What’s wonderful about reading these critiques and learning from them is that this is what you are going to get! Both barrels! And while some of it is right, some of it is also wrong, so the critics aren’t giving you help so much as telling you, YOU’VE GOT EVEN MORE WORK TO DO! There is also an expanded edition of the book, which includes the full screenplay of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, plus Goldman's analysis of the screenplay's strengths and weaknesses, as "Part Three", and moves the "Da Vinci" section to "Part Four". What’s fascinating about the criticisms of the script - which I saw no problem with on first reading - is not just how correct they are about the holes in the script, but about the details that they red flag are minute (my-noot?). The little details are what completely blows the whole premise out of the water! The book is divided into three parts. "Part One: Hollywood Realities" is a collection of essays on various subjects ranging from movie stars and studio executives to his thoughts on how to begin and end a screenplay and how to write for a movie star. Goldman is one of the best storytellers this country has produced, which may seem a bold claim to some, but it happens to be true. His most famous axiom, that “nobody knows anything” is one of those things that grow truer with time and experience. Goldman was referring to success in the movie business, the idea being that when something worked and was a hit, it just kind of worked and nobody really knew why, though everyone with a hand in the production would claim otherwise.

And Deep Throat — the person who guided Woodward and Bernstein through the Watergate years — never said, ‘Follow the money.’ Those iconic words were a line Goldman wrote for the character of Deep Throat in the film All the President’s Men. The personal section terrified me. I hope to see Untimed make the leap to film, as it will make a great one, and it's made vividly clear in Adventures that even a major screenwriter like Goldman is but a candle in the wind before the studio gale. This is made all the more peculiar by the fact that the screenplay is the single most important ingredient that goes into a movie. Film is a highly collaborative and commercial medium, but you really can't make a good movie out of a bad script (unless you rewrite it to be a good script). You can however, make a lousy film out of a great script, or a hit film out of a bad one (Transformers anyone?).This is a true insider's look at the screenwriting business (from the writer of All the President's Men, Marathon Man and – interestingly, the novel of Princess Bride) and interesting for anyone who writes or likes movies because - yes, there are fun gossipy asides about Hollywood (Robert Redford had ego!), but it's focus is on what makes a good story and how to write one that sells as a screenplay. They're not always the same thing. The next section covers how he gets movie ideas, and details four examples and why he didn't pursue them. This is a wonderful book about an incredible life in the real world of make belief. Highly recommended! It's not perfect, but not problematic enough to derail the enjoyment. Some of the anecdotes about movies Goldman wrote are a little meh. "The Princess Bride", arguably his best known novel and script to modern audiences, seems a little passive in its insights, fawning over the pleasurable experience (I guess bad experiences can be more interesting). This, for me as a struggling screenwriter, was perhaps the best takeaway from Adventures in the Screen Trade - that the biz is always hard, it's always going to be hard to break into it, and at a certain point you just need to shut up and write. Goldman never says that phrase exactly but his famous phrase, "nobody knows anything," says more than enough: all you can rely on is our own work, so try to make some good work and let the stuff you can't control take care of itself.

Stars, as opposed to character actors, almost never want to look bad. They know that their time in the sun is temporary and are therefore insecure. That Al Pacino scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is more or less an echo of what Goldman observes here. Has this somewhat changed? It seems to me that some stars now take on character actor roles purposefully while others pursue indie roles to broaden their reach. Goldman has a gift for writing amiable anecdotes about Hollywood. They read very conversational and fun to read, and are aided by Goldman's insight into historically significant figures from film and stuff. It's so interesting to see insights into Michael Douglas' skills as a producer, or Clint Eastwood's stiff cool as a director, and numerous other examples. The last section of the book is a particularly helpful exercise where he takes one of his short stories, wrestles it into a screenplay, and then interviews a cinematographer, a production designer, an editor, a composer and a director about what they would do with his finished product. (The director's critique is withering, and hilarious.) He admits that those interviews were the first time in his career that he had spent more than five minutes alone speaking with any of those film professionals, with the exception of the director.Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2022-01-22 12:07:26 Bookplateleaf 0002 Boxid IA40334723 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier And he replied after some thought, “They claim Eastwood? Eastwood’s the biggest star?” Finally, after another pause, he nodded. “They’re right.” I don’t know if the script will be done by the end of the book — and I seriously doubt it — that’s kind of the point! What I love about this book is that he shows you good scripts, but he doesn’t just leave it at “Write like that!”. He also goes into the specifics of what makes it work. He also shows examples of scripts and ideas that DON’T work and explains why — at least why HE can’t make them work and that’s an important point he makes throughout the book. That there is no ‘one-true-way’ that will work for every idea and every scriptwriter.