Excerpt: William Goldman's
Adventures
in the Screen Trade.
p.185
Why?
Obviously, I can't be -sure of the answer. The audience
certainly knew a lot more about him than the way the
movie originally opened.
They knew he lived alone-, in a pit of an office
They knew went to sleep with the tv for company. They
knew he didn't sleep well, not when he's up before the
alarm. They knew there was a woman, because of the photograph,
they knew he felt something for her from the way he
saluted her, they knew she wasn't with him, he was very
much alone. And they knew a lot more, too - yes, he
was a detective, not a successful one, and he carried
a gun, so he didn't seem like someone to take lightly.
The battered car told a lot about him.
But mainly it was that business with the coffee.
Whenever anyone talked about Harper to me in the weeks
that followed, that was the moment they remembered --
drinking that horrible stuff. (just like the jump off
the cliff is what people always mention first in Butch.)
And the laugh that went along with it, that was a laugh
of affection.
In a detective story of this type Maltese Falcon, The
Big Sleep--all you really have going for you is your
main man: You see everything, the whole world, through
his eyes he keeps you company every step of the way.
And if you don't like being with Sam Spade or Phillip
Marlowe, not all the plot skill in the world is going
to make it a happy journey. If you are turned off by
your host, forget it, it's over. And if the coffee moment
really turned out to be was an invitation that the audience
gladly accepted: They liked Lew Harper.
From that moment forward, the script was on rails. |
