William Goldman, author of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” dead at 87

Last Updated: November 18, 2018By Tags:

The Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman has died at 87 this past Friday. He’d earned two Academy Awards in the 70s, after penning such films as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid (1969) and “All the president’s men” (1976).

Goldman is best-known for the impact his pen had on the New Hollywood genre of the seventies. He wrote the dialogues for “Marathon Man” (also in 1976), a paranoid thriller that stars Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier. He’ll earn notoriety a few years later when his Butch Cassidy screenplay bringing together Robert Redford and Paul Newman, both on their way to becoming icons, was turned into a film.

After starting his career as a writer, the Illinois native entered the world of cinema in the mid-60s with “Masquerade.” Over the course of five decades of work, William Goldman has written scripts for several landmark films, such as the adaptation of a Stephen King novel, “Misery,” with Kathy Bates and James Caan (1990).

He did consulting and rewriting duties on other films such as “Last Action Hero,” “Good will hunting” and the Princess Bride.