In 2006, while working on Frost/Nixon, Peter Morgan became friends with his screenwriting hero William Goldman, who died this week.
Here he remembers a true master of the formThe first way I met him was through his movies, the same way as all of us, growing up watching Marathon Man and All the President’s Men.
My first experience as a writer was on Madame Sousatzka for John Schlesinger, who had directed Marathon Man, and I remember quizzing him all about Bill Goldman, and him saying how lovely he was.By that point I had read Adventures in the Screen Trade.
It was utterly riveting and I don’t know if it’s ever been equalled: both a guide to how to write and a guide to how to navigate the experience of being a professional in the industry.
Even though he existed at the most exalted level, it never felt like that.
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