Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting by William Goldman

(pb; 1983: nonfiction)

From the back cover

“No one knows the writer’s Hollywood more intimately than William Goldman. Two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter and the bestselling author of Marathon Man, Tinsel, Boys and Girls Together, and other novels, Goldman now takes you into Hollywood’s inner sanctums. . .on and behind the scenes for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, and other films. . .into the plush offices of Hollywood producers. . .into the working lives of acting greats such as [Robert] Redford, [Laurence] Olivier, [Paul] Newman, and [Dustin] Hoffman. . . and into his own professional experiences and creative thought processes in the crafting of screenplays. You get a firshand look at why and how films get made and what elements makes a good screenplay.”

Review

Adventures is a fun, informative, blunt and sometimes sad/frustrating (about the Hollywood writing-filming process) book. If you are interested in the aforementioned subject matter this may be an excellent read for you, like it was for me. It never lagged, was consistently interesting─in a way that I may re-read it in the future, re-reading something I rarely do: worth owning, this.