William Goldman dead at 87: ‘All the Presidents Men,’ ‘Princess Bride’

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Amati/Getty Images

• Author and Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman died
  Friday at the age of 87.
• Goldman won two Oscars for writing “Butch Cassidy and the
  Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men.”
• He was also the author of “The Princess Bride” and the
  Hollywood book “Adventures in the Screen Trade.”

Author and Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman died Friday
at the age of 87 at his Manhattan home from complications with
colon cancer and pneumonia, according to The Washington Post.

Goldman won two Oscars for screenwriting for “Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid” in 1970, and then for the classic Watergate
journalism drama, “All the President’s Men,” in 1977. He was also
a revered author who wrote the 1973 fantasy novel, “The Princess
Bride,” which he later adapted into a screenplay for the beloved
1987 film. 

He wrote the 1983 Hollywood and screenwriting book,
“Adventures in the Screen Trade,” best known for Goldman’s
conclusion about Hollywood: “Nobody knows anything.”

“Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows
for a certainty what’s going to work,” Goldman wrote. “Every time
out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter,
Goldman’s first original screenplay was “Butch Cassidy,” which
20th Century Fox bought for $400,000. It went on to score $665
million after inflation, making it the highest-grossing movie of
1969.

Seven years later, Goldman received his second Oscar for
“All the President’s Men,” an expertly crafted script that
follows Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as the famed Washington
Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who exposed the
Nixon administration’s Watergate scandal.

Goldman also wrote “The Stepford Wives” (1975), “Marathon
Man” (1976), and “Misery” (1990), based on the Stephen King
novel.