#bo goldman

[davidhudson]

Bo Goldman, September 10, 1932 – July 25, 2023.

Flanked by Richard Brooks and Gore Vidal on the picket line outside 20th Century Fox during the 1981 WGA strike.

[90smovies]

[justforbooks]

In the late 1970s, Bo Goldman was researching a script about Melvin Dummar, the unassuming Utah factory worker, gas station owner and former “Milkman of the Month” who was named as a $156m beneficiary in a will supposedly written by Howard Hughes but later successfully contested in court. Slowly, a realisation dawned on the screenwriter: “This man is a failure just like I am.”

It seemed an unusual conclusion to reach. After all, Goldman had written the book and lyrics for a Broadway musical, First Impressions, based on Pride and Prejudice, before he was 30, and won his first best screenplay Oscar (shared with Lawrence Hauben) for adapting One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Ken Kesey’s novel set in a psychiatric institution, by the time he was 45.

A second Oscar later came his way for Melvin and Howard (1980), his humane and warmly funny script about Dummar, lovingly directed by Jonathan Demme.

But Goldman, who has died aged 90, was haunted at the time by his inability to sell one of his earliest scripts, Shoot the Moon, or to follow up that 1959 Broadway debut, and by the years he spent in poverty and debt, struggling to provide for his wife and their six children. “I can’t tell you what it does to a man,” he said in 1982. “You feel awful. I respected my wife so much, but felt lousy about myself.”

Hollywood was impressed by Shoot the Moon, the story of a brutal marital break-up that he wrote in the early 1970s, but no one wanted to make it. The writing was strong enough to earn him an $8,000 commission from the director Miloš Forman to re-write Hauben’s script for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. One of Goldman’s first suggestions – that the iconoclastic patient McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, should kiss his admitting officers at the hospital – helped win him the job.

He also scripted the Bette Midler vehicle The Rose (1979), inspired by the life of Janis Joplin, but turned down offers to write Kramer vs Kramer and Ordinary People, both future best picture Oscar winners, because the terrain felt too similar to his unproduced script, which he still hoped would be filmed eventually.

It finally was. The British filmmaker Alan Parker directed Shoot the Moon in 1982, coaxing powerful work from Albert Finney and Diane Keaton as the warring couple, and touchingly natural performances from the four children cast as their daughters.

The critical response was positive. Even Pauline Kael, no fan of Parker’s, said she was “a little afraid to say how good I think [the film] is” and praised the script’s “theatrical richness.” Goldman was disappointed nevertheless by its box-office failure.

After his third Oscar nomination, for Scent of a Woman (1992), he said: “I’m always surprised when anything good happens to me.” That film starred Al Pacino as a blind, cantankerous ex-army officer who cuts loose when he is assigned a prep-school student (Chris O’Donnell) as his companion for Thanksgiving weekend.

Goldman based Pacino’s character on a combination of his father, one of his brothers and a sergeant under whom he had served. Pacino won an Oscar; on that occasion, the writer did not.

He was born Robert Spencer Goldman in New York City. It was at Princeton that he changed his name to “Bo”; the college newspaper, The Daily Princetonian, misprinted his byline, and it stuck.

His mother was Lillian Levy, a millinery model, his father, Julian Goodman, a sometime Broadway producer and the owner of a chain of more than 70 department stores, which went into receivership during the Depression shortly before Bo was born. That dramatic fall informed and even overshadowed the rest of Bo’s life, with its occasionally incongruous juxtapositions. He grew up, for instance, in a spacious, rent-controlled Park Avenue apartment yet the family was usually penniless. His father would leaf through scrapbooks from his glory days, even making annual visits to the stables in Chantilly where he kept his prize-winning race-horses.

Though this precarious economic situation was known to Bo throughout his youth, it was not until much later that he discovered his father had another estranged family, and that his parents had never married.

He was educated at the Dalton school and Phillips Exeter academy prior to Princeton. There he wrote lyrics for the college’s Triangle Show and developed an enthusiasm for writing for the stage. He was in the US army for several years, then made inroads into the television industry, starting in the CBS postroom before progressing to script editing and producing on shows such as Playhouse 90.

Though First Impressions, which starred Farley Granger, was poorly received, he devoted most of the 1960s to writing a civil war musical, Hurrah Boys, Hurrah, which was never staged. He took odds and ends of TV work, but was plagued by thoughts of his father’s ignominies, and bruised by his own. “The only thing which kept me going was my wife and the kids who never cared about my success or lack of it,” he said. “They only cared because it was causing me pain.”

Around the time Shoot the Moon was released, his wife, Mab (nee Ashforth), whom he had met at Princeton and married in 1954, and who supported the family financially through endeavours such as her fish and bread shop, Loaves and Fishes, reflected on the disparity between the bad times and the good: “People were so contemptuous of us … it’s remarkable how success has transformed us into acceptable people.”

Goldman became a sought-after script doctor, working uncredited on Forman’s Ragtime (1981), Demme’s Swing Shift, the coming-of-age comedy The Flamingo Kid (both 1984), Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy (1990) and the Arthurian adventure First Knight (1995).

Credited screenplays include Little Nikita (1988), an espionage thriller with River Phoenix and Sidney Poitier, and Meet Joe Black (1998), starring Brad Pitt as the pretty personification of death. Goldman also shared a story credit with Beatty on the period comedy-drama Rules Don’t Apply (2016). This was another Howard Hughes-related project, with Beatty playing the reclusive billionaire.

Though Goldman came close several times, his enduring dream of directing was never realised. “I think of myself as a filmmaker,” he said. “I’m a writer only because that is what they pay me to do.”

Mab died in 2017. He is survived by five of his children, Mia, Amy, Diana, Serena and Justin. A sixth child, Jesse, died in 1981.

🔔 Bo (Robert Spencer) Goldman, screenwriter, born 10 September 1932; died 25 July 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[mandoreviews]

📽️ Meet Joe Black (1998)

Not to objectify men or anything, but Brad Pitt in the 90s was so freaking hot. So now that we have that established, I watched this movie without reading the description, so I had no idea what I was in for. I was totally shocked by what happens right at the beginning of the movie, but I was really intrigued by what followed. I don’t think I’ve seen a movie like this before. I really enjoyed it. Honestly, I think this movie showcases some of Brad Pitt’s range as an actor. I know not everyone likes this, and some people think that Brad Pitt’s character was flat; but I think he played it exactly the right way. It is a long movie, so if you get bored easily I wouldn’t suggest it. There are lots of slow parts. But overall, it’s a beautiful movie that is well worth watching.

Sex/nudity: 3/10 (kissing, one brief boob shot, mild sex scene)

Language: 4/10 (one f-word, multiple other instances of foul language)

Violence: 4/10 (one scene of a heart attack, one pretty graphic scene that I can’t spoil)

Overall rating: 8/10

[vintagewarhol]

[blogdemocratesjr]

Scent of a Woman by Bo Goldman

[greensparty]

Remembering Bo Goldman 1932-2023

Screenwriter Bo Goldman has died at 90. He won two Oscars for two of the greatest films ever made IMHO: Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Jonathan Demme's Melvin and Howard. OFOTCN was adapted and it was one of Jack Nicholson's great performances. Demme's M&H is a phenomenal piece in Demme’s body of work. The inherent goodness in people despite their flaws is a constant theme in a lot of his work and that’s especially true here.

Goldman was an uncredited writer on Demme's 1984 film Swing Shift as well. That movie gets a bad wrap mainly because Demme didn't have final cut, star/producer Goldie Hawn did. I have seen the released version and I've also seen the director's cut version and there was some great scenes in there, just not as good as one would hope from Demme and Goldman.

Goldman is the father-in-law of another talented director Todd Fields as well.

The link above is the obit from Hollywood Reporter.

[thebestestwinner]

Top two vote-getters will move on to the next round. See pinned post for all groups!

[donaruz]

Esattamente 48 anni fa arrivava nelle sale italiane un capolavoro leggendario: "Qualcuno volò sul nido del cuculo".

Film maestoso!

È tratto dal romanzo omonimo di Ken Kesey, pubblicato nel 1962 e tradotto in italiano nel 1976 da Rizzoli. L'autore scrisse il libro in seguito alla propria esperienza da volontario all'interno del Veterans Administration Hospital di Palo Alto, in California.

È uno dei tre film nella storia del cinema (insieme a "Accadde una notte" di Frank Capra e "Il silenzio degli innocenti" di Jonathan Demme) ad aver vinto alla cerimonia degli Oscar del 1976 i premi come:

▪️ Miglior film a Michael Douglas e Saul Zaentz

▪️ Miglior regia a Miloš Forman

▪️ Miglior attore protagonista a Jack Nicholson

▪️ Miglior attrice protagonista a Louise Fletcher

▪️ Migliore sceneggiatura non originale a Lawrence Hauben e Bo Goldman

fonte Wikipedia

Atlantide

[whitemenwithtanlines]

Bo Goldman. A great model for Colt Studios. I love his muscles, his big butt and his hair that is receding a little bit. So masculine! And I love it like many Colt models he had a tan line!

[byneddiedingo]

Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman, 1975)

Cast: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Will Sampson, William Redfield, Brad Dourif, Sydney Lassick, Christopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito, Vincent Schiavelli, Scatman Crothers. Screenplay: Laurence Hauben, Bo Goldman, based on a novel by Ken Kesey. Cinematography: Haskell Wexler. Production design: Paul Sylbert. Film editing: Sheldon Kahn, Lynzee Klingman. Music: Jack Nitzsche.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is beginning to show its age, as any 48-year-old movie must. It no longer exhibits the freshness that won it acclaim as a masterpiece and raked in the five "major" Academy Awards: picture, director, actor, actress, and screenplay -- only the second picture in history to do that: The first was It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934), and only one other picture, The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991), has subsequently accomplished that feat. Today, however, One Flew has the look of a skillfully directed but somewhat predictable melodrama; its tragic edge has been blunted by familiarity. In treating the material, director Forman goes for straightforward storytelling, without showing us something new or personal as an auteur. And as time has passed, some of the elements of the source, Ken Kesey's novel, that screenwriters Laurence Hauben and Bo Goldman took pains to mitigate -- namely the countercultural glibness and antifeminism -- have begun to show through. It's harder today to wholeheartedly cheer on the raw, anarchic antiauthoritarianism of McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) or to accept as a given the unmitigated villainy of Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). We want our protagonists and antagonists to be a little more complicated than the film allows them to be. There are still many who think it a great film, but if it is, I think it's largely because it's the perfect showcase for a great talent -- Nicholson's -- supported by an extraordinary ensemble that includes a shockingly young-looking Danny DeVito, Scatman Crothers, Sydney Lassick, Christopher Lloyd, Will Sampson, and a touchingly vulnerable Brad Dourif.

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

Looking back 30 years ago at the 50th Golden Globes, the winning film was 'Scent of a Woman, the best tango ever, danced by Al Pacino and Gabrielle Anwar.

Scent of a Woman - 1992 Dir: Martin Brest. The film is a remake of Dino Risi's 1974 Italian film Profumo di donna, adapted by Bo Goldman from the novel Il buio e il miele (Italian: Darkness and Honey) by Giovanni Arpino.

The film was released on December 23, 1992. It received a positive response from critics and was a box-office success. Al Pacino won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in a dramatic film as an irascible retired army officer adjusting to life without sight. Chris O'Donnell was nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture.

The film also was nominated for Best Director, Best Picture and Best Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published.

The film won three Golden Globe Awards, for Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Motion Picture – Drama.

#ScentofaWoman #AlPacino #GabrielleAnwar #bestactor #50thGoldenGlobes #winner #film #tango #dance #drama #ChrisO'Donnell #actor #SupportingRole #AcademyAward

[popculturebrain]

Bo Goldman, Oscar-Winning Writer of ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ Script, Dies at 90

Screenwriter Bo Goldman, who won Oscars for his scripts to “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Melvin and Howard” and was among a select group of film scribes including Robert Towne and William Goldman considered to be among that generation’s best, died Tuesday in Helendale, Calif.

Subscribe to the Pop Culture Brain Daily newsletter for more stories like this!

[tinyreviews]

The story is good. But the performances are great. Al Pacino exudes such a powerful aura, while Chris O’Donnell is earnest and likeable.

Scent of a Woman is a 1992 American drama film produced and directed by Martin Brest. The film is a remake of Dino Risi's 1974 Italian film Profumo di donna, adapted by Bo Goldman from the novel Il buio e il miele (Italian: Darkness and Honey) by Giovanni Arpino. It stars Al Pacino and Chris O'Donnell, with James Rebhorn, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Gabrielle Anwar.

[abraham2love]

milos forman : director

full movie