R.I.P. William Goldman (1931-2018)

William Goldman

On November 16, 2018 writer William Goldman passed away at the age of 87 in Manhatan, New York after complications with colon cancer and pneumonia. Over the course of a career spanning half of a century, he has become renowned as one of the greatest screenwriters of all time. With two Academy Awards for writing, he has helped to shape the modern sense of the screenplay with films like All the President's Men, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, as well as the family classic The Princess Bride. He was also a novelist and a script doctor who worked on enough scripts to help shape the cinema of the 80's and 90's into something greater. He leaves behind a body of work that wasn't only great on screen, but also on the page. No matter what, his body of work speaks for itself and there's a good chance that no matter what, there's at least one film you're bound to like from his impressive career.

Goldman was born in Chicago, Illinois on August 12, 1931. He came from a Jewish family that raised him in a suburb of Highland Park. His father was a successful businessman who fell on hard times, largely because of alcoholism. He committed suicide while William was still in high school, and his mother's deafness made the years since difficult. William received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin in 1952 before joining the Army. When he left the Army, he earned a Master of Arts degree in 1956 from Columbia University. Despite these credentials, he had issues publishing the things that made him most happy: his short stories. When on the creative writing staff, he remembers submitting anonymously and having everyone tell him that his work was horrible and unpublishable. He would go on to dorm with his brother James Goldman and friend John Kander. All three of them would becomes Oscar-winning talent for different projects throughout their unique careers.

William's first love was novel writing, and thus he published his first novel "The Temple of Gold" in 1957. This would lead to several more, including some written under bouts of writer's block. This caused him to be experimental with projects, doing a mix of novels, screenwriting, and nonfiction. He also worked in theater on such projects as Tenderloin (1960) and "A Family Affair. While he would have some of his novels turned into movies, his earliest days didn't feature him writing any of the scripts. Still, he kept working and eventually wrote the screenplay for Harper (1966), which became a big hit. Following this, he taught at Princeton and continued writing novels until he ran out of ideas. By this time, he turned to writing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which he had researched for eight years. This lead to what was the highest sold screenplay at the time of $400,000.

The film would earn him his first Oscar win for Best Original Screenplay:

During this time, his clout allowed him to research and write a book called "The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway," published in 1969. He would continue to write movies, with some not reaching the adaptation phase, such as Papillon and The Right Stuff, and were handed to other writers. He would publish "The Princess Bride" in 1973, which is one of the few projecs he created that he was proud of. It would become his most beloved work and he would write the screenplay for the film. Before that, he wrote the screenplay for All the President's Men, which received controversy over writer ownership. After an investigation, it was proven that he had written it. 

He won his second Oscar for the film:

Despite the critical success and cultural relevancy, Goldman considers the screenplay to be one of his worst. While there isn't a clear answer as to why, he has alluded to two reasons that this may be the case. First, he was mandated by the studio to write a love interest. The second is tha the published so many drafts of it that it probably lost all meaning. Still, he was responsible for the iconic line "Follow the money," which many attribute to the actual figures depicted in the movie. In the 80's, he began to have a bit of a lull period with many of his screenplays not being published, save for The Princess Bride. It lead him to return to novel writing. When he returned to script writing in the 90's, he did projects mostly through Castle Rock that included several Stephen King novels, most notably Misery. He also became a script doctor and helped to fine tune the various projects.

Among his later projects was a Broadway adaptation of King's Misery for the stage in 2015. The version included performances by Bruce Willis and Laurie Metcalf. Beyond that, he dabbled in nonfiction writing and began to receive tons of acclamation. By the final years, he was considered one of Hollywood's greatest screenwriters, in large part because he never let success go to his head. He always put effort into his work. Despite all of this, he claims that the only projects that he was proud of were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the novel version of "The Princess Bride." It could be that he's hyper-judgmental of his own work, but it also proved that an artist will always have difficulty judging their own work. Still, Goldman's prolific output on page and screen left behind some highly influential work that continues to resonate with audiences. Even if he didn't think so, he was one of the best writers of the 20th century, and the world was better for having him.