William Goldman wrote the way Joe Dimaggio played ball: with such deft and consummate skill that the impossible seemed easy. (It wasn’t. And isn’t.) Reading a Goldman screenplay, you never see the armature, the scaffolding. You see people, real people, just a bit more vivid than they might be were they not in a Goldman movie.
Perhaps because he was a novelist long before he was a screenwriter, his screenplays are writerly. They’re literate without ever being literary. And though Goldman’s dialogue was ferociously memorable – is there a more iconic line in all of cinema than the one in which Inigo Montoya announces his name, his motivation, his intention? — Goldman knew that image creates character creates story. The very first words of Goldman’s very first original screenplay:
He was introducing his protagonist; but he might as well have been describing himself.
Goldman was also a master of exposition.
Perhaps because he was a novelist long before he was a screenwriter, his screenplays are writerly. They’re literate without ever being literary. And though Goldman’s dialogue was ferociously memorable – is there a more iconic line in all of cinema than the one in which Inigo Montoya announces his name, his motivation, his intention? — Goldman knew that image creates character creates story. The very first words of Goldman’s very first original screenplay:
He was introducing his protagonist; but he might as well have been describing himself.
Goldman was also a master of exposition.
- 11/19/2018
- by Howard Rodman
- Variety Film + TV
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