Adventures in the Screen Trade

by William Goldman

This was the start of The Great Waldo Pepper. (Waldo, remember, was the story of these daredevil flyers in the twenties, grown-up children who wanted to impress girls and be heroes and fly.) FADE IN ON THIS KID. Maybe he’s ten, freckled and bright-eyed. Very American-looking. And we’re in CLOSE UP, so we don’t know where we are or when, but that doesn’t matter; what matters is that the KID is concentrating on something just as hard as he can. He’s staring off and biting his lip and CUT TO A TEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL. CLOSE UP. And there are a lot of boys who are going to lose a lot of sleep over this one when she gets a little older. She’s looking up at something just now, we don’t know what yet, but she’s so excited you can feel the pounding of her heart. Now— CUT TO THE BOY. Not quite so close up this time. He takes half a step forward, then hesitates, stops, and begins kind of to rock back and forth, nervously back and forth as we CUT TO THE TEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL, AND NOW ANOTHER GIRL THE SAME AGE JOINS HER. This one is pretty, too, and she, too, stares up at the same angle, and she’s just as excited as her friend, and they stand there, side by pretty side, watching and waiting, watching and waiting. CUT TO THE BOY. He takes a deep breath, slowly starts running forward, and as he does CUT TO THE TWO PRETTY GIRLS, and whatever’s going on, it’s just too exciting, they simply can’t stand it and, keeping their eyes on the running BOY, they reach for each other’s hands, find them, clutc...