I first read William Goldman’s Adventures In The Screentrade in my early 20s. It was a revelation. Here was the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride and Marathon Man sharing wildly indiscreet details about a profession I longed to be part of. The book was essentially wall-to-wall war stories - the subtext being “Don’t Go Into Screenwriting!” But for me, his warnings made it sound all the more glamorous. I loved hearing about his fights with studio executives who all delivered variations on the same three notes - “faster, dumber, more likeable”, the mocking of actors who changed an “and” to a “but” in a line of dialogue and then demanded a co-writing credit, and finally, all the times he was fired. Who fires an Oscar winner?
Cut to 25 years later, and I read the book again. It was a completely different experience because I’d now gone through EVERYTHING Goldman wrote about—albeit with fewer movie stars and less money. This time, the war stories seemed more comforting than glamorous. It’s nice to know that Oscar winners also get mean notes about their work.
But there was one story in the book that moved me in the sense that it sent shivers down my spine. Goldman was writing the screenplay of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s book, All the President’s Men, about the 1972 Watergate scandal that brought down Nixon.
He would ultimately win an Oscar for his work. But in the extract I’m about to show you, he was going through the period that happens during the writing of most movies, where the powers-that-be lose faith in the writer. In this case, the powers-that-be were Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, producer Robert Redford, and Benstein’s then-girlfriend, Nora Ephron. It must be said that Ephron would become a Hollywood legend, penning When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seatle, You’ve Got Mail and Bewitched. But at the time she met Goldman, she was uncredited and didn’t know she had breached screenwriting etiquette.
Goldman takes up the story after he’d delivered his draft of the script and hadn’t heard anything for months:
Still nothing from Woodward and Bernstein.
It's now fall, I'm back in New York, in my office, and the phone rings. It's Redford. He says that Bob and Carl are with him and why don't I come on over.
I go on over to his apartment, elevator up, ring the bell, go inside. My mood was pretty good as I remember. And I had absolutely no warning bells going off in my head that I was about to begin experiencing the worst moments of my movie-writing life.
Redford's in the living room. Woodward's in the living room. Bernstein's in the living room.
And there is a script on the living room table.
I say hello to Redford, shake hands with Woodward, shake hands with Bernstein.
And now there is this silence.
And that script is still on the living room table.
Then Redford said really the most extraordinary thing: "Listen, Carl and Nora have written their version of the screenplay." (Nora being Nora Ephron, a writer, then Bernstein's girlfriend, whom he was later to marry and divorce.)
I just stood there.
Probably I blinked.
But I sure couldn't think of anything to say.
As a screenwriter, I test very high on paranoia. I'm always convinced of any number of things: that my work is incompetent, that I'm about to get fired, that I've already been fired but don't know yet that half a dozen closet writers are typing away in their offices, that I should be fired because I've failed, on and on.
But all those nightmares — and on occasion, they've all happened — are within the studio system. The producer goes to the executive and says, "Goldman can't cut it, let's get Bob Towne." And then the executive calls Towne's agent and a deal is struck and money changes hands and the first I hear about it is when my phone doesn't ring when it's supposed to.
But for two outsiders, a hotshot reporter and his girlfriend, to take it upon themselves to change what I've done without telling anybody and then to turn it into the producer - a "go" project, remember—
— not in this world possible.
But there was their script on the living-room table.
I stood silently, staring at the thing, and I wanted Redford to scream at Bernstein, "You asshole, get out of here, don't you know what you've done?"
Redford said, "I've gone over it a little and I think you ought to read it."
I wanted my producer to defend me. I'm eight months on the project now, and I've done a decent job. Warners said yes. I wanted to hear, "You're a dumb, arrogant fuck, Carl, and I'd like you to shove that script where the sun doesn't shine."
Redford said, "I think there might be some stuff in it we can use.”
I'm up to here with Watergate, I'm going crazy with when did Haldeman talk to Mitchell and how can we fit Judge Sirica into the story and how can Erlichman be the perfect neighbor everyone described him as being and still do the things he did; I had fretted and drunk too much and stayed up nights because I couldn't make it work until finally I did make it work and I wanted acknowledgment that a terrible breach had been committed.
Redford said, "We all want the best screenplay possible, so why don't you look it over, we're all on the same side, we all want to make as good a movie as we can.”
I said I couldn't look at a word of it until I had been told I could by lawyers. And I left as soon as I could.
I can make a case for my producer's behavior. After all, this was now a famous book, Woodward and Bernstein were the media darlings of the moment, and we needed all the help we could get from the Washington Post. A pitched battle with Bernstein wouldn't have been an aid to moving the project forward. I could go on longer and make a better case. Redford was in a bind, no question.
But I still think it was a gutless betrayal, and you know what else? I think I'm right.
Lawyers were called in, and eventually, it was decided I could read the Bernstein/Ephron version. One scene from it is in the movie, a really nifty move by Bernstein where he outfakes a secretary to get in to see someone.
And it didn't happen-they made it up. It was a phony Hollywood moment. I have no aversion to such things; God knows I've written enough of them — but I never would have dreamed of using it in a movie about the fall of the President of the United States.
One other thing to note about their screenplay: I don't know about real life, but in what they wrote, Bernstein was sure catnip to the ladies.
One important positive moment came out of that, a moment so meaningful to me I've separated it here. When I next met Woodward to talk about the movie, he said the following, word for word: "I don't know what the six worst things I've ever done in my life are, but letting that happen, letting them write that, is one of them."
I was and am grateful.
Incredible
How I loved that book. Up there with Neil Simon’s ‘Rewrites’. Had forgotten that passage. Fantastic