William Goldman also wrote a novel I really enjoyed, “Boys and Girls Together” (which would have made a great HBO mini-series, BTW). And he wrote two novels that were later turned into vastly underrated movies: “Soldier In The Rain”, with Jackie Gleason and Steve McQueen, and “No Way To Treat A Lady”, with George Segal, Rod Steiger, and Lee Remick.
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Ha ha with ya on that one. And I’m not entirely ignorant about modern music. Once every couple of years I listen to a bit of Kanye whether I need to or not, and I always say nope, don’t see it.
I remember when I was a teenager in the very early '70s, and people my own age - and even my high school English teacher - would tell me that “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” was a great piece of literature. Even at that tender age I would roll my eyes and chortle as I turned away. That was exactly the same time I started smoking weed, which made me really appreciate and enjoy classical music (listening to “Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Faun” after smoking a joint when you are 16 is a pretty revelatory experience), and I suppose it also had an effect on my taste in literature. LOL!
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Your high school teacher was trying to “relate” to your “generation.” I was talking to a friend just the other day about the bogus stuff going around then that just embarrasses people now. Good riddance.
It was funny how younger people could relate to and enjoy the culture of the generations before us, loving the greatness of old movies like “Casablanca”, “Citizen Kane”, “Notorious”, and others, and could appreciate the wonderful music of Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and George Gershwin, but many of the older generation just couldn’t get a handle on the tastes and interests of younger people. And that’s why they sucked up to so much trash.
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As a teenager in the Bay Area, those events (Jones Town and the Moscone/Milk murders) were enormous.
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I can’t remember if it was High School or Freshman college English when my teacher assigned us the book, “A Princess Bride.” (1980±) The entire class loved the book. He had a fantastic way of making you feel you were in on the joke.
This means two things. I’m a lot older than you, for one, and two that they also remain enormous and indelible because I lived then where I do now, in SF. Participated in the march through town to City Hall on the night of the murders. It was pre Internet days and social media, but thousands got the word somehow and we marched silently, sorrowfully, carrying candles.
A crowd of 12,000 carried flickering candles as they marched from Castro Street to City Hall to honor slain Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, (shown in portrait), on Nov. 27, 1979 on hje first anniversary of their deaths. In foreground is Moscone’s daughter, Jennifer, 22, (light coat), as she leads the parade with Cleve Jones, Harvey Milk’s former assistant.
Had to do with killing a lot of women if I’m not mistaken. No thanks. Just like no thanks to most anything by Brian DePalma.
“Is there anywhere that you don’t smoke”?
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More times than I can count, someone would move here and we would pull out our tape of Milagro and sit them down to watch it, because it so truly captures the spirit of northern NM and the old Spanish village farming culture. Nichols source novel was so perfect, Redford barely changed a thing (another thing he’s great at as a director, really respecting a good novel; watch A River Runs Through It for another shining example). Redford was so kind and respectful of the locals, giving as many as he could jobs and extras spots, that up in Truchas where they did principal photography, I’m told 30 years later they still affectionately refer to him as just “Bob”, and everyone knows who you’re talking about.
As to “Butch Cassidy”, being a musical of that era, parts of it are so corny and syrupy sweet, but it’s still a great screenplay and a joy to watch, a bittersweet gem that heralded in the greatest period of American filmmaking.
“A screenplay is a piece of carpentry,” he once said.
And having helped commit many of them to film, I can say there’s a lot of bent nails in most of them.
So long to a another great American. Thanks for the flicks, William Goldman.
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It’s OK to say that when you’re right.
I would hazard a guess that Goldman is the most quoted man on this board.
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Goldman’s “Butch Cassidy” screenplay was published in paperback, and it was as much fun to read as the movie is to watch. It begins, “Not that it matters, but most of what follows is true.” The stage directions are a treat, such as calling for “The longest traveling shot in the history of the world” in the scene where the posse emerges from a train to chase the Hole in the Wall Gang.
The great movie Heat (1995) with DeNiro and Pacino was written by Michael Mann. Goldman wrote a novel called Heat and a screenplay (1986) for it starring Burt Reynolds.
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Oh. The earlier Heat didn’t register, but I know the later Heat very well. Don’t know where I got the info Goldman was in on the early one. But Michael Mann’s no slouch either.