I stopped for a year and a half to do theater and when I came back I was blocked which is every writers nightmare and I didn t know I had six hundred pages typed and I didn't know what to do and one day I read an article I think in the Daily News the big crime at this time was the Boston Strangler and the new theory in Boston was that there might be two Boston Strangler and as I was walking up to my office an ocean never happened before maybe once again an idea dropped into my head which never happens which was what if there were two Stranglers and one of one of them got jealous or the other and I called up some friends and said I've got this idea for a novel but I want to write my long novel and they said well if you can write this strangler but quickly why don't you do that maybe I'll get you juiced up to finish up the long book and so I wrote the strangler book in ten days and it was became a novel and it became a movie was called no way to treat a lady and the reason I'm going on about this is I wanted to make it seem longer than it was so I had a ton of chapters because each new chapter I could start on the top of the next page and I think there were probably 50 or 60 chapters in a 150 page book was a weird looking book and the reason I go into this was because that's what got me in the movie business a lovely actor named Cliff Robertson somehow got ahold of no way to treat a lady and he came to my apartment and he said I read your screen treatment and I'm everything 'king that wasn't a screen treatment that was a novel but because of all the chapters and sometimes will be a one-sentence chapter and then the next page and he said and that his career his great successes of a nun television but that when the movies happened he didn't get the parts so he had optioned a marvelous short story called flowers for algernon by Daniel Keyes and when I write a screenplay and I had never seen a screenplay and so he left and I was talking to my wonderful van wife Eileen and I said I've gotta go down to tun down to Times Square was midnight or 1:00 in the morning and see if I can find what a screenplay looks like so there were bookstores that were open late in Times Square in those years and there was one I don't know what it was that was published at that time and when talking 64 and I bought it and I brought it home and I looked at his screenplay and I realize I could never write in that form because the screenplay is all double-spaced fade and on double-spaced bill double-spaced he is sitting in a chair blah all that and I really I could never write in that form and and I didn't and then for some reason Robertson I was writing than a screenplay for him but I hadn't done remotely anything on it yet and he asked me to come over and doctor a movie which I did for he was shooting a movie I think Sean Connery was supposed to play the lead and then he couldn't do it so they had a Reno changed the dialogue around and I did that for a couple of weeks then I came back finished flowers for algernon sent her off to Roberts and fired me immediately I never been fireman twas a horrifying experience and he got sterling Sullivan to write him and the movie was Charlie Wright he won the Oscar not a sentence of mine was in the screenplay but that's how I got in the movie business all a fluke huh I mean if cliff robertson doesn't miss read my mind think it's a screen treatment he never asked me interesting and I never and I said I was 33 years old and I never ever seen a screenplay nobody this has any interest in our business now I can say that there's a screenwriting convention that happens every year in California and it used to be before the crash thousands of kids came from all over the world and they would listen to agents would come and people would you know talk about how to make it in the movie business so how do you feel about that whole sort of orthodoxy of screenwriting with the books and the Robert McKee's and the okay I remember I listen to him but he's very good I mean he really is a good speaker I heard him once I'm letting her to a lecture he gave he's a very skillful fellow there are no rules on this things happen I mean when I think of there's no way if I wrote much casting in it which is the most successful movie I ever have been or will be connected with they don't make that movie they don't make a Western the only way they might make it is if mr. Eastwood felt an urge to make a Western and he got together with George Clooney and he directed it whatever I don't know but otherwise they don't make westerns westerns flop I mean John Wayne was the biggest star John Wayne couldn't get arrested in them the greatest dancer that ever lived Fred Astaire couldn't get arrested now what part I mean what part have you seen in a movie that Fred Astaire could have played they don't make Fred and Ginger movies anymore they don't do it it's all different and when you think about those giant stars of my childhood Gary Cooper what is Gary Cooper going to do that what is Jimmy Stewart going to do are any of them going to get are they they'd be on television they'd all have TV shows that would be how they earned a living but I don't think I'm when you think of with a big star we live in a time right now 2010 I don't think this has ever happened in the history of sound there's one movie star and that's Will Smith and yes Johnny Depp put him in a pirate movie sure but Will Smith in anything the way they the way they look at movie is out in Hollywood is does the movie open which means the first weekend does it do business and the reason they pay stars these obscene amounts of money or used to was because they felt the stars would open the picture Tom Cruise will open a picture well he doesn't anymore he has a movie coming up this summer if it's a big hit maybe not a lot Tom Cruise again but it goes very fast one of the reasons actors are the way they are is because it's not going to last and they know it and they know it and it's scary for them you never moved out there you know I don't like California I have no sense of direction I hate to drive I had a wonderful summer the Butch Cassidy summer but that was a different world you know we George Hill and I met every day at his office on the Fox lot for the day and we talked about this and talked about that in this line in that line and they wouldn't do that now was like the summer we spent working on the script then we had Redford and Ross and Newman in for ten days the three of them just killin myself and the three actors and they were all so gorgeous and I remember I was walking back to hills office one day and he said in a quiet rage I feel like a mutt because they were going to here were these three gorgeous they are and they were and I think of the three Ross was the best horseback rider I've always thought that I've been told that I'm hosting but and then we had the crew in for like two weeks we had everybody in and the editor and the cameraman and blah blah talking what problems do you have with this what do you have well we're gonna have trouble making that work well mama so that when the shoot actually happened the movie went like a dream because we had dad an amazing amount of work on the script and on location before the movie shot they wouldn't do that today the novel I mentioned no way to treat a lady which was published I think in 64 was published under a pseudonym Harry Longbaugh which was the real name of the Sundance Kid so this is five years before the movie came on so I'd obviously been trying to there was not a lot about them at this point we didn't know anything we still don't know really anything about longbow we think he was from we think he was born and brought up in New Jersey and he was clearly as good with a gun as anybody at that time and he was and he went to South America with Butch Cassidy Cassidy was a fabulous figure there are only two figures in the history of the West who were famous at that time when they were alive one of them was Jesse James and one that was cat city cassidy was so well liked this happened if he was being followed by someone he would go up to your house and say hi I'm Butch Cassidy the sheriff is after me can you hide me in the basement and they say sure come on in but everybody loved it he was this marvelous strange figure who had no violence in the never shot anybody he went to South America and he wasn't he in the Sundance Kid we're friends now why in the worried that was wonderful material and one of the great stories about this is true as a young man he's in jail and the governor of the state and I'm going to say it was Colorado says I'll make you a deal if you promise me you'll go straight I'll let you out I mean he was not in for murder he was in new whatever I'll release you from prison all you have to do is tell me that you'll never commit crimes again and Cassidy said I can't do it he said but I'll make you a deal if you'll let me out I promise I'll never do anything in Colorado again and the governor took the deal and he never did anything in Colorado again it may have been I don't know what state it was and I've been why but he was made what but he was an amazingly likable figure Cassidy was and that he had arguably the biggest gang and he ran it I mean it's ridiculous why would why did they all follow Butch Cassidy but they did until Harriman they robbed Raylan damn it's like the movie you know and I'd make much of that up they robbed real and eh Harriman it was a billionaire at that time whatever the equivalent would have been went nuts that Butch Cassidy kept robbing history so he formed the greatest law outfit and super posses a super posse yeah and he had six guys from around the country who were the top lawman in the America and he got them all together and he said all you got to do is captured Butch Cassidy and when Cassidy heard about it he realized they would kill him so that's why he went to South America I mean the idea of going to South America was insane but you know he was it's a wonderful he was a wonderful figure not like really anybody else so you wrote it on spec basically a brunch I tended to do that a lot I wrote my novels on spec etc etc that means not having a contract by rodebush on spec and I had a very great agent named Everett Ziegler and he decided to have an auction and everybody turned it down except one studio and they wanted to change which was the studio guys said they can't go to South America we'll buy this if you don't have them go to South America and I said but they went there and the studio guy said to me I don't give a all I know is one thing and then this great line John Wayne don't run away and of course John Wayne didn't run away it was a very unusual thing for a Western hero it's one of the other things that made the story so wonderful and so I rewrote it changing almost nothing and Ziggler auctioned it again and every studio wanted intercept one and there was this insane auction and I have to mention the number it was sold to Fox Richard zanuck and David Brown blessing for $400,000 which now we're talking about what 1967 whatever it was a shitload of money VIN but it was really a freakish amount of money now and it got in all the papers because nobody at this time knew anything about screenwriters because all I knew is that actors made up all the lines and directors and all the visual concepts and the idea of this obscene amount of money going to this lives in New York or on a Western drove them nuts that was the most vicious stuff and when the movie opened the reviews were pissy because they hated me and the movie basically caught on and became what it became but it was the writing of the screenplay and the amount of money that it went for that basically changed everything in my life I think I've written a couple of things and hadn't gotten made and then Harper and then there was something else and then I wrote butch I mean I wrote butch my second daughter was born and I think 65 and we moved to Princeton because I'd spend a little time go to school where when I spent a little time in Princeton your teaching no I was just basically out there I became a teacher later and we decided to move to Princeton we were gonna have a second kid it's a great town blah blah blah blah blah and now I'll tell historians it's a huge change in my life we moved to Princeton I am planning to be a writer a guy who I had met who was the writing professor came up to me and said I have a chance suddenly for sabbatical would you take over and be the writing professor next year yeah I've always thought I'd like to teach teaching writing and Princeton there weren't that many kids that take writing I'll do it so I taught writing at Princeton at that that was the over I wrote butch over Christmas vacation in Princeton New Jersey I mean I've been working on it for I don't know how many years and I tend once I have the confidence that I know what I'm doing to write quickly in movies in other words I don't know what it took me three weeks whatever it was but I've been working on it for X years so you don't know and I had done apparently a quality job in my teaching there that year and I got the same guy who was coming back said would you take over and be the other writing teacher here at Princeton and I thought well we like for instance so and so and so and so yeah so I was going to be a professor of writing at Princeton University and I didn't hear from the guy and I didn't hear from the guy and finally I ran into and he said oh god I've been avoiding you and I said what do you mean and he said there was a revolving head of the English department in that time I have no idea if they still have it and the guy who was the head of the English department that year I had mentioned a book I wrote the long book called boys and girls together it became a gigantic hit in paperback and it was about a bunch of people young people who come to New York and up their lives boys and girls gays and straights all kinds of stuff the guy was a head of the English department that year said I will not have our students this is a direct quote I will not have our students worshiping at the shrine of a pornographer I mean the son of a called me a pornographer and I'm such a nice Jewish boy it's so ridiculous and this was I went back to Eileen the kids were then born I called mr. Ziegler and I said I am leaving for instance I don't know that I'll ever come back you must get me something to do somewhere this summer I don't care what it is I want a doctor something this summer somewhere get me out of here so we moved back to New York in that week I think in the forty some years I've been back to Princeton once and I have no intention of ever going back and it's a swell school and all that and Zig got me a job I think in London and we were off that week where I spent this summer and I've lived in New York ever since but it was if either I think of the other two English heads had been running the department that year never would have happened this one guy hated the book so much Wow and like that that was a big and that was a big deal because I was 33 34 maybe 35 and I had planned to be a professor I really thought I was going to be that and then that all changed so I came to New York and I've been a writer ever since interesting yeah fascinating for me well yeah but luck I mean yeah the the role of chance and odd series yeah and chance measuring the period mind though at the same time you you said about this one other question about Butch Cassidy which is that you said that everything could from your Hollywood career came as a result of the cliff scene well it's it's from Gunga Din mmm I think for me the greatest movie ever made is a movie directed by George Stevens called Gunga Din with Cary Grant and Victor McLaughlin and Douglas Fairbanks Jr died Santa Fe Sam Jaffe in the title note and I went to see it at the Alsea and I remember I was so rocked by it that I went back the next day and I remember in grammar school everybody was stunned that I'd gone back to see a movie again and I remember some kids said to me how could you go again when you knew when you knew who won something like that and and I didn't Gong it in I've seen it at 16 times my best gunga din story for me is the day I got out of the Army in 1954 I was back in my small town in Illinois and there's an Army Post Fort Sheridan about two miles away and a friend of mine who was getting out and I called him and I said you know I'm back when are you getting up my mama and he said you'll never guess what's playing on the post tonight Ganga did and I said because I saw it every chance I ever got and I knew it by heart I said I'll be there and he said there's a problem you have to be in uniform so the day I got out of the service I got back in uniform and snuck on to Fort Sheridan so I could see Gunga Din again that's how much I loved it I am moved I've written this and I believe it's still true I am moved for reasons I don't understand more than anything by what I call stupid courage and the two best examples I know or D I don't want to spoil the plot among it in but at the end of young addenda heroes are all shot to and the waterboy Sam Jaffe is also wounded and there's a tower and the British troops are going to get massacred by the evil the evil criminals and Cary Grant says the Colonel's got to know and he indicate use them as a trumpet and Goong it in crawl crawls up to tempo to goal which I love my first novel is called and blows his bugle and gets killed but the British are safe and that was so moving for me and the other thing that moved me out of control was one of the great musicals that were written this poor you invest playing the Gershwins and Porgy is a and he's got a goat cart and it's down south and he's in love with the town building his name is Bess and there is an evil person in the thing called sportin life was a drug pusher and he gets us down south and he convinced its Beth to come to New York with him and he gives her drugs and they go off to New York and poor he's in jail because he has killed the town bully and then he gets out of jail and he comes back and he's crippled you know and he's on a cart and you just sit there in the audience to kick oh god mess is gone what's he gonna do he's got no life he's a mama and he says where's Bess and there's an embarrassment from the people ooh and then they say she's gone for you she's gone to New York and there's a pause and he says three words he says bring my goat and when I heard that I got so hysterical because I realized poor gig was going to go on his goat his goat cart having his goat pull him from the deep south to New York City and I thought oh my god and I started to sob hysterically and it's at the end of the show and there's curtain calls and chairs I'm still hysterical and I can still remember when we left the theater people would touch me Pat my head and say to my parents is he all right is there something wrong with your son because I couldn't stop hysterically crying so I bet you no stupid courage move so I mean the cliff scene in Butch Cassidy really is a gang of Dean oh it's totally total cutting I knew the Sundance Kid couldn't swim I knew that because all those years I was doing research I found out that most Cowboys couldn't swim it was not a thing that was part of their life and I'm ever thinking that you know I clocked that away and so when you come to the thing in which casting were at the cliff and they're about to get killed by the super posse and Busch says we'll jump and the Sundance Kid says I can't swim that was a big moment at the movies that people just shrieked and then they jump off the cliff and say horse yeah for me it was like and then when Newman says well it's the fall that'll kill us right at home probably kidding but that moment was one of the moments that and the other moment I think that I think they did die that way there's a lot of dispute as to whether they were killed by a but I think the militia got them and that last scene where that they have when they're going to when butch says let's go to Australia and then they go out and get shot that wart because they never talk about the fact that there's a militia out there that they're bleeding to death as they speak and they're going to die they just talk about can we go to Australia it's got nice beaches whenever the dialogue is and you could learn to swim and the kids that swimming started for it but here they are talking about going to Australia and they know they're going to die and that's again for me stupid courage that worked that worked and it was oh I got to tell a wonderful story halfway through shooting he'll has me out to look at like the first hours of dailies that he's done and the words wonderful and we're going to a sat after I'd seen hours and hours and hours and stuff and it was just when they were going to Mexico for the South American sequence and this is a directing story we're walking to the set and a guy walks past and he's carrying a hat he says hat okay and he'll nuts and then we go on the rest of our walk and subtly he'll almost drops to his knees because he realized what the guy was saying is this hat that I am showing you okay for South America I think because if he and go it was the wrong hat and if they had gone to Mexico and the Sundance Kid didn't have a hat that was the same hat that he was wearing in New York or wherever it was they're they have to stop shooting someone has to fly from Mexico to Los a.m. whatever whatever and I'll never forget that because directors have that kind of problem because if there's a thing if you need something in your director and you need this for a shot you need that kind of crowd that kind of hat you better have out of your I had Harper and Butch in the 60s and there was other stuff but I mean those were the two and then I'm trying to think there was a long period Oh God when was i a leper I wrote about it was when I wrote this season no it was when I wrote adventures in this green tree and I hadn't realized that I had basically I had written some movies that hadn't gotten made right and suddenly I was a leper and the phone didn't ring well you wrote a great movie that I love which is the great Waldo pepper yeah that was neat that was for George Hill you know that was only because George lived old airplanes right and whatever no but there was stuff it's just the interesting thing about Waldo pepper it was Redford and he'll again and the advanced hype was terrific and we had a sneak in Boston and I think it was Susan Sarandon 'he's first big part and she was wonderful and there's a scene where she's trapped on and on the airplanes on the you know old old old right lane and she's frozen on this airplane wing and and Waldo makes a plane to plane transfer and goes over and rescues her but she loses her grip and she falls to her doom the audience went nuts they felt so betrayed I never felt more panic you know I thought they might attack us because there were people getting up and in a rage because we had done this and the reason I mentioned this is today if we had seen that it's a half a day's reshoot all you have to do is put some footer in the same dress bobbing up out of the lake and waving or fist and anger up in Waldo and there's and she's fine but we didn't do that then we didn't do the reshooting which happens now which is a big part of a movie making there we didn't do that and what are we talking about 40 years ago it was I mean we never thought part of it was Hill but we never thought of reshooting it was never mentioned by anybody know we can do this because it's an easy reshoot however seeing it at the old River Lake right yeah so how did you learn if you had not seen a screenplay before and the ones that you saw or they think to be a rabbi again I've been very lucky in that I've only written movies I want to write in other words when I got offered a special-effects movie I know I couldn't do it and you can only do what you can do I think that sounds something but you know the other thing that I wrote that caught on a very screenplays or structure you're telling a story and you've gotta basically you've got to believe in the story that sounds really corny but you do you can only write what you think you can make play and I think for anybody who's starting out if you try and do something that you don't give a about you're not going to get at me and I was very lucky in that the movies that I wanted to do got made in there for a long period at least for the first 20 years of my career anywhere all movies I wanted to write and you were never one for pitching you know I only pitched once in my whole life and I pitched for friends at Castle Rock and I was so awful I quit after a few minutes I couldn't you know it's it's my problem I just couldn't do it and you know I got very I was very I was very in demand for a long time out there because Harper was a hit great line the producer of Harper we went up to him Newman's house in Connecticut and I remember walking talking about the script and we walked around the streets the back streets of I think Westport and he was the two best stars I've ever worked with our Eastwood and Newman they're just they were fabulous and I remember with Nolan he and pebbles and every time a car would come by he throw a pebble in it woods so his back was to the car so no one stopped and said oh my god that Paul mentleman and he said he would do it and we drove back into the city and the producer said you don't know what just happened do you and I said no it's my first movie and he said you just jump past all this and that was true because Paul Newman said he'd do it so the movie got me he was that biggest star in those days and and had a fabulous career can you tell the story of the opening credits sequence for Harper how that came to be and what it was I got a call from the director saying I don't like being on this set first of all I have a tendency to up the shot I tend to stand in an area where the cameras going to move and and it's boring for me I don't want it I never wanted to direct i no understand actor I never remotely except when I was in my you know hot streak whatever and people won't want me to direct I would never want to do it you know it was ridiculous and the director said we need a credit sequence and I thought what that it was my you know I didn't know about movies but I knew what I know what the credits were there are those things that come up to start and I thought well he's got to wake up in the morning all right about him waking up so I did and I got the notion that he was out of coffee and he was living alone and how he was a detective and he was living alone he was divorced whatever had a miserable life and he's out of coffee so he has to make his coffee with coffee grounds in the garbage and then he made his coffee and there's a moment where he subsidence a look of sheer horror comes over his face and when I went to see the movie they were having a screening of it in New York and I went to see it there was this huge laugh which I had not known was going to be there and one of the reasons I think when he knew one's face when he sipped his coffee was a huge laugh and that's what people were talking about the movie was a big success a good success and one of the reasons it worked I think was that moment in the beginning when he makes that face the audience just liked him from dinner the other story which is true when I went to see the this sleep the screening I walk in it was a guy at the door and he didn't have my name and he said who are you and I said I'm a screenwriter and he said I don't know if I can let you in and I'm Eileen said he's the screenwriter for krycek he wrote it so the guy let us in but I mean that was also a good example of the power of the screenwriter nobody wanted you around well you said you said that screenwriters rank somewhere between the the man who guards the studio gate and the man who runs in the men who run the studio yeah I think that's you know they it's it's an odd most screenwriters I think are only doing it because they want to get on to other things they want to direct I think most screenwriters really want to direct and I understand that because a director a makes more money but be s power and you can if you're lucky as a director and you have talent as a director I mean I think it's a terrible life but it's better in many ways in Vegas Green River I mean it's not movies are not movies are a very very odd way to make a living they really are because for everybody it's not just stars that lose it directors nobody wants this director anymore nobody wants that writer nobody wants that editor a lot of technicians have long careers it was a great great editor just idd Allan and she had been around I mean she didn't start too young as she was a woman and there was prejudice in those years but I mean she ran a launch it a wonderful run but a lot of technicians if they're really skillful cameramen and editors can have long careers there's a documentary out now about screenwriters and what's interesting is screenwriters tend to tell the same story because most of us have the same experience these are people who have had careers but you have the same things that didn't work it's interesting you're talking about directors so because you you talk about the perplexing what you call the perplexing relationship between the writer and director you say that the writer needs to be as supportive of the director as possible yet you've also called them insecure lying well I think basically that's true I mean a lot of directors are wonderful people Ron Howard the two nicest people I've ever met in the movie business are Richard Attenborough in England and Ron Howard here in terms of just playing nice decent professionals but most directors are it's weird because it's hard doing it because you don't oh my god you can't get you can't get this room I thought we had this room sewn up no we don't have it we have to go here or it's raining out or there's a million things that can go up the can screw up a director and most directors it's hard I mean George Hill is the best director I've ever worked with Jordan worked that much George would basically not work for like a couple of years and then would do two movies back-to-back and why he worked that way I don't know I don't know it was his rhythm but it wasn't that he wasn't wanted because it was offered everything but I mean a lot it's a strange and if you have a movie that's a flop and you're the director they remember that I mean you got to look up people's careers a lot of guys and a long time of years between words it's because the studio the last movie flopped they don't want you so has never been a desire on your part you never had any desire to drink I would have died rather than to it I wouldn't know what I wouldn't know what the to say to an actor you know there I mean actors one things about actors it's true like everybody else even though they're cuter than we are they're very insecure and when an actor wants lines changed you don't know is he really saying I don't like this line is he really saying I want more lines is he really saying I want everything in this seem to be about me what do they really say I don't know I mean they're they're very peculiar you know why I don't know I I don't know why actors say yes I'll do this part I don't understand them and they are what they are but in the case of Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy you had a great example of an actor st. not not worried about his co-star not worried about the co-star getting more attention or getting more lines or no but that was Newman Newman was I mean he was remarkable figure I think one says that's about actors I was so and so as but Newman really was but it got I remember this is an awful story I wrote a movie and the 90s it was a very successful Western name maverick and James Garner playing Mel Gibson's he turns out his father and I thought Paul Newman women great for the part because he looks like me and I went to mr. Newman and showed him the script and he had some suggestions and then he said let's do it and I remember he hit is that what the hell let's do it and then there was a pause now this is Paul Newman and he said I hope they don't lowball me meaning I hope the studio doesn't try and chintz me out of whatever my salary should be and I said that's not going to happen it did happen it did happen they low-balled Paul knew and the big female star that time was meg Ryan and they low-balled her and suddenly Mel Gibson I was told is who was a giant star at this point got in a rage because he didn't want to be the only star in the movie so they went to James Garner that day and he said yes and Garner had been in the you know and it was a very very good and they went to Jodie Foster and off more money than she never been offered and she said yes are they suddenly over a weekend had their cast but it was you know why would they I still don't know how anybody would lowball how can you basically take one of the great figures in film history and offer him enough money less than he felt it really wasn't a greedy man and I don't know it's a strange thing but that's that was a horrible story because Paul was probably Newman was probably 70 mm-hmm wonderful looking always you know yeah the eyes everything just everything you said that he had it all to do over again you'd have written everything you've written except for all the President's Men yeah it was a terrible experience was in swell movie mm-hmm it is but it was a it was just a complicated film as you know I wrote about it once and it in a book and it was just that's another movie they don't make today I mean even if a big star wanted to make it which Redford was then a big star it was just a very unpleasant experience and the movie it doesn't matter the movie had some wonderful things and I think the actors were swell and we got through it but it was a very here's the deal it doesn't matter if you have a shitty experience on a movie maybe eight people on earth know that I on a shitty experience on that movie because I wrote about it in the book but other than you don't does it matter it doesn't matter the movie itself whatever is up there on the screen or on your TV shadow and your little whatever those things are no that's what matters do you like that experience of being around that movie for that period of time and it doesn't matter if you have a good experience of a bad experience except to the particular person you know did the director have a shitty time you know whatever I don't know it was such a complicated story and so many different characters and and oh god the names were so terrible on them terrible but it was Bob Woodward who was one of the writers of it was a huge help to me and the movie doesn't work as well as it does if he wasn't as helpful as as he was then there's gone on having a fabulous career but it's like just in general whether I have a good experience or a bad experience making a movie writing a movie I mean let's talk about the writing of a movie writing for me my work habits are I can't do anything until I think I know what I'm doing and I only know what I'm doing when I know the story from beginning to end and then what I do is I'll put on my wall I'll tape to the wall a yellow thing maybe with 15 or 25 numbers it'll say interview rain whatever it is and the rain means that when I'm going home today there's a storm and some people are hurt because there's lightning whatever it is right so I'll just put a few words down but that's really the story of the movie so and once I have those words up on the wall I can write the movie and as I said I mean one of my favorite writers ever Graham Greene a very very great writer used to count the words and I think he wrote 300 words a day and when he got to his 300th word he stopped middle of a sentence Greenway would stuff you know what I got me well that's crazy but that worked for him and there's no but once I know what I'm doing once I have the notes up on the wall I tend to be able to write fairly quickly and that's that's what what that's me telling the story of the movie that I want to tell or that I think I can tell and that's the way it works for me everybody else is different I now write at home mm-hmm but I had an office for years then go up there and or whatever but the main thing is it's someplace quiet and I think that basically what we do there is no there are no rules for writing you know as I said at the start of all is the fact that we're talking about my writing career the fact that this happened is just inconceivable as Mazzini would say you know why I decided to write a novel when I had never written one why not you know why did I want to it's crazy it's just it was a bizarre experience and makes no sense but here we are how do you tell the difference between what seems like a great idea is something it's faux I just think it's something I can make play I remember I was talking about stupid courage I read a book when I was a little boy called Scarface the score story of a grizzle have no idea if it's in print it was about a huge bear and his adventures and bla bla bla bla bla and at the end of the book Scarface is old walking along a cliff edge and avalanche starts and he doesn't try and run to the end of the edge he turns gets up on it and fights the rocks as they carry him to his death well I couldn't stop crying for hours and I didn't know why I mean basically it was that same thing that moves me so basically I mean there were three famous movies that I've turned in The Godfather which I loved is a novel kind of loved it but I had just done something to do with crime if it was butch and I didn't want to write another crime story and not on illogically that feels right yeah and the second one was the Graduate which I didn't get the movie I think is wonderful Bubba moment I didn't get it and the third one was Superman which I desperately wanted to do because I was I am a comic book nut but I remember them saying we need a star and I knew enough to know that no movie star was going to place it for me I met Warren Beatty once we were taught I was a very smart fellow and they wanted him to be Superman and they gave him the costume and I think this is true I think he told me he went and he put it on walk outside of his house looked at himself and thought what the am i doing and Woodman took it off yeah but I knew that no man we're gonna get eastwood you know but plenteous was not going to this is a long time ago but you're not going to get a movie star to get in that stupid costume and I knew that but they said no we're going to get a star and of course they didn't they got the lovely Christopher Reeve no longer with us and was wonderful in the movie but those are three movies that I look back on and it would have been wrong I mean the Graduate was not a big deal it was a small novel mm-hm but I didn't know how to make away I didn't get it the novel is different that means I mean I've forgotten who wrote the script a hell of a script but they made change I'd be like Godfather I just can't remember turning down Godfather loving it I mean usually when you love something you can't but I think it's I didn't want to do a crime thing I think I don't know why I can't remember there was was there another gangster movie that I did or something I can't remember what but those are I don't regret them I mean the only one I wish I'd written of the three that I wanted to write was the Superman and I was too smart for the room because they insisted on having a star now you wouldn't I think if you were doing a special effects movie now you would know enough you're not going to get Will Smith to play maybe you will if you're lucky but you're probably not going to get him you're going to get somebody unknown or somebody who's not famous yet well what about adapting I mean you're talking about adapting novels and adapting someone else's work as opposed to adapting your own I mean you've you've done both you've adapted well you know I basically when you when you're doing it it's all the same thing you gotta you've got to like the story you've got to think I can make this play I can make this play and if you have that confidence I mean I don't think any of us are ever confident about anything we write God knows I never was and I remember I'll talk about Princess Bride I don't like my writing I should say that I never have liked it I don't like it I've only liked two things I've ever written I like much casting and I like the Princess Bride and the Princess Bride I was going to California my kids were a little I said I'm going to be gone I'll write you a story what do you want it to be about one of them said princesses one of them said brides nice and that'll be the title well I wrote a couple of pages that I don't think exist anymore in Los Angeles then I came back and I had a lot of scenes I had the fencing scene I had a lot of stuff but I didn't know how to do it and I remember walking around the city because I really wanted to write this for my children and I couldn't make it work I couldn't figure it out and I was going to never write it and then one day I got the notion that I didn't run it was written by this other figure named Morgenstern and all of a sudden that meant I could go from one good part to another to another and all of a sudden it opened up for me if that doesn't happen Marathon Man only exists because one day I was walking I think it's 47th Street that we're talking about 40 years ago the diamond is going sure and in those years it was filled with Jews who had concentration camp marks from under arms and stuff and I remember walking on the street and taking Jesus Christ one of the world's Most Wanted Nazi was walking on this street suddenly the rest of it happened but if I don't walk that Street that day or if it's winter and I can't see anybody's marks I never write marathon if I hadn't thought of the fact that somebody else wrote Princess Bride it never is written it's all fluky how it happens god knows but it's always for me a crapshoot it's stuff you know if I don't read that paper of what's it there there are two Stranglers I never write no editor a lady which is what got me in the movie business I mean a lot of this stuff is it safe is one of the great lines to me yeah I don't work because there's an ambiguity there that you don't know for a long time working well that was a great thing working for mr. great Olivier story who was the greatest actor that ever lived arguably melilla he had been ill I was working with John Schlesinger no longer with us Marathon Man was a thriller john was not known for doing it but he had done a movie that he thought was going to tank and he thought this could save his career around here he does not hate a look as many maybe it was I don't know but he thought it was going to take so we're in London and we try and get Olivia Olivia has been he was very ill with a bunch of diseases and Schlessinger went to see him I thinking nobody knew if he'd live and then I remember this marvelous time Richard Widmark a wonderful actor was in London and called up Schlesinger and said I know you want Larry can I read for you and Widmark got very famous in his first movie because of death playing an evil figure named Tommy Udo who pushed the woman down the stairs and he came and he was fabulous as well as the evil Nazi as you can if you think I'm moving kiss of death and then Olivier got strong enough to do it and he's bald in the movie vault in the book bah-bah-bah and we were terrified that Olivier who was a very ill man and had been gorgeous as a young star might not want to have all his hair taken away and I wouldn't have blamed him so we had a barber and we hid him in the basement of the place where we were doing rehearsal and so Lawrence walked in and said this les injure first words out of his mouth we should really do something about getting rid of my hair and so Danny went to the barber and he came back bald and he was just fine with it starting yeah he was he was the fabulous figure we'll talk a little bit about agents have you have you had a number of them I mean who have been here well look I live in New York I basically think of myself still as a novelist who happens to write screenplays even though I haven't written the novel in 25 years 20 years and I've written a bunch of nonfiction over the last decade or so but I haven't written a novel I remember the first agent I had I mentioned Joma krendl who was the agent for temple goal and I think Joe Joe became I know if I have this right we're going back a long time Joe had been an editor and he didn't like it because he was dealing with agents all the time so he became an agent to deal with writers and he went around the country when he was just starting and he went to Ollie's schools and had writing programs and he picked up I think Philip Roth he picked up him who was a kid and you know but he picked up a bunch of writers and then Joe was my agent for several years and then he got bored with it and he went out and lived in Princeton and there was a wonderful woman named Annika McCall there were at this time all the big agents in New York for books where women there was Monica McCall andand we would and I can't take it the fairy right now and they had everybody in Monica became my agent but I didn't need a movie agent in the beginning and then what eight years later after I'd been an album whatever mr. Ziegler was a wonderful figure graduate of Princeton really a bright bright man and he then he died so do you have it do agents really do anything yes Zig did I mean the auction was a huge thing but he liked it was an odd thing that mr. zanuck he liked at doing auctions when he got a script that he thought he could sell for a lot of money he would call up all the studio heads that he knew and say I've got this terrific script I'm sending it to you Friday you have to have an offer in my Monday vote and that was what he didn't he and he he liked doing that and and he was very successful in but agents I don't know what to say you need one you desperately need one but it's a strange life they have because people are always leaving I mean it sounds like the world we live in everybody's always leaving everybody but it's true I mean almost nobody it said oh yes so it so has been raging for forty years come on you always hear that someone says it to it whatever it is I know all I can say is you hustle you have to not mind rejection you have to send stuff off to an agent with a letter and pray that somebody in the office will read it and pray that whoever reason likes it and gives it to somebody else in the office and the somebody says wait a minute I think we can sell this in which case you have an agent but they're not your friends that's not what they do and like that but you have to have what I should say we were changing cars we were just talking about that you have this extraordinary year where you were a judge both at a judge at them is your life left absolutely it was just a marvelous experience because everybody on the jury has a different job and when we talk you know we see we'd see each other in like every six movies and we talk about it we like this do we like that what about whatever whatever and it was so interesting not just being around a director and actor but I said photographer in an editor and we all were it was fast and it was a marvelous experience but you were that you judge Khan that was it was Pelle the Conqueror yeah it was well it was such a great yeah incredible movie it was a wonderful it was a wonderful experience now was that during this period there was that you said in the eight years prior to 78 you had seven pictures and then there was an eight-year desert it was a period of eight years nothing happened nothing that made it was amazing one of the things was I mean I got involved with a marvelous figure not dead named Joe Levine and he wanted to work with me because a bridge too far brought him back and he had been in the wilderness he was we did an original screenplay deal and none of the screenplays got made us I mean kind it's one of these things you think about it I wrote a screenplay this is like butch I wrote a screenplay about two pirates which happened one of them was a man named Steve bonnet who lived in this is hundreds of you lived in Barbados and was the richest man in the island it was married to a monstrous very lovely woman but evil and he'd been in the service but he'd never seen action and he got very ill one winter and he thought I might die and he always wanted adventure this is true so we did something totally totally never done before his since he built a pirate ship pirate ships were always stolen bonnet built his own pirate ship got his Butler to find a crew and he went off sailing to be a pirate and he didn't give a if he died he just wanted action and through a wild fluke he attacked the greatest pirate that ever lived Blackbeard and they sailed together for a won and I wrote a movie called the sea kings and I still think it's a fabulous idea for a movie because they had adventures and you know they were they were just totally all Blackbeard wanted to do was get enough money to retire he was so sick of action he was so sick of an adventure all he wanted to do was just get out of it and all Bonnett wanted to do was see some adventure before he died and I had these two guys as my heroes and it was I still think it's a great story and it killed me that it never got me but it never would but Pirates became prominent and Princess Bride yeah yeah but I think the reason the Pirates went there was a big pirate movie that tanked I can't remember what it was and cutthroat island and if something were and they aren't you know loss oh my god pirate movies nobody wants to see and then you know Jerry Bruckheimer did the pirate movies and now every but it was it still I think of Marvel story I think what we do is write what we hope will move us and we hope that you can translate that emotion to the reader whether it's a poem or whether it's a novel or an essay or a movie or a play you want to move people and you want to have people say wait I didn't know that whatever whatever and it's it's tricky it's just tricky Princess Bride though I mean you said that was your favorite that's my one that's what I really loved it I really can look at it with it when I said I don't like my writing I really don't like my writing and that doesn't quite track into my nonfiction because nonfiction it's not you know it's not the writing style that's so important it's what do you you know whatever but when I write fiction I really don't like it I when I when I look at it I almost never I almost ever read anything I've written because it's so horrible for me mm-hmm I just don't like it I wish it was better but Princess Bride I really really like and it prints you far away something that you said you really was a terrific well that was a great experience because Anton Burroughs such a fabulous figure and we got I mean it was an amazing story and a really good book and it didn't work it's funny it didn't work commercially as well as it should have everybody loved it until the audience came and it was long yeah and it was it was not filled with heroic stuff that you could say on John Wayne would've been great in this and it's sort of the anti longest day yeah really was and it was but it was you know you as I said you never know nobody knows anything nobody has the least idea what's going to work and screenwriters are the basis I think of everything because if you have a shitty script even if you had Bergman or Fellini or David Lean it's not going to work as a movie it just is it and everything I think everything begins with this grift and I think when you see a movie that that's not very good one of the reasons is just a script didn't work it's not the elegance of the prose it's not the language for me in terms of movies oh I'm talking movies it's all story that's really all it is if the story works if the audience if you're moved by whatever the goddamn story is you have a chance to have a movie that works and if it doesn't if the story isn't well told or nobody cares about the story you know it's not going to work it just isn't it's going to be you'll say ah you know what I was you know I'm sorry I saw that I don't know a lot of people that walk out of movies I tend not to but you know half an hour in usually if you're bored Erna you really do when you sit there well you've always said you have to get them in the first 15 I think so at the beginning is really what it's it's a weird if there was any logic to it we wouldn't be here the fact is it's not logical and most most it's very hard I don't mean for me it's hard for anybody to tell a quality story you have a good beginning and a middle and an end that works and all that stuff it's just difficult and you look at even the greatest writer directors did turns and you say why well because the story that were telling didn't work not all of really while he was wonderful right some of it was not even Bergman is my hero not all of it was wonderful was it because of Attenborough that you worked on the Chaplin film yes that was because he needed work on it and I doctored it for him and then I got billing I guess but it was funny you know Downey we live in a world but one could argue the two biggest action stars are not John Wayne and Gary Cooper they're Robert Downey and Matt Damon and that's not possible it's not possible in Robert Downey is a giant akun but he is you know when I read a terrific guy and a wonderful actor but when we did Chaplin if you'd said we whose are really going to be an action you'd say what are you smoking but that's the world we live in a lot of it is you know in Matt Damon in the Bourne movies of their marvelous scripts by Tony Gilroy but you know Matt Damon's wonderfully well speaking of Tony Gilroy you had an experience with with Tony and absolute power absolutely he saved my ass I was the movie works it's okay but I was having terrible trouble there were too many characters trying to figure out the story Eastwood is just as fabulous figure I remember when he said he would do absolute power I fly out for a meeting on the script and this is what it's like he'll go through the thing it'll say this scene here can it be shorter and I say anything that would be good and then he goes and could this be funnier it's like I could try and you good and you all of a sudden half an hour later I'd said that's what he does and talk to anybody who's worked with him he's the fastest guy you know he's still I mean he's going to be 80 years old that he's still directing to movies I don't know how he does it but he has a crew that he's all worked with before and it's like lightning it's a marvelous experience what you work with him and I mean I don't know how he does it's amazing my theory on why Newman and Eastwood are the two fabulous figures that they are and were is because they did not make it when they were young they were close to 30 east wind was digging swimming pools in California and Newman was desperate to try and find any kind of work he got and they both got lucky they both got lucky Eastwood told me he was walking in a movie studio to see a friend who had a job not as an actor but as a and a guy stopped him and said excuse me sir are you an actor and Eastwood said yes sir and the guy said we're trying to cast a television show would you come read for us and it was this was in Western that he did that was so raw and the reason that they wanted him was because the other guy they'd already cast was really tall so they needed a tall guy to play rowdy and Eastwood was tall most actors are short one of the things you must know when you're a screen they're not told that's my same experience you had was Celestra Stallone oh yeah that was I was staggered 5/7 absolutely yeah um I believe this is corundum this is a story I think eastwood told me it's his first year on the thing on rawhide he comes home to his wife whatever the wife was and he said I was offering a piece of Western too but I turned it down she said what way he's out at home it takes me to Italy and she says we've never in Italy would they pay you and he says oh yeah $25,000 she said wow we can use that okay so it goes over shoots this Western in Italy comes back to rawhide never hears of the Western again there's another movie that's a gigantic for them and then all over Europe nothing he's ever heard of months later he gets a call from the producer who says Clint Clint could we do eyes will you come while we do our sequel at Eastwood says to what and they change the title from two Fistful of Dollars and no one had told so he said let me see it so they sent him over and he's great Bing you know and I think you rented a little movie theater in his town and had some friends over he says I don't know what this is and he liked it so we did the sequel any of the third one at the end of that he was the biggest star in the world but I mean if he doesn't walk down that hall at that moment no and then the consistency of his stardom oh it's somebody's it was Jordan Airy over nothing nothing remember I think he's the greatest star in Hollywood history I really do but then the director is so freaky that he's become this mad mean arguably this fabulous director has a disk incredible and Newman was fabulous he doesn't direct as much as he minded but I remember Newman did our town to you it was wandering but they were they were both late 20s I think when they broke through so they had years of suffering and whatever and I think that's why they were the decent figures they turned out to be the reason I asked you about absolute power was because you said that you had had screenwriters mess around with your novels but you had never screwed really he'd ever it said describe it to somebody else it's true god yeah it was hard I don't know sometimes you just can't do it I know is there anything finally you want to say yes very no it's just basically it's it's just what we started out with screenplays our structure the story I think is everything and you've got to really try and do stuff you think you can make play it's hard you know it just is you've got to do your job and don't it up and don't square it and just do what you try and tell your story or whatever they want you to do as skillfully as you can and and hope and hope you

Channel: Writers Guild Foundation

Views: 205,973

Rating: 4.9329958 out of 5

Keywords: writers guild foundation, writing, writers guild, screenwriting, screenplay, writers, screenwriters, television writers, william goldman, princess bride, screenplay structure, interview, adventures in the screen trade, what lie did i tell, marathon man

Id: nCs4gdt-mPY

Length: 93min 10sec (5590 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 10 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/dtothelee]

William Goldman speaks in a 2010 interview with the Writers Guild Foundation on the craft and the business of screenwriting. Subsequently, if you haven't read his book Adventures in the Screen Trade, I highly recommend it!

[u/JSAProductions1]

This interview is interesting. I love how Goldman is straight up with the interviewer.

[u/LensPro]

My favorite Goldman book is soldier in the rain.

[u/PackinSteel]

Never saw this before. This is great.

[u/[deleted]]

This man is a treasure.

[u/derek86]

I thought it was adorable when he was like "I don't really like special effects movies... well, I like Jaws"