Nobody knows anything.

Whenever a newspaper or magazine is trying to account for the unaccountable success of the latest piece of awfulness featuring Adam Sandler they invariably throw the sentence: "As legendary screenwriter William Goldman says - 'Nobody knows anything.' " into the opening paragraph. Adventures In The Screentrade is the book in which he said it. This is also the book that made me want to take up Screen Studies. Written at a time when the craft was still a fairly big mystery to the general public, Goldman produced an accessible introduction which outlines all of the principals involved, at the same time throwing in a heap of gossip about Hollywood and films he has worked on (Butch Cassidy, The Stepford Wives and A Bridge Too Far). A sequel some years later, Which Lie Did I Tell? completes the biographical story, delves into the world of script doctoring and offers many great examples of good screenwriting.