Fieldnotes:
Hollywood, 1982

A Memoir in
3 Parts
1 Breakdown of the Process and Players
11 Individual Movie Discussions
1 Short Story Adaptation to Screenplay

The Short Version:
This was just set too early for me, really. Of the movies he discusses in detail, I've only seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (of which Goldman is very proud), and honestly...I didn't like it. So a lot of the specific movie screenwriting stuff he discusses I ended up glazing over.

But a ton of what he says is still very relevant. Stars still have to be protected. Nobody has any idea what the public really wants and how to give it to them. So some of the more general stuff is interesting while a lot of the gossipy stuff was fairly dull.

I also found the final section on adapting a short story into a screenplay an interesting exercise - though I admit I mostly agreed with the interviewed director's comments on how these things would actually work (i.e., they wouldn't). To an extent Goldman talking about how he wanted to sit down to talk about what he intended with every scene makes me want to roll my eyes - he repeatedly insists making the movie is a team effort but gets frustrated when he (and his "vision") isn't the most important part of that effort, which seems particularly amusing given his vociferous disdain for the idea that the director is the "auteur". ( )

Funny and insightful - ok, you don´t expect to learn the business of screen writing and meanwhile I guess a lot of things have also in Hollywood but it is still fun to read.
With me being born in 77 I still remember the mentionend people but it could get more and more difficult if you are way younger and not a movie nut interested in older movies. Also it feels a bit unstructured and is getting weaker closer the end but I still enjoyed reading it. ( )

Very readable, anecdotal, gossipy. Nice read, especially if you’re interested in film. ( )

I had wanted to read this book for years, ever since typing innumerable papers for University of Texas Radio-Television-Film students forced to read and report on it for some beginner class. It wasn’t their reports that interested me, but the fact that this text was considered the sine qua non of the university RTF world–the text that you needed to have read, because everyone else had. Goldman’s credentials were substantial, having written some quite substantial films both in critical and box-office terms, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men. He further endeared himself to me by his wonderful book and film, The Princess Bride. But I never read this book for years because I wanted to own a hardback version of it. Browsing this past year in the stacks at the Bellevue Half-Price Books, I chanced upon just that, and finally was able to fill a decade old longing.

Adventures in the Screen Trade is somewhat dated now, even though it is only 13 years old. The movie trade is moving and shifting at an incredible pace (although not as quite as fast as the Internet), and what is golden one year, can be video-fodder the next. Goldman’s expose of the in-and-out of movie-making, from the screenwriter’s perspective, is uncomfortably close to the old adage about sausage and politics–you don’t want to see either being made. Yet, like an automobile wreck on your way home from work, you find that you just can’t help from looking. Goldman does a good job of presenting the business straight-forward, if with a tinge of understandable bias for the writer, that underlines the power of stars and the blockbuster mentality. A sequel, updating this book and adding Goldman’s extra thirteen years of experience, would be welcome, I think. ( )

(Note to self, paperback copy has been read enough such that it's falling apart. If you suddenly find yourself looking for it? It's probably fallen to bits.) ( )