Adventures in the screen trade

What Hacker News says

1. mattkevanSep 2017
   I’ve just finished reading ‘Adventures in the screen trade’ by William Goldman, the guy who wrote ‘All The President’s Men’, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid’ and ‘The Princess Diaries’.

   While written in the early 80s, it’s thoroughly entertaining and very insightful as to how movies actually get made. His main point is that nobody knows anything. No one knows why one film was a hit and another wasn’t. So successful properies/stars/directors are milked for all they’re worth until suddenly they’re not.

   Read the book, it’s great.

   Show morethread
2. leocAug 2023
   Viz. the screenwriter William Goldman’s “Nobody knows anything” from his book Adventures in the Screen Trade. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-08-11-ca-807-st... https://variety.com/2018/film/opinion/william-goldman-dies-a...
   thread
3. lutuspSep 2013
   > If you're so confident, why not short it?

   What? He should tell you his investment strategy? These things are secret for a reason. As William Goldman famously said, no one knows anything.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_in_the_Screen_Trade

   thread
4. dxbydtOct 2012
   >All of the advice given at these events are bullshit by this definition. startup founders literally have no idea why things take off and they have no idea why they win

   So William Goldman wrote an entire book on this very subject - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_in_the_Screen_Trade#...

   That book has chapter upon chapter upon chapter with the same exact advice - "Nobody knows anything"

   Goldman says after he wrote the book, his phone simply stopped ringing for four full years, because he calls everybody a liar - the director, producer, screenplay writer, actor, story consultants, everybody - none of them know why one movie works & another doesn't. Finally, it was The Princess Bride in 87 that salvaged his reputation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Bride_(film) )

   I used to be a Film Major and it was repeatedly banged into our head that "Nobody knows anything", so we couldn't say "your script sucks" when our classmates read their script ideas aloud in class.

   Show morethread
5. jseligerAug 2010
   Why is it that everyone is so concerned about where to start?

   Because where you start appears to influence -- heavily -- where you end up, or if you end up doing anything important. How many big tech companies began and stayed in in Madison, WI, or in Florida? Almost none.

   There's a whole field dedicated to examining why and how this happens: economic geography. See here for a decent intro: http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/patton.carpet . The carpet industry in Georgia is one such example; Internet startups in Silicon Valley are another; movies in L.A. is a third; and so on.

   It's like moving to Hollywood because you want to be an actor or writer.

   Take a look at William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade, where he says:

   "I find Los Angeles a very difficult and potentially dangerous place to work in, and I think anyone seriously contemplating a career as a screenwriter ought to move there as soon as it's humanly or financially possible" {Goldman@74}.

   Later:

   Screenwriters should go to L.A. despite the problems. As Goldman says, "To begin with the practical: Simply put, they know things out there the rest of the country doesn't, and they get that information first. The movie business is a part of the fabric of life in Los Angeles, and that just isn't true anywhere else. It is, if you will, in the air" {Goldman@80}.

   People who ignore this ignore it at their own peril.

   Show morethread
6. mechanical_fishNov 2008
   No major artwork was created by a committee.

   Actually, William "The Princess Bride" Goldman argues in his famous book about screenwriting (Adventures in the Screen Trade) that all movies are created by committee. He lists a bunch of people that need to do their jobs correctly in order to make a movie any good, starting (obviously) with the screenwriter and the director but also including: The cinematographer, the casting director, the designers and costumers, the film editor, and the composer. To say nothing of the producers, who need to come up with sufficient money or the film doesn't get made.

   Goldman makes this point in the course of lampooning the "auteur" theory of criticism, in which entire films are attributed to the genius of one person -- usually the director. It's because of those auteur theorists that we tend to speak of "Hitchcock's" North by Northwest, ignoring the fact that a lot of that film's genius was contributed by Cary Grant, to say nothing of Bernard Herrmann.

   A great example is Star Wars, which as we all know sprang from the brow of George Lucas. Except, of course, for the parts that were actually created by Ben Burtt (sound designer), John Dykstra (FX supervisor), Rick Baker (makeup artist), Ralph McQuarrie (production illustrator), John Williams (composer), and Richard Chew, Paul Hirsch and Marcia Lucas (film editors). And that's just scratching the surface.

   A game on the scale of Spore is also, inevitably, created by committee. The question is whether you can keep the committee on the same page. It sounds like Spore's team had some struggles, which had to be mediated, and which were ultimately resolved in a way that isn't quite to my taste. Which is not to say that the enterprise is a failure. It's sold a lot of copies, and no doubt many people are pleased with it. I played with the creature creator, and it was very cute.

   Show morethread