By WILLIAM GOLDMAN (Applause Books; 2000)
This collection of movie-related essays was one of two nonfiction books put out by the late William Goldman in 2000. The other was WHICH LIE DID I TELL?, a witty and enjoyable follow-up to the classic ADVENTURES IN THE SCREEN TRADE. THE BIG PICTURE is a far lesser work, being comprised of 34 short pieces that were previously published in Premiere, The Daily News and elsewhere, and written, as Goldman frankly admits, to “keep the demons at bay” after the dissolution of his 27 year marriage.
The book is ostensibly a “chronicle of the worst decade in movie history,” the 1990s. Putting aside the obvious inaccuracy of that proclamation (the reboot era, when movies really got shitty, hadn’t yet taken hold when THE BIG PICTURE was published), that statement is wrong simply because the book doesn’t actually “chronicle” the movies of the nineties. Rather, it focuses on the least interesting aspects of the decade’s cinema: the box office receipts and (more prominently) the Academy Awards.
Goldman was a two time Oscar recipient and active Academy member, so I guess his obsession with the Academy Awards is understandable. The question is why Goldman and Applause Books found his speculations about who was going to win each year’s crucial awards and his interviews about them with various unnamed studio executives worth preserving in book format, as such information is completely moot now. Ditto Goldman’s frequent pondering about who the biggest movie star in Hollywood might be (it always seems to come down to Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford and Jim Carrey) and his curmudgeonly reminisces about the Good Old Days of movie exhibition (which will come as a surprise to those of us for whom the nineties were in fact the good old days).
In fairness, no Goldman book is entirely without worth, and there are some interesting tidbits to be found herein. We learn, for instance, that Hollywood executives really hated FORREST GUMP, largely because it hit a little too close to home in its glorification of stupidity (which of course is precisely what most Hollywood honchos are doing with their product). Also present is Goldman’s infamous takedown of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, which may be the most acerbic critique ever written about that vastly overrated spectacle.
How unfortunate, then, that the book ends with a wholly superfluous essay called “Bikini Shopping with Elizabeth Hurley,” which has very little to say other than a). Elizabeth Hurley is hot, and b). credit cards aren’t always accepted in foreign countries (although at least the Academy Awards aren’t mentioned, so I guess the piece isn’t all bad).
Bottom line: nineties nostalgists may enjoy THE BIG PICTURE, but even they will probably find it slow going. Is it William Goldman’s worst-ever book? Quite simply: Yes.