About That Time Robert Redford and William Goldman Stopped Being Friends

Nobody knows anything. Except in the case of how Robert Redford and William Goldman stopped being friends at the height of their respective careers during production on All the President's Men. That story, it appears, has finally become known.

In an adaptation of his biography Robert Redford: The Biography for Vanity Fair, author Michael Feeney Callan recalls the tumultuous development process for All the President's Men -- which all started with a bit of a misunderstanding.

"The film started to move after I'd first talked to [Bob] Woodward," says Redford. "After the Washington meeting he came to my apartment. When I knew he and Carl [Bernstein] were coming by, I told [the screenwriter and novelist] Bill Goldman, since we were friends. Bill said, 'Gee, I'd love to hear all this.' And so Bill was there with Bob, Carl, and me. And, of course, the story was magical. It was tremendously important nationally, obviously. But I was also interested in Bob Woodward as a man. He was quirky. He had some odd mannerisms. I liked that. When he left, I said to Bill, 'There's the movie. These guys. Their personalities. The aspects of each that propel the other. The way the investigation was led by these personalities.' I made that observation to Bill as a general remark. I didn't mean to involve him in the project, and I wasn't commissioning him as the screenwriter."

Too bad, though, because that's apparently what happened. Goldman wrote a draft of the script, but since he neglected to interview "key participants" in the Washington Post offices, Redford, Woodward and Bernstein were not pleased. Still, Redford said he sent the Goldman-penned script around to directors in Hollywood.

"I got the impression that no one took it seriously. [Ben] Bradlee felt it was glib, like another Butch Cassidy, and that was very worrying." [...] "It was a predicament to be in, since we were losing ground, given the time frame of topicality," says Redford. By this stage, having briefly considered Michael Ritchie and Sydney Pollack as potential directorial collaborators, Redford had made a handshake deal with Alan J. Pakula, who was fresh off another journalistic conspiracy movie, The Parallax View. When Goldman finally handed his reluctantly reconstructed script to Pakula, utter despair set in. "All hope was lost," says Redford. "Alan hated the script, and we immediately made arrangements to re-write it ourselves, since we learned Bill was tied up already, writing Marathon Man for John Schlesinger. I was furious, but to what purpose? The friendship was gone -- that made me sad -- but there was a movie that had to be made." Redford booked rooms at the Madison Hotel, across from the Post offices, for one month, and he and Pakula repaired there to re-draft the screenplay. About one-tenth of Goldman's draft remained in the end. "Bill gave the start point and the ending," says Woodward, "and those never changed." Goldman would win an Academy Award for the script, but his participation was by now finished.

Fascinating. As is the rest of the Vanity Fair piece, which you can read by clicking through. Robert Redford: The Biography is set for release on May 3.

· Washington Monument [Vanity Fair]