Script review – “Absolute Power” by William Goldman

Goldman goes into detail in “Which Lie Did I Tell?” about the adaptation of this, and while you can understand all his decisions and agree with his judgements (except for the ending, which he never could make work – but bugger if I can think of a better one) but this still isn’t that good. The big twist of the killer being the President isn’t that much of a twist – we’re going to know it going in. And also it’s not much fun watching films where the villain is the President. I mean, I really dyed-in-the-wool fully evil President who orders the execution of Clint Eastwood (it would seem more believable to have the chief of staff do this – instead of having the chief of staff just being a bitch who gets snarled at by Scott Glenn). As Goldman points out he can’t write a bad screenplay – the scenes are taunt, it has a structure, etc. But it doesn’t quite work. The Clint Eastwood character died in the original book and I think you needed that emotional power to push it forward. Having made the Clint Eastwood character the hero I don’t know what you’d do… it would be too many to kill Laura Linney, maybe have them kill the cop (Ed Harris character?) Minor Goldman which became minor Clint Eastwood.