"William Goldman - Adventures In The Screen Trade" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goldman William)

Sixteen: The Screenplay

Seventeen: Interviews
Tony Walton
Gordon Willis
Dede Alien
David Grusin
George Roy Hill

Eighteen; The Relay Race

Final Fade-In
Index


Authors note

This book was begun at the greatest time of panic and despair in modern
Hollywood history-late January of '82. Future film scholars may well term
it "the Heaven's Gate era." And certainly that movie received more media
coverage than any other con- temporary disaster.

But only a few enlightened bookkeepers will know for sure if it lost more
than, say. Raise the Titanic! or Honky Tonk Freeway.

During the holiday season of '81-'82, sixteen films were re- leased by the
major studios. Of those, only one-On Golden Pond-was a runaway success. And
ten of the sixteen each lost more than ten million dollars. One major
studio executive told me recently, "Of course the failures are upsetting.
But there have always been failures. What's got us so immobilized now is
that whatever it is. that we're making, we're missing the audience by a
wider margin than ever before. We don't know what they want. All we do know
is that they don't want what we're giving them."

Perhaps the key word above is immobilized. By the end of February, only
ten films will have begun production. At the same time a year ago,
twenty-five had started shooting.

Again, this is the worst period within memory. By the time this book sees
print, it may well be the best period within memory. The point being this:
Movies an a gold-rush business.

Anyone interested in what follows had best commit that fact to memory....

What follows, generically speaking, is a book about Hollywood. It may not
come as a total shock to you if I say this is not the first attempt to mine
that subject.

All I can provide that is different is my point of attack: I have been, for
close to twenty years now, a screenwriter. I have seen a lot, learned more