Navigate to Arts & Letters section

Adventures in the Screen Trade, William Goldman (1983)

The consummate inside look at Hollywood

by
Adam Chandler
September 17, 2013

Before he wrote screenplays like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All The President’s Men, The Princess Bride, and Marathon Man, William Goldman was a young cinephile sneaking into the Halcyon Theatre in the northern Chicago suburbs. His early 1980s memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade (punned from an unfinished Dylan Thomas novel) is a crafty tracking shot of how decades of Hollywood life turn innocence into knowledge. This is what a smart Hollywood dinner table sounds like. And we know who is sitting at that table.

Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.