Bo Goldman
Encyclopedia
For the next few years, Goldman contributed uncredited work to countless scripts including Milos Forman's Ragtime
(1981) starring James Cagney
and Donald O'Connor
, The Flamingo Kid
(1984) starring Matt Dillon
, and Warren Beatty
's Dick Tracy (1990).
(1992) receiving his second Golden Globe Award
and third Academy Award nomination. In the film Al Pacino
plays Frank Slade, a blind, retired army colonel. A character Goldman said he based on someone he "knew from his days in the army." After being nominated seven times for roles as varied as Michael Corleone
in Francis Coppola's 'The Godfather
' and Frank Serpico
in Sidney Lumet
's Serpico, his portrayal of Frank Slade finally earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor
. The film was beloved by critics, Janet Maslin
of The New York Times
wrote, "Scent of a Woman offers Al Pacino the kind of opportunity actors dream about. As Lieut. Col. Frank Slade, a corrosively bitter military man who has been blinded (quite literally) by his own stupidity, Mr. Pacino roars through this story with show-stopping intensity. Bo Goldman's screenplay provides him with a string of indelible wisecracks, and Martin Brest's direction allows room for the character to be developed at great length. Mr. Pacino's contribution, in the sort of role for which Oscar nominations were made, is to remind viewers that a great American actor is too seldom on the screen." The film has a 94% score on the critic site Rotten Tomatoes
.
Next up was Harold Becker
's City Hall
(1996) again starring Al Pacino
and also John Cusack
. Pacino played the corrupt Mayor of New York City. The film is peppered with musical theatre references – a clear homage to Goldman's father and his own Broadway days.
He then wrote Meet Joe Black
(1998) starring Brad Pitt
and Anthony Hopkins
. Among critics the film was fashionably unfashionable. Pitt and the director, Martin Brest
took the biggest thumping. The main complaint centered not on content, but pace. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times
wrote, "Where Meet Joe Black runs into most of its trouble is that everything happens so terribly slowly. Martin Brest has felt the need to inflate the tale until it floats around like one of those ungainly balloons in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Not helping the time go faster is the way star Brad Pitt has ended up playing Death. Ordinarily the most charismatic of actors, with an eye-candy smile and a winning ease, Pitt approaches this role largely on a leash, hanging around more like the protagonist of "I Walked With a Zombie" than a flesh-and-blood leading man."
said, "The great Bo Goldman. He's the pre-eminent screenwriter -- in my mind as good as it gets. He has the most varied and intelligent credits, from Cuckoo's Nest to Shoot the Moon, the best divorce movie ever made, to Scent of a Woman, to the great satire Melvin and Howard. He rarely makes mistakes, and he manages to maintain a distinctive American voice. And he manages to stay timely."
. It was Goldman's script that green lit the movie at Warner Bros. and convinced George Clooney
to star. The film went on to earn $327,000,000.
In recent years, Goldman was rumored to be working on an adaptation of Jules Dassin
's Du rififi chez les hommes for Al Pacino
.
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | New York Film Critics Circle Awards
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | National Society of Film Critics Awards
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Boston Society of Film Critics
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Writers Guild of America Awards
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Academy Awards
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Golden Globes
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Writers Guild of America
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Ragtime (film)
Ragtime is a 1981 American film based on the historical novel Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow. The action takes place in and around New York City, New Rochelle, and Atlantic City in the first decade of the 1900s, and includes fictionalized references to actual people and events of the time. The film was...
(1981) starring James Cagney
James Cagney
James Francis Cagney, Jr. was an American actor, first on stage, then in film, where he had his greatest impact. Although he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances, he is best remembered for playing "tough guys." In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth...
and Donald O'Connor
Donald O'Connor
Donald David Dixon Ronald O’Connor was an American dancer, singer, and actor who came to fame in a series of movies in which he co-starred alternately with Gloria Jean, Peggy Ryan, and Francis the Talking Mule...
, The Flamingo Kid
The Flamingo Kid
The Flamingo Kid is a 1984 comedy film directed by Garry Marshall, written by Marshall, Neal Marshall and Bo Goldman. It stars Matt Dillon, Richard Crenna, Hector Elizondo, and Janet Jones...
(1984) starring Matt Dillon
Matt Dillon
Matthew Raymond "Matt" Dillon is an American actor and film director. He began acting in the late 1970s, gaining fame as a teenage idol during the 1980s.- Early life :...
, and Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has received a total of fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning one for Best Director in 1982. He has also won four Golden Globe Awards including the Cecil B. DeMille Award.-Early life and...
's Dick Tracy (1990).
Scent of a Woman – Meet Joe Black
He followed this with Scent of a WomanScent of a Woman
This article is about the American film. For the Korean drama, see Scent of a Woman .Scent of a Woman is a 1992 drama film directed by Martin Brest that tells the story of a preparatory school student who takes a job as an assistant to an irascible, blind, medically retired Army officer...
(1992) receiving his second Golden Globe Award
Golden Globe Award
The Golden Globe Award is an accolade bestowed by the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association recognizing excellence in film and television, both domestic and foreign...
and third Academy Award nomination. In the film Al Pacino
Al Pacino
Alfredo James "Al" Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface, Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in Dick Tracy and Carlito Brigante in Carlito's Way, though he has also appeared...
plays Frank Slade, a blind, retired army colonel. A character Goldman said he based on someone he "knew from his days in the army." After being nominated seven times for roles as varied as Michael Corleone
Michael Corleone
Michael Corleone is a fictional character in Mario Puzo's novels, The Godfather and The Sicilian. He is also the main character of the Godfather film trilogy that was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, in which he was portrayed by Al Pacino, who was twice nominated for an Academy Award for his...
in Francis Coppola's 'The Godfather
The Godfather
The Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...
' and Frank Serpico
Frank Serpico
Francesco Vincent Serpico is a retired American New York City Police Department officer who is most famous for testifying against police corruption in 1971...
in Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
's Serpico, his portrayal of Frank Slade finally earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor
Academy Award for Best Actor
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
. The film was beloved by critics, Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times film critic from 1977–1999.- Biography :...
of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
wrote, "Scent of a Woman offers Al Pacino the kind of opportunity actors dream about. As Lieut. Col. Frank Slade, a corrosively bitter military man who has been blinded (quite literally) by his own stupidity, Mr. Pacino roars through this story with show-stopping intensity. Bo Goldman's screenplay provides him with a string of indelible wisecracks, and Martin Brest's direction allows room for the character to be developed at great length. Mr. Pacino's contribution, in the sort of role for which Oscar nominations were made, is to remind viewers that a great American actor is too seldom on the screen." The film has a 94% score on the critic site Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
.
Next up was Harold Becker
Harold Becker
Harold Becker is American film director and producer from New York.-Biography:After studying art and photography at the Pratt Institute, Becker began his career as a still photographer, but later tried his hand at directing television commercials, short films and documentaries...
's City Hall
City hall
In local government, a city hall, town hall or a municipal building or civic centre, is the chief administrative building of a city...
(1996) again starring Al Pacino
Al Pacino
Alfredo James "Al" Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface, Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in Dick Tracy and Carlito Brigante in Carlito's Way, though he has also appeared...
and also John Cusack
John Cusack
John Paul Cusack is an American film actor and screenwriter. He has appeared in more than 50 films, including The Journey of Natty Gann, Say Anything..., Grosse Point Blank, The Thin Red Line, Stand by Me, Con Air, Being John Malkovich, High Fidelity, Serendipity, Runaway Jury, The Ice Harvest,...
. Pacino played the corrupt Mayor of New York City. The film is peppered with musical theatre references – a clear homage to Goldman's father and his own Broadway days.
He then wrote Meet Joe Black
Meet Joe Black
Meet Joe Black is a 1998 American fantasy romance film produced by Universal Studios, directed by Martin Brest and starring Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins and Claire Forlani, loosely based on the 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday...
(1998) starring Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt
William Bradley "Brad" Pitt is an American actor and film producer. Pitt has received two Academy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations, winning one...
and Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, KBE , best known as Anthony Hopkins, is a Welsh actor of film, stage and television...
. Among critics the film was fashionably unfashionable. Pitt and the director, Martin Brest
Martin Brest
Martin Brest is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer.-Education:He was born in a Jewish family in the Bronx, New York....
took the biggest thumping. The main complaint centered not on content, but pace. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
wrote, "Where Meet Joe Black runs into most of its trouble is that everything happens so terribly slowly. Martin Brest has felt the need to inflate the tale until it floats around like one of those ungainly balloons in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Not helping the time go faster is the way star Brad Pitt has ended up playing Death. Ordinarily the most charismatic of actors, with an eye-candy smile and a winning ease, Pitt approaches this role largely on a leash, hanging around more like the protagonist of "I Walked With a Zombie" than a flesh-and-blood leading man."
A Writer's Writer
In a 1998 interview with the New York Times screenwriter Eric RothEric Roth
Eric Roth is an American screenwriter. He won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Forrest Gump . He also co-wrote the screenplay for Michael Mann's The Insider , the Steven Spielberg film Munich , and David Fincher's film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button , all of which were nominated for...
said, "The great Bo Goldman. He's the pre-eminent screenwriter -- in my mind as good as it gets. He has the most varied and intelligent credits, from Cuckoo's Nest to Shoot the Moon, the best divorce movie ever made, to Scent of a Woman, to the great satire Melvin and Howard. He rarely makes mistakes, and he manages to maintain a distinctive American voice. And he manages to stay timely."
Most Recent Work
In 2000, Goldman did a page one uncredited rewrite of The Perfect StormThe Perfect Storm (film)
The Perfect Storm is a 2000 dramatic disaster film directed by Wolfgang Petersen. It is an adaptation of the 1997 non-fiction book of the same title by Sebastian Junger about the crew of the Andrea Gail that got caught in the Perfect Storm of 1991. The film stars George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg,...
. It was Goldman's script that green lit the movie at Warner Bros. and convinced George Clooney
George Clooney
George Timothy Clooney is an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. For his work as an actor, he has received two Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award...
to star. The film went on to earn $327,000,000.
In recent years, Goldman was rumored to be working on an adaptation of Jules Dassin
Jules Dassin
Julius "Jules" Dassin , was an American film director, with Jewish-Russian origins. He was a subject of the Hollywood blacklist in the McCarthy era, and subsequently moved to France where he revived his career.-Early life:...
's Du rififi chez les hommes for Al Pacino
Al Pacino
Alfredo James "Al" Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface, Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in Dick Tracy and Carlito Brigante in Carlito's Way, though he has also appeared...
.
Filmography
- The Paradine CaseThe Paradine CaseThe Paradine Case is a 1947 American courtroom drama film, set in England, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by David O. Selznick. The screenplay was written by Selznick and an uncredited Ben Hecht, from an adaptation by Alma Reville and James Bridie of the novel by Robert Smythe Hichens...
(1962) (TV) - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's NestOne Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (film)One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a 1975 American drama film directed by Miloš Forman and based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey....
(1975) - The RoseThe Rose (film)The Rose is a 1979 American musical drama film which tells the story of a self-destructive 1960s rock star who struggles to cope with the constant pressures of her career and the demands of her ruthless business manager...
(1979) - Melvin and HowardMelvin and HowardMelvin and Howard is a 1980 American comedy-drama film directed by Jonathan Demme. The screenplay by Bo Goldman was inspired by real-life Utah service station owner Melvin Dummar, who was listed as the beneficiary of USD$156 million in a will allegedly handwritten by Howard Hughes that was...
(1980) - RagtimeRagtime (film)Ragtime is a 1981 American film based on the historical novel Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow. The action takes place in and around New York City, New Rochelle, and Atlantic City in the first decade of the 1900s, and includes fictionalized references to actual people and events of the time. The film was...
(1981) (uncredited) - Shoot the MoonShoot the MoonShoot the Moon is the title of the fourth album by singer-songwriter Judie Tzuke, released in April 1982. It was Tzuke's first album for Chrysalis Records, after leaving Elton John's label Rocket Records...
(1982) - Swing ShiftSwing Shift (film)Swing Shift is a 1984 feature film directed by Jonathan Demme and produced by and starring Goldie Hawn with Kurt Russell. It also starred Christine Lahti, Fred Ward and Ed Harris...
(1984) (uncredited) - The Flamingo KidThe Flamingo KidThe Flamingo Kid is a 1984 comedy film directed by Garry Marshall, written by Marshall, Neal Marshall and Bo Goldman. It stars Matt Dillon, Richard Crenna, Hector Elizondo, and Janet Jones...
(1984) (uncredited) - Little NikitaLittle NikitaLittle Nikita is a cult 1988 American drama film directed by Richard Benjamin and starring Sidney Poitier and River Phoenix.-Plot synopsis:...
(1988) - Dick Tracy (1990) (uncredited)
- Scent of a WomanScent of a WomanThis article is about the American film. For the Korean drama, see Scent of a Woman .Scent of a Woman is a 1992 drama film directed by Martin Brest that tells the story of a preparatory school student who takes a job as an assistant to an irascible, blind, medically retired Army officer...
(1992) - City HallCity Hall (film)City Hall is a 1996 film directed by Harold Becker. Al Pacino and John Cusack star as the Mayor of New York and his idealistic deputy mayor....
(with Ken Lipper, Paul SchraderPaul SchraderPaul Joseph Schrader is an American screenwriter, film director, and former film critic. Apart from his credentials as a director, Schrader is most notably known for his screenplays for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Raging Bull....
, and Nicholas PileggiNicholas PileggiNicholas Pileggi is an Italian-American author and screenwriter.-Career:Pileggi is best known for writing the book Wiseguy, which he adapted into the movie Goodfellas, and for writing the book and screenplay Casino. The movie versions of both were co-written and directed by Martin Scorsese...
) (1996) - Meet Joe BlackMeet Joe BlackMeet Joe Black is a 1998 American fantasy romance film produced by Universal Studios, directed by Martin Brest and starring Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins and Claire Forlani, loosely based on the 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday...
(with Ron Osborn & Jeff Reno and Kevin WadeKevin WadeKevin Wade is an American screenwriter and television producer.Born in Chappaqua, New York, Wade is a graduate of Connecticut College. He wrote the play Key Exchange, which was produced off-Broadway in 1981...
) (1998) - The Perfect StormThe Perfect Storm (film)The Perfect Storm is a 2000 dramatic disaster film directed by Wolfgang Petersen. It is an adaptation of the 1997 non-fiction book of the same title by Sebastian Junger about the crew of the Andrea Gail that got caught in the Perfect Storm of 1991. The film stars George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg,...
(2000) (uncredited)
Awards
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Golden Globes
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Writers Guild of America Awards
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | New York Film Critics Circle Awards
New York Film Critics Circle Awards
New York Film Critics' Circle Awards are given annually to honor excellence in cinema worldwide by an organization of film reviewers from New York City-based publications. It is considered one of the most important precursors to the Academy Awards....
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | National Society of Film Critics Awards
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Boston Society of Film Critics
Boston Society of Film Critics
The Boston Society of Film Critics is an organization of film reviewers from Boston, Massachusetts, United States, based publications.The BSFC was formed in 1981 to make "Boston's unique critical perspective heard on a national and international level by awarding commendations to the best of the...
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Writers Guild of America Awards
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Golden Globes
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Writers Guild of America
Writers Guild of America
The Writers Guild of America is a generic term referring to the joint efforts of two different US labor unions:* The Writers Guild of America, East , representing TV and film writers East of the Mississippi....
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