What is stronger than childhood memory? Nothing, at least for me. I still have a recurring dream of my poor, sad father reading the book out loud—only in the dream he wasn't poor and sad; he'd had a wonderful life, a life equal to his decency, and as he read, his English, so painful in truth, was splendid. And he was happy. And my mother so proud....
But the movie is the reason we're back together. I doubt that my publishers would have sprung for this edition if the movie hadn't happened. If you're reading this, dollars to donuts you've seen the movie. It was a mild success when it first hit theaters, but word of mouth caught up with it when the videocassette came out. It was a big hit in video stores then, still is. If you have kids, you've probably watched it with them. Robin Wright in the title role began her film career as Buttercup, and I'm sure we all fell in love with her again in
Most of us love movie stories. Maybe back when Broadway held sway, people loved theater stories, but I don't think anymore. And I'll bet no one begs Julia Louis-Dreyfus to talk about what it was like shooting
Anyway, these are some movie memories pertaining to
I had taken time off from writing
You will read, in such magazines as
The truth: they are all oil slicks.
Only one person per studio has anything resembling power, and that is the GG. The GG, you see, can make a picture happen. He (or she) is the one who releases the fifty million bucks—if your movie is aimed for Sundance. Triple that if it's a special effects job.
Anyway, the GG at Fox liked
Problem: he wasn't sure it was a movie. So we struck a peculiar arrangement—they would buy the book, but they would not buy the screenplay unless they decided to move forward. In other words, we both owned half the pie. So even though I was tired from finishing the abridgement, I went on nervous energy and did the screenplay immediately after.
My very great agent, Evarts Ziegler, came to town. Ziegler was the one who orchestrated the
I didn't want to do anything but get home
All kinds of doctors came in—everybody knew something was seriously wrong, nobody had a guess as to what it might be.
I woke at four in the morning. And I
And right then, in that hospital (and, yes, I expect this will sound nutty to you) as I woke in pain and delirium, somehow I
—because somehow my life and
The night nurse came in and I told her to read me the Morgenstern.
'The what, Mr. Goldman?' she said.
'Start with the Zoo of Death,' I told her. Then I said, 'No, no, forget that, start with the Cliffs of Insanity.'
She took one close look at me, nodded, said, 'Oh, right, that's exactly where I'll start, but I left my Morgenstern at the desk, I'll just go get it.'
The next thing I knew, here came Helen. And several other doctors. 'I went to your office, I think I picked up the right pages. Now what is it you want me to read?'
'I don't want
'I could be Buttercup—'
'Oh, come on, she's twenty-one—'
'Is that a screenplay?' this handsome doctor said then. 'I always wanted to be a movie star.'
'You be the man in black,' I told him. Then I pointed to the big doctor in the doorway. 'Give Fezzik a shot.'
That was how I first heard the screenplay. These medicos and my genius wife struggling with it in the middle of the night while I froze and sweated and the fever raged inside me.
I passed out after a little while. And I remember thinking at the last that the big doctor wasn't bad and Helen, miscast and all, was an OK Buttercup, and so what if the handsome doctor was a stiff, I was going to live.
Well, that was the beginning of the life of the screenplay.
The GG at Fox sent it to Richard Lester in London—Lester directed, among others,
—then he got fired, and a new GG came in to replace him.
Here is what happens Out There when that happens: the old GG is stripped of his epaulets and his ability to get into Morton's on Monday nights and off he goes, very rich—he had a deal in place for this inevitability—but disgraced.
And the new GG takes the throne with but one rule firmly writ in stone:
Death.
So
And I realized that I had let control of it go. Fox had the book. So what if I had the screenplay; they could commission another. They could change anything they wanted. So I did something of which I am genuinely proud. I bought the book back from the studio,
After a good bit of negotiating, it was again mine. I was the only idiot who could destroy it now.
I READ RECENTLY that the fine Jack Finney novel