William Goldman: “Nobody Knows Anything” – Part Two

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Directed by George Roy Hill)

Along with authoring a number of well-known (and infamous) major motion pictures across a variety of genres, William Goldman established himself as an authority on Hollywood screenwriting with the 1983 release of Adventures in the Screen Trade. Goldman imparted to audiences not just his command of all things literary — narrative, language, and character — but also an incisive, frank study of Hollywood's existing studio structure in the 1960s and 1970s, and what it would eventually become over the next three decades. 

“Nobody knows anything.” Since the publication of William Goldman's 1983 book Adventures in the Screen Trade, the Hollywood truism has become something of an adage. Even if this is true, it did not prevent readers and aspiring film writers from gleaning insights from Adventures into the mystical dynamics of the film business: Goldman was, at the very least, cognizant of what he did not know and his memoir remains insightful and acerbic, and one of the most elegant insider’s views on the functioning of the Hollywood studio system in transition.

Goldman came to prominence with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid his first original screenplay which went on to star Robert Redford and Paul Newman in a now legendary partnership. Goldman later went on identify the script's flaws in his book – an excess of clever dialogue, too many reversals, and an excess of "cuteness" – but the film was a box office smash in 1969, earning Goldman his first Academy Award, and arguably better defining the counter-cultural moment than critical touchstones such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Easy Rider (1969), and The Wild Bunch (1969). (1969). It elevated Redford to star status, and Goldman became one of his favourite writers on films such as The Hot Rock (1972), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), and All the President's Men (1976).  (Goldman's second Academy Award, despite his trenchant views on the film's several rewrites and the downplaying of Goldman's contribution to the finalised film.

His best years were the 1970s, when he penned seven screenplays, including Marathon Man (1976) and Magic (1978), both of which were adapted from his own books. However, his most successful film is The Princess Bride (1987), which was also based on his novel. Probably the most personal of his project: it manages to be romantic without being vloying, classical but unconventional, tough but sweet, and manages to appeal to a youthful yearning for heroism and adventure. He also has one other notable credit, the claustrophobic Stephen King adaptation Misery which was a major box office and critical success.

Goldman also summarised the screenwriter's poor status in Hollywood in the book. “In terms of power, screenwriters fall somewhere between the guard at the studio gate and the guy running the studio (this week),” Goldman wrote. 

Goldman served as a mentor to a generation of screenwriters, notably Aaron Sorkin. “He was the dean of American screenwriters and generations of filmmakers will continue to walk in the footprints he laid,” Sorkin said in a statement. “He wrote so many unforgettable movies, so many thunderous novels and works of non-fiction, and while I’ll always wish he’d written one more, I’ll always be grateful for what he’s left us.”

This is the second part of an in-depth interview with William Goldman (writer of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Marathon Man, The Princess Bride, among others), offering a glimpse into the writing process of one of Hollywood’s most experienced screenwriters.

Lack of confidence seems to be an ongoing issue for many writers. Have you met many writers who were confident?

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”?

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].

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Directed by George Roy Hill)

What is your rhythm now?

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?

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-veryterrific 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.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Directed by George Roy Hill)

None of the news clippings that you included in ‘Which Lie Did I Tell’ spoke to you as a short story or a novel? Not the seventy-eight-year-old bank robber or “the dolphin” [a ten-year-old autistic boy lost in an alligator-infested swamp who swam fourteen miles to civilization]?

Oh, I think if I were younger. Those are marvelous pieces. My God. If I was younger and had all that energy, I don’t know that I’d write another original screenplay. The dolphin is just breathtaking. I just love that piece. Don’t I end the book with the dead guy they found in the subway? [The clipping tells of a corpse that rode the subway for three days before someone noticed he was dead.] Well, come on! That’s a great start or middle or end of something! When you’re young and you have all this energy and you want to write and write and write, you can do that. But I’m older and dumber, and I don’t know if I have the energy to follow that through. My God! How old was the guy? It wouldn’t have worked for a movie, because they wouldn’t have made it. They would have made him young. But I just thought what a great thing. How old was he, seventy? This is an amazing story!

I read a terrible thing in the paper. There’s this crazy lady, Andrea Yates, who killed her five children. Terrible, terrible, terrible. I mean, Jesus, she’s fuckin’ nuts! Don’t tell me that she had any kind of depression from having too many children. She’s not what interests me. What interests me is, there was another woman down south who killed three of her children because [they think] she had been influenced by the woman in Texas. If you are a poor, miserable, half-crazed woman down south, and you read about this Yates woman and her husband saying, “Oh, I love her,” you think, “My God! How wonderful it must be to be famous!” I don’t know that we should do that. I think there’s a book in that.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Directed by George Roy Hill)

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?

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.

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.”

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.

This article first appeared in Creative Screnwriting Volume 8, #5

William Goldman: “Nobody Knows Anything”

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Directed by George Roy Hill)

William Goldman was a prolific author and screenwriter, best known for the 1987 film The Princess Bride, which was adapted from his 1973 novel. William Goldman first came to prominence in Hollywood when he sold his original script for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for a then-record $400,000. The 1969 picture, which featured Robert Redford and Paul Newman, was a critical and commercial success, earning Goldman his first Academy Award nomination for best screenplay.

Goldman was raised in Highland Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, where he earned a BA from Oberlin College in 1952 and an MA from Columbia University in 1956. Before he started writing screenplays, he had written several novels and had three Broadway plays performed. He eventually utilised several of these as the basis for screenplays. 

William Goldman went on to write over twenty screenplays, many of which are notable for their homage to and occasionally ironic reimaginings of popular film genres such as film noir (Harper), war films (A Bridge Too Far) thrillers (Marathon Man), horror films (Misery), and westerns (Maverick). Apart from their adherence to genre standards, the bulk of his screenplays are adventure stories, as shown by numerous key features of their narrative structure. This is obvious in two of his most personal screenplays, both of which gained considerable critical acclaim: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (directed by George Roy Hill, 1969) and the adventure/fantasy The Princess Bride (directed by Rob Reiner, 1987). 

The screenplay that launched Goldman's career as one of Hollywood's most celebrated writers began in the late 1950s, when Goldman discovered the story of two train robbers known as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, who committed numerous rail robberies in Wyoming during the early twentieth century. They subsequently fled to Bolivia to elude their pursuers – hired by the Union Pacific Railroad's owner – and are believed to have been killed by the Bolivian army. Goldman penned a very personal script based on the little information available, drawn to the aura of romance and adventure that surrounded this ultimately tragic  tale:  "For me it was always their story. These two guys, travelling together for years and decades over countries and continents finally going down, wildly outnumbered, in Bolivia. (...) I was moved when I first read about them, always will be”. 

As was usual throughout Goldman's career as a screenwriter, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was a script that defied classification, confusing many studio executives at the time. Despite the location in the Wild West, it was far from a standard western. It blended action and humour, had a cheerful and casual environment, and its characters acted like contemporary urban youth; a metamorphosis of the genre that had its origins in changes in America's cultural outlook. Goldman's agent, E. Ziegler, aggressively sold the script, and George Roy Hill's film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, was released in 1969. Not only was it a commercial hit, but it was also one of the decade's most highly acclaimed films. 

The film is famous for ushering in a new movie genre known as the buddy movie, which is connected with both action and comedy, emphasising male friendship ideals while relegating male-female relations to a secondary position. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid also plays a significant role in the 1960s film series that pioneered new approaches to the western genre. As was previously the case with Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959), The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960), El Dorado (Howard Hawks, 1966), and The Wild Bunch (Howard Hawks, 1966), this so-called New Western –featured the metamorphosis of the vicious bandit into an appealing protagonist. Due to its aesthetics and sense of futility, the film has been classified as a member of the so-called New Hollywood movement, a set of films that sought to revolutionise conventional filmmaking in response to the needs of a younger progressive audience. As a consequence, this film is often likened to other genre films such as Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967), Easy Rider (Dennis Hoper, 1969), The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967), and Midnight Cowboy (1969, John Schlesinger). 

Many reviews saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as a parody of the western genre, much how the 1973 novel The Princess Bride was seen as a parody of fairy tales and the adventure genre upon its 1987 publication. On the other hand, Goldman has often said that he did not want to produce a satire, but rather a fairy tale for his children. 

For $500,000, Fox Studios purchased the novel's rights and commissioned Goldman to develop a screenplay. Goldman eventually acquired the novel's rights back from the studio with his own money, fearful that they would undermine a work he considered very personal and amongst the best things he had written.

The Princess Bride film was eventually released in 1987, but only after Goldman secured a director devoted to the book in order to avoid losing creative control over one of his most cherished works. Rob Reiner finally won Goldman's trust, resulting in an endearing film that was well received at the box office and had an extended run on home video, occupying a special place in future generations' childhood memories. 

As with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride had a major impact on its movie genre. Due to its subtle irony, it was one of the first films to include a dual reading – one for adults and one for children – ushering in a trend that has continued to expand in future years, as seen by Dreamworks' Shrek trilogy (2001-2007). Rob Reiner accentuated the irony in Goldman's writing by casting late-night television and comic icons in supporting parts — Saturday Night Live's Billy Crystal and Christopher Guest, as well as English comedians Peter Cook and Mel Smith. 

Both Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Princess Bride follow the traditional Hollywood narrative system: the screenplays are formal in nature, with a beginning, a middle, and an end; they follow a sequential logic of cause and effect; the characters are active and transparent; and the endings are conclusive. Apart from their common Aristotelian narrative ancestors, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Princess Bride seem to have few other traits. They are written in two dissimilar genres (western and romantic adventure) and represent two diametrically opposite dramatic actions (a runaway into death with a tragic ending and a lover's ransom with a happy ending). However, both screenplays share a critical element in their narrative structure: they are both deeply rooted in the history of adventure literature and are constructed narratively as adventure plots.

Goldman received two Academy Awards for his work on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: an Academy Award for Original Screenplay and an Academy Award for Adapted Screenplay for All the President's Men. He also received two Edgar Awards for Best Motion Picture Screenplay from the Mystery Writers of America: for Harper in 1967 and for Magic (adapted from his own 1976 book) in 1979.

This is the first part of an interview with William Goldman, excerpted from Creative Screenwriting, that offers a glimpse into the writing process of one of Hollywood’s most experienced writers.

What’s your adaptation process? When you look at ‘Low Men in Yellow Coats’, for instance, how do you break it down?

The first thing is, I read it the first time and decide, “Do I really care about this project?” Because one of my great breaks is I have only done work I wanted to do. I’ve been very lucky and it’s true. The other thing is, “Can I make it play? Can I figure out how to do it?” Once I do, once I say yes, and the agents fire their guns across the waters with the studios, then what I do is, I’m not going to start writing for months. What I do is I reread the source material with a different colored pen for each pass. For instance, in Hearts in Atlantis, I made a mark by, let’s say, the Ferris wheel scene, in red. And I read the book and then I’ll put it away and then about two weeks later I’ll read it again.

If you had the Hearts in Atlantis that I had, you would see there are these incredibly stupid marks in color and circles in the text. They look bizarre ’cause the last reading, when there are all these colored marks, I begin to circle pages that I know I’m going to use. I knew I had to go back to the Ferris wheel sequence: ‘It was the kiss by which all the others of his life would be judged and found wanting.’ That’s marvellous! The great scene when Ted resets her arm, that business, pain, writhes, bite the belt, that marvelous scene. Every time I came to that, I knew that was going to be in the movie, so I would mark that.

Hearts in Atlantis (Directed by Scott Hicks)

So about two or three months later, I’ve read the book five or six times— this is why you better love what you’re doing. I’ll then go through it and I’ll look at what I’ve marked a lot, because I know pages with no marks are not going to be in the movie. I’ll try and figure out, “Have I got a spine? Have I got a story? Is there a way of telling it, using these scenes?” If I do, then I write a shorthand thing that I tape to the wall. In Hearts it might have been “baseball glove.” That would have meant the first sequence when he’s doing the picture taking and the baseball glove comes and he goes home. But I would just write “baseball glove.” Then there was a long sequence, which has been cut, during the credits of driving from wherever he lives to Connecticut and I would have written “drive.” And then I would have had “funeral.” For the entire scene at the Ferris wheel—the Ferris wheel, the cotton candy, all that stuff—I would just have “fair.” I can’t do that until I have the story in my head. But when I’m done, what I have on my wall is twenty-five or thirty snippets of one or two words.

What I’m trying to do is have twenty-five or thirty sequences—it could be one sentence or it could be ten pages—that hook onto the next so that at the end I have what I think is a story. And then I’ll write that. I tend to write quickly. I think one should. When I start, I won’t quit the first day until I’ve written three pages. And that seems like a lot if it’s a book, but with all the white space we have on screenplays, like “Cut To,” and double spacing and all that, it’s not that much. I won’t quit until I’ve written three pages. And I’ll go that way and then gradually it begins to up. It’ll go to four, and then to five. This is only about building up confidence. And then once you get halfway through, you think, “Holy shit, I could make it to the end!” And then you have more energy and you write it more quickly and then you’re done.

If I say, “Yes, I’ll make a movie out of this phone call,” you would get the first draft in six months (I’m compulsive about deadlines) but I wouldn’t start to write for four. I’ll write it in three weeks or four, and then I’ll fiddle with it and give it to you. But the whole thing is building up confidence that it’s not going to stink this time. If you decide you want to write, you magically have people in your head that drove you toward that life decision, to whatever you read when you were a kid, or whoever you saw when you were a kid. And you know you’re not that good. You realize you’re not going to be Chekhov, you’re not going to be Cervantes, you’re not going to be Irwin Shaw, who is the crucial figure for me. And so you go into your pit alone, hoping, trying to fake yourself out that this time you will be wonderful. And that’s hard and that’s why the building up of confidence is so crucial for me.

Hearts in Atlantis (Directed by Scott Hicks)

In ‘Hearts in Atlantis’ you changed the scene where Carol gets beaten. In the second draft she gets hit several times on screen, but in the third draft she gets hit once. Why?

That was intentional. In the book, all three bullies beat her up. They club her with a baseball bat. First thing you have to be careful of, this is in a movie now. You’ve got to be clear [to the movie audience] that they don’t molest her sexually. The second thing is, how much do you want to see? There’s a marvelous shot that Hicks has: her book falls in the stream, there’s a sound of birds flying away, and you hear the bat hitting something. Then Bobby comes in and she’s dazed and she says, “He hit me.” If you go more than that, it gets tricky. I’m sure I wrote it tougher.

There’s a wonderful legal phrase in the music business called the “money part.” If you’ve written a song and I sue you, the money part of the song will be the part that’s famous. [Sings] “Some enchanted evening…” Pardon me for singing, but you know what I mean? That’s the money part. I’ll use that very often. When you read Hearts in Atlantis, clearly the beating was one of the money parts. That’s something you know is so important that it’s going to be a major part of the movie. But it’s one thing when you read it in King. It’s something else when you write it for the screen. How much do you want to see a girl get beaten?

When you are adapting a story, do you look at the characters as people or as functions of a theme? When you write Carol, do you write her as person or a representation of hope?

As I’ve gotten increasingly longer in the tooth, it’s more and more and more the story. When the mother comes back [and has the confrontation] with Ted, that’s a plot point in the story of Ted’s betrayal, and that’s what it should be. But I know what you’re saying about character. It all mixes up. All I’m thinking about is how can I make this story interesting for me. How can I make this story work for me—if I think it’s a decent story, people around the world will. You don’t know if it’s going to be true. You don’t know if the studio’s going to make the movie. But that’s what I go on.

I believe when people leave me—when people walk out of a movie I’ve been involved with—it’s my fault. I believe we [screenwriters] have fucked up somehow on the storytelling. We’re telling you stuff you already know, stuff you don’t want to know, the wrong person’s talking.

The same scene, if it was on page ten or 110, would be totally different. Because once you’re running for curtain—as you are when you’re fifteen, twenty pages from the end—once you’re running for curtain, you want to speed up as much as you can because there’s a whole excitement that’s building, and you don’t want to have people in those last twenty minutes who are not of great interest to the audience. It’s an odd skill, an odd writing thing. I don’t know quite what it is yet after all this time.

Hearts in Atlantis (Directed by Scott Hicks)

What is the secret to writing great child characters?

First of all, there are no secrets to anything.

Okay… What is your approach to writing characters like those in ‘Hearts in Atlantis’?

Go with King. It’s one of the great things about King. Bobby and Carol are pretty much King. I don’t think I did much with them. Some of the dialogue is me but most of it is King, as much as I could make. Were there any big changes? No. A lot of it is just taking out bits and pieces and making it play. But I think that’s all King.

I believe when you decide to do a movie about something, there’s something in it that moves you. Whatever that is, you’d better protect that. Bobby and Carol, unrequited love, whatever you want to call it, I found just heartbreaking. I thought they were so great together and finally they got together again, at least in the book. So I wanted to protect that. The other thing is Bobby and Carol and Bobby and Ted. So you want to protect that. You want to stay with as much as you can that moves you. In the novel you get into all kinds of stuff as to who the low men are. I was talking to King on the phone and he had read, that to fight communism, Hoover began hiring people who were telepathic or had certain mental skills, which is fairly insane. I didn’t want to go there. That’s swell for the book, and that’s swell for King, but [I thought] that’s not what this movie is going to be.

Courtesy Creative Screnwriting Volume 8, #5

Elmore Leonard: On Writing and Movies

Jackie Brown (Directed by Quentin Tarantino)

The late, great American crime writer Elmore Leonard penned over 40 books and numerous short stories in a career spanning sixty years. As one of America’s most distinctive and influential genre novelists his work inspired television shows and several fine films. The following abridged excerpts are from an interview by Patrick McGilligan for Film Comment on Leonard’s experience of working in Hollywood and his reaction to film adaptations of his work. It was published to coincide with the release of Quentin Tarantino’s adaptation of Leonard’s Rum Punch (as Jackie Brown).

To what extent do you think your writing was influenced by movies, even before you began selling stories to Hollywood?

Probably more than I thought. When I started writing, I wanted to make money right away and I chose Westerns because of the market. You could aim for Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, Esquire, Argosy, Adventure, and a number of pulp magazines, like Dime Western, that were still in business. I liked Western movies and they were big in the Fifties.

So when you were writing a story, you were thinking of it, from the outset, as a possible movie?

That was my hope.

Was it just accidental that the stories you were writing, with so much dialogue, almost resembled scripts?

It happened that my style did lend itself – the way I learned to write in scenes, with a lot of dialogue. I think initially I learned as much as I could from Hemingway, and then the style I developed seemed to apply itself to movies: scenes leading to scenes, character development, but always enough action, too.

On the first story he sold to the movies: ‘3:10 toYuma’:

How did that get sold? What was the process whereby you were ‘discovered’?

The story was in Dime Western, 4500 words; I got ninety dollars for it. The editor insisted I rewrite one of the scenes and do two revisions on my description of the train. He said, ‘You can do it better. You’re not using all your senses. It’s not just a walk by the locomotive. What’s the train doing? How does it smell? Is there steam?’ He made me work for my ninety bucks, which was good. It was in the magazine, and then within a year a producer saw it and bought it.

The Tall T (Directed by Budd Boetticher)

How about ‘The Tall T’ (57)?

That was a novella in Argosy, which sold to Hollywood fairly quickly. I found out later that Batjac, John Wayne’s company, had bought it originally, and then something happened and he passed it on to Randolph Scott and [producer] Harry Joe Brown. They also added about twenty minutes onto the front end, which I thought gave it an awfully slow opening.

And you had nothing to do with the people in Hollywood who made the movie?

No. I saw that one in a screening room with Detroit newspaper critics. I remember the film coming to the part where Randolph Scott has Maureen O’Sullivan lure Skip Homeier into the cave. Randolph Scott comes in and faces Skip Homeier, who has a sawed-off shot-gun in his hand. One of the critics said, ‘Here comes the obligatory fistfight.’ But Randolph Scott grabs the shotgun, sticks it under Skip Homeier’s chin, pulls the trigger, and the screen goes red. They didn’t say anything after that.

You might say that was a ‘defining Elmore Leonard moment.’ You have become known for surprising, brutal violence in your stories. How did you come by that penchant?

I wasn’t writing for Range Romance, I was writing action stories, six-guns going off, violence a natural part of it, the reason for reading a Western. But never, in 30 short stories and eight novels, did I stage a fast-draw shootout in the street, the way practically every Western movie ends. Later I developed ways of having the violence happen more unexpectedly and low-key. ‘And he shot him.’

The Moonshine War (Directed by Richard Quine)

When is the first time you actually went to Hollywood to work on a screenplay?

In ‘68 or ‘69, with The Moonshine War. [...] I’d go out to Hollywood, stay all week, and go home weekends. I spent at least three weeks out there before [the producer] Ransohoff fired me from the picture. He said, ‘You’re too close to the forest to see the trees.’

Was he right?

No, not then. Now, when I think of adapting my own stuff, I think there’s truth in that. Definitely. But it’s not so much that you’re too close to it. It’s just that all of your enthusiasm went into the original, so how do you get it back up to write the screenplay? To me, if the writing process isn’t enormously satisfying, it isn’t worth doing. I love writing books. I wrote movies for money.

What did you do for those three weeks?

Met with [director] Dick Quine. I’d go to his house every day and we would sit around and talk about what we were going to do; and then Chris Mankiewicz would come over – he was the liaison between Ransohoff and us – and talk in broad, general terms, never specific, about what should be in the picture. I thought we just wasted an awful lot of time, until finally I wrote the script and then I was fired.

They had another writer for maybe a week and then I was hired back on. Quine liked me and got me back. Ransohoff also had a phonetically written script done by a professor at the University of Kentucky, I think, indicating what the dialogue would sound like with that kind of a rural Southern accent. I kept thinking, Why in the hell don’t they just get good actors who can fake it, or actors born in the South?

Joe Kidd (Directed by John Sturges)

Then they ended up shooting the picture in California, not far from Stockton, in the only clump of trees in a rather barren landscape of dun-colored hills. The picture was also miscast. Let’s face it, Dick Quine was not the guy to direct a picture about people who live in ‘hollers’ and talk funny. He had done mainly comedies that were hip at that time: How to Murder Your Wife, Paris When It Sizzles. The Moonshine War didn’t stand a chance.

Did anybody ask your advice about casting?

They always ask, but they don’t pay any attention to the writer. Richard Widmark I thought was all wrong for the part of the [bootlegger] – I had pictured someone like Burl Ives with a little 16-year-old girl sitting on his knee. I did visit the set for a couple of days. After a number of takes of one scene, Patrick McGoohan came off the set, walked up to me, and said, ‘What’s it like to stand there and hear your lines all fucked up?’

Do you feel that what went wrong there was not the script, but everything else – the casting, the locations, the director… ?

There were things about the story I had been obliged to change. In all of my screenplays, I’ve always gone against my better judgment in listening to the director or the producer, doing what they want so I can get the money and go home and write a book. Or thinking, Well, they know what they’re doing – even though something is telling me, Nah, that’s not gonna work.

Joe Kidd (Directed by John Sturges)

On working with Clint Eastwood and John Sturges on ‘Joe Kidd’ (72):

How much did Clint have to do with the script?

Eastwood and Sturges would come into my office at the end of the day and read the scenes I had written. Eastwood is the easiest guy in the world to get along with. I don’t recall him changing that much. He would just agree and pass the pages on to Sturges. The only time I can recall him saying anything was for the scene where Joe Kidd is confronted by an armed faction, near the end of the second act. Eastwood said, ‘Shouldn’t I have my gun out when I say that?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t think you need to have your gun out.’ Eastwood said, ‘But my character has not been presented as a gunfighter.’ He turned to Sturges, ‘Don’t you think I need my gun out?’ Sturges said, ‘No, you don’t need your gun out.’ Eastwood said, ‘Why not?’ Sturges said, ‘Because the audience knows who you are – they’ve seen all your pictures.’ But when the picture was made, Eastwood did have his gun out.

Get Shorty (Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld)

Was ‘Get Shorty’ (95) a totally positive experience?

All the way. I must admit I was surprised to see the film had become a comedy. I told [director] Barry Sonnenfeld after I saw it, ‘I don’t write comedy.’ He said, ‘No, but it’s a funny book.’ Barry and [screenwriter] Scott Frank were conscientious about sticking to the plot and using as much of the dialogue as they could. The lines were delivered the way they were written, seriously, the way I’d heard the characters when I was writing their lines. Gene Hackman was delivering his lines one day in rehearsal, and Barry said, ‘Gene, that was really funny,’ and Hackman said, ‘Well, I wasn’t trying to be.’ Barry said, ‘That’s the whole idea.’

I do think my books were getting a little funnier as I loosened up, toward the mid-Seventies. I had become a little freer and easier in the way I was writing – not trying so hard to write – and funny things began to happen to the characters.

Going back to The Big Bounce in ‘68, however, I've been working pretty much with the same characters: ordinary people who seem a bit quirky, non-heroes, spending as much time with the bad guys – who usually aren’t too bright – as I do with the more sympathetic characters. I have an affection for all of them, so I treat them as human beings with much the same desires and hangups we all have. Plot is secondary, not that important to me. Once I know my characters I’m confident a plot will come out of them. I make it up as I go along, not knowing what’s going to happen, never knowing how the book will end.

Get Shorty (Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld)

‘Not knowing what is going to happen’ is part of the comedy, it seems to me. Part of the Elmore Leonard experience. There are always amazing plot twists in your stories.

What’s amazing to me, when I think about it, is that while Hollywood in general prefers plot driven stories – they ask, ‘What’s it about?’ – 33 of my 35 books, all character-driven and talky, have either been optioned or bought outright for film. I write a book not knowing what’s going to happen, so I won’t be bored, so I can entertain myself making it up as I go along, establishing characters in the first act I hope to be able to use later on, for a set-piece or two if not turns in the plot. If a plot twist is amazing, as you suggest, it must be at the same time believable. So I write each scene from a character’s point of view, with the character’s ‘sound’ providing the rhythm of the prose and the believability of what’s taking place in the scene. The reader accepts it because the character is there. It might not be acceptable from my point of view, were I an omniscient author who thinks he knows everything. Their ‘sound’ is much more entertaining than mine, so I try to keep my nose out of it. I don’t want the reader ever to be aware of me writing. And if the prose sounds like it was written, I rewrite it.

Jackie Brown (Directed by Quentin Tarantino)

On ‘Jackie Brown’, did you read Quentin Tarantino’s script?

Yeah. It’s pretty much the book, with a lot of Tarantino, of course, a lot of additional dialogue.

Did you give Tarantino any input?

I questioned a couple of things, asked why scenes we both liked were left out. But I only spoke to him twice on the phone. The first time was a couple of years ago, when he was just beginning and told me he was going to do Rum Punch instead of Killshot. That was all I heard from him for about a year and a half, until just before he started shooting, in early June [‘96], when he called again. He said, ‘I've been afraid to call you for the last year.’ I said, ‘Why? Because you’ve changed the title and you’re starring a black woman in the lead?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Do what you want. You’re the filmmaker, you’re going to do what you want anyway.’

I was on the set twice, and both times it looked like he was enjoying himself. I met Sam Jackson and Pam Grier, who looked terrific, and I could see why Quentin wanted her. Bridget Fonda I’d met before, doing publicity for Touch, and I was happy to see her in the picture. I trusted Quentin and felt certain the film would work; though I suppose there will be a few smartass critics waiting to take a shot at him.

So, all of a sudden, you’re ‘hot.’

It doesn’t seem that long ago I had hopes of being the hot kid, selling my first story in ‘51 when I was 25. I got on the cover of Newsweek in April 1985, and was seen as an overnight success after little more than thirty years. Now I’m 72 and still at it, writing a sequel to Get Shorty that puts Chili Palmer in the music business, where, with his mob-connected background, he should feel right at home. In doing the research, learning about the record industry, the success of Get Shorty has opened all the doors. We’ve even had Aerosmith over to the house to drink non-alcoholic beer and play tennis. MGM, Jersey Films, and John Travolta all seem optimistic that it will happen. I am, too, but I have to finish writing the book before we’ll know if is any good. Or even what it’s about.

– ‘On Writing and Movies. Elmore Leonard interviewed by Patrick McGilligan’. Film Comment Magazine. 

Terry Southern on Stanley Kubrick

Dr. Strangelove (Directed by Stanley Kubrick)

Writer Terry Southern was hired by Stanley Kubrick to make a satire out of a screenplay originally based on the novel Red Alert by Peter George. Released as Dr. Strangelove (1964), the movie takes us into the war room of a certain President Merkin Muffley, to reveal a military culture gone berserk, as its leaders cheerfully prepare for the imminent end of the world.

Kubrick's examination of Cold War unease is one of the most biting satires ever produced in Hollywood. The movie is set at the height of Cold War hostilities and centres on a deranged US general (played by Sterling Hayden) who, frustrated by his sexual impotence, plots to launch a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, a disparate coalition of political leaders makes a last-ditch effort to avert apocalypse. Peter Sellers plays three separate parts, including Dr. Strangelove, a weapons specialist with Nazi sympathies, while George C. Scott stands out as a hawkish general. The film was initially intended to be a dramatic examination of the Cold War (based on Peter George's book Red Alert), but Kubrick determined that it would be more successful as a parody. Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a subversive masterpiece that established Kubrick as an unmatched stylist and bitter ironist. 

The moment in which an air force major (played by Slim Pickens) rides atop a falling nuclear weapon is one of the film’s most lasting images. Originally, the film concluded with a lavish pie fight within the War Room. The section was omitted, and the rewritten conclusion depicts a sequence of nuclear explosions set to Vera Lynn's iconic World War II song "We'll Meet Again." 

Dr. Strangelove's development was hampered by a plagiarism action involving the 1964 picture Fail Safe, which was based on a book similar to Red Alert, and the fact that the picture's premiere was initially scheduled for Nov. 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was killed.

Kubrick deftly weaves social critique onto an otherwise straightforward Cold War narrative. Kubrick clearly underlines a sense of dramatic irony in practically every scene via staging and language, most notably in the Strategic Air Command's slogan, "Peace is Our Profession,"

Kubrick deftly incorporates this lethal irony to demonstrate what occurs when communication is disrupted. Fundamentally, the tragedy is the loss of discourse during translation, which invites the question: Who is responsible? What is both funny and distressing about the film’s escalation into nuclear annihilation is that many of the film's ill-advised scenarios (such as the mishandled hotline between President Muffley and Premier Kissov) might have been prevented with appropriate planning and technology. Kubrick, however, does not underplay its baleful repercussions. By portraying caricatures of powerful characters, Kubrick skillfully suggests to the audience his own cynical views of society’s leaders: powerful men who are tragically out of touch with reality and whose paranoia will eventually destroy the world. Gens. Ripper and Turgidson exemplify this craziness. Ripper believes the Soviets have been fluoridating American water supplies to pollute the "precious bodily fluids" of Americans, while Turgidson asserts that a coordinated preemptive attack would restrict reprisal to a "modest" 20 million American deaths. As the adult men quarrel in the War Room, Kubrick wrestles with a world gone mad, warning cogently against naive reliance on a system that may result in destruction and chaos. 

While the Cold War’s immediate terrors have mostly subsided since the debut of "Dr. Strangelove," Kubrick's disturbing images implying the inevitability of nuclear war can nevertheless strike fear and dread – even today. Kubrick consistently infuses "Dr. Strangelove" with contradictory feelings of exhilaration and terror, patriotic enthusiasm and troubling hate, until the film's terrifying conclusion. As the soothing verses of Vera Lynn's optimistic World War II anthem "We'll Meet Again" plays on the soundtrack, coordinated scenes of nuclear explosions fill the screen, a disturbing vision of darkness unleashed. 

The following extract is taken from an interview with Terry Southern by Lee Hill in which Southern discusses his experience of working with Stanley Kubrick.

What was the status of the ‘Dr. Strangelove’ script before Stanley Kubrick decided to hire you in the fall of 1962?

When Kubrick and Peter George first began to do the script, they were trying to stick to the melodrama in George’s book, Red Alert [published under the pseudonym ‘Peter Bryant’... There was an outline. They didn’t go into a treatment but went straight into a script. They had a few pages and in fact had started shooting, but in a very tentative way. Kubrick realized that it was not going to work. You can’t do the end of the world in a conventionally dramatic way or boy–meets–girl way. You have to do it in some way that reflects your awareness that it is important and serious. It has to be a totally different treatment, and black humor is the way to go. That was Kubrick’s decision.

When you first got together with Kubrick, did you start changing the tone of the script right away?

Yeah, after the first day, at our first meeting, he told me what the situation was. All those things that I’ve told you were his very words. ‘It’s too important to be treated in the conventional way. It’s unique! The end of the world is surely a unique thing, so forget about the ordinary treatment of subject and go for something like a horror film.’ He decided to use humor. The flavor that attracted him in my novel The Magic Christian could be effective in this new approach. He would talk about the mechanics of making it totally credible and convincing in terms of the fail-safe aspect and then how to make that funny. And the way you make it funny, because the situation is absurd, is by dealing with it in terms of the dialogue and characters.

I’m curious about the day-to-day working relationship with Kubrick as you wrote the film from the preproduction period through the actual shooting.

Well, after my first day in London when he told me what he had in mind, I got settled into a hotel room not far from where he lived in Kensington. That night, I wrote the first scene, and then he picked me up at four-thirty the next morning in a limo. The limo was a big Rolls or Bentley. We rode in the backseat with the light on. There was this desk that folded down. It was very much like a train compartment. It was totally dark outside. If it got light, we would pull the shades down. He would read the script pages; then we would rewrite them and prepare them for shooting when we got to the studio, which was about an hour to an hour–and–a–half drive depending on the fog.

Kubrick is notorious for his organizational mania.

Yes, he loved nothing so much than to go into stationery stores and buy gadgets and organizational aids.

You hear all these fantastic stories about how Kubrick lives. Did you visit his home much when you were in London?

Yes, several times. He has a castlelike structure, a grand old mansion, which has this two–projector screening room. It has electric fences and security devices. It has everything except a moat. He’s super private because he lives for his children. He lives in comfort and luxury in almost total isolation.

Peter Sellers was going to play all four parts originally, including the Texan bombardier. I understand you coached Sellers on his accent.

The financing of the film was based almost 100 percent on the notion that Sellers would play multiple roles. About a week before shooting, he sent us a telegram saying he could not play a Texan, because he said it was one accent he was never able to do. Kubrick asked me to make a tape of a typical Texan accent. When Sellers arrived on the set, he plugged into this Swiss tape recorder with huge, monster earphones, and listened to the tape I made. He looked ridiculous, but he mastered the accent in about ten minutes. Then Sellers sprained his ankle and couldn’t make the moves going up and down the ladder in the bomb bay. So he was out of that part. The doctor told him he couldn’t do it. Then it was a question of replacing him. Stanley had set such store by Sellers’s acting that he felt he couldn’t replace him with just another actor. He wanted an authentic John Wayne. The part had been written with Wayne as the model.

       

Did Kubrick ever try to get Wayne to play the role?

Wayne was approached, and dismissed it immediately. Stanley hadn’t been in the States for some time, so he didn’t know anything about television programs. He wanted to know if I knew of any suitable actors on TV. I said there was this very authentic, big guy who played on Bonanza, named Dan Blocker. Big Hoss. Without seeing him, Kubrick sent off a script to his agent. Kubrick got an immediate reply: ‘It is too pinko for Mr. Blocker.’ Stanley then remembered Slim Pickens from One-Eyed Jacks [1961], which he [had] almost directed for Marlon Brando, until Brando acted in such a weird way that he forced Stanley out.

When Pickens was hired and came to London, wasn’t that the first time he had ever been out of the States?

Yes, in fact it was the first time he had ever been anywhere outside the rodeo circuit as a clown or the backlots of Hollywood. Stanley was very concerned about Slim being in London for the first time and asked me to greet him. I got some Wild Turkey from the production office and went down to the soundstage. It was only ten in the morning, so I asked Slim if it was too early for a drink. He said, ‘It’s never too early for a drink.’ So I poured out some Wild Turkey in a glass and asked him if he had gotten settled in his room. ‘Hell, it doesn’t take much to make me happy. Just a pair of loose shoes, a tight pussy, and a warm place to shit.’ One of Kubrick’s assistants, a very public-school type, couldn’t believe his ears, but went ‘Ho, ho, ho’ anyway.

Finally, I took Slim over to the actual set where we were shooting. I left him alone for a few minutes to talk to Stanley. While we were standing there talking, Stanley went, ‘Look there’s James Earl Jones on a collision course with Slim. Better go over and introduce them.’ James Earl Jones knew that Pickens had just worked with Brando. Jones was impressed and asked Pickens about the experience of working with Brando. ‘Well, I worked with Marlon Brando for six months, and in that time, I never saw him do one thing that wasn’t all man and all white.’ Slim didn’t even realize what he was saying. I glanced at James Earl Jones, and he didn’t crack [a smile]. Slim replacing Sellers worked out well because, unbeknownst to me at the time, the actor that was playing the co-pilot [Jack Creley] was taller and stockier than Sellers. Whereas Slim was about the same size [as the co-pilot] and more convincingly fulfilled the intention of this larger-than-life Texan.

To what extent did Peter Sellers’ improvisation depart from the shooting script?

It was minimal. It wasn’t like Lolita, where he improvised a great deal. His improvisational bits in Strangelove were very specific. One scene that comes to mind is when [Sterling] Hayden goes into the bathroom to kill himself, Peter’s lines are: ‘Oh, go into the bathroom and have a brushup . . . good idea.’ Sellers changed that to: ‘Splash a bit of cold water on the back of the neck . . .,’ which is more of a British thing. That was good.

What was Columbia’s reaction to this subversive black comedy that the studio had helped to finance?

Columbia was embarrassed by the picture and tried to get people to see Carl Foreman’s The Victors instead. At the time we thought we were going to be totally wiped out. People would call up the box office and be told there were no seats for Strangelove and asked if they would like to see The Victors instead. Gradually, the buzz along the rialto built word of mouth in our favor.

Wasn’t there some falling-out between Kubrick and yourself over screen credit following the film’s release?

Stanley’s obsession with the auteur syndrome – that his films are by Stanley Kubrick – overrides any other credit at all. Not just writing but anything. He’s like Chaplin in that regard. That’s the reason why he rarely uses original music in his films. [Since I had] written this great best-seller, Candy, which was number one on the New York Times best-seller list for something like twenty-one weeks, my reputation eclipsed Stanley’s; so I got total credit for all the Strangelove success in Life, the New York Times, and other publications. The credit I was getting was just so overwhelming and one sided that naturally Stanley was freaking out. He took out an ad in Variety saying I was only one of the three writers on the film, the other two being Peter George, and himself. He just lashed out. But it was like an overnight thing. I wrote a letter to the New York Times explaining that there was no mystery involved, and that I was brought in to just help with the screenplay.

Screenwriter Paul Schrader Discusses His Writing Process

Taxi Driver (Directed by Martin Scorsese)

Paul Schrader has long credited the renowned French director Robert Bresson's Pickpocket as a major influence on him. Schrader refers to the film, first seen while a student at UCLA film school,  as "the most significant film in my creative life" and has often described how his preoccupation with Bresson's film led to the creation of Taxi Driver.

During his time at the university film school, Schrader thought there was a major difference between critics and filmmakers, but this film helped him understand the artistic view of each.

“When I saw this film Pickpocket, it hit me for the first time that there could actually be a place for me. I could make that film,” he thought to himself in the cinema. “I saw that there was a bridge between my theological upbringing and my current love of the movies,” said Schrader. 

In the film, a man commits a series of thefts and then goes and writes about them in his diary. “Two years later, I wrote Taxi Driver, which is exactly that film.”

While the film's formality approaches minimalism, Bresson insists on the subjective, limiting viewers to what the loner hero, Michel (Martin Lassalle), sees, says, thinks, and writes; this is reinforced by his voice-over narration and on-screen writing, and emphasised by the film's near-total lack of leading music. 

Bresson's predilection for slicing his "models" (rather than "actors," whom he thought belonged in the theatre) into isolated body parts, usually revealing only their hands, torsos, and feet, has gotten a lot of attention. Similarly, there aren't many establishing shots, and most of Bresson's black-and-white films (1943-1967) take place in cramped rooms. With a watch attached to the leg of a table and a wallet in the breast pocket of a hanging jacket, Michel (Martin LaSalle) trains in his destitute garret (like many of Bresson's locations, Michel's hovel suggests the domiciles of Dostoevsky's gone-to-seed recluses). It's no surprise that this sequence echoes the "You talkin' to me?" scene from Taxi Driver.

Over the next twenty years, Schrader made over twenty films and the influence of Bresson is pervasive not just in Taxi Driver, but American Gigolo, Light Sleeper and more recently First Reformed.

In the following extracts Schrader discusses his writing process and the influences on his work.

Taxi Driver (Directed by Martin Scorsese)

Transcendental Style In Film

“There are different kinds of films,” said Schrader. “You show an image and that image creates empathy, whether it’s a person or a place. Then, you move that image and you create empathy and action. That’s what we do in movies.” But, there are also efforts to break these rules.”

“When you start withholding, you are working against the very grain of cinema. Only a handful of films can succeed by withholding because that’s not what film was meant to do. But, because film is so good at providing, it can also work at withholding, but it was never meant to withhold.”

In Schrader’s book, Transcendental Style in Film, Schrader dissected the work of Yasajiro Ozu, Robert Bresson, and Carl Dreyer. Where most films focus on psychological realism, these directors focus on transcendental style and camerawork. The style is meant to be devoid of self-consciousness.

This is also true of how he creates mysterious characters like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver or Toller in First Reformed.

Creating Complex Characters Through Mystery

“There’s a mystery within the character. A good character has a mystery. Sometimes, you can have a sense of what that mystery is and sometimes you don’t want to know. Sometimes he goes off or she goes off and does something and you say, Why the hell did he do that?”

“That’s part of the fun of creating,” mused Schrader. While this may back some writers into a hole, it keeps the work interesting for the acclaimed screenwriter. In the case of Taxi Driver, he knew that putting the audience in the mind of Travis Bickle would essentially create empathy, which he would then remove by the end.

Part of this mystery comes from carrying the characters around in his mind. Schrader will often tell stories to people and at a certain point, he is overflowing with an idea. This really means talking to anyone who will listen and share the story to make sure it’s enticing and engaging.

“I’m sitting here in front of the computer now and I’ve started a new script. But, it took me almost a year to get here. I don’t start writing until I know what I’m going to do. I don’t write to figure it out. I write because the well-spring is bubbling over and it needs now to be expressed.”

First Reformed (Directed by Paul Schrader)

Idea Overflow & Narrative Moments

Before Paul Schrader sits down at the computer, he will tell his movie idea to anybody who will listen. This is ironic, given that most screenwriters are so worried about protecting their ideas. Perhaps Schrader knows that no one else can write a story like him, but it’s an interesting approach nonetheless.

The writer advises telling the story to “anybody who is smarter than you… Let me take you to get a cup of coffee—By the way, I want to tell you this story. That’s how it is. It’s not what they say. It’s what’s in their body language. It’s what in their eyes. Do you actually have them? That’s all that matters. I don’t give a damn what they think of my story. All I care about is: are they sitting in my narrative moment?”

Based on the body language, Schrader will go back and change up the story to make it more engaging. This is perhaps the most intriguing approach to telling a story and another reason why Schrader believes movies to be more oral storytelling than a version of literature. This is also how comedians work on material in front of small audiences to build up an hour for a special.

Amidst the creation states and the physicality of writing, however, even an acclaimed creator like Paul Schrader has had pitfalls.

First Reformed (Directed by Paul Schrader)

Getting Knocked Down By Applause

In his 20s, Paul Schrader lived out of his car before selling the screenplay for Taxi Driver. More recently, he had a Nicolas Cage film taken away from him that he was working on as the director. Despite these odds, he managed to push forward and continue work as a screenwriter and director.

“Filmmakers, by nature, are alpha beings. We look at the lions and we say, ‘Give us a whip. Give us a chair. I’m going to go into that cage and I’m going to make those lions sit up.’ But, that’s not always the case. Sometimes the lions eat you and that has happened to me.”

Schrader has gotten into projects where he didn’t respect the other person or the other person didn’t respect him. But, with First Reformed, he’s essentially back on top and the film is being well-received by all. “When people are laughing at you and kicking you and pissing on you—it’s sometimes easier to get up than when they are applauding,” he said about the recent success.

“Now, they’re applauding. I’ve found that it’s a little tricky to get back up on your feet once you’ve been knocked down by applause,” said Schrader. Despite the success, the writer-director is not thinking of retiring anytime soon.

– Excerpt from “Screenwriting Veteran Paul Schrader Discusses His Writing Process on Taxi Driver, Raging Bull & First Reformed. From Creative Screenwriting, July 2018. Full article here