William Goldman Dies; Oscar Winning Writer Of ‘Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid’ Was 87

deadline ^ | 11/16/2018 | Mike Fleming Jr

[Borges]

I have been informed by friends of the family that William Goldman died last night. He was 87. Goldman, who twice won screenwriting Oscars for All The President’s Men and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, passed away last night in his Manhattan home, surrounded by family and friends. His health had been failing for some time, and over the summer his condition deteriorated.

We will be following this and building out the story today, but I wanted to let Deadline readers know straight away. From his scripting work to his books like Adventures in the Screen Trade, Goldman is one of the greats, a true legend.

Goldman began as a novelist and transitioned to writing scripts with Masquerade in 1965. While his greatest hits were the indelible pairing of Robert Redford with Paul Newman in the George Roy Hill-directed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Redford and Dustin Hoffman in the Alan Pakula-directed toppling of President Richard Nixon drama All The President’s Men, he wrote the scripts for many other great movies. The list includes the Hoffman-starrer Marathon Man, as well as The Princess Bride, Flowers For Algernon, The Stepford Wives, The Great Waldo Pepper, A Bridge Too Far, Chaplin and Misery. He also did a lot of behind the scenes script doctoring without taking a screen credit, as on films that included A Few Good Men and Indecent Proposal.

[EveningStar]

Silent Generation

[karnage]

RIP. A great, great screenwriter. Coined the immortal term, referring to the “experts” in the movie business: “Nobody knows anything.”

Pure genius.

[Mears]

Yep,Silent Generation——and someone wrote a book calling us The Lucky Generation-——and we were.

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[Borges]

He wrote a blistering take down of “Saving Private Ryan’...

http://achtenblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/saving-private-ryan-goldman-essay.html

[ifinnegan]

I didn’t know that, thanks.

I will read it.

[minnesota_bound]

ping

[minnesota_bound]

I had never liked the Private Ryan movie starting with the beginning where US soldiers kill unarmed German soldiers when they were prisoners. Spielberg supports the democrat party and will make America look bad when he can.

[Borges]

Thanks for pinging me to my own post. :)

[Borges]

That was towards the end actually. You think his goal with that film was to make American servicemen look bad...

[EveningStar]

Thanks. I loved the essay. BTW, I never saw the movie. From what others said about it, it sounded too violent.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 11/16/2018. Thanks Borges.

Butch wrote some unknown number of letters to people back in the states. Of those which are known to have survived, not even one postdates the shootout in Bolivia on November 7, 1908. That's not a coincidence. He had a lookalike brother who (like the rest of the family) amounted to nothing, who in later years visited old friends he and "Butch" had had in common in their youth, and passed himself off as Butch.

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