After a multi-decade career that saw him write some of Hollywood’s best and most beloved movies, screenwriter William Goldman has passed away from complications with cancer at the age of 87.
Goldman leaves behind an incredible genre-spanning legacy of work, including the 1969 screenplay for Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, for which he won an Oscar – an award he also picked up for 1976’s All The President’s Men. In 1975, he adapted Ira Levin’s novel The Stepford Wives for director Bryan Forbes’ hugely influential sci-fi-horror, and he also leaned towards the dark side in his adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery, released in 1990. He was also a script doctor who conducted uncredited work on other screenplays.
But if there’s one creation that William Goldman will likely be remembered for above all others, it’s The Princess Bride – the sweet but sharply self-aware fantasy romance that spawned a thousand catchphrases. As well as writing the original 1973 novel, Goldman penned the screenplay for Rob Reiner’s 1987 screen adaptation, giving voice to the likes of Westley, Princess Buttercup, Inigo Montoya and Prince Humperdinck on the big screen. The screenplay addition of the wrap-around story, with the narrator reading his grandson a bedtime story, ensured Goldman kept intact the smart, meta-commentary of his novel, which presents itself as an abridged vision of an existing fantasy story written by ’S. Morgenstern’.
Goldman’s final credited feature-length screenplay was for Wild Card, the 2015 crime-drama starring Jason Statham. Goldman’s script was adapted from his own novel Heat (not the Michael Mann crime saga), which he’d also previously adapted for the 1986 film Heat, starring Burt Reynolds.
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