Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade

by William Goldman

These three, I felt—they had to run a total of fifty pages at least—were so strong they would support the remainder of the screenplay, no matter how badly I might screw things up. Aside to young screenwriters: no, I am not bullshitting when I say this last. I am always terrified I am going to screw everything up. The most hideous advice—and at the same time the most releasing—was given to me by George Roy Hill, still and always the greatest director I ever worked with. I had just taken on the job of trying to make the famous Woodward-Bernstein Watergate book somehow translate to screen. Hill, a world-class sadist, looked at me, and these were his words: “All the President’s Men? Everybody’s going to be waiting for that one.” And here he smiled. “Don’t fuck it up.” At a Knicks game recently I ran into Ben Stiller, who has his own demons trying to figure out the glorious Budd Schulberg book What Makes Sammy Run? Naturally I was kind, told him this: “Don’t fuck it up.” He kind of smiled …