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

by William Goldman

  More new characters who weren't leaving soon:

  GLORIA RUSSELL, the Chief of Staff

  BILL BURTON, the veteran Secret Service guy

  TIM COLLIN, the young hotshot

  And let us not forget--

  JACK GRAHAM, pretty clearly to be the hero

  KATE WHITNEY, even though she hasn't done much yet

  JENNIFER BALDWIN, the rich and beautiful fiancee

  Along with, please remember--

  LUTHER WHITNEY, the great old thief

  CHRISTY SULLIVAN, the philandering blonde

  THE WELL-DRESSED MAN, now revealed as PRESIDENT ALAN RICHMOND, whom she was philandering with

  Nine characters now.

  And counting.

  I finished the book and then did something I have never done before when offered an assignment--I read the whole thing again. And as I did, I became convinced that more and more characters who appeared were crucial to the story. Here are some of them:

  SETH FRANK, the detective trying to solve it all, maybe the lead

  WANDA BROOME, who conceived the break-in with LUTHER

  WALTER SULLIVAN, the good billionaire and wronged husband

  SANDY LORD, SULLIVAN's lawyer and a power in Washington

  LAURA SIMON, SETH's top aide, who ties LUTHER to the crime

  MR. FLANDERS, a bystander who photographed the attempt on LUTHER's life

  MICHAEL McCARTY, world's top assassin, hired to kill LUTHER

  And just in case you went to the kitchen for a snack--

  GLORIA RUSSELL, the Chief of Staff

  BILL BURTON, the veteran Secret Service guy

  TIM COLLIN, the young hotshot

  And let us not forget--

  JACK GRAHAM, pretty clearly to be the hero

  KATE WHITNEY, even though she hasn't done much yet

  JENNIFER BALDWIN, the rich and beautiful fiancee

  Along with, please remember--

  LUTHER WHITNEY, the great old thief

  CHRISTY SULLIVAN, the philandering blonde

  THE WELL-DRESSED MAN, now revealed as PRESIDENT ALAN RICHMOND, whom she was philandering with

  You add it up, it's too horrible.

  You simply cannot have that many characters in a movie today. It's confusing, it's a turnoff, and in terms of movie storytelling, it's just wrong.

  And wrong more than ever now, when the hunger for a vehicle role, a locomotive (as they sometimes refer to the male lead Out There), has reached hysterical heights.

  Even worse than the number of characters was this: there was no star part.

  LUTHER was the best character, but he could not be the star, for many reasons, chiefly this: in a great shocker, he is murdered halfway through by order of the President.

  No to LUTHER.

  JACK GRAHAM, the young lawyer, was maybe the biggest part. But he didn't come into the story till very late, and the star must enter early.

  No to JACK GRAHAM.

  SETH FRANK was the cop on the trail. But he didn't solve all that much.

  Couldn't be SETH FRANK.

  What's a mother to do ... ?

  I called Shafer and said I would like to try it, and I would try to write ten good roles--because that was what the material called for. Shafer said this: "It's okay. We'll go with ten one-million-dollar actors rather than one ten-million-dollar one."

  All I had to do now was write the bastard.

  Why did I say yes?

  Because I had not done a flat-out thriller since Marathon Man, twenty years earlier, and was anxious to try another. Because it was Castle Rock, the best movie studio for writers in my third of a century of writing screenplays.

  And because Baldacci, bless him, had written three sensational sequences. The opening sixty-page rough sex with the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES; the double assassination attempt to kill LUTHER, with both COLLIN and MCCARTY having point-blank shots at the old guy, and, maybe most moving of all, LUTHER's shocking murder by COLLIN, which comes at a time when the reader thinks LUTHER is finally safe.

  Wonderful stuff.

  These three, I felt--they had to run a total of fifty pages at least--were so strong they would support the remainder of the screenplay, no matter how badly I might screw things up.

  Aside to young screenwriters: no, I am not bullshitting when I say this last. I am always terrified I am going to screw everything up. The most hideous advice--and at the same time the most releasing--was given to me by George Roy Hill, still and always the greatest director I ever worked with. I had just taken on the job of trying to make the famous Woodward-Bernstein Watergate book somehow translate to screen. Hill, a world-class sadist, looked at me, and these were his words: "All the President's Men? Everybody's going to be waiting for that one." And here he smiled. "Don't fuck it up."

  At a Knicks game recently I ran into Ben Stiller, who has his own demons trying to figure out the glorious Budd Schulberg book What Makes Sammy Run? Naturally I was kind, told him this: "Don't fuck it up."

  He kind of smiled ...

  The First Draft

  May, 1995.

  I called this draft Not Executive Power, because I thought Baldacci's title so damaging--there were already several other movies ahead of us in the pipeline that also were called "Executive" something or other. Even more important, at least to me, was this: I kept forgetting the name of the novel when people asked me what I was working on.

  The first script ran 145 pages--too long, I knew that, but I also knew that the crucial thing for me in this initial pass was to get the story written. And then read it.

  I never read anything I've written till I'm done. If I did, I would be so appalled at the crimes I'd committed, I would never be finished rewriting the first scene.

  I wrote it.

  I read it.

  Ugh.

  It looked like a screenplay. If you lifted it up, it hoisted like a screenplay.

  But it just kind of laid there.

  No one to really root for--

  --except old LUTHER, who died halfway through.

  Not having someone to root for is a terrible problem.

  But an even bigger problem was this: the story didn't end, it just stopped.

  Endings are just a bitch. (Tattoo that behind your eyelids.)

  The best ending of mine, I think, is Butch Cassidy. And I like the "As you wish" in The Princess Bride.

  Endings in thrillers are particularly brutal. At least they have been for me. I've tried several--Marathon Man, No Way to Treat a Lady, Magic, Control, Brothers. If you read any of them, chances are, if you remember them at all, it's not for the way they concluded.

  Maybe it's because the initial pulse for the story was played out before the ending came. Marathon Man, at least as I remember, came from two ideas: (1) What if someone in your family whom you knew and loved wasn't remotely what you had thought? (Babe--Dustin Hoffman in the movie--has no idea his beloved brother, Doc--Roy Scheider--is a spy and not a businessman); (2) What if the world's most wanted Nazi came to Manhattan? (Szell--Olivier, yesss--has to come here to retrieve his diamond fortune from a bank, if it was safe for him to go there.)

  Well, by the time blood had been spilled, by the time Olivier had slaughtered Scheider and Hoffman had cornered Olivier, it was just a matter of mixing and matching. I had nothing much more up my sleeve.

  David Baldacci (curse him) didn't have a sleeveful either. The manuscript I read ended like this: in the last chapter, SETH FRANK, the detective who's been in charge of the CHRISTY SULLIVAN murder case, comes to the White House along with a bunch of law enforcement officials and arrests PRESIDENT ALAN RICHMOND. RICHMOND says that as President, legally he can't be served with anything. SETH replies that after his impeachment he'll be plain ALAN RICHMOND again and when that happens, he's going to trial.

  Not heart-pounding, but solid enough.

  The epilogue is the quagmire.

  JACK GRAHAM, KATE's onetime lawyer fiance, has gone on a trip and come back to Wash
ington and knows nothing of recent events, such as the murder trial of the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. "Inconceivable," as Vizzini used to say. SETH FRANK comes to visit him and fills JACK in on what's been happening. COLLIN got twenty years to life, GLORIA RUSSELL got 1,000 hours of community service, RICHMOND lied on the stand, was torn apart on cross, was found guilty and given the death penalty.

  Clearly, I had to come up with an exciting ending.

  My brain chose this time to go on holiday.

  So did I, and on Christmas afternoon of 1994 I found myself walking around a polo field in Barbados with John and Alyce Cleese, whining about my ending problem. One of them, I think it was Alyce, said, "Why doesn't another woman kill him?"

  I wrote it as soon as I got home.

  Not Executive Power ended this way: SETH the detective hero and JACK the lawyer hero go to the White House and meet with the PRESIDENT, who denies everything and has letters (false but sworn to) backing up his case. He then explains why they can't touch him. And indeed, they can't. He has too much power, too many who will lie for him. JACK and SETH leave in wild frustration.

  Then we cut to the exterior of another mansion. Then inside, to the corridor outside the master bedroom. COLLIN paces, RUSSELL works on her appointment book.

  Now a woman's cry comes from inside. They glance at each other, shrug. Nothing they haven't heard so many times. Then another feminine cry, louder. They go on as before.

  Then gunfire from the bedroom.

  COLLIN and RUSSELL rush inside to see a naked, drunk blonde holding a gun. "He dared me," she says.

  And RICHMOND lies alongside her, shot in the heart.

  Finally and briefly, a cemetery. We hear Bernard Shaw telling CNN viewers that RICHMOND's sudden fatal heart attack has shocked the nation but we've been through worse and we'll come through this, too.

  We're at LUTHER's grave now. JACK and KATE, LUTHER's daughter, pay their last respects to the old guy.

  Final fade-out.

  Stephen Sondheim once said this: "I cannot write a bad song. You begin it here, build, end there. The words will lay properly on the music so they can be sung, that kind of thing. You may hate it, but it will be a proper song."

  I sometimes feel that way about my screenplays. I've been doing them for so long now, and I've attempted most genres. I know about entering the story as late as possible, entering each scene as late as possible, that kind of thing. You may hate it, but it will be a proper screenplay.

  This first draft was proper as hell--you just didn't give a shit.

  I met with the Castle Rock people. They still wanted to make Absolute Power (by now, Baldacci had come up with the better title). They just didn't want to make this version of the story.

  Yes, they knew they had said write ten terrific parts, we'll be fine. But the problem with doing it the way I had done it was this: there was no one to root for. Couldn't I write someone we could care about besides LUTHER, who dies so soon? In other words, was there somewhere in the material--please, God--a star part? Because that's what the movie needed.

  I agreed with them.

  But the same problem still haunted me--

  --there was not now and had never been a star part.

  The Second Draft

  October, 1995.

  I must explain something about the way I work. I have always only done movies I wanted to do--which means caring for and being faithful to the source material.

  I had never changed a story this much.

  If I could figure out how to do it at all. I pored over and over my three star-part choices.

  1. Luther

  Still by far the best character in both the book and the movie. But he had to die. Not just because of a wonderful chance for a strong scene. LUTHER's death provided the impact the story needed to sustain itself. Morally and viscerally.

  Definitely could not be LUTHER.

  2. Jack Graham

  The logical choice, really. He ends up with the girl, LUTHER's daughter, KATE, so he carries that emotion with him. Also, he is close to LUTHER--he's the one LUTHER turns to when he decides to try and expose PRESIDENT RICHMOND.

  Problem: That happens literally halfway through the novel (and on this page of my 145-page first draft).

  Could I bring JACK in earlier?

  Sure. This wasn't a documentary, I could do anything I wanted. There was no JACK. He was a character in a novel, for chrissakes. I could open the damn movie with JACK being born if I wanted to.

  But if I did bring him in earlier, he would have just stood there. He had nothing really to do till LUTHER came to him for help.

  So could I really bring JACK in earlier?

  Not without totally changing everything and making it JACK's movie--but it couldn't be, because JACK wasn't in the goddam vault, and what was seen from that vault, and its consequences, had to be the story.

  Definitely could not be JACK.

  3. Seth Frank

  SETH, the detective trying to solve the murder, might seem even more logical. Detectives are traditionally there from the uncovering of the crime till the solution.

  But not here.

  The crime itself is not only a high point of the whole story, it also takes thirty pages of the first draft. And and and--SETH doesn't detect all that much. JACK solves his share too.

  Definitely could not be SETH.

  A double hero would be best.

  Problem: I'd already tried it that way in the first draft. With JACK and SETH. And failed.

  "Sheeesh," as Calvin used to tell us.

  I went over them again and again.

  LUTHER? No.

  JACK? No.

  SETH? No.

  If you happened to be walking near Seventy-seventh Street and Madison Avenue during the early fall of 1995, that sound you heard was me screaming.

  Finally, blessedly, I remembered Mr. Abbott.

  One of the great breaks of my career came in 1960, when I was among those called in to doctor a musical in very deep trouble, Tenderloin. The show eventually was not a success. But the experience was profound.

  George Abbott, the legitimately legendary Broadway figure, was the director of the show--he was closing in on seventy-five during our months together and hotter than ever. All in all, Mr. Abbott was connected with more famous and successful shows than anyone else in history, as producer, director, writer, or star. (We are talking about one of those careers--if you are a sports fan, think of the Babe or Wilt.)

  Mr. Abbott was a big man, six-two maybe, ramrod straight. Someone once wrote of him: "If he's ever late, you figure there's been an accident." The most totally professional man that ever walked the earth.

  And as I was going through my second draft of Absolute Power madness, I remembered a Mr. Abbott moment. He was coming from backstage during rehearsals, and as he crossed the stage into the auditorium he noticed a dozen dancers were just standing there. The choreographer sat in the audience alone, his head in his hands.

  "What's going on?" Mr. Abbott asked him.

  The choreographer looked at Mr. Abbott, shook his head. "I can't figure out what they should do next."

  Mr. Abbott never stopped moving. He jumped the three feet from the stage to the aisle. "Well, have them do something!" Mr. Abbott said. "That way we'll have something to change."

  The choreographer got off his ass, started moving the dancers.

  As I remembered Mr. Abbott, I got off my ass, too. We were not going to shoot the second draft, I reminded myself. So just write something so we'll have something to change.

  LUTHER could not be my guy for reasons of death.

  JACK could have been--his love affair with LUTHER's daughter made that appealing. Except for this: in the novel and in the first draft, too, LUTHER and KATE never once talked to each other. She betrays him, arranges for his capture; but that moment when she serves as decoy is their only contact in the Baldacci story. (They are estranged and have been for years when the story begins and stay that way after the murde
r; LUTHER is terrified to ever talk to her, for fear the Secret Service might kill her on the theory that she might know something.)

  I didn't want to mess with that.

  No to JACK.

  So SETH, by elimination, became my star.

  There was still the problem of his not solving all that much. But I figured I could help that by having him do stuff that had belonged to other characters in the novel and the first draft.

  One of the ways I did this was by giving him a family. I have two daughters, Jenny and Susanna, who loved Nancy Drew when they were kids. Guess what? SETH now had twin daughters with those names who were fifteen, had outgrown Nancy but not the notion of being detectives.

  The family was a way to keep SETH around, and also to get rid of exposition that other characters carried earlier. And it made SETH vulnerable, so that, near the end, when he is closing in on RICHMOND, the PRESIDENT has BURTON and COLLIN "send him a message" by instructing them to hurt his family. Which they do, driving them off the road, putting ELAINE and the TWINS in the hospital. So SETH has a huge emotional score to settle when, in the last scene, he visits the White House and brings RICHMOND down.

  Not Shakespearean. But maybe an improvement over the first draft. And SETH was now at the center of pretty much everything possible. I had certainly written a star part, which was primarily what I meant to do.

  I sent it out. Fingers very much crossed.

  Because this draft was going to Clint Eastwood.

  His agent had called while I was writing this draft and indicated he wouldn't mind taking a look at it when it was done. And I was desperate to work with Eastwood, had been for decades. He is quietly having one of the very greatest careers. He and John Wayne are the two most durable acting stars in the history of sound. Plus plus plus the directing.

  Eastwood as SETH set the blood racing.

  I had given them something. So at least we had something to change.

  Little did he know ...

  Third Draft

  December, 1995.

  The second draft got out to Castle Rock around the twentieth of October. Their reaction was good--not terrific, but certainly good--and they were very appreciative about the amount of work that had gone into changing it.