Adventures in the Screen Trade

by William Goldman

I had one meeting with the late Steve McQueen, involving a Western I’d written that, he told me over the phone, he liked a lot, and could we meet? We met, and the then director of the project, Don Siegel, was also present. And this is about how it went. McQUEEN I want a campfire scene where the two guys get drunk and talk about the old days. SIEGEL He’s got that—I think it’s fine. McQUEEN I don’t mean that kind of campfire scene. I mean a campfire scene. We met like that for several hours and I still don’t know why. But it was madness. Here I was, closeted with these two men whose work I’ve admired for years, and McQueen kept going on and on about things that he wanted in the script that were already in the script, and Siegel tried to do his best. I just sat there, nodded, took notes, prayed for it all to end. I wasn’t surprised, a few weeks later, to learn that Siegel had walked the picture.