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

New York: Pantheon Books, 2000. First Edition. First Printing. From the library of author William Goldman with his estate stamp which reads, “from the library of William Goldman (1931 - 2018)”. Fine in a fine bright dust jacket. The second screenwriting memoir from William Goldman, preceded by his classic work Adventures in the Screentrade, in which he reveals more of the inner workings of movie making magic and what it’s like to collaborate with some of Hollywood’s major players, including Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Rob Reiner, Michael Douglas, and more. He concludes the book with this: “Gloria Steinem once said this to me: ‘Storytellers have been getting us through the night for centuries. Hollywood is the current campfire.’ Keep the fires burning...” Goldman was a masterful storyteller with a great capacity for insight and relevance, making his entire body of work shine as much now as it ever did. Three of his scripts have been voted into the Writers Guild of America Hall-of-Fame's 101 Greatest Screenplays list; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men - both of which won him an Oscar, and The Princess Bride which he adapted from his own novel. “You can only write what you can make play,” Goldman says in the Writers Speak DVD. “It’s all about the story. You’ve gotta think, I can make this play.” His enormously successful film writing and script doctoring career includes so many other greats; Harper (1966), No Way to Treat a Lady (1968), The Stepford Wives (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), The Hot Rock (1972), Papillon (1973 - as an uncredited contributing writer), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) and Marathon Man (1976) and Magic (1978) which were both adapted from his own novels. Some of his other published works include the novels Boys and Girls Together (1964), Tinsel (1979), Control (1982), The Silent Gondoliers (1983), The Color of Light (1984), Heat (1985), and the memoirs Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting (1983), Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade (2000), Wait Till Next Year (1988), and Hype and Glory (1990). William Goldman had this simple advice for would-be screenwriters: “Go and see a movie all day long.” His reasoning was that, by evening, utterly bored with the movie, one would start observing the audience and realize what makes people tick - the true source of and inspiration for all great storytelling.