Butch Cassidy and Princess Bride scriptwriter William Goldman dies aged 87

Source: The Guardian

Oscar-winning screenwriter and novelist William Goldman, best known for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Princess Bride, has died aged 87. Deadline reported he had died in his sleep at his home in New York, and his daughter Jenny confirmed his death was the result of colon cancer and pneumonia.

Goldman was key figure in the 70s New Hollywood generation who revolutionised the American film industry with a string of major films to his credit, but will probably be memorialised for a short aphorism that opened his 1983 memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade: “Nobody knows anything.”

Born into a Jewish family in Chicago in 1931, Goldman became interested in becoming a novelist after taking a creative writing course, and published his first novel, The Temple of Gold, in 1957.

He began to pick up screenwriting work in the mid-60s, after being hired to adapt Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon. Goldman’s script was shelved, but it led to more work, including the Ross Macdonald detective flick Harper, starring Paul Newman. Its success on its release in 1966 set Goldman on his way.

Goldman would alternate publishing novels and writing scripts. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which was another hit for Newman in 1969, was Goldman’s first original film script. It earned Goldman a massive fee, and best original screenplay Oscar.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/nov/16/butch-cassidy-and-princess-bride-scriptwriter-william-goldman-dies-aged-87