Excerpt: William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade.

p.178

I finally chose the first Archer book, The Moving Target, which Kastner optioned, and I set to work. The script I wrote was dialog heavy because I still thought that was the crucial element. (The resulting movie, by the way, was very successful for a lot of reasons, none of which I can take much credit for. Television had preempted the private-eye format, and there hadn't been a movie like Harper for years, so it had freshness. It also had some kind of a cast for a detective flick-among the performers were -Lauren Bacall, Julie Harris, Arthur Hill, Janet Leigh, Strother Martin, and Robert Wagner giving what I still think is far and away the deepest emotional work he's yet shown. Not to mention just wonderful work by Paul Newman, who simply shouldered the script and rammed it home.)

I don't believe Newman was the first to see it-my memory is Sinatra turned it down. Newman was in Europe when he was sent the project, and he showed quick interest.

Because we couldn't have caught him at a better time. He was making a dog of a period piece, Lady L, and he was running around in tights and having a miserable time. Harpe?~ very much in the American tradition, felt very appealing to him.

Kastner did then what any adroit producer does at such a time: He hustled. A young director acceptable to Newman showed a willingness to do it, so Kastner took him and they flew to Europe to sew up Newman while his interest was high.

Imagine Kastner's surprise when the meeting took place and it turned out the young director didn't like the script at all, said it was rotten, and what they should do was pitch it all and start over, doing something in the genre but not this piece of shit. (Piece of shit by the way is the standard terminology in Hollywood for a project. If you ask a producer what he's working on, more than likely he will say, "Well, I've got this Western piece of shit I'm working on" or "this piece-of-shit comedy.")

Kastner managed to stifle the director before total disaster overtook the project. They left Europe with the director out but Newman, perhaps a bit ruffled, still interested. Eventually, another young director, Jack Smight, did the picture with terrific pace and skill.

When Lady L. was done, Newman returned to his home in Connecticut and Kastner took me up to a crucial meeting: Changes were needed and were they the kind of alterations I could accommodate. (If I hadn't, by the way, I would have been gone and someone else would have done them. If Newman's interest would hold. Stars like Newman get offered everything practically every day, and if a situation begins to get messy, they can get turned off. Quickly.)