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John Cleese interviews William Goldman

ITV FailOn Sunday night I set my Freeview box to record The South Bank Show which featured screenwriter William Goldman talking about his career with Melvyn Bragg.

Just a few hours ago I sat down to catch up with it and 5 minutes in (as William and Melvyn were discussing the no-rules knife fight in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) it stopped. 

The fact that the info display said the show was 837 minutes long indicated that not all was well in the bowells of my Freeview technology. 

But surely ITV, with their all new, all singing, all dancing website, would have it on demand?

Er, no. Of course they don’t.

Can anyone at ITV explain why the most recent episode of their best arts programme is not available to see their website?

But then again we could be talking about the same people who screwed up monetising the Susan Boyle viral video

However, in my post-South Bank Show funk I did come across a 1992 interview John Cleese did with Goldman that was broadcast on BBC Radio Five (or Radio 5 as it was called back then) in 1992.

Here it is in 3 parts:

If you have never read them, Goldman’s two books about his career in Hollywood – Adventures in the Screen Trade (1982) and Which Lie Did I Tell? (2000) – are essential reading.

Both are filled with profound observations and juicy anecdotes about creating stories for the big screen and manage to avoid the usual I-did-this-and-they-did-that crap of certain memoirs. 

> John Cleese and William Goldman at Wikipedia
> Guardian interview with Goldman by Joe Queenan

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