Excellent how-to book from Turman, best known for The Graduate, one of those once-in-a-lifetime hits... as it proved for the producer, but he's since remained highly active making films and TV movies. The book is full of wisdom, enthusiasm and good stories. What I like most about it is that while Turman inevitably refers to The Graduate a lot, he talks just as much about his other less popular films (especially The Film Flam Man, which seems to have been a particular favourite - but also The Best Man, TV movies like Get Christie Love).
He admits failures and mistakes, promotes ethics and feeling positive, as well as hard work. He's a bit self serving but who isn't in this sort of book and he may well be telling the truth (for instance "working on the script" of Butch Cassidy seemed to be encouraging and reading and telling people the second act needed work).
The correspondence between Turman and William Goldman at the end is fascinating for Goldman fans (Turman tries to get Goldman, then teaching at Princeton, to write a movie about young people but Goldman declines - Goldman also says the Beatles are managed by a "faggott")
No comments:
Post a Comment