{"id":809,"date":"2018-11-22T18:19:46","date_gmt":"2018-11-22T18:19:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myamplelife.com\/wp\/?p=809"},"modified":"2018-12-21T15:29:34","modified_gmt":"2018-12-21T15:29:34","slug":"inconceivable-nobody-knows-anything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myamplelife.com\/wp\/2018\/11\/inconceivable-nobody-knows-anything\/","title":{"rendered":"Inconceivable! Nobody Knows Anything."},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, one of my favorite screenwriters, William Goldman, passed away. Here is the NYT article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I have enjoyed reading screenplays (and about screenwriters) after I took classes at Pittsburgh Filmmakers<\/em> and in CMU’s English Department<\/em> (in 1996).<\/p>\n

I had recently been tenured and thought how better to celebrate it than take classes in filmmaking and in writing scripts!<\/span><\/p>\n

As part of of one of my assignments, I had to write a Treatment<\/em> (of a prospective film) and screenplay for the first 10 minutes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Egon Balas, my colleague at CMU, had given me his pre-publication manuscript: Will to Freedom<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is an amazing autobiography that spans both the Holocaust<\/em> and the Communist Era in Romania, <\/em>prior to him moving to the US in 1965.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My screenplay opened with a teenage Egon playing competitive ping-pong, at the foothills of Carpathian Mountains in Cluj, Romania, as dark thundering clouds were approaching.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I remember reading William Goldman’s book Adventures in Screen Trade<\/em>, sometime in 1996, and enjoying it very much for his honesty.<\/p>\n

Writing about Studio Executives<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Compounding their problem of no job security in the decision making process is the single most important fact, perhaps, of the entire movie industry:<\/span><\/p>\n

NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING.<\/span><\/p>\n

If there is a Roman numeral I to this book, that’s it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Again, for emphasis–<\/span><\/p>\n

NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Later in the book, while discussing Subtext:<\/em><\/p>\n

There are three kinds of movies–<\/span><\/p>\n

(1) movies that aspire to quality and succeed<\/span><\/p>\n

(2) movies that aspire to quality and don’t succeed<\/span><\/p>\n

(3) movies that never meant to be any good at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

The third group, alas, comprises the majority of commercial films.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He should know. He has been awarded the Oscar for Best Screenplay, twice, for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid <\/em>and All the President’s Men.<\/em><\/p>\n

To be clear: he was sympathetic to the fact that it is somewhat unknowable<\/em> as to what will really succeed. <\/span><\/p>\n

So a pragmatic approach is to simply attempt to replicate past successful formulas, which is what commercial ventures land up doing.<\/span><\/p>\n

I wonder what he thought about using machine learning<\/em> to predict success rates, like that being attempted by an Israeli startup (that I reviewed, but did not invest in): VaultML<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

My favorite of his movies is the screenplay he wrote for his own novel, The Princess Bride<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Among my top ten dialogues from movies is this one:<\/p>\n

\n

VIZZINI<\/span><\/p>\n

He didn’t fall? Inconceivable!!<\/span><\/p>\n

INIGO (whirling on Vizzini<\/em>)<\/span><\/p>\n

You keep using that word– I do not think it means what you think it means.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Of course, the movie has many more memorable lines.<\/p>\n

It was only when I saw the movie again, recently, I realized that Inigo was played by Mandy Patinkin, who I absolutely enjoyed in the TV Show Homeland<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, I saw a movie Omar, <\/em>that is likely the best foreign movie I have seen that is set in the Middle-East.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Mandy Patinkin has a nontrivial role in it.<\/p>\n

In my view, Omar<\/em> is better than the Iranian Oscar-winning film, A Separation, <\/em>which was also very good. <\/em><\/p>\n

Another Iranian movie made by the same Director, Asghar Farhadi, \u00a0<\/em>that I liked is About Elly. <\/em>He won his second Oscar for The Salesman.<\/em><\/p>\n

Someday, after a few years of Quantum Computing\u00a0<\/em><\/a>I may try my hand at writing screenplays.<\/p>\n

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