The Big Picture
"The trouble with the Oscar show is that it's too short," William Goldman writes more than once in these infectiously droll essays about Hollywood stars, box office roulette, vintage movie years, and the illogic ofSaving Private Ryan. Any other writer would be in deep ironical mode saying that, but the great screenwriter (All the President's Men,The Princess Bride) and giddy movie enthusiast is hardly a "prevailing view" kind of guy. Wouldn't we have gotten Brando himself at the 1973 Oscars, he argues, if he had unlimited time to defend Indian rights to a billion viewers? Wouldanythinghave been better than that? Writing irregularly forNew Yorkmagazine between 1991 and 1999, Goldman promised to explain "the Hollywood mind" to the rest of us--with the mantra always in front of him that "nobody knows anything." Which leaves him open to occasional free association.Gungha Dinis "the most important movie ever made," he writes not once but twice. If Miramax is successful it's because the Weinsteins "live above the store." What do you do with Universal giving Sylvester Stallone $60 million after thirteen duds likeTango and Cash? "How long do you think you'd hold if you had those thirteen movies played over and over in a locked room?" Goldman asks. But while there's ephemera galore here, and nothing so very lofty, the guy speed-typing his interior monologueslovesmovies, and when he runs through the dumb things inGood Will Huntingor the great things about (his "all-time favorite") Cary Grant, just try putting the book down.--Lyall Bush