
Goldman grew up in a Jewish family in Highland Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, and obtained a BA degree at Oberlin College in 1952 and an MA degree at Columbia University in 1956.His brother was the late James Goldman, author and playwright. William Goldman had published five novels and had three plays produced on Broadway before he began to write screenplays. Several of his novels he later used as the foundation for his screenplays. In the 1980s he wrote a series of memoirs looking at his professional life on Broadway and in Hollywood (in one of these he famously remarked that "Nobody knows anything"). He then returned to writing novels. He then adapted his novel The Princess Bride to the screen, which marked his re-entry into screenwriting. Goldman won two Academy Awards: an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay for All the President's Men. He also won two Edgar Awards, from the Mystery Writers of America, for Best Motion Picture Screenplay: for Harper in 1967, and for Magic (adapted from his own 1976 novel) in 1979. Goldman died in New York City on November 16, 2018, due to complications from colon cancer and pneumonia. He was eighty-seven years old.
by William Goldman
Rating: 4.1 ⭐
• 4 recommendations ❤️
No one knows the writer's Hollywood more intimately than William Goldman. Two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter and the bestselling author of Marathon Man, Tinsel, Boys and Girls Together, and other novels, Goldman now takes you into Hollywood's inner sanctums...on and behind the scenes for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, and other films...into the plush offices of Hollywood producers...into the working lives of acting greats such as Redford, Olivier, Newman, and Hoffman...and into his own professional experiences and creative thought processes in the crafting of screenplays. You get a firsthand look at why and how films get made and what elements make a good screenplay. Says columnist Liz Smith, "You'll be fascinated.
Beautiful, flaxen-haired Buttercup has fallen for Westley, the farm boy, and when he departs to make his fortune, she vows never to love another. When she hears that his ship has been captured by the Dread Pirate Roberts - who never leaves survivors - her heart is broken. But her charms draw the attention of the relentless Prince Humberdinck who wants a wife and will go to any lengths to have Buttercup. So starts a fairy tale like no other, of fencing, fighting, torture, poison, true love, hate, revenge, giants, hunters, bad men, good men, beautifulest ladies, snakes, spiders, beasts, chases, escapes, lies, truths, passions and miracles.
Tom "Babe" Levy is a runner in every sense: racing tirelessly toward his goals of athletic and academic excellence--and endlessly away from the specter of his famous father's scandal-driven suicide. But an unexpected visit from his beloved older brother will set in motion a chain of events that plunge Babe into a vortex of terror, treachery, and murder--and force him into a race for his life . . . and for the answer to the fateful question, "Is it safe?"
Something odd, if predictable, became of screenwriter William Goldman after he wrote the touchstone tell-all book on filmmaking, Adventures in the Screen Trade (1983), he became a Hollywood leper. Goldman opens his long-awaited sequel by writing about his years of exile before he found himself--again--as a valuable writer in Hollywood. Fans of the two-time Oscar-winning writer (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men) have anxiously waited for this follow-up since his career serpentined into a variety of big hits and critical bombs in the '80s and '90s. Here Goldman scoops on The Princess Bride (his own favorite), Misery, Maverick, Absolute Power, and others. Goldman's conversational style makes him easy to read for the film novice but meaty enough for the detail-oriented pro. His tendency to ramble into other subjects may be maddening (he suddenly switches from being on set with Eastwood to anecdotes about Newman and Garbo), but we can excuse him because of one fact he is so darn entertaining.Like most sequels, Which Lie follows the structure of the original. Both Goldman books have three stories about his movies, a deconstruction of Hollywood (here the focus is on great movie scenes), and a workshop for screenwriters. (The paperback version of the first book also comes with his full-length screenplay of Butch; his collected works are also worth checking out). This final segment is another gift--a toolbox--for the aspiring screenwriter. Goldman takes newspaper clippings and other ideas and asks the reader to diagnose their cinematic possibilities. Goldman also gives us a new screenplay he's written (The Big A), which is analyzed--with brutal honesty--by other top writers. With its juicy facts and valuable sidebars on what makes good screenwriting, this is another entertaining must-read from the man who coined what has to be the most-quoted adage about movie-business "Nobody knows anything." --Doug Thomas
Starting out as a boy in the Catskills, Corky develops into a brilliant and famous magician whose long-hidden secret and expert skills attract dark forces intent on destroying him.
Los gondoleros silenciosos es el resultado de la investigación de Morgenstern sobre por qué los gondoleros de Venecia, que eran los mejores cantantes del mundo, un día, de repente, empezaron a cantar tan horriblemente que desde entonces los clientes les piden que remen en silencio. La respuesta a ese enigma está en la historia de Luigi, un joven de sonrisa bonachona que toda su vida soñó con ser gondolero. Goldman, a través de su narrador ficticio, nos lleva a la taberna secreta de los gondoleros, a la Iglesia de las almas de los que murieron por el Mar y a otros muchos lugares mágicos, dibujando una Venecia a medio camino entre la realidad y la fantasía en la que Luigi, a pesar de todas las frustraciones, sinsabores y derrotas, jamás renunciará a su sueño.La edición de Ático de los Libros incluye las ilustraciones que el pintor Paul Giovanopoulos realizó para la edición original.
Acclaimed for such Academy Award—winning screenplays as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and such thrillers as Marathon Man, not to mention the bestselling classic The Princess Bride, William Goldman stands as one of the most beloved writers in America. But long before these triumphs, he caused a sensation with his brilliant first novel, a powerful story of reckless youth that was hailed as a worthy rival to The Catcher in the Rye. THE TEMPLE OF GOLDRay Trevitt is coming of age in the American midwest of the late 1950s. Handsome, restless, eager to live life and to find his place in the world, Ray hurtles headlong through a young man’s rite of passage–searching for answers and somewhere to belong. What he discovers is that within friendships and love affairs, army tours and married life, victory and tragedy, lie the experiences that will shape his destiny, scar his soul, and ultimately teach him profound lessons he never expected.
William Goldman is famous for his Academy Award-winning screenplays, infamous for the thriller that did for dentists what Psycho did for showers, beloved for his hilarious "hot fairy-tale," and notorious for his candid behind-the-scenes Hollywood chronicles. But long before Butch and Sundance, Buttercup, and the Tinsel-Town tell-alls, he made his mark as one of the great popular novelists of the twentieth century. Now his sweeping, classic tale of a generation's tumultuous coming-of-age is at last back in print.BOYS & GIRLS TOGETHERAaron, Walt, Jenny, Branch, and Rudy. They are children of America's post-war generation, as different from one another as anyone can be. Yet they are bound together by the traumas of their pasts, the desperate desire to capture their dreams and satisfy their passions, the stirring pleasures of sexual awakening--and the twists of fate that will inextricably link their lives in the turbulent world of 1960s New York City.
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He's twenty-three years old and already a prodigy, a critically acclaimed author of whom great things are expected--immediately ... But artistic success and happiness will not come easily to Chub Fuller. Like many writers, he will find himself descending again and again into the lower reaches of his psyche, driven by the phantoms of his past, the obsessive passions of others--and finally, by a murder that brings him face to face with the darkest forces within us all ...
In this belated sequel to Marathon Man Goldman jumps several years into the future of the Levy brothers. Thomas is now a history professor at Columbia, and Scylla, the lethal secret agent left for dead in New York's Lincoln Center, has been restored and reactivated as a top-level killer by his shadowy masters in the U.S. government. In the nether world of Washington policymaking science has become a major weapon in a bizarre struggle between hawks and doves, and Scylla's assigned role is to eliminate two scientists whose invention of new creative killing methods may be more dangerous than the problem they set out to solve. The imaginative, if sometimes bizarre, plot winds its way through seemingly unconnected episodes of considerable violence before reaching an ironic conclusion which pulls all the threads together.
Playwright/novelist/screenwriter Goldman analyzes Broadway from the perspective of the audiences, playwrights, critics, producers and actors. “Very nearly perfect... It is a loose-limbed, gossipy, insider, savvy, nuts-and-bolts report on the annual search for the winning numbers that is now big-time American commercial theatre.” –Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
by William Goldman
Rating: 4.3 ⭐
Four screenplays written by William Goldman, with essays. Author royalties donated to the Motion Picture and Television Fund.Contents:Butch Cassidy and the Sundance KidMarathon ManThe Princess BrideMisery
William Goldman, who holds two Academy Awards for his screenwriting ( Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Men ), and is author of the perennial best seller Adventures in the Screen Trade , scrutinizes the Hollywood movie scene of the past decade in this engaging collection. With the film-world-savvy and razor-sharp commentary for which he is known, he provides an insider's take on today's movie world as he takes a look at “the big picture” on Hollywood, screenwriting, and the future of American cinema. Paperback.
Las Vegas security officer Nick Escalante, an ex-Marine, chances on to a bizarre kidnapping threat and is plunged into a nightmare world of false identities, vicious grievances, and gruesome encounters
In the glittering world of Hollywood peopled with stars, hopefuls, and hasbeens, hungry and cunning producers, starlets, moguls, and whores are willing to sacrifice everything for an elusive place at the top.
The author of "Adventures in the Screen Trade" provides an inside look at the Cannes Film Festivals and the Miss America Pageant from his unique perspective as a judge, offering anecdotes about the judging process
extremely rare,very good condition
by William Goldman
Rating: 3.9 ⭐
"Read the book Steinbrenner and a host of other sports notables will want to burn. It's a beauty." -Elmore Leonard"The greatest high for any True Believer, besides seeing your team win the Super Bowl, the seventh game of the world series or the NBA Championship, is getting the chance to talk sports with another True Believer. Bill Goldman and Mike Lupica are so intelligent, insightful and accessible, it's like having a conversation with two really True Believers."-Rob Reiner"In the tradition of great double plays, Wait Till Next year is Lupica to Goldman to great reading,"-Billy CrystalThe New York area's 1987 sports scene is replayed by incisive reporter Lupica and Goldman, screenwriter, novelist (Marathon Man), and zany sports fan. With intimate reporting and diverting asides, they trace the downfall of 1986's champion Mets and Giants, the early winning Yankees, the downtrodden Knicks and Nets, and the Jets. For good measure there's a concerned look at Columbia's football team, piling up a losing streak that only ended this October. Comparing the talents of the Celtic's Larry Bird and Danny Ainge, appraising sports broadcasters good and bad, and looking for better times in 1988 all add to the appeal of this bittersweet reading for Big Apple fans. Lots of fun for outsiders, too
Uno dei migliori noir mai scritti.
Screenplay / Drama / Anthology
Goldman's second book and by far his scarcest novel.
A collection of five screenplays by this Academy Award-winning writer. All the President's Men • Magic • Harper • Maverick • The Great Waldo Pepper. Also features essays by “Getting Even or Creative Accounting ” “Sneak Previews, or Why Did She Have to Die? ” “Hype or A Brief History of the Future ” “Shooting from the Don't You Know Anything About Screenwriting? ” and “Nothing for Me to The Secret Life of an Adaptation.”
A young couple goes on vacation in London, Rome and Venice, in the hope of salvaging their faltering marriage. The quarrels, the agonies, the bickering and the swift changes of moods of Amos and Lila McCracken are fiercely and poignantly familiar, yet Goldman renders his domestic crisis as freshly as he does the character of their precocious little girl. This strong and moving novel attains a climax that is shattering in the outrageously sad and funny reaches of its inimitably fallible humanness.--From publisher description.
(Applause Books). This book includes an interesting introduction on how this film starring Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer based on the terrifying true story of the man-eating lions of Tsavo came to be; the complete screenplay by William Goldman; and fabulous photos from the film throughout.
Holly has been brutally raped. Barely conscious, she mouths two The Mex. Alone in a bar, a youngish woman waits for her boyfriend. A big Mexican moves towards her, drunk, but doing a decent job of hiding it. She is not usually frightened...Who is the Mex? What manner of man? Nick Escalante has the answer. Escalante is the master of edged a tough guy a good guy, about to wake up to his five thousandth morning in Las Vegas (and that's long enough for anyone to have luck on the their side). He roams the sleazy underside of the city picking up bucks as a chaperone. His mission is to earn the freedom money he needs to retire, to avenge an appalling rape, and to satisfy the honor of a misjudged an. Along the way he meets an array of bizarre characters.
Author Stephen King, scriptwriter William Goldman, and director Lawrence Kasdan describe how they approached the adaptation of King's novel Dreamcatcher into film. The book presents the full shooting script, a summary of the adaptation process, and detailed scene analysis, and includes abundant b&w illustrations and movie stills. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The Princess Bride Screenplay by William Goldman From His Novel. Revised Final Draft. May 3, 1986 Producer: Rob Reiner..