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William Goldman
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- This article is about the novelist. For the mathematician, see William Goldman (professor).
William Goldman (born August 12, 1931) is an American novelist, playwright and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter.
Contents
- 1 Biography
- 1.1 Autobiographical fiction
- 2 Trivia
- 3 Credits
- 3.1 Broadway
- 3.2 Screenplays (Produced)
- 3.3 Screenplays (Unproduced)
- 3.4 Television
- 3.5 Novels
- 3.6 Non-fiction and memoirs
- 3.7 Children's books
- 3.8 Other
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Biography
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. William Goldman had been estranged for many years from his brother, playwright James Goldman, before James's death in 1998.
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. He is often called in as an uncredited
script doctor on troubled projects.
Goldman has 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 has 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.
He was married to Ilene Jones until their divorce in 1991. The couple had two daughters.
Autobiographical fiction
Simon Morgenstern is both a pseudonym and a narrative device invented by Goldman to add another layer to his novel The Princess Bride. He presents his novel as being an abridged version of a work by the fictional Morgenstern, an author from the equally fictional country of Florin.
The details of Goldman's life given in the introduction and commentary for
The Princess Bride are also largely fictional. For instance, he says that his wife is a psychologist and that he was inspired to abridge Morgenstern's
The Princess Bride for his only child, a son. (
The Princess Bride actually originated as a bedtime story for Goldman's two daughters.) He not only treats Morgenstern and the country of Florin as real, but even claims that his own father was Florinese and had immigrated to America.
At one point in The Princess Bride, Goldman's commentary indicates that he had wanted to add a passage elaborating a scene skipped over by Morgenstern. He explains that his editors would not allow him to take such liberties with the "original" text, and encourages readers to write to his publisher to request a copy of this scene. Both the original publisher and its successor have responded to such requests with letters describing their supposed legal problems with the Morgenstern estate.
Goldman also wrote The Silent Gondoliers under the Morgenstern name.
Trivia
- Favorite writers: Irwin Shaw and Ingmar Bergman.
- Doesn't drive; claims he can't concentrate that long.
- Major fan of the New York Knicks.
- Wrote mostly serious, literary works until death of his first agent when he began writing thrillers starting with Marathon Man.
- Researched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for eight years and used Harry Longbaugh (a variant spelling of the Sundance Kid's real name) as his pseudonym for No Way to Treat a Lady. After deciding he didn't want to write a cowboy novel, he turned the story into his first original screenplay and sold it for a record $400,000.
- Doesn't like “bloodbath action” movies and spoofed them in Last Action Hero.
- Turned down The Graduate (“didn't get the book”), The Godfather (loved the book, but didn't want to glamorise the Mafia) and Superman (a big comic fan, but he didn't want to write with a major movie star in the lead, as was the original plan, so they hired Mario Puzo).
- Wrote early/unused scripts for Papillon, The Right Stuff and The Da Vinci Code.
- Worked as uncredited script doctor or consultant on Twins, A Fish Called Wanda, Chaplin, Malice, Last Action Hero and Fierce Creatures
- William Goldman was referred to in Stephen King's 1986 novel It. In that book he is said to be the only good writer to ever go to Hollywood and remain good. Interestingly, Goldman later wrote the screenplays for King's novels Misery, Hearts in Atlantis, and Dreamcatcher.
- Goldman wrote the famous line "follow the money" for the screenplay of All the President's Men. Most journalists attribute it to Deep Throat, the informant in the Watergate Scandal, but it is not in Bob Woodward’s notes nor in Woodward and Carl Bernstein's book or articles (see Rich, Frank. 2005. ‘Don’t follow the money’, The New York Times, 12 June)[1] [2].
Credits
Broadway
Screenplays (Produced)
Screenplays (Unproduced)
Television
Novels
Non-fiction and memoirs
Children's books
Other
- New World Writing Number 17 (1960)
- A collection of stories, poems and articles by several authors, with an 11-page story entitled "Da Vinci" by Goldman
- The Craft of the Screenwriter by John Brady (1981)
- Includes a profile on Goldman and a lengthy interview about his craft
- The Movie Business Book by James E. Squire (Editor) (1992)
- Includes an As Told By William Goldman piece
- Writers on Directors by Susan Gray (1999)
- Goldman has a piece on Rob Reiner in this book, and another on Norman Jewison
- The First Time I Got Paid For It: Writers' Tales From the Hollywood Trenches (2000)
- Goldman speaks candidly about his writing process in American Film Foundation's series Screenwriters: Words into Motion.de:William Goldman
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