R.I.P: William Goldman

Interviews and articles about the dean of contemporary American screenwriting who died this week.

Scott Myers

17 Nov 2018 • 3 min read

William Goldman (1931-2018)

Interviews and articles about the dean of contemporary American screenwriting who died this week.

Legendary screenwriter William Goldman died yesterday at the age of 87. His movie credits include Harper, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Stepford Wives, The Great Waldo Pepper, All the President’s Men, Marathon Man, A Bridge Too Far, Magic, Heat, The Princess Bride, Misery, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Chaplin, Maverick, The Chamber, The Ghost and the Darkness, Absolute Power, The General’s Daughter, Hearts in Atlantis, and Dreamcatcher.

This list does NOT include the dozens of movies Goldman contributed his writing services to for which he received no credit — the consummate script doctor. He also wrote three books about the entertainment business: ‘Adventures in the Screen Trade (1983), ‘Hype and Glory’ (1990), ‘Which Lie Did I Tell? (2000).

I own and have read all three of those books. To this day, ‘Adventures in the Screen Trade’ is the single best book I have ever read about the life of a screenwriter in the Hollywood film business.

William Goldman was a giant among screenwriters. Not only because of the many, many movies influenced by his words. Not only because he sold the first spec script in the contemporary era (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for a reported $400K). But because of this:

“Screenplays don’t have to read like an instruction manual for a refrigerator. You can write them as a pleasurable read.”

Goldman’s writing is a joy to read. He invited the reader to pull up a chair and share the journey with him. His scripts have an intelligent, yet folksy charm. Deftly detailed characters. Well-crafted plots. Sharp dialogue. All wrapped up in 120 pages of a writer recounting a story with you over a couple of beers.

He did not suffer fools gladly. I remember going into a meeting at Warner Bros. in which the execs were all atwitter about something that had happened earlier that day. Goldman had been hired to adapt the novel “Memoirs of an Invisible Man,” a project to which Chevy Chase was attached to star when Chevy Chase was CHEVY CHASE in terms of his box office appeal. It was a high profile gig. Goldman, who lived in New York City and hated L.A., flew out to The Coast for a notes meeting on the script he had delivered. The meeting included studio executives, producers, and Chevy Chase himself. They provided script note after script note after script note, and at the end, Goldman simply stood up and reportedly proclaimed, “Fuck it. I make too much money to deal with this shit,” and walked out of the meeting.

Goldman always referred to himself as a novelist, not a screenwriter. I think he did that to provide himself a measure of distance to The Business. He didn’t want to be beholden to decision-makers who made choices in a business in which “nobody knows anything.”

That said, he uplifted the importance of a screenplay to the success of a movie, that without a good script, a movie cannot succeed.

Over the years at Go Into The Story, I have featured Goldman many times. Here are links to just a few of those blog posts:

William Goldman on Rocky

Interview: William Goldman

Screenwriting 101: William Goldman

Written By: William Goldman interview David Koepp

Scene Description Spotlight: “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”

Here are some video interviews with Goldman:

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