William Goldman's 'Adventures in the Screen Trade'

As someone who writes fiction as a hobby and dreams of doing it professionally, I enjoy reading authors discuss their process and craft.

William Goldman's "Adventures in the Screen Trade" was no exception, an ultimately fun read loaded with practical advice, narcissistic drivel, and everything in between.

Goldman, who died last November at age 87, offers a cynical, blunt book that's half-memoir and half-instruction manual for those interested in Hollywood screenwriting. His memoir/manual format, first published in 1989, would later be perfected by Steven King in his brilliant guide for aspiring novelists, "On Writing."

Near the beginning of his book, Goldman lets us in on a depressing secret with his infamous line, "Nobody knows anything." What he means is nobody knows which screenplays will become hits -- and that in the face of this void, studio executives create myths designed to preserve their sanity.

In one illuminating anecdote, a studio executive tells Goldman that 1981's On Golden Pond was a smash hit "because it's got Jane Fonda in it" (p. 51). Goldman points out (to the reader, not to the executive) that Fonda starred in another film that year, Rollover, and it was a total bomb.

"So why did the studio guy say Fonda made On Golden Pond?" Goldman asks. "Because he was desperate to come up with something, anything, that wouldn't shake the foundations of what he knew to be true -- what kind of film to make."

What this studio executive knew to be true was that a mature family dramedy aimed at middle-aged audiences just wouldn't do much business at the box office -- and that viewers were flocking to it not for the brilliant storytelling, but because it was anchored by a major star (not to mention her father, Henry Fonda, alongside Katharine Hepburn). The problem, Goldman explains, is that acknowledging the success of a film like On Golden Pond on its merits would "mean a total opening up of what constitutes a commercial film. And that's scary -- so much more comforting to make Death Wish XXIII" (p. 51).

Overall, I found Goldman's advice on the writing process to be direct and mostly useful -- and applicable to all writing, not just screenwriting. I was interested in some of the book's many gossipy anecdotes, the ones that still hold up more than three decades later; the others I just skimmed.

One section that was particularly interesting -- and distressing -- was Goldman's lament that Hollywood studios were increasingly only greenlighting what he calls "comic-book movies." He uses the term "comic-book movies" metaphorically -- movies that adhere to certain rules, including these two (p. 153):

(1) Generally, only bad guys die. And if a good guy does kick, he does it heroically.

(2) There tends to be a lack of resonance: Like the popcorn you're munching, it's not meant to last. 

What would Goldman think now, when his analysis is no longer metaphorical, when Hollywood literally only greenlights comic-book movies?

I chose the following as the best paragraph because, first, it's great and, second, it has particular resonance with me as a just-starting-out novelist engaged in the search for an agent (p. 85):

Agents are the Catch-22 of the movie business: Everybody starting out desperately needs one and nobody starting out can possibly get one.

Tana French's 'In the Woods'

Tana French's 'In the Woods' left me shaken.

At the bottom of this post, below the spoiler warning, I discuss the ending -- a frustrating, confounding, genius ending that I can't stop thinking about.

The novel is a gripping psychological study that I plowed through in just a few days. It opens with the main character, Rob Ryan, recalling a childhood horror -- when he and his two friends went into the woods in 1984 and only he came out. He can't remember a single thing about what happened to his friends, who haven't been seen since.

Two decades later, Rob is a homicide detective assigned to investigate the murder of a young girl from his hometown. The case has eerie similarities to the 1984 disappearances, raising the obvious question: Are the cases connected?

What kept me flipping the pages was the delicious tension between Rob and his partner, Cassie. They are funny, smart, and likable -- maybe too likable.

The best paragraph (p. 4):

This is my job, and you don't go into it -- or, if you do, you don't last -- without some natural affinity for its priorities and demands. What I am telling you, before I begin my story, it this -- two things: I crave truth. And I lie.

SPOILER ALERT!!!

It's impossible to evaluate this novel without discussing the ending, which has been churning in my brain for days.

At first, I was outraged -- French appeared to have broken a cardinal rule of mystery-writing by leaving a key thread unsolved.

But after mulling it over -- and reading some online discussion boards -- I came around to the opinion that the 1984 disappearances are, in fact, solved. Our narrator, Rob, murdered his friends. I don't come to this conclusion lightly; I liked Rob and was rooting for him to emerge as the story's hero.

The evidence for this theory can be found in numerous posts across the internet. I'll add just two points that are extremely convincing to me:

1) Cassie cuts Rob from her life. Yes, Rob is a huge jerk to her. But I don't believe the events, as described by Rob, warrant her response of completely ghosting her best friend. Instead, I believe her reaction is the result of her realizing that Rob is a sociopath. She has repeated her previous error of falling for a man with no conscience -- and this realization pushes her to seek a fresh start. It's worth noting that the other women in Rob's life, Sophie and his landlord, also seem to see something sinister inside Rob that we do not -- since we're only privy to Rob's side of the story.

2) I keep coming back to the passage below where Rob notes that we, as readers, failed to pick up on Rosalind's evil nature. I can't help but wonder if Rob is playing the same trick with himself, causing us to sympathize with him despite the warning signs that he is concealing his true nature. Here's the passage in question (p. 409):

I am intensely aware, by the way, that this story does not show me in a particularly flattering light. I am aware that, within an impressively short time of meeting me, Rosalind had me coming to heel like a well-trained dog: running up and down stairs to bring her coffee, nodding along while she bitched about my partner, imagining like some starstruck teenager that she was a kindred soul. But before you decide to despise me too thoroughly, consider this: she fooled you, too. You had as good a chance as I did. I told you everything I saw, as I saw it at the time. And if that was in itself deceptive, remember, I told you that, too: I warned you, right from the beginning, that I lie.

Sarah Pinsker’s 'And Then There Were (N-One)'

What if you could meet every possible version of yourself?

That’s the premise of Sarah Pinsker’s novella “And Then There Were (N-One),” which was first published by Uncanny Magazine but came to my attention through the Escape Pod podcast.

Pinsker casts herself as first-person narrator, a choice that could easily come off as egotistical but that works here because of the self-deprecating humor and earnestness.

The story opens with Pinsker considering whether to accept an odd invitation—to an alternate-reality event called SaraCon, attended by hundreds of Sarah Pinskers from different universes.

At the event, Pinsker mingles with others who share her name, birthday, and DNA. But these Sarahs hail from worlds with varying degrees of similarity to our own—exposing each Sarah to a different set of circumstances, leading to so-called life “divergence points.” Some Sarahs are writers; others are scientists, teachers, and barn managers.

“The occupation list read like a collection of every ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I’d ever answered,” writes the Sarah from our world.

The story takes a macabre turn when one of the Sarahs is murdered. What would motivate one Sarah to kill another? Our Sarah, an insurance investigator, sets out to find the answer.

The brilliance of the story is that it’s impossible to read without contemplating our own alternate selves. What would my life be like if I’d chosen a different college or occupation? The story forces us to reckon with the fact that each decision we make, big or small, has profound consequences for our future selves.

The best paragraph:

Why did I go into detective work, not one of the sciences? I hated my calculus teacher, dropped it after a few weeks; because of him, I didn’t get far enough in math to pursue a college major in bio or physics. Maybe he didn’t exist in the other worlds, or maybe the science Sarahs hadn’t let him get the better of them. Maybe they pushed themselves to spite him. Some went on to become geneticists or researchers or science fiction writers. Same mind, applied differently. Choices, chances, undecisions, non-decisions, decisions good and bad.

James A. Michener's 'Sayonara'

James A. Michener's 'Sayonara' is a brilliant novel about a hotshot U.S. Air Force pilot's forbidden romance with a Japanese woman in 1952, when he's stationed in Kobe during the Korean War.

It's a breezy read at 208 pages, with hardly a word wasted -- a rarity for Michener, known for his lengthy historical tomes.

The novel is engrossing because of its authenticity, which makes sense given that it's loosely autobiographical. The first-person narration feels like the honest musings of a lovesick 28-year-old, torn between his lust for his Japanese lover and his father's expectation that he will marry an upstanding white woman from a military family.

Michener confronts the U.S. government's racist policies that deterred military men from marrying foreign women, with the novel defining love as a product of our common humanity that transcends racial, cultural, and legal barriers.

The best paragraph (p. 102):

It was breathlessly apparent to us as the sun sank below the distant hills that in terribly crowded Japan Hana-ogi and I were seeking a place in which to make love. There was now no thought of Japanese or American. We were timeless human beings without nation or speech or different color. I now understood the answer to the second question that had perplexed me in Korea: "How can an American who fought the Japs actually go to bed with a Jap girl?" The answer was so simple. Nearly a half million of our men had found the simple answer. You find a girl as lovely as Hana-ogi -- and she is not Japanese and you are not American.