Hype & Glory

by William Goldman

Filled with hilarious, gossipy and truly fascinating anecdotes, Hype & Glory is an insider's look at two of the most popular events in the world--the Cannes Film Festival and the Miss America Pageant.

Genres: Nonfiction, Film, Biography, Memoir, Humor

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Goldman grew up in a Jewish family in Highland Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, and obtained a BA degree at Oberlin College in 1952 and an MA degree at Columbia University in 1956.His brother was the late James Goldman, author and playwright.

William Goldman had published five novels and had three plays produced on Broadway before he began to write screenplays. Several of his novels he later used as the foundation for his screenplays.

In the 1980s he wrote a series of memoirs looking at his professional life on Broadway and in Hollywood (in one of these he famously remarked that "Nobody knows anything"). He then returned to writing novels. He then adapted his novel The Princess Bride to the screen, which marked his re-entry into screenwriting.

Goldman won two Academy Awards: an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay for All the President's Men. He also won two Edgar Awards, from the Mystery Writers of America, for Best Motion Picture Screenplay: for Harper in 1967, and for Magic (adapted from his own 1976 novel) in 1979.

Goldman died in New York City on November 16, 2018, due to complications from colon cancer and pneumonia. He was eighty-seven years old.

Reviews

[Moses Yuriyvich Mikheyev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jesus fucking Christ. This book is, like anything by Goldman, pure fucking gold. I loved it. I will gladly be re-reading it when I spend summer in France this year. Hell, I may even retrace Goldman's steps. Another 100%, two-thumbs-up recommendation. Hilarious and unputdownable.

[Mrs. Read · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like it was I personally who discovered William Goldman since I read (and marveled at) Marathon Man and Magic before the world realized how great he is.* And I think that Adventures in the Screen Trade is one of the best “insider” books ever written about anything, so of course I was delighted to track down Hype & Glory. I have to concede that it’s not as good as Adventures... , but Goldman can write, and despite an noticeable measure of whininess (his marriage, his eye, crowded social events, his digestion, and more) I found parts of this book very very funny. I enthusiastically recommend it it to readers who, unlike me, are interested in or knowledgeable about movies or beauty pageants and to those who, like me, are major Goldman fans.

* I know him only from his written books - I’ve not seen any of the movies based on them, or any of the others for which he wrote the screenplays.

[Hamish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goldman runs out of juice during the second half.

Or maybe I have overfilled my quota on his writing by some margin.

Some of the references pre-date me by about 35 years. Yet, there are some I understand. Not sure how that makes me feel.

[Caspar Ette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, you know... reading this is like one of those people at dinner parties that always has good stories to tell. And often you think, hey I have heard him telling that story before. But you don't care. Because it's funny, it's a good way to pass time, but it is also very forgettable.

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite possibly my all-time favorite Goldman book. As much as I love The Princess Bride,Hype and Glory is all commentary on the author's experience while judging Cannes and the Miss America Pageant. If you loved the commentary in TPB,this is not to be missed.

[Amy Gatten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent autobiography of writer William Goldman's life during a year of ups & downs.

[Eddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly amusing anecdotes from a profoundly accomplished screenwriter and author. He wrote some of the most classic films: Marathon Man, Butch Cassidy Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride, etc. The book consists of musings of the author at Cannes Film Festival and Miss America Pageant. Goldman has a refreshing "I don't care what hollywood thinks of me, bc they need me" attitude and pulls no punches in his witty description of his experiences. A very enjoyable read.

[Darrell Reimer · Rating 2 out of 5]

William spends a year as a judge for Miss America, and Cannes Film Festival. And he gets divorced. The inevitable melancholy of the last fact colours the other, jollier proceedings. Which ain't a bad thing, I suppose, except that the fizzy stuff tends to feel especially so -- hence, it becomes one of his slighter productions.

[Sean Wicks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Screenwriter William Goldman chronicles his experiences judging the Canne Film Festival and the Miss America Pageant in the same year (1988).

The Miss America Pageant section (second half of the book) is more interesting that the Cannes section, but even that wears thin after a while. An enjoyable ready though overall.

[Bryan Thomas Schmidt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thorougly entertaining and enlightening.

[jj · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved his fiction and thought I would also enjoy some inside info on Hollywood but it turns out I prefer to not see how the sausage is made.

[Larena · Rating 2 out of 5]

G:FAMILY: Minimal violence and no gratuitous frightening descriptions. No profanity, sex or nudity, though it may contain offensive slang.

E:Easy: 3rd grade Vocabulary

[Stephen Dedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential reading for anyone considering accepting a post on an award judging panel.

[Raja99 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why I Read This Book: I saw it on the library shelf while looking for a few Ellison books, and I like the author's work.

Judging by its cover, this isn't a particularly deep book, nor is it about a particularly promising topic. Actually, it's about two not particularly promising topics; the book is about the summer (of 1989?) that Goldman acted as a judge in both the Cannes film festival and the Miss America pageant.

It turns out that it's actually about a third topic as well, one of grave personal interest to the author, but one he doesn't reveal until page 41. I won't spoil the surprise.

Overall, I very much enjoyed the book. Yes, Cannes and the Miss America pageant aren't the most important things in the grand scheme of human civilization, but Goldman shows that he and the judges involved did a lot of work and took their work very seriously. It also reinforces my feeling that the outcomes of contests (or votes, or ballots, or the like) depend very sensitively on the exact rules in play. I wish more people realized this.

(Finished 2009-07-17 17:46:19 EDT)

(Note: This book would be terrible on a Kindle; the section dealing with the Miss America pageant has plenty of tables, and several full-page (grayscale) glamor photos.)

[Brian Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Goldman's memoir about a year where he was both a judge at the Cannes film festival, and a judge in the Miss America pageant is a source of amusing anecdotes. Not surprisingly, it's also really well written -- there's an actual personal story buried beneath the words and anecdotes that Goldman develops without talking about it much. But the book is somehow not fully satisfying in the way I would have hoped.

Part of it is rhythm. Goldman's prose here seemed a little by the numbers; the anecdotes were mostly delivered in a similar fashion, one after another. This is more noticeable to me because I read the entire thing in a short volume; people using it as a coffee table book might not complain as much.

But another part of it is time. This is a book written in 1990 about 1988; Goldman makes use of many allusions to a culture that feels increasingly alien. Miss America is not a driver of the zeitgeist any longer, and people don't worry about the on-set acrimony of Charlie's Angels.

Enjoyable, but light; it probably won't stick with the reader other than the occasional laugh-out-loud anecdote.

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

William Goldman chronicles his experiences as a judge for the Cannes film festival as well as the Miss America Pageant in the same year - 1989. An entertaining collection of anecdotes, combined with some musings on the meaning of art & criticism, as well as the path his life was leading. Goldman occasionally comes off a bit self-centered, but it's kind of the nature of the beast for this type of writing.


I thought it quite interesting that he included some of the young women's info - headshots & bios - perhaps to allow us to make our own judgements?

Worth a read if you find it at the library or in a friend's collection - tho I'll be passing it along to the local used book store shortly.

[Brent · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a little hit-or-miss, and certainly no match for his Adventures in the Screen Trade, which is one of the best books ever written about the industry — Hollywood's Ball Four, if you will — but Goldman is always an entertaining read. I'm biased like that. You write Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, I'm going to give you quite a bit of leeway.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goldman serves as a judge for the Cannes Film Festival and the Miss America Pageant, while undergoing a divorce and dealing with medical problems. This is an entertaining read: opinionated, full of tales large and small, and ultimately engaging and energizing.

[Diana180]

More Goldman, a record of the year he judged the Cannes film contest and the Miss America contest and got divorced. Has the peculiar effect of making the Miss America contest seem almost reasonable and the Cannes contest ridiculous.

[Elliot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really wonderful. A year on Goldman's life where he was a judge at Cannes then a judge at the Miss America pageant, while his marriage quietly falls apart in the background.

Also full of great film anecdotes like 'Adventures'.

[Angela Natividad · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am fond of William Goldman, but Hype and Glory was a tough read with only a handful of satisfactions.