Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade

by William Goldman

  Problem: Maverick is a gambler, what can he do that's magical?

  The great sleight-of-hand artist John Scarne did something that I read about once which almost cost him his life. Scarne, after thousands of hours of practice, had taught himself to cut to the ace of spades at will. He pretended it was a trick but all he did was riffle the cards, spot where the spade ace was, and instantly count how many cards into the deck it was and then cut to it.

  Just writing that seems amazing. Scarne almost got killed when he pissed off a major Prohibition-era gangster who saw him cut the ace and wanted to know the trick. He wanted to be able to do it too. And he thought Scarne was putting him on when he claimed he couldn't. So he was going to kill Scarne. Fortunately for one and all, the gangster was finally convinced.

  I decided Maverick could also cut to the ace of spades at will. He has, built into his character, marvelous skill with cards. The Magician says he wants to see magic before he dies and if Maverick can do something magical, he will let him go and give him the money for the entrance fee. Maverick begins his con, comes up with a story, told sincerely, that he once had magic, the day his mother died he had it, and The Magician says, You can do it again, but Maverick is reluctant, says he's convinced he will fail. The Magician forces him to try and of course he cuts to the ace of spades, gets the money, and goes off to the poker game. Now this was all done straight, the audience did not know it was a trick, and at the end of the movie, in the first draft, Maverick is about to tell how he did it, then changes his mind, saying that life's always a little better when there's just a touch of mystery in the air. In other words, he tells us it was magic, not a con.

  Okay, exposition's over.

  The first draft is accepted, Dick Donner comes on to direct, and we start the first of endless months of revisions. Donner likes The Magician, and what he likes about it is the magical aspect, the sense of something strange. He likes it so much he wants more of it.

  And I never told him what I just told you--that it was a con.

  He did not know the Scarne story. (I've used this material twice so far, as any of you who saw Magic know.)

  I never told him for this reason: because he never asked.

  In the second draft it's the same setup, only everything else is different. Maverick cannot cut to the ace of spades at will, and he really did have magic the day his mother died. This time around, Maverick cuts what we think at first glance is the ace of spades but it turns out to be the ace of clubs--in other words, he fails. But The Magician gives him the money anyway because Maverick has come close and given The Magician hope that the next guy he finds will actually be able to do it. "Hermits need hope," The Magician says, one of the truer lines I've written in my life.

  The third draft stays the same, with just the amount of money changing. I must explain that I am willing and happy to do any changes here because I am not threatened by anything that's happening--nothing is altering the spine of the movie. It is still about a guy needing money. I get very crazy if you mess with the spine. Otherwise I am totally supportive.

  And I think the reason I never told Donner about the Scarne story was because writers need secrets just as much as hermits need hope. Also, I think I was afraid if I told him the truth, Donner would hate it. And want other changes that would alter the spine.

  Marion Dougherty, who is fabulous, is casting the movie, and it is Marion who gets this notion: make The Magician a woman. She felt it would add a new dynamic. Donner went for it, and, as I said, I didn't mind, I was just trying to service the director. The spine was safe. And once Marion's notion was taken, there was nobody else, really, who would have been as good in the part as Linda Hunt.

  In the fourth draft, the dynamic changes again: now she gets into his life to give him back confidence, to send him on his way knowing he has a chance to win. She says he came close and next time he'll come closer, all of which leads, of course, to the big card game when the ace of spaces is cut and wins the game for Maverick. Donner liked that because he wanted to get the encounter to be as mystical as possible--by that time Tom Sanders, our production designer, had come up with some startling and beautiful notions of what the hermit's home might look like.

  The fifth draft is essentially the same as the fourth, except now The Magician is convinced Maverick has magic inside him. He cuts to the ace of clubs again, but this time the next card is the ace of spades. It was, hopefully, a stronger version and was intended to be both different and emotional. This is how the concluding moments read in rehearsal, starting with the reveal of the spade ace as the next card. Henry, it should be noted, is The Magician's pet rattlesnake who was been watching the sequence with great interest.

  CUT TO

  MAVERICK AND THE MAGICIAN.

  THE MAGICIAN

  Next time you'll get it right--maybe the next time after the next time. But you got magic inside you--knew it all along--that's what makes me a great hermit.

  (beat)

  I know things.

  (throwing more money at MAVERICK)

  Buy yourselves some clothes that fit--thank me or I'll kill you--

  (she grabs up HENRY)

  --now get out of my life.

  (sweetly, to HENRY)

  Yes ... there's a good baby ... yes...

  We leave her there. And that's where I left the sequence after rehearsal. Linda Hunt and Gibson were terrific. No question it was different from anything else in the movie. Donner still liked the notion, still wasn't happy with the scene, but he couldn't verbalize what more he wanted. And frankly, I was tired. I had delivered the first draft in March, it was now August, and after that kind of time with this many changes, you lose not only your zest but your objectivity.

  I was out of the loop for the next many months. Donner brought in Gary Ross, who wrote the excellent Dave, for another whack at The Magician. I wasn't even remotely upset--I didn't have it in me for another go.

  It was, apparently, a happy shoot. Which, as I've said, has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of the film. We don't like to believe that but it's true. I was called out to see the first showing of the film. It wasn't a true sneak. There was an audience of a couple hundred people but it wasn't in a large neutral theater somewhere in Pasadena; rather, they chose a place without air conditioning--without working air conditioning--on the Warners' lot on a hot afternoon.

  There was a lot of tension--there always is at such a moment-- there should be, my God, if you're not tense then, get out of the picture business--but the time pressure Maverick was under made it unendurable. I delivered the first draft on March 12, 1993. That week Gibson said he liked it, so we were a "go" project.

  And that same week I was told that the movie would open--would definitely open--on the weekend before Memorial Day, May 20, 1994. Ready or not. I have never been around a flick that went so fast. Thirteen months from first draft without director to being in 2,000-plus theaters. This is a terrible gamble to take--there was no time for mistakes.

  We all saw the movie on March 13. The picture had to be totally locked and ready to go to the lab for printing by early May. This was not, obviously, a low-budget art film. There was no time for tinkering. The picture had to work.

  It did and it didn't.

  The audience loved Jodie Foster, loved loved Gibson--more importantly, loved them. Great affection for James Garner, too. Not to mention the crucial ending card sequence. (What always gives you hope at such a time is if the ending holds. If that's happening, even if you're in rough shape, you have a solid chance.)

  The Linda Hunt scene was a train wreck.

  Sure, this was a rough cut, two and a half hours long. Yes, the air-conditioning malfunction was a factor. And Linda Hunt was wonderful.

  It still stopped the picture dead.

  Gibson was fine in the scene, too. And it sure was gorgeous to look upon. But it was dead wrong. I don't know why. A different style, maybe. Maybe what was once a simple con to get money had become too convoluted. We'll n
ever know. It just did not work. The audience was confused at first, then, more dangerously, they began to lose interest. When you have a sag like that it can cripple everything that immediately follows.

  We met afterwards. The early thoughts were of how to save it but soon we all knew the entire sequence had to be jettisoned. This was a major chunk of film we were eliminating, and opening day could not be delayed. Reshoots were scheduled for the next weekend. Instead of The Magician blasting Maverick out of the hanging tree--from the second draft on, the original bow and arrow had become sort of an elephant gun--a providential blast of lightning saves him.

  But without someone to give him money, guess what? He couldn't be robbed. So the moments when the bad guy robs him were edited out, and Graham Greene as the Indian friend had to be brought back to set up that his money is in his boot. And then after he is saved you see Gibson hobbling along after his horse, showing us his money is safe.

  I think we sort of kind of got away with it. It was a loosely plotted movie anyway, so no one noticed. And Donner was able to get the movie down from two and a half hours to two hours ten. I think he could have gotten it down to under two hours, had he been given time. Maybe it would have worked better. We'll never know. It pleased a lot of people just as it was in the summer of '94. Which is all it was ever meant to do. Let's leave it at that.

  One of the great truths of the movie business is that movies are fragile. And even the most successful are only a step away from disaster. Every step of the way ...

  * * *

  Courtroom Scenes

  There are no rules to screenwriting, as we all know, but one of them is this: you must never ever open your first draft screenplay with a courtroom scene.

  What we are talking about here is this: limitations of the form.

  If you will look at Ephron's Harry and Sally scene or what the Farrellys did to poor Ben Stiller, I would argue that those scenes are better in a movie than anyplace else. I don't care how talented the poet, his version of the zipper madness is not going to be as wonderful as the flick was. And no novelist's orgasm scene is going to be as wonderful as what Billy and Meg did in the Carnegie.

  I don't think those scenes work as well on the stage either. Oh, they would get laughs, but you would not have the immediacy, you would not see the horrible embarrassment of the two chief men in the movies.

  No, these are movie moments, great ones, and best left there.

  But the screenplay, like any other form, cannot come close to doing everything. Let me write a little of the courtroom scene and I think the problem becomes clear.

  FADE IN ON

  A majestic courtroom. You sense decades and more of history here, you feel the tears of those who lost, the exultation of the winning side. You sense, more than anything, that this is a place where justice, that rare and valued commodity, could actually breathe.

  CUT TO

  The Defense Team. Half a dozen lawyers, led by one solid man. This is MELVIN MARSHALL, a bulldog in the courtroom. Short, powerful, he seems almost to be bursting out of his custom-made suit.

  Seated beside him is The Defendant, and if MARSHALL is the beast in this story, then WAVERLY DIAMOND is the beauty. She has never had a day in her adult life when men did not turn in her direction, study her eyes wondering how anything could be that blue. Watching her now, it seems inconceivable that she could have knifed her husband to death in cold blood.

  CUT TO

  The one man alive who seems most intent on proving that she did kill wealthy WALTER DIAMOND. This is the most famous prosecutor in recent San Francisco history, the legendary TOMMY "THE HAT" MARINO.

  MARINO has come a long way from his Mafia-ridden boyhood. The son of the famous HARRY "THE HAT" MARINO, the terrifying waterfront boss of all bosses, TOMMY has spent his life trying to prove that a man can come as far from his childhood as he so desires.

  TOMMY "THE HAT" stands now, as does everybody else in that great room, for here he comes, and we see him close as we

  CUT TO

  JUDGE ERIC WILDENSTEIN himself. Here is what you must know about him--

  Okay, enough. You must see by now that in spite of all my dazzle, your eyes are glazing over. You have been given too much information in too short a time about which you don't give a shit, no wonder you're bored.

  You can open a movie with a courtroom scene--easy, because we see the faces of the actors so their identities register.

  And you can open the shooting script--after you are in production--with a courtroom scene. You aren't trying to sell quite so hard when you're in production.

  I guess what I'm trying to say is don't ask the screenplay to do what it has trouble with. Information overload is one of those trouble spots. There are many others and if I made a list of all those that I know, it would do you no good at all. You will want to find your own disasters ...

  * * *

  The Ghost and the Darkness

  [1996]

  * * *

  I have been a professional writer for over forty years now. (I began my first novel, The Temple of Gold, on June 25, 1956.) And in all that time, I have come across but two great pieces of material. The first, dealing with Butch Cassidy and his adventures with the Sundance Kid, became a famous movie around the world. But it was unknown material before that.

  The second is the tale of the man-eating lions of Tsavo, which was well known around the world, just not in the United States. In Africa, it is the most famous story of high adventure. A hunt for wild animals is called a "stalk," and no less an aficionado than President Theodore Roosevelt termed it "the greatest stalk of which we have any record."

  More recently, in his splendid book Millennium: A History of the Last Thousand Years, the Oxford historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto has written over seven hundred pages on what's been going on Down Here for the last ten centuries.

  Well, two of those pages are about the lions of Tsavo.

  Why were Butch and Sundance unknown for so long? I think because they ran away to South America when the Superposse came after them, instead of shooting it out, which is what western heroes always did, since westerns are based on confrontations.

  I think the reason the Tsavo lions are unknown here is because, when Americans go to the movies, they want solutions to questions, not more questions. The Tsavo story, something that never happened before and has not happened since, is still, at its dark heart, a mystery.

  And always will be ...

  I first heard about them in July of 1984, my initial trip to Africa, at one of my favorite spots on earth, the Masai Mara Plains (it is in Kenya, and when the land becomes Tanzania, the name becomes the Serengeti). It was night, a bunch of people were sitting by a fire. And then, in that magical semidarkness, someone began telling the story of what happened at Tsavo back in 1898. I clearly remembered that I turned to Ilene, my good wife of twenty-some years, and said something I had never said before: "That's a movie."

  My plan then was simple--to research the story back in America, to return to Africa at the proper time for further work, and then to write it as an original screenplay. Life, however, as most of us are continually shocked to discover, has plans of its own which tend to take precedence. I did a lot of research when I returned home, yes. But our marriage ended, the further trips to Africa never took place, and the lions found a small corner of my brain, growled, and went to sleep.

  Dissolve: five years later. It's 1989.

  I got a call from my agent, Robert Bookman at CAA. "You remember that lion story?" I said I sure did. "Well, there's some interest in the project at Paramount. Do you have a problem flying to L.A. to try for the job?"

  I said I had zero problem flying to L.A.

  But there was indeed a problem.

  I have a bad back and it tends to go into spasm when it chooses--crippling me, usually for a week or two. And it had gone out just before Bookman called. When that happens, the worst thing is having to sit in a car for a long time. Having to sit in an airplane for
a long time also isn't so terrific. But I made the trip the next day, met with the Paramount Guys. The usual bullshit grunts of hello. Then it was my turn to sell.

  This is not something for which I am noted. I have only tried one "pitch" in my life, and that was for friends, and I was so awful I quit halfway through. Now I was sitting in a room with a bunch of strangers. More precisely, they were sitting in the room.

  Me, I was lying on the floor.

  Pretty much in spasm.

  Looking up at them.

  I said I had no idea how to write the movie. I said I had no idea yet what the story was. But I also said I knew what the story should be: a cross between Jaws and Lawrence of Arabia.

  I said they could doubt my talent to be able to successfully write that movie, but they could never doubt my passion for wanting to try. I mean, shit, I was flying six thousand miles more or less doubled over--that had to be indicative of something. (I was told that the meeting, because of my position, achieved a certain brief notoriety.)

  At any rate, I was hired.

  I delivered the first draft on April Fool's Day, 1990. I always aim for that date--after all, we are talking about the movie business. Shortly afterwards, we met again, the Paramount Guys (PGs) and moi. Here is what they said: Yes, we like the script. Yes, we think it's a movie. But it is also going to be a very very expensive movie. So we will make it only if we can get one of these three stars to play Patterson, the main character:

  Costner

  Cruise

  Gibson

  Well, those happen to be wonderful performers, and all three were good casting for the role. Serious about their careers and their choices of material. And huge stars.

  The problem is, you just don't get people like that for pictures like this (neither O'Toole nor Scheider nor Dreyfuss nor Shaw were huge stars) because stars know they inevitably are going to be dwarfed by the desert or munched by the monster. In the case of The Ghost and the Darkness, I knew that none of Paramount's holy trinity would sit around while the lions stole the movie. So while I said "Terrific" to the studio about their casting choices, I've been at this a while and I have a certain sense for failure when it is coming down the track at me. I knew, old hand that I am, that none of the three would do it. The movie was dead in the water.