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

by William Goldman

  Wilder also gave Lindbergh--and this is not, let me preface quickly here, something Mr. Wilder wants festooned across his tombstone--a fly. You got it right, a common housefly that somehow gets into the plane and gives Lindbergh someone to talk to. (Stewart, apparently less than thrilled with the device, once told Wilder, "Either the fly goes or I go.")

  But impoverished as the fly might be, we can't even do that--Taylor doesn't talk. And if you give him words, how often can you hear him say "Want Chee*tos"?

  I love this story so and it moves me continually and we all know that anything can be a movie, but I'm not sure about Taylor and his Odyssey. Oh, you can cheat it. You can make the mom the hero or, if you get a star, he'd love to be the one who fought the snakes and killed the alligators as he swam through this deadly terrain for his beloved son.

  But that is not the story that moved me.

  If you can make this play, if you can fix it so I can see this story and have it be honest and simple and all that good stuff, I would probably give you my Knicks tickets.

  Or at least think about it ...

  * * *

  Doctoring

  Whenever I am offered a movie job, I always view it with two very different hats--my artist's hat and my hooker's hat.

  My artist's hat asks: Can I make it wonderful?

  The hooker wants to know only: Will it get made?

  If I can't make it wonderful, obviously I can't accept. The reasoning is pretty obvious: Why struggle knowing you will fail from the beginning?

  In truth, I cannot remember ever having turned down something I loved because I felt it was too uncommercial. If I were given a brilliant novel dealing with six octogenarians in the death ward of a cancer hospital, I'm sure I would pass. But not before trying to get the producer to get it done on television, especially someplace like HBO, which doesn't have to deal with the problem of selling in the same way.

  When I am offered a doctoring job, however, neither hat is necessary. Doctoring is about one thing only: craft. I am dealing with a maimed and dying beast and the only question is: Have I the skill to surgically repair it?

  I should add this here: except in very rare occasions, I never doctor a flick that isn't gearing up for production. So often, executives will tell me that if I just doctor their invalid, they can almost certainly promise we will become a "go."

  Screenwriters get blamed for most failures anyway, and the great thing for me about doctoring is that for once, I am the fucking hero. I am the stud with the white hat who alone can bring peace to Dodge.

  Doctoring, you should know, is not new. Studios in the thirties and forties, when everyone was under contract, jobbed in writer after writer as a matter of course. The reason you are reading about it now in the media is because of cassettes and residuals. There is real money attached to being given a screen credit now. If the movie is a hit, I should think hundreds of thousands of dollars.

  When Stepmom opened to less than glorious reviews, the critics had a problem: they couldn't blame Julia, couldn't blame Susan, they never blame the director. So who was responsible? Obviously the five listed screenwriters. Easy target. It's so easy to write something like: "It took five screenwriters to turn out this piece of shit?"

  Let us pause and think, but for a moment, of the logic behind that. Why would a studio keep spending more and more money for screenwriters unless there is a very good reason? I know nothing about this movie but I do know the reason: ego clashes. I will bet the farm that Julia had to have her person fix up her part, then Ms. Sarandon (whom I adore and have ever since she ruined a movie I wrote called The Great Waldo Pepper by being so entrancing and sympathetic she threw the movie out of whack) brought in her pet. And there's Chris Columbus, the most successful director of the decade whom you never heard of (I think he ranks just behind Cameron and Spielberg in terms of movie grosses)--well, he had to direct the thing, so he had to bring in his guys. On and on.

  I haven't read the screenplay but I'll bet this: the movie got worse with each new writer.

  A lot of top directors never change writers. Lean and George Roy Hill didn't. Kazan didn't. Eastwood never does. And if God cursed me and made me be a film director, I wouldn't dream of changing. Part of the adventure is who you go into battle with. Who cares.

  Script doctors do not care.

  Because most critics and media writers still think screenplays are dialogue, I don't care how often I tell you this--dialogue is one of the least important parts of any flick.

  So if doctoring isn't about flashy talk scenes, what is it?

  There's no one answer possible, it depends on why the movie is in trouble. Jerry Belsen is famous Out There for helping Back to School be a huge hit for Rodney Dangerfield. Belsen supposedly said three words that changed everything:

  "Make Rodney rich."

  That's good doctoring. And if he didn't write a word of dialogue, it's still good doctoring. I worked on Twins for four weeks and if you asked Ivan Reitman what I did that helped make it a worldwide success he would say two things.

  I wrote the credit sequence where the twins are born--and in the crib, one of them is already tormenting the other. Reitman feels that got the movie off to a solid start.

  Twins was a story when I got there about these two mismatched guys who came together and went looking for their mother, who was dead.

  The big thing I did was convince Reitman that the mother had to be alive. If you look at the movie today I don't think you can imagine it with the mom already among the departed.

  Twins took in close to a quarter of a billion dollars worldwide at the box office. Allowing for inflation, double that. A monster. What was that one idea worth? You decide.

  When Richard Attenborough asked me to come in and help with Chaplin, I read several books about the man. And I thought it might make a terrific flick.

  Because of his childhood.

  Charlie had one of those lives even Dickens wouldn't have dared dream up. Poverty, sure, lots of that. Love, nope, none of that. But a lot of people are poor and unloved, no big deal.

  It was the madness that rocked me. Chaplin had madness in his family. His mother was insane. And when he was a teenager, he had to put her in a lunatic asylum.

  I ended All the President's Men on a fuck-up by Woodward and Bernstein. My logic was that time had proven them right, had made them rich, famous, media darlings of their time. So the audience, I hoped, would carry that out with them so we did not have to tell them how wonderful were Bob and Carl.

  Chaplin's horrible early life stayed with him as he performed and came to America and got to Hollywood and--this is true now--for reasons no one will ever know, he was doing a movie and wandered into a prop-and-costume shack, tried this on, that on--and exited as the tramp. Arguably the most famous image in the first century of film was born full-blown that day. He went in as Charlie, came out a little later with the shoes and the hat and the cane, and stood there blinking in the sunlight.

  That's how I wanted to end the movie. This unknown little guy, blinking and maybe experimentally waving his cane around and walking that most famous of all walks.

  My logic was the same as the Watergate flick--the audience knew what happened to the tramp. Let's leave before that.

  Attenborough, a very bright man, understood my point. He had a different problem. He loved the childhood, yes, but he was just as moved by the end of Charlie's life, when, ancient and infirm, he was at last allowed back to Hollywood for his honorary Oscar in 1977. If you have seen that real footage, you know how moving it was. If you haven't, try and find it somewhere. It will rock you.

  So Dickie loved the childhood, yes, but he also loved the old man's return. The movie had to include both.

  Problem: sixty interim years had to be covered.

  I once met Stanley Kubrick and we got to talking about what he hoped he would do next (alas). Napoleon, he said. I asked what part and this was his reply: "Everything. I want to do the whole sweep of a man's life."
<
br />   Problem: movies don't do that well.

  I would love to know how Kubrick would have attacked the problem. Because it's not just the makeup that bothers you in time passing. The script I was handed for Chaplin was full of moments where some guy you never met would come into a scene and say this kind of thing to Charlie: "Charlie Chaplin, how are you, I'm Major Dorsey, I worked in the lunatic asylum where your mother is and she asked me to say she forgives you and is doing fine."

  Or: "Charlie Chaplin, my Lord, it's been ten years since we last saw each other, back in London it was, when my daughter played the ingenue in that West End revival of The Importance of Being Earnest and you liked her and we met backstage. This was just before you got her pregnant."

  In other words, it was clunky. Sir Dickie wanted me to come in and somehow, to use his word, "declunk" it.

  I came up with the Tony Hopkins part. I decided that since Chaplin wrote an autobiography, and since he was a famous man living in Switzerland, it would not be ridiculous if his book editor came from London to discuss final revisions. The editor could ask whatever questions we wanted to get us to the next dramatic sequence. And could also, if possible, shoulder some of the dreaded exposition that infiltrated the story.

  Chaplin was a worldwide commercial flop. What was one idea worth? You decide.

  Doctoring is tricky, particularly when it comes to taking credit for success (or blame for failure). Of course, what I'm best known for of late is the the doctoring job I did on Good Will Hunting. If you go on the Net and look up my credits, there it is, the previously uncredited work on that Oscar-winning smash.

  The truth? I did not just doctor it. I wrote the whole thing from scratch. Though I had spent at most but a month of my life in Boston, and though I was sixty-five when the movie came out, I have been obsessed since my Chicago childhood with class as it exists in that great Massachusetts city. My basic problem was not the wonderful story or the genuine depth of the characters I created, it was that no one would believe I wrote it. It was such a departure for me.

  What's a mother to do? Here was my solution--I had met these two very untalented, very out-of-work performers, Affleck and Damon. They were both in need of money. The deal we struck was this: I would give them initial credit, they would front for me at the start, and then, once we were set up, the truth would come out.

  You know what happened. Mirimax got the flick, decided to use them in the leads, decided I would kill the commercial value of the flick if the truth were known. Harvey Weinstein gave me a lot of money for my silence, plus 20 percent of the gross.

  Which is why I'm writing this from the Riviera.

  I think the reason the world was so anxious to believe Matt Damon and Ben Affleck didn't write their script was simple jealousy. They were young and cute and famous; kill the fuckers.

  I remember when a national magazine called and said they had been told I wrote it, I literally screamed at the writer. I have had this kind of thing on occasion before and I hate it a lot. If you write something and that something has quality, how awful to have the world think the work belonged to others.

  The real truth is that Castle Rock had the movie first, and Rob Reiner, no fool he, was given it for comments. Rob had one biggie.

  Affleck and Damon in an early draft had a whole subplot about how the government was after Damon, the math genius, to do subversive work for them. There were chases and action scenes, and what Rob told them was this: lose that aspect and stick with the characters.

  When I read it, and spent a day with the writers, all I said was this: Rob's dead right.

  Period. Total contribution: zero.

  But I'll bet in some corner of your little dark hearts, you're still saying bullshit. I mean, it's been five years and what else have they done? Nada.

  Now I'll tell you the real truth. Every word is mine. Not only that, I'm the guy who convinced James Cameron that the ship had to hit the iceberg ...

  * * *

  IV.

  The Big A

  * * *

  * * *

  What follows is an original screenplay I wrote for this book. I knew for a long time that I wanted to have you read something of mine that was new. That you could look at with entirely fresh eyes.

  I hope you think about it as you read it--what works, what doesn't, why doesn't it, how would you improve it? It's very important to me that you take the time to do that.

  But I also thought you would benefit from learning what some top screenwriters thought of it. So I sent the script--exactly what you are going to read--to some screenwriters I know and respect. Between them they've won a couple of Oscars, had a lot of hits, doctored a bunch more. Here they are, billing alphabetical: Peter and Bobby Farrelly Scott Frank

  Tony Gilroy

  Callie Khouri John Patrick Shanley I'll give you their specific credits later. This is the letter I sent them:

  21 June 99

  To my fellow pit dwellers--

  --thank you.

  What you have received is the last part of my sequel to Adventures in the Screen Trade, entitled Which Lie Did I Tell? More specifically, this chunk is part original screenplay, part outline, part thoughts about writing screenplays. It is the very first draft.

  What I want you to do is this: criticize the shit out of it. It does me no good if you take pity. I thought in the beginning I would tape you all but we are scattered and we are writers, so I now think it might be easier for you to jot your thoughts down.

  I think what I want you to do is this: a studio has sent you these 90 pages for doctoring. What do you think works, what do you think doesn't, what are the strengths, tell me the weaknesses.

  In other words, you are going in to talk to, I guess, the producer or the studio exec, and you are going to explain how, if possible, you are going to make this, if not wonderful, at least better. (Note: you have the job if you want it.)

  Their comments will be printed later in the book. And they're all real smart, but for now, what I care about is you. You judge it. And remember, there is no wrong answer. We all have our own stories to tell. Here's one of mine.

  The Big A

  Original Screenplay By

  William Goldman

  July, 1999

  For Our Eyes Only

  FADE IN ON:

  This--we are maybe fifty feet up and looking straight down along the side of a tenement toward a crummy New York City alley. This is not Park Avenue, folks. We're in a crappy slum.

  Dark summer night.

  Now, as we watch, A GUY comes into view, making his slow way climbing up the side of the old brick building. He travels light--no equipment, just his fingers digging into the old brick.

  Hello to CLIMBER JONES. (Born Ralph, but known since a kid by the nickname. Used to spend days in the small apartment he grew up in without ever touching the floor.)

  Clearly, as he comes toward camera, he's still at it. The only difference is that when he was little, it was pleasure, it was adventure. Now, mid-thirties, it's business, and we can tell this much from his face: he hates it. It scares him shitless.

  And if he lives through this-- and he will, my God, he's the star--he will earn probably five hundred dollars and in the morning he will wake up to be what he was: as honest a private detective as the city has to offer. We are looking, in other words, at a guy who comes as close as anyone alive to being the Bogart of The Maltese Falcon. A good man in a bad world.

  Now he takes a breather, hanging there, breathing as silently as he can, on the top floor of the building.

  He glances into the nearest window and as he does we

  CUT TO

  THREE MEN. Armed and swarthy. They sit around a table on which a telephone rests. Staring at it.

  CUT TO

  CLIMBER, glancing done. He takes a breath, glances back down now to the street--

  CUT TO

  ANOTHER MAN. He waits by a phone booth. From a distance we could be looking at the great Jimmy Cagney of Love Me or Leave M
e, mid-fifties, but you still don't want to mess with him. This guy's name, incidentally, is JIMMY. Several more men range behind him in the darkness.

  JIMMY shrugs his shoulders in a questioning way, staring up through the darkness at THE CLIMBER. He seems to be asking: yes?

  CUT TO

  THE CLIMBER. He waves his arm back and forth--no.

  Then he resumes climbing but this time he goes down a few hand holds, till he is below the window where the THREE MEN wait.

  Now he goes crab-like, sideways, till he is past the window. Then back up again, till he is at the next window, glances in.

  CUT TO

  A YOUNG GIRL. Twenty maybe. She's bound and gagged, blindfolded, and has been tossed into a corner on the floor. Her clothes, nice once, are now ripped and dirty. She lies taut, dry-eyed. Probably she realizes this--that she is very soon going to die.

  CUT TO

  THE CLIMBER. He is now doing something kind of interesting--hanging by one hand in space. The other hand takes stuff from his pocket, a small box-cutter with a razor, a small gun.

  CUT TO

  THE PHONE BOOTH AND JIMMY staring up through the darkness. For a moment it's too horrible to contemplate and he has to turn away.

  CUT TO

  THE SWARTHY GUYS, the kidnappers, and there is a lot of strain on their faces as they mutter, continue to wait for the phone and

  CUT TO

  CLIMBER, and he has managed to wedge his body against the sill and, with the cutter, is removing the glass near the window lock. Silently, he pulls the piece of glass loose, reaches carefully in, unlocks the window.

  Then he takes a very deep breath.

  CUT TO

  THE GIRL. She is aware that something is going on, has no idea what it is, but her head is turned toward the window now.

  CUT TO

  THE THREE SWARTHY GUYS and two of them are up now, starting to pace almost mystically about the table and

  CUT TO

  CLIMBER, taking a breath. Then he takes a long look down in the direction of the phone booth, gestures strongly with his right hand: Go! And on that--