William Goldman---penulis skrip prolifik Hollywood..

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William Goldman (born August 12, 1931) is an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter.

Early life and education

Goldman grew up in a Jewish family in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois. He obtained a BA degree at Oberlin College in 1952 and a MA degree at Columbia University in 1956. Goldman lives in New York City. His brother was James Goldman, a playwright and screenwriter who died in 1998.

Career

Novelist, playwright and screenwriter

According to his memoir, Adventures in the Screen Trade (1983), Goldman began writing when he took a creative-writing course in college. He did not originally intend to become a screenwriter. His main interests were poetry, short stories, and novels. Goldman published five novels and had three plays produced on Broadway before he began to write screenplays. He wrote mostly serious literary works until the death of his first agent, when he started writing thrillers, the first of which was Marathon Man.
Goldman researched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for eight years and used Harry Longbaugh (a variant spelling of the Sundance Kid's real name) as his pseudonym for No Way to Treat a Lady. After deciding he did not want to write a cowboy novel, he turned the story into his first original screenplay and sold it for a record $400,000. He went on to use several of his novels as the foundation for his screenplays, such as The Princess Bride.