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This is off to an interesting start, I’m enjoying it a lot and very curious what’s going on in the background. I love me some time shenanigans.

This book has taken a very different turn than I expected. Stephen really cooked when he wrote this death scene, definitely my favorite part of the book so far. I’ve got no idea how the last 50 pages will go.

I keep forgetting to partake in my favorite hobbies (watching movies and reading). This is a fun book, Stephen has definitely got some strengths as a descriptive writer. The characters and dialogue aren’t the greatest, but I think the ideas he’s exploring are interesting and I’m curious how the story will end.

Today I spent 9 hours playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 and zero hours watching movies and about 40 minutes reading. This was not my finest day.

This is getting me even more excited for Survivor 50 than I already was

So many survivor references. I’m having fun with this so far

Stephen Fishbach has been one of my favorite Survivor castaways since I was in middle school, and I’m so happy to finally get to read his debut novel. I was lucky enough to get the chance to play a few games of Blood on the Clocktower with Stephen in person the other day, and it was a great experience. I hope this book does well and he gets the chance to publish more in the future.

Here Friedkin talks about his work directing a number of different operas, a couple of films from the early 2000s I haven’t seen, and then a scary medical situation where he had to have dangerous heart surgery. He says “I considered the possibility that I might die without having accomplished anything of lasting value”. This man made THE EXORCIST, and still thought he had no legacy. The human brain is fickle.

In this chapter Friedkin quickly ran through some of his significant films from the late 80s and the 90s. He talked about Blue Chips and how Nick Nolte truly lost himself in the role, a movie I haven’t seen called Jade which he claims has his best car chase, and his remake of 12 Angry Men, in which James Gandolfini was apparently nervous to act with Jack Lemmon. I’m gonna watch that one tomorrow (thanks Tubi).

In the chapter about To Live and Die in LA., Friedkin says that it was the most confident he ever felt while making a movie, and it really shows in the final product. Awesome fucking movie. He also talks about a movie he made called Rampage (never heard of it) and then how he met his wife, a successful producer named Sherry Lansing. At one point he says he admired Harvey Weinstein, which made me feel gross.

This chapter was mainly about the making of Cruising, which I just watched for the first time. Apparently the film was protested before it even started shooting, for being harmful to the gay community, and there were more protests throughout the entire production, and it was reviled when it released. I think it’s a pretty great movie. Al Pacino apparently thinks otherwise. I wonder if he’s ever gone back to it.

Well I just read about an insane story that I had never heard before. Apparently this radiologist who appeared in one of the hospital scenes in The Exorcist, a guy named Paul Bateson, was convicted of murdering a Variety theater critic in New York, and some believe he was an actual serial killer. This inspired Friedkin to make Cruising, which I will hopefully be watching tomorrow before I read on. Crazy stuff.

This chapter was about my favorite Friedkin film, Sorcerer. Its production was so interesting that it could probably be a full book on its own. He talks a lot about how the success had gotten to his head, and he had become obsessive. The famous bridge scene required them to shut down travel to a different country after a river dried up. It’s an incredible movie but it flopped, and his career was never the same.

So many stories. Friedkin fired a good friend of his, composer Lalo Schifrin, from The Exorcist, and 40 years later they still hadn’t spoken again. He had a criminal friend steal a bootleg print of The Exorcist at gunpoint from a porno theater. He formed a production company with Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich that lasted less than a year because the head of Paramount turned them all against each other.

In this section, Friedkin writes about the making of The Exorcist (which I watched for the first time yesterday). He tells so many great stories about how he was chosen to direct, how the cast was assembled, how the sets were chosen/built, and a million other interesting details. I’m in the middle of the chapter where he talks about filming in Iraq (pre-Hussein), which is so fascinating and could be its own book.

I finished the end of the long French Connection chapter. I love that Friedkin talks about how much it really meant to him to win an Oscar, because so many people try to downplay how important it is. He also talks about how he got depressed after winning, because the bar had been set too high. Tonight I have some homework to do, because the next chapter is about The Exorcist, which I still have never seen.

I’m in the middle of a very long chapter where he talks about the making of The French Connection, and it is absolutely insane. The famous chase scene was filmed illegally, with no permits and real reckless driving. The heroin test scene was filmed with actual heroin. They caused a real traffic jam on the BQE. They paid off an MTA head to let them film on an elevated track. The 70s were unhinged!

Really wish I could read this while I walk around at work. Up to this point, I have never even seen any of the movies that Friedkin has talked in detail about, but I’ve still loved every page. He has such a no-nonsense approach to reminiscing, and has no problem whatsoever with talking about the creative differences he had with other artists on each film. It’s so refreshing.

This book is awesome because Friedkin is so honest about all the mistakes he made as a younger man, and he’s not afraid to talk about all of the specific ways in which he messed up and burned bridges in Hollywood. He’s also just a naturally gifted storyteller, so every chapter reads so well. I had no clue that his first Hollywood film was a strange musical comedy starring Sonny and Cher.

It’s crazy (and just a BIT infuriating) how much easier it was to get a job back in the day. Friedkin lucked into so much of what got him started in his career just by meeting the right people at the right time. That does happen anymore. This chapter was about his tv work, a couple of documentaries (that the execs stripped of any artistry) and an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. This is a great book so far.

Another nonfiction book, this time from a legendary director. The first chapter is about his childhood and adolescence in Chicago, and then how he got his start working in live tv. He also tells a fascinating story about his first film, a documentary about a man on death row named Paul Crump who Friedkin believed to be innocent. The film ended up saving Crump’s life, and jumpstarting Friedkin’s career.

I skimmed through the 40 page “Da Vinci” script he wrote so that I could get up to the section where Goldman interviews a bunch of Hollywood people about their roles on a film, and how they would personally attack this screenplay. The most interesting of them for me was with legendary cinematographer Gordon Willis. He’s one of the absolute GOATs, so it was great to read his unfiltered thoughts for a few pages.

After talking about some of the strengths and weaknesses of Butch and Sundance (an original screenplay), Goldman then says he wants to show how different it is to adapt a screenplay. So he includes a short story he wrote called Da Vinci (I always read it as Da Vinky now) and then explains his thought process on how to adapt it for film. It’s interesting and I wonder how many writers today work like Goldman did.

Well this kind of feels like cheating. I technically skipped ahead over 200 pages, but that’s because the entire screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is included in the book. I love that movie, but I’m not as interested in reading through the whole script from start to finish. I’m glad that it’s included though as a resource to refer to when I actually start writing my own stuff again.

This long chapter about A Bridge Too Far was great, and now I really want to watch this movie. Goldman tells a lot of stories about Joseph Levine, an independent producer I had never heard about but now I’m obsessed with. He also talks about how Richard Attenborough was an incredible person which makes me happy to hear. Up next is the long section all about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

The chapter on Marathon Man was fun because it consisted entirely of Goldman telling stories about how incredible it was to work with Laurence Olivier, who he described as “The Actor of the Century”. The chapter on The Right Stuff was very different from the others, because it was the first time that Goldman stepped away from a film voluntarily due to creative differences. This book is incredible.

This chapter about All the President’s Men has probably been my favorite part of the book so far. This has gotta be one of Goldman’s 3 most iconic films, and he literally won an Oscar for it. But the process of writing the script was so miserable for him (due to problems with Redford, Pakula, and Bernstein, and even an embarrassing encounter with Walter Cronkite) that he wished he had never done the movie.

I’m up to the part where Goldman tells stories from his experiences with the films he was involved with. This book has been so inspiring for me that I actually stopped in the middle of this chapter, and wrote down the outline for the opening scene of a script I wanna write. Here he tells another glowing story about Paul Newman, as well as a cool story about a time he met Jack Warner, one of THE Warner Brothers!

This section was very pessimistic, as Goldman talks about the films of Spielberg and Lucas, and how he thinks they’re bad for movies. He makes his first incorrect prediction by claiming, with certainty, that E.T. will win Best Picture (he doesn’t mention Gandhi at all). I do agree with some of his points, as spectacle really took over the industry, but I think he’s unfair to the artistry of Spielberg.

I have absolutely adored every single word of this book so far. It never feels like Goldman is giving a lecture or presenting a bunch of precious information. Instead it just feels like he’s a friend, telling a story about all of the pieces that go into telling a story. I recently learned that he wrote a follow up book many years later, so of course I bought it right away and it’s currently sitting in my room.