Fred Smith's Blog, page 2

Everyone Knows his Work. Few Know his Name.

I’m going to print a single word. An adjective, if you’re curious.And when you read this lone word, you’ll know exactly who my favorite author of all time is.Well, you might not know his name, but you’ll instantly recognize his work. Guaranteed.If you’re over the age of 30, it’s a slam dunk. And since no one under the age of 30 reads my stuff, I’m fine with the prediction.Wanna bet? Make it interesting? Bring it on. Name your prize.Email me with your demands if you don’t have the foggiest idea what I’m talking about when I say this word. I’m good for it.Me? I’m not even going to ask for an ante. It’s not a fair bet.Ready for the word?Ok, here it is.The word...(scroll down)(little more)wait for it...“Inconceivable!!”Do I even have to give you a moment to think? Or copy and paste the word into Google if you actually are under 30?Of course, I don’t. Because everyone knows I’m referring to The Princess Bride.Now, for double points...who’s the author?This one’s a bit tougher.I’ll give you a hint. The Princess Bride isn’t the only movie he’s written that you’ve probably seen.Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Marathon Man.Still stumped?Don’t sweat it and don’t go to Google or IMDB.com, either.The name you’re looking for, who in my forties I’ve come to realize is my favorite author of all time, is...William Goldman.Ahem, two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter William Goldman. Bestselling novelist William Goldman. Playwright William Goldman.The greatest author you’ve never heard of...William Goldman (1931-2018).He’s famous for saying that in Hollywood, “nobody knows anything.” Outside of Hollywood, few (save for film buffs) seem to know him.I think he should be a household name. Here’s why:If William Goldman only wrote the novel AND screenplay for The Princess Bride (which he did), his legacy should be cemented in the canon of 20th century American literature. Add the fact that he did the same for Marathon Man, and his case for immortal praise strengthens.But there’s more to his body of work. A lot more.How’s this for a career stat line?30+ produced screenplays (two Academy Award winners).16 novels.4 plays.9 nonfiction books.Maybe it’s because he’s had such success as a screenwriter that his achievements as a writer have been largely overlooked.Popular as his movies have been since the 1960s (Butch, Marathon Man, Princess Bride, The Stepford Wives, All the Presidents Men, Misery), timeless as his novels are (Boys and Girls Together was a bestseller in 1964. It would be today, too--without a single edit), it’s his nonfiction work that I keep by my bedside among a collection of sacred texts.Two of Goldman’s works, in particular, should be required reading for anyone crazy enough to try and earn his living by putting words to paper:Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting (1983)Which Lie Did I Tell? (More Adventures in the Screen Trade) (2000)Both were bestsellers (and widely available today). Both are ostensibly about screenwriting and the business of Hollywood from a screenwriter’s perspective.To me, though, they’re about more. They’re handbooks for how to survive when you’re a creative professional living in a business-driven world.I was in my 30s and well into a career of getting my ass kicked and soul crushed in the advertising game when I discovered Goldman’s sacred duo of books on writing. To this day, I swear I’m in those pages with him.Here’s a writer who’s had the kind of success most of us only fantasize about when we’re alone and practicing our interviews with Terry Gross. Goldman, however, spends all his time telling us not about the hits...but the misses--the false starts, the oh-so-closes, the flops...the failures. Can I get an amen for relatability?Even when he tells us about the highlights of his writing career, he keeps the story on the pain and misery.Butch earned him his first Academy Award. The screenplay took eight years to research. Eight years!A question for the under 30 crowd (if there are any out there who’ve braved reading this far): have you ever done anything for eight years?It’s not just the kids who rebel against time investment. I’ve heard grown colleagues lament (corporate-speak for bitch) about how they spent three whole weeks writing a project only to have it die an unceremonious death at the hands of a spineless executive.All the President’s Men, according to Goldman was the hardest and worst experience of his writing life. It won him the Oscar that year for best adapted screenplay. Even when he’s discussing Misery, Goldman can’t keep from relating his own personal misery.His favorite scene in the Stephen King-adapted film--the reason he took the job, the scene he was sure would make the movie--was re-written without his approval. Does he bitch about his soul being crushed by a bunch of gutless producers with their greedy eyes on the bottom line at the expense of art?Hardly. He admits he’d over-written the scene and toning it down was exactly what the picture needed.[spoiler alert]The scene in which Kathy Bates breaks James Caan’s legs with a sledgehammer originally called for her to chop his legs off with an ax. Revised and toned down, the scene did, in fact, prove to be the movie’s most memorable and probably solidified Bates for the supporting actress Oscar.“If we had gone the way I wanted it,” Goldman says, “It would have been too much. The audience would have hated Annie and, in time, hated us.“I was wrong,” the tow-time Oscar winner summarizes.Preach on.Except he doesn’t. He never talks down to his readers. He’s never pretentious or condescending. He never shows off with lofty prose, either. You’re in the trenches with him. Two soldiers sharing stories over a smoke in between shellackings.Guys who’ve been around the block love to tell guys who haven’t about their trip. Goldman does that, but he frequently uses one word that takes the focus from him and shifts it to the reader.The word?"You."In one breath, he issues a calling, inviting you to join the cause of bringing stories to life because “God knows we can use you.”In another, he gives it to you straight, divulging the inevitable misery that comes with choosing the writing life.“Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it. Putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before. And although you are physically by yourself, the haunting Demon never leaves you, that Demon being the knowledge of your own terrible limitations, your hopeless inadequacy, the impossibility of ever getting it right. No matter how diamond-bright your ideas are dancing in your brain, on paper they are earthbound.”William Goldman. Earthbound storyteller and relater of pain.I’ll take it. Every word.Because a writer’s “life is pain, highness. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.”Fred Smith was born in the '70s, wore long socks and short shorts in the '80s, played drums in bands in the '90s, and became a husband (to the greatest woman on the planet) and a father in the 2000s. This decade he's made a few movies and written a few books you can check out on this site. Stick around. Have a few rounds on the house. Then, you know...buy something. Fred Smith's latest book of short stories, The Closet, is now available on AmazonHERE.William Goldman'sbody of workis also on Amazon.

On Writing Racist Characters

The charred corpse of Jesse Washington hangs from a utility pole. His ashen body is naked from the waist up, arms flexing like a body builder showing off his chiseled physique. A noose hangs around his neck. Two white men pose in front of the body, each wears a sullen face typical of photography subjects from the early 1900s. Dozens of stoic black faces look toward the camera’s lens from the background as though this wasn’t the first time one their own was paraded through their neighborhood by whites with a message. Nearly 4000 African-Americans were lynched in the US from 1882 to 1968. Most of these murders were clandestine in nature, overt statements of white superiority made by killers intent on keeping their identity a secret while reminding blacks of their place. Some of these killings, like Jesse Washington’s, were preserved by professional photographers and output as postcards. Lynching postcards were souvenirs that immortalized the dead and championed those responsible. Throughout the 20th century, the cards were routinely exchanged between white family members eager to spread their racist hate from one generation to the next. In the case of Jesse Washington’s card, the proud killer inscribed a barley-legible handwritten note on the back: “This is the barbecue we had last night my picture is to the left with a cross over it your son Joe (sic).” A lynching postcard is a central plot device in my short story, “The Exalted Cyclops” about an aging Klansman who begins to question his long-held racist convictions in the fictitious town of Jennings, Georgia in 1968. In the story, lifelong KKK member J.D. Schlocter is given a lynching card by his father when J.D. is a boy. A half century later, the card remains an effective motivator J.D. uses to rally his fellow Klansman in preserving the KKK’s creed of upholding the purity of the white race, fighting communism, and protecting white womanhood. J.D.’s flock, the Jenning’s chapter of the Klan, is a cross-section of aging working-class whites, most of whom, like J.D., show physical signs of wear from a lifetime of labor. These men, like their fathers before them, fought America’s wars, built her highways and homes, and assembled her machines. Now, as the 20th century reaches its fourth quarter, J.D. is realizing that America is turning her back on the working men whose own backs she broke to get where she is.“But it’s hard to hate America. Still, a man has to have someone to blame.” Opportunity comes when Beattie Sams, an out-of-towner, “with the looks of a Motown singer, the hands of someone who worked for living and the grip of someone who meant business” presents J.D. with a proposal born from integration. It’s Beattie who points out to J.D. that blacks and working class whites face the same plight; both form an underclass in unwitting support of the haves who are content to let the have-nots fight themselves. “Black and white together makes green,” Beattie says in support of her idea to integrate the local economy. In considering the proposal, J.D. examines his life and wonders whether the choices he’s made have been guided by virtue or marred by treachery. As the story’s author, I made it a point not to judge J.D. or any of the choices he makes. I leave that to the reader, who brings his or her own prejudices to the story, confronts his or her beliefs, and picks sides. "The Exalted Cyclops" appears in Fred Smith's latest book of short stories, The Closet, available on Amazon HERE. Fred Smith was born in the 70s, wore long socks and short shorts in the 80s, played drums in bands in the 90s, and became a husband and a father in the 2000s. This decade he's made a few movies and written a few books you can check out on this site. Stick around. Have a few rounds on the house. Then, you know...buy something.

Rendezvous (flash fiction)

She’d grown tired of waiting and decided to pretend she was the star of a French New Wave film; a fantasy that gave her license to play with his gun. His apartment became a grainy black and white scene that invited her to take hold of the pistol and aim it at items the audience would interpret as significant. In truth they were random, but now she had something to do. She plopped on the bed and lit a cigarette, which would have pissed him off, not because he hated smoking, but he detested

The Valedictorian's Moment (short film)

On the eve of her high-school graduation, the valedictorian receives inspiration from a heavenly source. Starring Jacqueline Frenkel and Jessie Frenkel. Music by Jeremy D. Silverman. Written and driected by Fred Smith  

Small Talk

  She felt sympathy for him because he was old. His face was wrinkled and his shoulders sagged as though his body had spent the last decade in an out-of tune microwave. Yet here he was on the number 7, commuting among the hustle and fray, most of which was half his age and still clung to the grade-school ideal that the world owed them something. His eyes, though, were bright and looked as though they hadn’t aged a day since the summer of Sam. From her seat she watched as he kept his head up in

Inopportune (Flash Fiction)

They were sitting patiently near the fountain. She found it calming. It made him want to take a leak. The son said into his phone, “I can’t. We’re at the credit union. The federal credit union.” Mom clutched her purse with two hands across her chest like it was her son the time when he was six and spent the night alone in the woods. An Asian boy with tight shorts and a nose ring sprayed himself with a bottle before stepping through the automatic door into the lobby. The son rolled his eyes and

The Kinko's Poet

Listen to the poetic groove HERE.   !2 below in Baltimore. I stepped into a Kinko's on Charles Street, and was greeted by a poet who welcomed me to his impromptu show by the cash register.   I had heart to spare and so I listened, while the poet spoke his peace about a boy who grew up hard with words that bit and rhymes that bit harder than the winter we were all trying to escape.   He was good. So I an another listener taking reprieve from the cold gave thanks for his enlightening what would

An Outhouse in Our Time

Seldom do we get the chance to point our lens at another time.   No one knows exactly when this outhouse was built, but it stands today at the Coon Dog Cemetery in Tuscumbia, Alabama. The place is a burial ground for bona fide coon dogs, the first of which was "Troop", who was laid to rest in 1937 by the cemetery's founder, Key Underwood. I went there a few years ago while on assigment covering Tiffin Motorhomes of nearby Red Bay, AL. After convincing my traveling mates we needed an early

Contrast: a poetic groove by Fred Smith

Inspired by something I saw in a bar in Florida. Words, sticks and image by yours truly.

Intercession City

We were stopped at a run down gas station, somewhere on the backroads between Tampa and Orlando after a Sunday afternoon with my in-laws. The place didn’t seem like Florida. There was hardly a tree in sight. Everything was brown. Dust swirled in the wind in a way that suggested tumbleweed would roll by any minute. Our five-year-old had to pee and this place, which probably handed out bathroom keys tied to cinder blocks, would have to do. These days, dad isn’t much help in a public bathroom. I’m