INTERVIEW BY DAVID KONOW
CREATIVE SCREENWRITING | MARCH 2015

Q. What is the secret to writing great child characters?
WILLIAM GOLDMAN: First of all, there are no secrets to anything.

Lack of confidence seems to be an ongoing issue for many writers. Have you met many writers who were confident?
GOLDMAN: It’s an odd life. It’s not a good life. It’s been wonderful for me, but I don’t recommend it as a way of getting through the world. It’s weird! You intentionally closet yourself from everybody else, go into a room and deal with something no one gives a shit about until it’s done. It’s a strange world.

What are the tricks you’ve learned that help you survive “the pit”?
GOLDMAN: You’ve gotta get in there and do it. There are so many things on the planet that are more fun than writing. I know a very gifted young writer who said to me, “My problem is never writing, my problem is sitting. Getting to my computer is like a mine field: I’m remembering chores I have to do, and all of a sudden the day is gone.” I think that happens to a lot of us.

One of the things that young writers falsely hope exists is inspiration. A lot of young writers fail because they aren’t putting in the hours. I had a great, great editor, Hiram Haydn, who had many children and was a novelist. Toward the last years of his career, the only time he could write was Sunday morning. He would write four hours every Sunday morning. And he would get books done. It would take him years, but I think it’s crucial that we have some kind of rhythm. Whether you can write all day every day, or whether you can write four hours on Sundays, whatever it is, you have to protect that time.

The whole idea of a rhythm is crucial, almost the most crucial thing for a young writer. Also, treat it like a real job and be at your desk. I don’t necessarily stay there but I think it’s very important to have [a place to work].

What is your rhythm now?
GOLDMAN: I’ve been doing it for so long… my rhythm now is, I have coffee and I read the papers. And then I go on my computer and the first thing is that I see what Calvin and Hobbes is that day; that’s crucial. And then, if I’m writing, I’ll be there all day. I will be there every day, pretty much all day, until I finish the draft—whenever that is. Then I’ll take some time off. I’m not writing novels anymore. I used to alternate novels and movies, but I haven’t written a novel in a disgracefully long period of time.

Why haven’t you been writing novels?
GOLDMAN: It’s funny. I don’t know why. I wish it weren’t the case. I wrote novels for thirty years. When I was a kid, when I was in my teens, until I was twenty-four, I used to write a lot of short stories. And they were all rejected. It was so horrible. I remember the fuckin’ New Yorker, once, I think rejected a story the day I sent it out. It was the most amazing thing. I go in my mailbox and there was the rejection slip, and I thought, “I just sent it to you this morning!” They were always the same printed form. Never a note. You’d pray that some editor would say, “Well, let us see the next thing you write.” Nothing. Then I wrote “Temple of Gold” and I don’t think I ever wrote a short story again. I stopped getting ideas for short stories. The last novel I wrote was a not-very terrific book called Brothers [the sequel to Marathon Man]. I haven’t had an idea for a novel that excited me for fifteen years. I think if I got one, I’d write it. But I wrote a lot of novels. I just ran out of juice.

In Which Lie Did I Tell, you touch on the story structuralists like Robert McKee. Do any of the classes or books mean anything to you? Do you use any paradigms or strategies when you write?
GOLDMAN: I think McKee is good. I went to his class. Anything that makes you do it, is worthwhile. And if going to a course makes you do it, I think that’s terrific. The problem is that girl who said that thing at Oberlin, “Do you always begin your second theme by page seventeen?” I’ll never forget that. Ever. Because I knew she’d been reading some structuralist who had told her that. It’s just wrong!

It sounds like you don’t use any particular formula or paradigm, you just get in there and write.
GOLDMAN: Yes. That’s the deal. Thank you very much for saying that. What I try and do is, find the story and then write it. My problem is, it takes a while to find the story. George Hill said a great thing to me: “If you can’t tell your story in an hour fifty, you’d better be David Lean.” Movies are wildly long now. Movies are boring; you want to think, “Cut that! Cut that!” It’s a complicated thing. You’re trying to do something that’s going to please an audience all over the world, and you don’t know what it is.

In both Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I Tell, you open yourself up to criticism from film professionals when you say, “Take a look at this short story adaptation or original screenplay [The Big A] and give me your notes.”
GOLDMAN: Oh, that was the most heavenly experience. When I had The Big A, I read all their answers at the same time, and I was praying that they’d be negative. [Goldman sent the partially completed script to the Farrelly brothers, Scott Frank, Tony Gilroy, Callie Khouri, and John Patrick Shanley for a critique. There were few kind words.] If they were positive then it’s all Hollywood horseshit, and it doesn’t do anybody any good as a teaching exercise. And they were so horrible. I still speak to all of them. But, my God! You just read them and think, “My God, they’re so full of shit! Why are they wrong about this?” But you’ve gotta listen, because when you’re doing a movie, there’s no way of knowing.

You’ve had an amazing run in Hollywood all these years. To what do you attribute your longevity and survival?
GOLDMAN: I’m always amazed…I’m amazed that I’m still employed, and thrilled, because they’re very ageist. I think one of the reasons that I’ve survived is that I’ve lived in New York. No one gives a shit in New York; in LA, it’s such an obsessive place in terms of who’s in and who’s out and who’s hot and who’s cold. I think it helped me that I was a novelist for so long because I had something else to do, and it helps that I’ve written non-fiction about the entertainment business. Listen, it’s been a terrific run, and it surprises me, and I’m thrilled! And if I knew what I was doing…

With all the experience under your belt, are certain things in the writing process easier now or harder now?
GOLDMAN: It’s the same. I write on a computer now instead of on a portable typewriter, so I’m faster. Certainly no better. It’s tricky. You’re trying to figure out the fucking story! And that’s all it is in a movie. It’s not like writing a book. It’s not like a play. You’re writing for camera and audiences. One of the things which I tell young people is, when you’re starting up, go to see a movie all day long. See whatever is a big movie that’s opening on Friday in your town. Go see the noon show and the 4:00 show and the 8:00 show. Because by the time the 8:00 show comes, you’ll hate the movie so much you won’t pay much attention to it. But you’ll pay attention to the audience. The great thing about audiences is, I believe they react exactly the same around the world at the same places in movies. They laugh, and they scream, and they’re bored. And when they’re bored it’s writer’s fault.

As you’ve said, there aren’t any rules in Hollywood.
GOLDMAN: There aren’t. It’s bewildering. I look at movies and I think what works and what doesn’t work, and it’s got nothing to do with quality. But there is something that they can’t figure out how to manufacture: word of mouth. That’s the great problem the studios have. If they could figure out how to manufacture that, they could all be relaxed about the world. But you can’t figure out why people say, “I want to see that,” and, “No, I don’t want to see that.” They try, but they can’t do it. I wrote a movie based on a fabulous piece of material, called The Ghost and the Darkness. It was a disappointment. After the first sneak preview, the studio asked, “Who’s your favorite character?” The Michael Douglas part was the fourth most popular. And when there are three people who the audience liked more than your star, it’s not going to work. You can’t make someone likable. When I was thirty, I got to work doctoring a show on Broadway for George Abbott, who was the most successful director in the history of American theatre. He said, “You can’t tell anything until you get hot bodies out there.” And I said, “What are hot bodies, Mr. Abbott?” He said, “People who don’t know your mother. People who want to come to the theatre and enjoy themselves or not and if they don’t, they’ll leave.” And that’s still true. They spend all this money hyping all these movies that open on Friday and they’ve gotten very skilful, but you still don’t know what’s going to work.

Do screenwriters get more or less respect today? Or did they ever get respect?
GOLDMAN: Oh, I don’t know. I think every time anybody makes a killing as a screenwriter, anybody who makes a huge sale, that’s a huge plus for everybody. Because when they watch the Today Show or they watch Letterman, what the audience sees is the stars being adorable and saying, “Yeah, well I wrote that part.” And I want to say, “Fuck you, asshole! Show me your script!” I’ll give you my theory. One of the reasons that screenwriters are never going to get what they should is because people who write about the entertainment business want to be in the movie business. They believe that screenwriters don’t do anything, so they can do it too. The director is in charge of all visuals and the stars write all the classy dialogue. So what does a screenwriter do? His position is very small in the public’s mind. And I don’t think that’s going to change.

In Adventures in the Screen Trade, you said that comic book movies were starting to take over. Now we’re thirty years later.
GOLDMAN: Yes, and they are. And sometimes, like The Matrix, they’re wonderful. And sometimes they are not. I wish there were answers. Billie Jean King, the great tennis player, said, “If it were easy, everyone would do it.” That’s true of making movies.

In your section on The Ghost and the Darkness in Which Lie Did I Tell, you had a quote from a lion tamer who displayed a terrible scar and said, “I made a mistake once.” What dealings with Hollywood have you had where you say, “I made a mistake once”?
GOLDMAN: I’ve turned down a lot of hits: The Godfather, Superman, The Graduate. But I should have because I wasn’t the person to write them. It’s thirty-five years now and I’m still here. I have very little to bitch about. Period.

Lastly, what’s your favorite lie?
GOLDMAN: When people ask me to read scripts, I always say, “Do you want me to tell you you’re wonderful? Do you want me to be honest?” And everybody always says, “Oh, I want you to be honest!” When I discuss the script with them, I’ll take a scene and say, “This scene here, I have a couple of questions.” And they’ll say, “Oh my God! That’s my favorite scene in the movie!” And then you know they don’t want to know what you think. The best thing to do is tell them how wonderful they are and get on to the next. I’ve always liked to know how horrible I am. Because I need all the help I can get.