Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman

talk about the handling of story material, something that may not seem germane but I think may prove to be.)
    There is a famous, probably apochryphal, story about a Broadway actor who had a tiny blink of a part in A Streetcar Named Desire. He appeared only at the very end, and then to help cart Blanche away. Someone asked him, before the play opened, what Streetcar was about. And this actor replied, "It's about a man who takes a woman to a booby hatch."
    All right. All Night Long is the story of George and his mid-life crisis-but that's only because the writer wrote it that way. Cone With the Wind is only about Scarlett and Rhett because that was the creator's decision, but you could have told about the Civil War through the eyes of Ashley Wilkes, in which case Scarlett would have been of secondary importance and Rhett nothing much at all. Or you could have done the whole thing centering on the Tarlelon twins, minor roles who are with Scarlett at the beginning of the story, in which case everybody major now disappears.
    Look, the story of All Night Long could have made a terrific Jane Fonda picture. A noble, decent wife whose husband leaves her but she goes on alone.
    If you'd had Travolta, it becomes the son's story-a strong drama about a young man in love and on the brink of manhood who finds himself in dangerous competition with his father over the same object.
    The fireman would have been great for Robert Duvall-a tough, expert guy in a dangerous line of work who finds his wife is sleeping with another man, and how does his macho soul come to grips with that?
    Or easiest of all: Cheryl's story-it would make a super sex comedy. Start it this way: She's cooking up some concoction in her kitchen, fumbling and funny, when suddenly there's a flash Fire and she's saved by this gorgeous fireman. Dissolve. They marry. He's still gorgeous, but not only is he crummy to her, he's away ail night long. Enter this handsome teen-ager to paint the bedroom, he's confused, insecure-boom, they're in the sack. Only next comes something she hadn't counted on: He's got a real crush on her. Madness: She's a married lady much older than he is. Now another boom: The kid's father finds out and says, look, stop playing around with my son. She says sure, and the next thing you know, she's playing around with the father. she's in the sack with him and the son comes knocking at the door-inslant farce. Men are flying in one door and out the other, with Cheryl at the center, trying to handle her husband with one hand, the kid with the other, and the kid's father with any parts of her body left over.
    As a matter of fact, not only would this make a sex comedy, it would be a perfect part for Barbra Streisand. And what is that?
    Streisand's persona was pretty much outlined with Funny Girl: This is a lady who dominates. She wins every scene. And she may not be classically beautiful, but her energy and drive are enough to captivate the most beautiful of men-O'Neal, Sharif. Redford.Kristofferson. She can do musicals, she can do farce, she can do romantic comedy. Just let her dominate and you're home.
    Remember Up the Sandbox?
    It's maybe her most telling film performance, and also her sole disaster. What did she play? A put-upon, forlorn housewife with daydreams that don't quite work. Why did it fail? Because she may have been acting, but she wasn't acting her role. And what was the part of Cheryl? Nothing else but a put-upon, for lorn housewife with daydreams that don't quite work.
    Why didn't the studio alter the film, once they'd shut down, to accommodate their star? And why didn't they add a bunch of musical numbers? (Cheryl, after all, is a songwriter in the story.) Because Barbra Streisand wanted to play Cheryl as written. (She was perfectly fine, by the way.)
    So what the studio had done was to take a frail, three-million dollar film and turn it into a fifteen-million-dollar film that wan a total disaster and that, when you add in prints and