Adventures in the Screen Trade

Ahmad Sharabiani

Rating: really liked it
Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting, William Goldman

Adventures in the Screen Trade is a book about Hollywood written in 1983 by American novelist and screenwriter William Goldman. The title is a parody of Dylan Thomas's Adventures in the Skin Trade.

Abstracts: No one knows the writer's Hollywood more intimately than William Goldman. Two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter and the bestselling author of Marathon Man, Tinsel, Boys and Girls Together, and other novels, Goldman now takes you into Hollywood's inner sanctums...on and behind the scenes for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, and other films...into the plush offices of Hollywood producers...into the working lives of acting greats such as Redford, Olivier, Newman, and Hoffman...and into his own professional experiences and creative thought processes in the crafting of screenplays. You get a firsthand look at why and how films get made and what elements make a good screenplay.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز شانزدهم ماه مارس سال 2004 میلادی

عنوان: روند اقتباس از دیدگاه یک فیلمنامه نویس؛ اثر وی‍ل‍ی‍ام‌ گ‍ل‍دم‍ن‌؛ مت‍رج‍م ع‍ب‍اس‌ اک‍ب‍ری؛ نشر ته‍ران، س‍روش‌ (ان‍ت‍ش‍ارات‌ ص‍دا و س‍ی‍م‍ا)‏‫، 1377، در 136ص، شابک 9644351797؛ موضوع ف‍ی‍ل‍م‌ن‍ام‍ه‌‌ ن‍وی‍س‍ی‌؛ س‍ی‍ن‍م‍ا - ص‍ن‍ع‍ت‌ - ای‍الات‌ م‍ت‍ح‍ده‌؛ ‫هالیوود (لوس آنجلس، کالیفرنیا)‬ - سده 20م

کتاب درباره ی روند تبدیل یک «قطعه داستانی»، به یک «فیلم‌نامه» است؛ متن آغازین کتاب، مربوط به یک قطعه داستانی، درباره ی آرایشگری به نام «داوینچی» است، که با توجه به آن قطعه، نویسنده مباحثی همچون «موضوع داستان»، «نقش زمان و مکان»، «شخصیت‌ها و نقاط اتکا» ـ که فیلم‌نامه نویس در حین اقتباس با آن مواجه می‌شود ـ را مطرح میکند، وی سپس متن فیلم‌نامه‌ ای را که از داستان «داوینچی» تهیه شده، عرضه کرده، در پایان دیدگاه‌های برخی از همکاران نویسنده را، اعم از «طراح صحنه»، «فیلم‌بردار»، «تدوین‌گر»، «آهنگ‌ساز» و «کارگردان» را، در خصوص اعمال تغییرات لازم، برای بهبود فیلم‌نامه گوشزد می‌کند

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 27/03/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Julio Genao

Rating: really liked it
dishy, delicious, and—shockingly—very, very useful.

a couple years back i thought i'd move to hollywood and write movies for a living.

i love movies.

i write good.

what could go wrong?

everything. everything could go wrong.

because being a screenwriter is exactly like john august describes—except with a simply staggering amount of asslicking and a dash of despair he's too genteel to mention.

the stories, people... the stories. actors are appalling people—and so are studio execs.

recommended.

Scurra

Rating: really liked it
Nobody Knows Anything.

Goldman could almost have saved us the 400-pages of what is still one of the most insightful books about the movie-industry, and just printed his Law on a single page at the front.
But then we'd have missed a glorious roller-coaster ride through Tinseltown stuffed to the gills with anecdotes of such toe-curling detail that you believe every word.
And even now, 25 years later, it still all rings true. Read it, and you too might understand how lucky we are to get the occasional "great" movie. Because it's quite simple:

Nobody Knows Anything.

Seth

Rating: really liked it
Man, William Goldman makes himself out to be a real asshole. He's so irritating, in fact, that after a two-week break away from Adventures in the Screen Trade I cashed in with over 100 pages left, because I couldn't stand the thought of going back to have him bitch at me like my worst film school instructors used to, bitter that a lack of work forced them into talking about their job instead of doing it.

Goldman launches his first fart rocket within the opening 20 pages, tattling four anecdotes to illustrate that movie stars are bad people. He mentions that, out of courtesy, he's only naming two of the actors in question because some of them have recently died. But then he goes on to redact the identities of the deadies, while going right ahead and smearing the two performers who still have careers left to ruin.

That strange blend of bitterness and false modesty permeates the rest of this farrago of a -- what is it, a memoir? A handbook? A two-inch thick advance check? Whatever it is, it's macramed into a few dozen short sections seemingly based on the order of the manuscript pages after a passing bus blew them across Goldman's parquet floor. Each of those section manages to take a swipe at individuals, groups, or imagined coteries of robed gnomes William perceives of having wronged him, the targeted loogies flying from behind a shield forged of "Oh well, what do I know? I'm just a regular guy who fell into a wacky business full of crazy Hollywood types [that also made me rich and famous and got me a book deal to write all about it, but trust me I'm just like you]."

BIll's such a regular guy that, when he came to LA for his first movie biz meeting, he couldn't stand the thought of being picked up at the airport by a chauffeur-driven car and insisted on riding up in front with driver, because that's what regular guys like him and me and you do. I assume that Goldman, so proud of his New York City heritage, had never been in a cab before. Nor realized that lots of regular guys dream of being in a position where rich people send expensive cars to drive them around. But Will shares that story and others like it throughout the book to casually note what a humble, normal person he is, despite the fact that humble, normal people avoid constantly pointing out how humble they are in their books published by Time Warner.

Anyway, Goldman goes on to cheerfully disparage studio execs, actors, directors, actors, audiences, and also actors. He finds page space to belittle the auteur theory and anyone who subscribes to it, insisting that all movies are a team effort, while still blaming his failed movies on everybody else that worked on them. Billy also loves to explain other people's decisions and character traits he dislikes by ascribing thought processes to them, while managing to ignore the fact that he's making shit up out of boogers and ego. Dustin Hoffman refused a scene in Marathon Man that required his character to keep a flashlight in his nightstand, Goldman insists, because Dustin thought it would make him look weak on screen, and every male movie star, deep down, will never allow himself to look weak on screen. I'm curious as to what Goldman thought of Hoffman's Oscar-winning performance six years later as an almost helpless savant in Rain Man.

Between all the self-aggrandizing and payback that Willy skillfully disguises as friendly banter, he throws in some screenwriting advice. As a screenwriter myself, I can say that some of it's quite good, while some is just objectively crappy. He devotes a section to subtext but doesn't seem to have a clear idea of the difference between subtext and basic cinematic storytelling techniques. He writes a lousy four-page movie opening to demonstrate how to write a lousy movie opening and then, of all the scene's lousy features, pinpoints as lousy the only reasonably acceptable one.

Luckily I doubt many writers ever end up taking much advice from Adventures in the Screen Trade, because the book isn't written for them. Actually, I have no idea who it's written for. I can't imagine that the same readers who want mouthfuls of dirt about starlets having affairs with directors or a prison guard's testimony that his wife would crawl on her knees just for a chance to fuck Robert Redford also want to read a glossary of screenplay slug lines or the entire script for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But if you're interested in the movie industry and are willing to weed through 600 pages (and twice as many ellipses), it's sometimes fun to watch the spray of Goldman's vindictive bloodletting. Too bad he leaves you to clean up the mess.

ThereWillBeBooks

Rating: really liked it
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.

This collection of anecdotes, advice, and essays is one of the most engaging pieces of writing that I’ve read. Just an old pro relating his experiences and humbly passing on what he knows. There is a great deal of wisdom to be found in this book. I suppose some could find his tone curmudgeonly, but I like to think of it as old school and iconoclastic, he’s going to tell you how he sees things and not kiss anyone's ass along the way.

“Over the years I have met and worked with a dozen prize-winning American directors, and there is not one whose “philosophy” or “worldview” remotely interests me. The total amount of what they have to “say” cannot cover the bottom of even a small teacup.” Ha! The book is filled with that kind of thing. It's not mean, just honest.

Adventures is up there with Mamet’s Three Uses of the Knife and King’s On writing as far as useful books to would-be writers and storytellers.

Melissa McShane

Rating: really liked it
We've been listening to As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride and it got me thinking that I hadn't read this book in many years, though I loved it the first time. So I bought a copy and dipped into it over the course of four or five days. Goldman's insider's approach is still compelling, though I wondered how much of what he says about how Hollywood works is still true 36 years later. It's also interesting to note some of what he failed to predict, from his assumption that E.T. The Extraterrestrial would win the Academy Award for Best Picture (at the time, Gandhi wasn't out) to his casual comments about women in action movies (i.e. that they slow a movie down--he had no concept of women someday starring in action films). However, the inclusion of the screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid makes the book even more valuable, especially since he also analyzes the screenplay and what works and what doesn't. The only thing that would make this book better, in my opinion, is if he'd written it five years later--so he could discuss The Princess Bride.

Molly

Rating: really liked it
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.

Two big bonuses of this book: Goldman provides his entire screenplay of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and then analyzes what worked and what didn't. He also provides a short story of his that was not optioned by Hollywood. He translates it into a screenplay for this book and explains the choices he has to make along the way: what characters to keep, what scenes to focus on etc…

He then solicits feedback from a suite of movie insiders: a director, editor, cinematographer, etc ... about the resulting work. They give fascinating and practical insights into what they think of this screenplay and what makes a movie work in general, sometimes contradicting one another. Whether you agree with them is another matter.

The only detractor is that the book was written in 1983 and the references to stars include: Robert Redford, Burt Reynolds, etc.. and feel dated, even though the insights into writing are not.

Michael

Rating: really liked it
This is perhaps the best book about screenwriting and the film business ever written.

Oscar winner William Goldman, who wrote such classic films as HARPER, BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, MARATHON MAN and ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN shares his unique, often difficult, experiences working with top directors, producers and stars like Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier.

If survival in the Hollywood film industry is possible, then there is no better "survival guide" than this book, because Goldman tells it like it is. He pulls no punches.

According to Goldman, the single most important fact in the movie industry is that "Nobody Knows Anything".

Most of the book's second-half is a primer on how to write a successful screenplay.

What does Goldman feel is the most important lesson to be learned about writing for films?

1. "Screenplays Are Structure"
2. You protect the "spine" of that structure "to the death".

If you want to work (and succeed) in Hollywood, then this is a book that you must carry around with you...like a Bible.

Nigeyb

Rating: really liked it
The recent sad news of the death of William Goldman reminded me of an episode (October 2017) of the wonderful Backlisted Podcast about his book Adventures in the Screen Trade. What better way to honour the great man's memory than by reading this book?

As a successful screenwriter and novelist, William Goldman was perfectly placed to write one of the definitive insider accounts of Hollywood. If you like cinema then this is a fascinating read. Although written in 1983, with many films he cites from this era, I am sure the process is little changed.

Adventures in the Screen Trade is a sparkling memoir and every bit as entertaining as some of the landmark films he helped create (including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, and Marathon Man).

A great mix of gossip, advice, and insight, Adventures in the Screen Trade remains a complete delight for cineastes - and a valuable trove of advice for anyone hoping to make a career as a screenwriter.

4/5

Linda Robinson

Rating: really liked it
William Goldman is incredible. Prolifically incredible. In several genres. I read this book on 3-18-97 straight through. I know I did because I wrote this quotation:

"Nobody knows anything.

Again, for emphasis...

Nobody knows anything."

Justin

Rating: really liked it
I don't think I have much to say that hasn't been said repeatedly below but yes, this is an excellent behind-the-scenes look at the craft of screenwriting and yes, it's kind of crazy how well it holds up 30 years after it was written. I live in Los Angeles, in the heart of the filmmaking industry, and it seems all I ever hear about is how that industry is going down the toilet. Well, in this book Goldman also laments how the industry is going down the toilet, how they are making fewer and fewer movies, and so on... It would seem that Hollywood can always find something to worry about on the business side, no matter what era it's in. Perhaps any industry can.

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.

And there's a bunch of other good stuff and fun anecdotes as you already know, though those parts actually do feel a bit dated. Sure Butch Cassidy is a classic, but a lot of the films Goldman mentions have been long forgotten. Still he's an engaging storyteller no matter what the topic and he's not too precious about the craft, which is also awfully important to keep in mind for aspiring writers. If there's any profession where some perspective is required on your importance to the engine that pays you, it's screenwriting. Goldman has that perspective.

Sean O

Rating: really liked it
It was an entertaining book, but it didn't know what it wanted to be. A primer on how to hustle as a screenwriter? Amusing anecdotes about the movies he's worked on? A script workshop for tourists and beginners?

Yes all of these. Good, but not great. It could have been split and expanded into two better books, imho.

For fans of Goldman: He's a good writer and an entertaining read.

Ellen

Rating: really liked it
this is a nonfiction how-to-adapt-a-novel-to-a-screenplay memoir by a well-known screenwriter. (All the President’s’ Men, etc). I read it because one of my favorite authors read it when he had to do a screenplay of one of his novels. The author wrote the screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid. He talks a lot about Hollywood and there are some darling little stories about particular stars and directors, then he shows you the actual screenplay for the movie with directions to the actors etc., then he breaks down what is weak and strong about the screenplay. Towards the end he has you read a short story he wrote and then the screen play version. This became my bathroom book. A good read if you plan to write a screenplay but if not I would pass.

Bob

Rating: really liked it
If you're interested in learning how to write screenplays then this is all you need.

Stephen McQuiggan

Rating: really liked it
One thing is clear from the beginning - Bill loves the movies. You would have to, I mean really really really have to, just to put yourself through the torture of writing for them, because that's the message that comes out of this again and again - prepare to be shat on. This is a gentle book; world weary, with a big heart. After detailing the vast amount of work it takes to bring a script all the way to the big screen, it's no wonder Goldman gets so angry at the Auteur theory. My only gripe about an otherwise insightful book is that the author is very hard on schlock horror b movies - a staple of my life for as long as I care to remember.