Requiem for a Curmudgeon: William Goldman (1931-2018)

William Goldman so mastered Hollywood's byzantine rules that he not only became known as its greatest screenwriter, he also saw through its charades and shenanigans -- and wasn't afraid to write that, too.

When his "Adventures in the Screen Trade" was published in  1983, he was riding as high as anyone could: winner of two Oscars (for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "All the President's Men"), highly-paid and sought after both for his own screenplays and as a script doctor for others', someone whose name alone could help get a project green-lit.

But he wrote honestly and acidly about the business of Hollywood in the book, including his own travails and butting of heads with giants like Robert Redford. Perhaps not coincidentally for a place known for the phrase "you'll never eat lunch in this town again," the next few years were a downtime for him. Even "The Princess Bride," based on his beloved own novel, was a middling hit in 1987. But he hit a second stride that lasted through the 1990s and into the early 2000s.

Bill has died at age 87. I'm proud to say I knew him, if only a little.

He and my father, Jim, were fast friends at Oberlin College and kept in touch over the years. When I was growing up my dad would make occasional references to knowing somebody in showbiz, which I largely ignored until I was a teenager and knew I wanted to write about movies. He would always call him "Bill," as in mentioning to my mother, "Just got off the phone with Bill Goldman." And so I will, too.

I first met Bill in 1990 when I transferred to New York University to join the Cinema Studies department -- not the much larger and more heralded Film department; we watched movies rather than make them for an education. By then he was divorced and his daughters grown, so he was living alone in an expansive apartment in a Manhattan hotel.

I remember it was raining a deluge that day; my parents and I all got soaked to the skin. So we decided to eat lunch in, wearing some of Bill's old sweatshirts. I got to hoist his Oscars, which he kept lackadaisically on an old bookshelf. Many people have commented how they're much heavier than they appear, which I found to be true.

My dad was a little nervous about leaving his only son alone in the big, mean city. He gave me the phone numbers of two friends in New York City I was supposed to call upon if I had any trouble, and one was Bill's. I kept it for many years without ever using it.

That first day we spent some hours talking movies -- I'm afraid to say I probably came across as a little snotty. My tastes still ran to visual spectacles in those days, before I'd learned that I needed to learn more. Bill was polite to his friend's son, declining to tell me what an ass I was. The only hint was the inscription he wrote in my copy of "Adventures," which reads: "To Chris Lloyd, You knew all this anyway, God Bless, Bill."

Luckily, we did not leave it there.

When email dawned, I reached out to Bill and was pleased to get a response. For many years we kept up a correspondence, generally about movies but also sharing personal news and thoughts. He was one of the first people I let know when my dad died six years ago; I still remember his warm remembrance fondly.

Bill was just as direct via email as he was in person or in his writings. If Bill thought the favorite to win the Best Picture Oscar that year was piece of shit, that's exactly what he would write. We occasionally argued, but in a good-natured way.

Interesting aside: in email, Bill mostly eschewed things like capitalization and punctuation. Sentences tended to be very short or run on. Perhaps someone so used to writing in the careful formatting of screenplays craved having a sphere where he could throw out all rules.

But he always signed them the same way: "God bless, Bill."

I knew he was ill in recent years, and the death of his daughter three years ago marked about the last time we spoke. I'm glad to see the various news services giving his passing  glowing coverage. His last produced screenplay was "Dreamcatcher" in 2003, based upon Stephen King's book, and it was a commercial flop. I remember some of the reviews at the time were quite vicious in mentioning Goldman's name.

Bill Goldman was a great writer who was also open about how painful the process of writing was for him. He talked of "going into my pit" upon embarking on a new project. He often felt cut off and alienated from others. The reputation of a curmudgeon eventually formed around his persona, especially as he got older.

But as everyone else spends this time talking about his achievements as a writer, I just wanted to pay my own meager tribute to the man. His most famous saying was "Nobody knows anything," but I'm one of many who can say that this was a man who knew a lot.

Reeling Backward: "A Bridge Too Far" (1977)

Recently this column focused on "Theirs Is the Glory," a fairly unique film in which the actual participants of the failed Allied stratagem to end World War II by Christmas 1944, Operation Market Garden, returned to the site of the battles one year after the fact to recreate the action for a motion picture. The same military operation later became the basis for the 1977 feature film, "A Bridge Too Far."

In my essay on "Theirs Is the Glory," I mostly concentrated on the similarities between it and "Bridge," wondering if screenwriter William Goldman or author Cornelius Ryan, on whose book the latter film is based, were influenced by the earlier picture. That inspired me to go back to "A Bridge Too Far," and see how it has held up to my memory.

It only reinforced my opinion: "A Bridge Too Far" is one of the great WWII epics, and an incredible marriage of narrative structure, inspired direction, gritty performances and technical mastery from the support crew, particularly the musical score by John Addison (who himself served as a soldier in Market Garden).

Market Garden would remain a forgotten bit of history for 30 years until Cornelius Ryan wrote his book about the adventure, in which the Allies dropped 35,000 paratroopers behind enemy lines to capture a series of bridges. The plan was to have XXX Corp, the British armor column, punch up the road to connect the bridges, thus creating a hole directly into Germany.

Except, the Allies ignored evidence of a great deal of German resistance along the route, including an entire Panzer tank division near Arnhem, the last and most important of the bridges, since it spanned the Rhine River and the border into Germany itself. The British paratroopers, who were only supposed to have to hold the bridge for two days, gave up after nine, leaving behind 80% of their men as casualties or prisoners of war.

That's a lot of story to cram into a feature film, even a three-hour one, but Goldman's screenplay is an exercise in elegant structure. The story begins and ends with generals, both Allied and German, as they plan bold stratagems and then later try to pick up the pieces of where things went wrong. The middle section focuses on the lower ranks of soldiers, the dogfaces who actually have to carry out the fight their superiors dreamed up.

You've heard of "all-star casts," but this one is simply jaw-dropping. For the Brits: Anthony Hopkins, Dirk Bogarde, Michael Caine, Edward Fox, Sean Connery. For the Germans: Hardy Krüger, Maximilian Schell, Wolfgang Preiss. For the Americans: Robert Redford, Elliot Gould, Gene Hackman, James Cann, Ryan O'Neal. Not to mention Liv Ullman and Laurience Olivier  as Dutch civilians. And Denholm Elliott and John Ratzenberger turning up in bit roles.

Redford, arguably the biggest movie star in the world at the time, doesn't even show up until after the two-hour mark. 

I found it interesting how the script is laid out into essentially four sections. The first is the planning of Operation Market Garden, in which British heads are swelled and the first seeds of doubt creep in. Frank Grimes has a terrific role as a nervous major who unsuccessfully points out the presence of tanks, and is sent on medical leave as a result. The second section is the actual drop, a beautiful and daunting ballet of parachutes -- more than 1,000 men jumped out of planes for the sequence -- and the Allies' initial success in taking their objectives. The third is what I call the "American vignettes," and the last act is when everything goes to hell.

The vignettes are a quick succession of three stories centered around American characters. Elliott Gould is up first in a semi-comedic bit about his regiment failing to take the first bridge before the Germans blow it up, necessitating the building of a claptrap "Bailey bridge" to get the tanks across -- but not before delaying them 36 hours. Gould is terrific and charismatic, chomping on a cigar and shouting jokes in between the orders. Addison's music goes into a jazzy, bouncy mode.

Then we get James Caan as a nearly monosyllabic sergeant who protects his young captain -- he doesn't put on his coat at first, so we think he's just a punk private or something -- even guaranteeing the officer that he won't die. He appears to fail in his mission, as the captain is left for dead after being shot in the head. But the sergeant carries the body in a jeep through enemy lines to a mobile Army hospital and, at gunpoint, forces the surgeon (a spot-on Arthur Hill) to examine the wounded lad, revealing that he's still alive. 

(This may sound like Hollywood bullshit, but other than the part about being chased in a jeep by German soldiers, it really happened.)

The last and most harrowing of the vignettes is Redford as the major tasked with crossing the Waal River and taking the bridge at Nijmegen. Due to logistical snafus, they had to make a daytime crossing in flimsy portable boats, the wind blew away their smoke cover, and the unit was cut to pieces. Watching Redford with his helmeted head tucked down, pulling his rifle butt through the water like an oar, all the while chanting "Hail Mary, full of grace..." remains one of my seminal cinematic moments. (Again, this really happened.)

Sean Connery also gets a mini-vignette of his own as Major General Roy Urquhart, commander of the British airborne division dropped near Arnhem, who gets cut off from his own command and has to hide out in a little Dutch enclave, dodging from house to house, during which time he is presumed dead.

Lieutenant-General Frederick Browning, played by Dirk Bogarde, more or less acts as the heavy, playing the gung-ho Brit general who will not cancel the operation for any reason. Those who "rock the boat" are encouraged to clam up or suffer the consequences. 

At the end of the film Browning is depicted as duplicitously claiming to always have been skeptical about the operation -- "As you know I've always thought we tried to go a bridge too far" -- rather than an unreserved booster. In reality, Browning raised his doubts prior to the operation, and he and his family -- Bogarde actually served alongside Browning during the war -- were outraged at his villainous portrayal.

It being only three decades and a bit after the events depicted, many of the actors had an opportunity to talk with and even befriend the men they were playing. Edward Fox knew Lt. Gen. Brian Horrocks, commander of XXX Corp, prior to filming and later cited it as his favorite movie role. Michael Caine changed some of his dialogue after asking his counterpart how he would have issued orders, and the real Lt. Col. Johnny Frost had to explain to Anthony Hopkins that he would never have run too quickly between cover, because he had to show his men how contemptuous he was of enemy fire.

The production of "Bridge" is a Homeric story unto itself, and one others have already told better than I could -- notably by Goldman himself, who wrote a making-of book, "Story of a Bridge Too Far," and also included an entire chapter about it in his seminal showbiz tome, "Adventures in the Screenwriting Trade." 

(Extremely short version: Joseph E. Levine, a lifelong maverick producer, personally financed the film's $22 million budget -- about $86 million in today's dollars -- himself, then convinced some of the biggest global movie stars to participate by all accepting the same weekly pay rate. He recruited Richard Attenborough (him again) to direct, undertaking an incredible logistical and artistic challenge. Then as some of the amazing footage of the airdrops and battle scenes started to come back in, Levine showed the rushes to distributors who bid on the international distribution rights to the film. As a result, "Bridge" was already in the black before the first ticket was sold.)

The ultimate result was surprising, and not. Everywhere but the U.S. the film was a smash hit. Here, American and audiences and critics used to rousing pro-Allies depictions of the war collectively shrugged their shoulders at a massive production about a colossal military screw-up. Thus, "A Bridge Too Far" is barely known on these shores.

Their loss; "A Bridge Too Far" was perhaps the last of the great World War II epics.

Reeling Backward: "The Hot Rock" (1972)

"Not me. I’ve got no choice. I’m not superstitious, and I don’t believe in jinxes, but that stone’s jinxed me and it won’t let go. I’ve been damn near bitten, shot at, peed on, and robbed. And worse is gonna happen before it’s done so I’m taking my stand. I’m going all the way. Either I get it, or it gets me!"

That's a line of dialogue from "The Hot Rock" that I'm not sure if it came out of the typewriter of screenwriter William Goldman or author Donald E. Westlake, who wrote the book. I highly suspect the former, because Goldman -- one of the most celebrated script men of all time -- has a penchant for giving main characters long-ish speeches where they more or less tell you everything you need to know about them.

That line is from Dortmunder, a career thief played by Robert Redford, talking about a massive diamond he and his team are after at the behest of an African diplomat named Dr. Amusa (Moses Gunn). Dortmunder has had a run of bad luck during his life in crime; indeed, as the story opens he's just getting out of a long prison stint.

He takes the job, even though he has every intention of taking up the plumbing trade he learned behind bars, because his brother-in-law Kelp (George Segal) convinces him to. It's fun to see Redford play a character who is inherently pessimistic and downbeat -- he even chews a special medicinal gum to soothe his pre-ulcerous stomach.

They case the museum where the diamond is held, leading to another great exchange of dialogue as he explains their likelihood of success:

Dortmunder: "It's good, and it's bad. There's a guaranteed return, and that's good. But the guarantor is Amusa, and Amusa's a rookie, and that's bad. But it's an easily transportable object, and that's good. Only it's in a rotten position in the museum, 30 steps to the quickest exit, and that's bad. And the glass over the stone, that's bad too, because that's glass with metal mixed in it, bulletproof, shatterproof. But the locks don't look impossible, three, maybe five tumblers. But there's no alarm system, and that's the worst, because that means no one's going to get lazy watching, knowing the alarm will pick up their mistakes. Which means the whole thing has got to be a diversion job, and that's good and that's bad, because if the diversion's too big, it'll draw pedestrians, and if the diversion's not big enough, it won't draw that watchman."
Kelp: "Dortmunder, I don't know where the hell you are, or what the hell you're saying. Just tell me, will you plan the job?!?"
Dortmunder: "It's what I do."

The basic joke of this comedy-caper is that the crack team of criminals are very good at what they do, but something always seems to go wrong and they keep having to steal the same diamond over and over again.

They successfully distract the guards by having their wheel man, Murch (Ron Leibman), crash a car in front of the museum and pretend to be injured, while their explosives guy, Greenberg (Paul Sand), portrays a doctor helping out. But things go awry and Greenberg is arrested after swallowing the diamond.

Then it becomes a prison break movie, with Dortmunder and the team forced to get Greenberg out. Then they learn he stashed the diamond in the holding cell at the 9th Street police station, so they have to break in there with the help of a helicopter and more diversions.

Finally, after learning Greenberg's father, a slimy attorney played by Zero Mostel, has double-crossed them all and hidden the diamond in his bank safe deposit box, they have to break into there, strong-arming the bank clerk with the help of a hypnotist.

The movie's not terribly funny, but the caper bits are really inspired and nerve-wracking. Director Peter Yates, know for "Breaking Away" and "Bullitt," has a tight feel for action scenes, while simultaneously knowing how to make each character vivid and distinct.

The film contains several notable aspects. While they're flying the helicopter to the police station, Murch -- a novice at piloting a chopper, but insisting "I can drive anything!" -- nearly crashes into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, which was then still under construction. Christopher Guest makes his film debut with a bit part as a cop at the police station.

I also thoroughly enjoyed Robert Redford in a non-golden boy role, playing a man who's a ball of nervous energy and low expectations for himself. The part at the end where Dortmunder, having successfully retrieved the diamond from inside the bank, walks away is just a treat.

He finally has a bounce in his step, and Redford practically floats above the sidewalks of New York City, almost seeming to dance his way into the arms of long-elusive success.

Reeling Backward: "Magic" (1978)

"Magic" is one of those good movies that, for whatever reason, saw its reputation fade as the years went by. It got good reviews and box office when it came out in 1978, and arrived right around the beginning of the horror film boom of the late '70s and 1980s. But it didn't have the lasting cultural impact of, say, "Halloween," which came out the same year.

It's probably a mistake to toss "Magic" into the horror bin, since it's more a psychological portrait of a deranged mind than a movie whose primary vocation is to scare you. Certainly, director Richard Attenborough and screenwriter William Goldman (who adapted his own novel) are not names associated with cheap slasher flicks.

Still, it features a lot of the same tropes of horror films, and what fame it does have is usually framed in terms of Anthony Hopkins' performance as a creepy precursor to that in "Silence of the Lambs." And, of course, the kicker ending is in the classic horror mold -- giving the audience a final thrill while setting up the possibility of a sequel (wisely left unmade).

For the movie Hopkins had to learn a number of difficult skills: magic tricks with cards, coins, and of course ventriloquism. His work with the puppet Fats -- a leering, oversexed, R-rated version of his character's own crushingly repressed id -- is so good, in fact, that we wonder if there wasn't a little help from the sound looping department.

Hopkins' lips and teeth barely seem to move at all, and if it weren't for a slight tremor under the jawline, I'd chalk it up to Hollywood trickery.

Voice has often seemed an important element to Hopkins' body of work, much more so than most actors. The flat, metallic sound he gave Hannibal Lecter reflected the timbre of a man who had barely spoken for more than a decade (mostly because he deemed his few visitors unworthy of his speech). Hopkins is also known to be a really good mimic -- including dubbing the lines of the late Laurence Olivier for the restored footage of "Spartacus."

Here he employs a high, reedy tone that tip-toes right up to the edge of being shrill. For the dummy, it jumps whole hog right into screechy. In this sense the way Fats sounds parallels his looks, which are meant as a crude caricature of his partner's own visage.

Hopkins plays Corky Withers, a failed apprentice magician whose first attempt to appear on stage is a horrible disaster. The story opens with him relating the tale of his bombing in flashback to his dying mentor. The old man advises him that since he lacks anything like charisma or showbiz flair, he needs a gimmick.

Flash to a year later, and Corky is on the verge of hitting it big, playing sold out performances and appearing several times on "the Carson show." He has now incorporated Fats into the act, using him to tell off-color jokes and operate as his own personal court jester, hurling insults and put-downs at the guy working his levers.

His own TV show is in the works, and eel-ish agent Ben Greene (Burgess Meredith) advises him that the only formality is a medical exam. This sends Corky running off into hiding, leaving New York City for his hometown in the Catskills. It appears he knows the doctors would conclude something is wrong with his head, so he doesn't give them a chance.

There he hooks up with his old high school love interest, Peggy Ann Snow (Ann-Margret), whom he never had the courage to approach when they were youngsters. Now trapped in an unhappy marriage to a brute (Ed Lauter), she at first resists Corky's overtures -- played mostly through Fats' persona, who can flirt and cajole while Corky can't get past a stammer.

Ann-Margret has verve and sass, and seems to exist as a thinking, independent character who isn't just there to be acted upon by the male protagonist. That wasn't always an assured thing in the 1970s (or now).

Attenborough and Goldman tease the audience with the possibility of something supernatural going on with Fats -- that he's actually a sentient being who only plays the part of a ventriloquist's dummy. On a couple of occasions we seem to catch his head moving on its own, but it's always in the corner of the screen and/or out of focus.

Of course, the most glaring evidence is when Fats stabs Peggy Ann's husband to death with a switchblade -- it's shot to suggest that the dummy is wielding the knife. But we can see it's a human hand holding the blade, and after the man falls dead, dragging Fats to the ground with him, the curtain behind where the dummy was sitting parts to reveal Corky.

The point is that while Fats isn't really alive, Corky thinks he is. Their ongoing conversations with each other are actually symptoms of a split personality, or at least a manifestation of Corky's darker instincts. (Of course, this doesn't explain the ending, where Peggy Ann starts talking in a voice similar to Fats', suggesting Corky's delusion has been passed on to her.)

One of the things I most liked about the movie was the distinction Corky makes between "magic" and "tricks." Tricks, to him, are a set-up -- something the magician has arranged in advance with special equipment or a volunteer who's in on the gag. Corky insists that he performs magic, which he defines as simply a skill that has been practiced and honed so that it appears to be extraordinary.

Fats, for his part, tells Peggy Ann that "Corky does magic. I just do tricks," emphasizing the opposition between their warring personalities. In essence Fats is Corky's trick, the prop he uses to get the audience to pay attention to his magic act, which otherwise wouldn't impress them.

I haven't read Goldman's book, but I wonder if it explores the process of how Corky evolved from nobody loser to huge ventriloquism success. My guess is no.

It's merely supposition, but if I were to fill in the blanks for Corky's missing year, I would say he forced himself to sell out his purist magic principles by adopting the cheapest, moldiest carny sideshow trick: the ventriloquist dummy. Self-hatred drove him to endow the object of his parallel success and degradation with seething hatred.

Here's one thing I know: I would've loved to have seen the Corker & Fats television show.

"Magic" is a very good and borderline terrific proto-horror film that showcases Anthony Hopkins at his nervy best. Hopefully the movie can conjure up a new generation of admirers.