Adventures in the Screen Trade

This book coined the maxim far and away the most quoted in Hollywood to this day: “Nobody knows anything.” I first read it the year before I broke in. My copy is heavily annotated with yellow highlighter and red pen; a black paperclip still marks the second of Goldman’s two capitalized maxims, “Screenplays are structure.” The value of this book to anyone wanting to understand – or survive in – Hollywood is that, ironically, Goldman, one of the most successful screenwriters and novelists in Hollywood history, knew almost everything, not only about screenwriting, but also the psychology, cautious care,… show more.

William Goldman is best known as the screenwriter of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Marathon Man, and The Princess Bride. Published in 1983, Adventures in the Screen Trade quickly became a favourite among filmmakers as Goldman shares gossipy anecdotes about the movies that he’s worked on – including projects that didn’t get made – and offers what he has learnt about screenwriting and Hollywood. The two major adages from the book are Nobody Knows Anything – that is, for all the smart talk in Hollywood, no one knows what the audience is going to want to see.… show more.

If you don’t know William Goldman, trust me, you know his work on screen: The Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, Misery, and Marathon Man, to name just a few.

William Goldman knows about writing, and although much of this book focuses on his Hollywood (mis)-adventures, there’s plenty of gold nuggets for writers of all stripes. In particular, the critique his Hollywood pals give him on a short screen story is a master class in dramaturgy and criticism. Come for the Robert Redford stories, stay for the lessons in writing.

In his sardonic 2002 memoir, What Just Happened?, producer Art Linson remembers an ex-studio head saying that if he’d greenlit the movies he’d passed on and cancelled the movies he’d made, the end result would have been the same. Screenwriter William Goldman famously put this a different way: “Nobody knows anything.” As a double Oscar-winner, for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men, he knew as much as anyone – and a lot more than most – and his 1983 classic anatomises the business and craft of screenwriting in tones both magisterial and gossipy.

This is another book that seems to be about screenwriting but really is about all writing: about what goes through a writer’s mind in conceiving and developing a project; about how the rest of the world will greet that effort; and about how not to go crazy when small-minded people take colorful dumps on your work. I swallowed Adventures in the Screen Trade whole the first day I encountered it, and I have re-read it many, many times since. In moments of despair, when agents, publishers or readers just can’t seem to pick up the genius I’m putting down, I… show more.