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The Way They Were: How Epic Battles and Bruised Egos Brought a Classic Hollywood Love Story to the Screen
Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of “The Way We Were,” this intriguing and impeccably researched book is the first ever account of the making of the classic film starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford, revealing the full story behind its genesis and continued controversies, its many deleted scenes, its much-anticipated but never-filmed sequel, and the real-life romance that inspired this groundbreaking love story…
It’s one of the greatest movie romances of all time. Fifty years on, the chemistry between Barbra Streisand as Jewish working-class firebrand Katie Worosky and Robert Redford as all-American golden boy Hubbell Gardiner remains potent. Yet the friction and controversy surrounding The Way We Were was so enormous, the movie was nearly never made at all.
Screenwriter Arthur Laurents wrote the role of Katie with Streisand in mind. Casting Hubble was another matter. Redford, already a superstar, was reluctant to play what he perceived as the “Ken doll” to Streisand’s lead, and demanded his role be changed and expanded. Laurents resisted, telling director Sydney Pollack, “You’ll ruin the movie if it ends up being about two people. It’s Katie’s story, not Hubbell’s.” Despite his protests, ten writers—among them Francis Ford Coppola—were brought on to rework the script.
Laurents’s fears were well founded, and the first preview was disastrous. Producer Ray Stark and Pollack, with Redford's approval, cut several scenes, upsetting Streisand and Laurents. Yet the edits worked. Such was the movie’s success that Redford was open to making a sequel, though Laurents’s script was never greenlit. Some of those "lost" scenes are now being restored to the film for its 50th anniversary.
It’s also the deep, surprising love story at the heart of The Way They Were that makes it so memorable, and Robert Hofler explores its inspiration—the relationship between Laurents, a Jewish Brooklyn-born college leftist, and his longtime partner, Tom Hatcher. Drawing on a vast trove of Laurents’s and Pollack’s unpublished writings, as well as interviews with Streisand, Redford, and other key players, this is the definitive account of a film that changed the rules of moviemaking and defined romance ever since.
It’s one of the greatest movie romances of all time. Fifty years on, the chemistry between Barbra Streisand as Jewish working-class firebrand Katie Worosky and Robert Redford as all-American golden boy Hubbell Gardiner remains potent. Yet the friction and controversy surrounding The Way We Were was so enormous, the movie was nearly never made at all.
Screenwriter Arthur Laurents wrote the role of Katie with Streisand in mind. Casting Hubble was another matter. Redford, already a superstar, was reluctant to play what he perceived as the “Ken doll” to Streisand’s lead, and demanded his role be changed and expanded. Laurents resisted, telling director Sydney Pollack, “You’ll ruin the movie if it ends up being about two people. It’s Katie’s story, not Hubbell’s.” Despite his protests, ten writers—among them Francis Ford Coppola—were brought on to rework the script.
Laurents’s fears were well founded, and the first preview was disastrous. Producer Ray Stark and Pollack, with Redford's approval, cut several scenes, upsetting Streisand and Laurents. Yet the edits worked. Such was the movie’s success that Redford was open to making a sequel, though Laurents’s script was never greenlit. Some of those "lost" scenes are now being restored to the film for its 50th anniversary.
It’s also the deep, surprising love story at the heart of The Way They Were that makes it so memorable, and Robert Hofler explores its inspiration—the relationship between Laurents, a Jewish Brooklyn-born college leftist, and his longtime partner, Tom Hatcher. Drawing on a vast trove of Laurents’s and Pollack’s unpublished writings, as well as interviews with Streisand, Redford, and other key players, this is the definitive account of a film that changed the rules of moviemaking and defined romance ever since.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published January 24, 2023
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May 13, 2023
3.5 stars
This book is all about the making of the movie 'The Way We War', a 1973 romantic drama starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford.
Ever since the American Film Institute started keeping track, 'The Way We Were' has always been among the top ten movie romances of all time, in the venerable company of 'Casablanca' and 'Gone With The Wind.' I'm going to write about the plot of 'The Way We Were' in this review, so if you're not familiar with the film and plan to see it, you might want to stop reading now.
Chronologically, 'The Way We Were' starts in 1937, when Katie Morosky (Barbra Streisand) is a Jewish, working class, college student and a member of the Young Communist League. Katie rails against the Spanish Civil War and unsuccessfully tries to engage other students in her cause.
Katie is attracted to handsome, gentile, blonde jock Hubbell Gardiner (Robert Redford), an upper class boy in her writing class who appears to have it all.
Hubbell admires Katie's spunk, but they're just schoolmates, and Hubbell hangs with his own crowd.
Katie and Hubbell meet again after World War II, when Katie works for a New York radio station and Hubbell is back from his stint as a naval officer. Romantic sparks ignite between the pair, and they become a couple.
Trouble erupts when activist Katie takes umbrage against Hubbell's rich dilettante friends, whose lives seem to revolve around fun and parties.
Katie and Hubbell break up, but get back together and marry.
Hubbell's novel has been optioned for a Hollywood movie, and Katie and Hubbell move to California, where Hubbell will write the screenplay.
While the couple is living in California, the red scare flares up and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) pursues a mission to root out subversives in Hollywood. This leads to the blacklist, which denies employment to actors, screenwriters, directors, musicians, and other entertainment personnel who are (or were) Communists or sympathizers.
Katie and other activists who feel their freedom of speech is being abridged go to Washington to protest, and Katie's radicalism threatens to blow back on Hubbell and his career.
Katie and Hubbell part, but happen to meet years later for a final goodbye.
That's the jist of the finished movie, but the road to get there was long, sinuous, and difficult.
'The Way We Were' began when producer Ray Stark commissioned screenwriter Arthur Laurents to write a movie for Barbra Streisand.
Producer Ray Stark with Barbra Streisand
Laurents penned the script for the film 'The Way We Were' - and later the book of the same name - based on his own experiences. Laurents, who was Jewish, tended to fall for handsome gentile men, and his script for 'The Way We Were' was based on Laurents' romance with actor Tom Hatcher......where Laurents is Katie and Hatcher is Hubbell.
Screenwriter Arthur Laurents (right) with Tom Hatcher
Moreover, "over the years Laurents never gave an interview without failing to mention how his movie career got upended when the House Un-American Activities Committee swung into action in 1947 and declared....the motion picture industry a hotbed of communism."
Director Sydney Pollack liked Laurents' script and wanted Robert Redford to play Hubbell Gardiner.
Director Sydney Pollack (right) with Robert Redford
Redford refused to sign on though, because he thought the Hubbell role was too shallow and one-dimensional. Redford noted, "All I am supposed to be is this blond, blue-eyed hunk of romance that all the girls go crazy over, and I have absolutely nothing else to do in the picture." The actor "had assiduously avoided playing any [movie] role that capitalized on his awesome chiseled face and his dazzling golden hair." Redford felt his looks got in the way of audiences and critics recognizing his real talent as a subtle and gifted actor.
Robert Redford
Pollack cajoled Redford for months, saying "You really have to do it. It's really important. I, as your director, want you to do it, and I think you'll be good in it." Streisand and scriptwriter Laurents also fought for Redford to play Hubbell. However producer Ray Stark was indifferent to the actor and asserted "We've got Streisand. What do we need Redford for?" The producer pushed for Ryan O'Neal and seemed to think almost any handsome (preferably blond) actor would do. Thus other suggestions for Hubbell were Ken Howard, Dennis Cole, and Warren Beatty.
Actor Ryan O'Neal
Pollack insisted on Redford though, and proclaimed "Redford is one of the great screen actors." Pollack pressured Laurents' to change the script to beef up the Hubbell character, and when Laurents refused, the director hired other writers to turn Hubbell into something Redford wanted to play. And Redford finally (if reluctantly) agreed to star in the film.
Stark and Pollack also wanted the writers to play down the politics because the blacklist was still a sensitive subject in Hollywood.
The top executives at Columbia Pictures, which was financing the movie, feared what would be exposed. For instance, the William Morris Agency, which represented some of the best known entertainers in film, television, and music, had vigorously enforced the blacklist....and people were still resentful.
Script re-writes continued throughout the filming and the ever-expanding and changing screenplay emerged as the greatest problem dividing producer Ray Stark and director Sydney Pollack. "We were rewriting all the time," said Pollack. "While we were shooting, we were rewriting. We didn't know how to mix the politics and the love story and make it work."
The actors also presented challenges. Three weeks into production, Pollack could see he was dealing with two extremely different actors. Pollack recalled, "Barbra wanted precision; Redford spontaneity. Barbra likes lengthy rehearsals and multiple takes; Redford [refuses to rehearse and] is better in his early takes. After that he just gets bored." In addition, Streisand phoned Pollack at eleven o'clock most nights to discuss everything that had happened that day and what would be taking place the next day.
Sydney Pollack directing Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford
'The Way We Were' had a five-million-dollar budget, which was very tight. Streisand and Redford together were earning $2.2 million, and that didn't leave Pollack much money to replicate New York City in the year 1945, where Katie and Hubbell meet after the war. It was expensive to rent vintage cars, set up shots for the luxury Beekman Place apartment of Hubbell's best friend, and camouflage anachronisms like modern parking meters and post office boxes.
Additionally, photographing stars like Streisand and Redford on the streets of New York City demanded a good deal of security control, which was expensive. Finally, numerous scenes were filmed that never made it into the final cut of the movie.
When it came to the music for the film, producer Stark approached Marvin Hamlisch and asked him to write a song for Barbara on spec. If the song passed muster, Hamlisch would get to do the whole movie. Stark put Hamlisch together with lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman, and together they wrote the theme song for Streisand to sing. As it turned out, the song - also titled 'The Way We Were' - ended up being as tightly linked to the film as 'Over the Rainbow' is to 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Moon River' is to 'Breakfast at Tiffany's.'
Composer Marvin Hamlisch with Barbra Streisand
The film was edited by John Burnett and Margaret Booth, and Burnett observed, "You put the movie together and it's not exactly what the director for a year or two has had in his head." After Pollack had the first private screening of the (more or less) completed movie, he and Burnett removed whole chunks of the film, taking out most of the blacklist material, which made the movie basically about a couple.
'The Way We Were' had its world premiere on October 16,1973, at the Loew's State Theatre in Times Square, with an after-party at the Plaza Hotel. On the red carpet, Pollack downplayed the film's politics, telling reporters "It's a star vehicle for our two reigning superstars." The movie went on to become the year's fifth most popular film, earning nearly fifty million dollars....and the eponymous song became a number one hit and the best-selling single of the year.
Upon the film's release, the influential critics Pauline Kael and Judith Crist broke from the majority male opinion of 'The Way We Were.' The women found the film 'enjoyable.' Almost fifty years later, critic Christina Newland wrote, "[The movie is] wonderful because it addresses what so many women know to be true: some men want you to be less of yourself, and that simply will not do. Even if they are Robert Redford."
There was talk of a sequel to 'The Way We Were' but it never happened.
Barbra Streisand singing The Way We Were
I've mentioned a bit about the making of 'The Way We Were', but every aspect of the movie, including the cast, costumes, extras, lighting, etc. is extensively covered by author Robert Hofler - who did numerous interviews and prodigious research. Hofler also includes juicy gossip about some of the major players, especially screenwriter Arthur Laurents, who had a mean streak, lots of affairs, and a very colorful life. Hofler also mentions that Barbra Streisand often slept with her male co-stars, but not Redford, who was a married father and careful to keep his distance. There are plenty of other interesting tidbits as well, and I enjoyed this peek into Hollywood history.
I'd recommend the book to fans of 'The Way We Were', film buffs in general, and people interested in HUAC and the blacklist.
Thanks to Netgalley, Robert Hofler, and Kensington Books for a copy of the manuscript.
You can follow my reviews at http://reviewsbybarbsaffer.blogspot.com
December 29, 2022
I read an advance digital review copy provided by the publisher via Netgalley.
I’ve always liked this movie—it’s one of only about 70 DVDs I own—especially its mix of the history of the Red Scare and Hollywood blacklist era, with the romance of two very different characters. It hadn’t been that many years since the blacklist ended when the movie was made, so that part of the story intrigued me.
Arthur Laurents, the initial screenwriter, had been—or at least claimed to have been—affected by the blacklist. His view of the story was focused on Katie, a strong, politically committed character, and the battles she fought for her ideals and to fit into the world of the beautiful WASP-y guy she fell in love with. Laurents clashed constantly with producer Ray Stark and director Sidney Pollack, who wanted to eliminate much of the political content and focus on the love story. The script ended up being written and rewritten with the input of many different people.
Author Hofler doesn’t limit his how-the-sausage-is-made exposé to the behind-the-cameras people. He also focuses on the two leading actors, contrasting their preparation styles. He portrays Redford, who was very reluctant to take the part, as constantly late, and rude and dismissive of the time and concerns of others. Streisand gets off a little bit better, but Hofler demeans her by, among other things, claiming that she was so attracted to Redford that she insisted on many unnecessary takes of scenes with him.
I’ve enjoyed many books about the making of movies and TV shows, but this one was mostly just depressing. Hofler makes Stark and Laurents, and to a lesser extent, Pollack, seem petty and nasty. Less so Streisand and Redford, but it does feel like he went out of his way to drag them down in some of his stories about them. It seems like a miracle, given Hofler’s take on the production, that the movie ended up being an enduring success.
Late in the book, Hofler discusses Laurents’s emphasis on the importance of the fact that Streisand’s character is Jewish and Redford’s is Gentile. Hofler thinks that 50 years later, this distinction is no longer so important, remarking that Jews and Gentiles are now both in the same category of white privilege. I was stunned by that comment. Is Hofler unaware of the increasing virulence of antisemitism today, which is proudly touted by celebrities and even some politicians?
In the end, while this is a well-researched book, I didn’t feel it added anything positive to my knowledge of the industry or the making of this particular film. Its focus was too heavily on the petty squabbling and other behaviors of the principals.
I’ve always liked this movie—it’s one of only about 70 DVDs I own—especially its mix of the history of the Red Scare and Hollywood blacklist era, with the romance of two very different characters. It hadn’t been that many years since the blacklist ended when the movie was made, so that part of the story intrigued me.
Arthur Laurents, the initial screenwriter, had been—or at least claimed to have been—affected by the blacklist. His view of the story was focused on Katie, a strong, politically committed character, and the battles she fought for her ideals and to fit into the world of the beautiful WASP-y guy she fell in love with. Laurents clashed constantly with producer Ray Stark and director Sidney Pollack, who wanted to eliminate much of the political content and focus on the love story. The script ended up being written and rewritten with the input of many different people.
Author Hofler doesn’t limit his how-the-sausage-is-made exposé to the behind-the-cameras people. He also focuses on the two leading actors, contrasting their preparation styles. He portrays Redford, who was very reluctant to take the part, as constantly late, and rude and dismissive of the time and concerns of others. Streisand gets off a little bit better, but Hofler demeans her by, among other things, claiming that she was so attracted to Redford that she insisted on many unnecessary takes of scenes with him.
I’ve enjoyed many books about the making of movies and TV shows, but this one was mostly just depressing. Hofler makes Stark and Laurents, and to a lesser extent, Pollack, seem petty and nasty. Less so Streisand and Redford, but it does feel like he went out of his way to drag them down in some of his stories about them. It seems like a miracle, given Hofler’s take on the production, that the movie ended up being an enduring success.
Late in the book, Hofler discusses Laurents’s emphasis on the importance of the fact that Streisand’s character is Jewish and Redford’s is Gentile. Hofler thinks that 50 years later, this distinction is no longer so important, remarking that Jews and Gentiles are now both in the same category of white privilege. I was stunned by that comment. Is Hofler unaware of the increasing virulence of antisemitism today, which is proudly touted by celebrities and even some politicians?
In the end, while this is a well-researched book, I didn’t feel it added anything positive to my knowledge of the industry or the making of this particular film. Its focus was too heavily on the petty squabbling and other behaviors of the principals.
January 2, 2023
Like many, the movie around which this work is centered and focused, The Way We Were, is a film that has always been in my life. I have no memory of watching it for the first time — it has simply existed. As I grew up watching it every few years, with each viewing I'd gain more information and pick up on details I missed the previous times.
When, as a newly crowned adult, DVDs started including these fantastic behind-the-scenes videos, I gobbled those up as fast as I could. I especially adored (and still miss) the sometimes included director's commentary, where you could watch the movie again while the director (though sometimes it was the director and an actor or just several actors and no director) spoke over the movie's audio track and talked about the making of the movie in different ways, often breaking down their thoughts behind scene setups, characterizations, and plot arcs.
With The Way They Were, Hofler has compiled one of the most complete studies about the making of a specific movie I've ever encountered — second maybe only to the widely known giant Gone with the Wind and the search for Scarlett. In fact, there are comparisons to Selznick's constant memo writing and similar high-volume communication during the making of The Way We Were.
Somehow with all my rewatches of this movie, it never occurred to me to think about what was going on during the time of the making of the movie — specifically politically with the Watergate scandal and President Nixon. In fact, beyond the political, Hofler delves deeply into the life and influence from which the story sprung — Arthur Laurents, who wrote the novel (after it was already pitched as a movie) and screenplay.
From the shooting schedule and deconstruction of how many key scenes were filmed to the reason the deleted scenes were cut, Hofler left nothing out. Going through from the first incarnation of the story of Hubbell and Katie to how director Sydney Pollack transformed (not singlehandedly) to the beloved cinema classic I know so well, Hofler was a wonderful guide and companion who never overshadowed the subject matter. I found this as easy to read as a novel and as informative and well-researched as the DVD special features I miss so much. I'll be buying the hardcover of this one for myself — the only thing that could possibly make it better is if there are photographs.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This affected neither my opinion of the book nor the content of my review.
When, as a newly crowned adult, DVDs started including these fantastic behind-the-scenes videos, I gobbled those up as fast as I could. I especially adored (and still miss) the sometimes included director's commentary, where you could watch the movie again while the director (though sometimes it was the director and an actor or just several actors and no director) spoke over the movie's audio track and talked about the making of the movie in different ways, often breaking down their thoughts behind scene setups, characterizations, and plot arcs.
With The Way They Were, Hofler has compiled one of the most complete studies about the making of a specific movie I've ever encountered — second maybe only to the widely known giant Gone with the Wind and the search for Scarlett. In fact, there are comparisons to Selznick's constant memo writing and similar high-volume communication during the making of The Way We Were.
Somehow with all my rewatches of this movie, it never occurred to me to think about what was going on during the time of the making of the movie — specifically politically with the Watergate scandal and President Nixon. In fact, beyond the political, Hofler delves deeply into the life and influence from which the story sprung — Arthur Laurents, who wrote the novel (after it was already pitched as a movie) and screenplay.
From the shooting schedule and deconstruction of how many key scenes were filmed to the reason the deleted scenes were cut, Hofler left nothing out. Going through from the first incarnation of the story of Hubbell and Katie to how director Sydney Pollack transformed (not singlehandedly) to the beloved cinema classic I know so well, Hofler was a wonderful guide and companion who never overshadowed the subject matter. I found this as easy to read as a novel and as informative and well-researched as the DVD special features I miss so much. I'll be buying the hardcover of this one for myself — the only thing that could possibly make it better is if there are photographs.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This affected neither my opinion of the book nor the content of my review.
February 4, 2023
Such a disappointment. If Hofler wanted to write a book about Laurents he should have. If he wanted to insert gay-relevant content he could’ve written that without muddying the story of how TWWW was made. Some of that content is related to the film, but entire chapters about Laurents love life is not even tangentially relevant to the film making.
Some material is contradictory; Streisand singing the title song at the Oscars might have helped her win for Best Actress (p. 212)? When the voting was closed by the night of the awards, as Hofler notes on the following page when discussing Peggy Lee’s performance of the title song? Perhaps sloppy editing, but really?
Skip it.
Some material is contradictory; Streisand singing the title song at the Oscars might have helped her win for Best Actress (p. 212)? When the voting was closed by the night of the awards, as Hofler notes on the following page when discussing Peggy Lee’s performance of the title song? Perhaps sloppy editing, but really?
Skip it.
July 26, 2023
The Way they were was a good idea for a book. Having seen the movie many times on television. I never knew what it took to make the movie. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found out .
April 25, 2023
I reviewed this and THE WAY WE WERE for the Los Angeles Review of Books: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a...
IT’S UNQUESTIONABLY exciting when the production of a movie has enough drama to fill its own movie—or at least a miniseries. And there’s little better than telling a story where the main characters are already movie stars. Millions of dollars at stake, sexy people behaving badly, and, in some cases, mild criminality resulting in family-friendly wide releases? If only all classic movies had these kinds of engaging stories behind them, the sort of stories that make you look back on the movie in amazement that it was ever produced at all.
The Way We Were is not one of those movies.
It is, however, a justifiable classic: a heartbreaking doomed love story with challenging political themes and two movie stars working in their exact wheelhouses. This year has brought with it two new books about its production to coincide with the movie’s 50th anniversary—Tom Santopietro’s The Way We Were: The Making of a Romantic Classic and Robert Hofler’s The Way They Were: How Epic Battles and Bruised Egos Brought a Classic Hollywood Love Story to the Screen. Perhaps unfortunately, the production of The Way We Were had only small doses of the drama that fans crave and was a fairly straightforward production with the kinds of hiccups any big movie with big stars might experience. As a result, one of these books desperately clutches to any disagreement or challenge as evidence of a deeply troubled production; the other wisely tells the story of the movie’s production with such involved, gossipy detail that the reader hardly cares if the production was a disaster (it wasn’t). Together, these accounts prove that it can be enough to tell a story well and focus on its most interesting figures.
From an original script by theater maven Arthur Laurents, Sydney Pollack’s The Way We Were tells the story of two people who meet in college in 1937. Katie (Barbra Streisand) is a left-wing activist and Hubbell (Robert Redford) is a golden boy athlete and preternaturally gifted writer; they do not get along. Reconnecting close to the end of World War II, they begin to fall for one another, and their romance carries them into Los Angeles and the Hollywood blacklist, where her strident politics and his desire not to make waves trouble their relationship until it reaches a breaking point.
If you haven’t seen it, or haven’t seen it recently, I really do recommend it.
Producer Ray Stark pushed for casting Streisand in the lead as Katie; Pollack had worked with Robert Redford previously and wanted him. Redford wouldn’t commit to doing it, partly because he felt the character Hubbell was a supporting player to Katie and partly because he was the kind of movie star who didn’t commit to doing things easily. Eventually, Pollack convinced Redford there would be enough rewrites to beef up his character, and Redford agreed. Somehow, the numerous rewrites Redford insisted on never impinged on his image as a chill, breezy movie star. Thanks to a sexist double standard, the same was not true for Streisand.
Redford and Streisand didn’t fight much, but they had very different styles of working. Streisand was detail-obsessed and adamant about rehearsing. She called Pollack every night after shooting to go over the next day, something Hofler quotes Pollack calling “not a problem […] just time-consuming,” which adequately describes most of the production’s dramas. Redford, conversely, liked to be thought of as spontaneous, seemingly disinterested in the nuts and bolts of making the movie beyond his own performance: at one point, Streisand, Pollack, and Bernie Pollack (costumer and brother to Sydney) had a lengthy conversation about a military uniform Redford would be wearing, which Redford cut short with, “Guys, it’s fine. A uniform’s a uniform.”
Streisand and Redford’s different working styles weren’t irreconcilable, and such tensions are not a rarity in Hollywood (let’s call it the Four Christmases problem). Screenwriter Laurents felt strongly that the movie should focus on Katie and the story of the blacklist, but by the time the movie was edited and released, it was much more of a two-hander and a love story. He was angry, but gladly took the screen credit and payment. The first few cuts of the movie were longer and not as good as the version eventually released in theaters. These are, in essence, the “epic battles and bruised egos'' to which Hofler’s title refers.
In the case of Santopietro’s The Way We Were, the actual lack of real-life drama appears to be itself a crisis. The book is peppered with end-of-chapter teasers like, “The battles were just beginning,” or “Barbra Streisand […] was proving to be the least of his problems.” This sort of breathless reporting only underlines how relatively undramatic the whole production seemed to be. Santopietro dutifully reports every available detail about the making of the movie, including dedicated sections about the production designer, set decorator, cinematographer, costume designer, and editors—all important jobs, but almost none of which makes for interesting reading outside a reference text. He relies too heavily on interviews with erstwhile actor, now right-wing social media influencer, James Woods, who had a relatively small role in the movie but apparently has a great deal to say about its entire production.
At around the book’s halfway point, having taken us from the story idea through to the movie’s Oscar wins and losses, Santopietro begins to retell the story, providing something like a special-features commentary on the movie in running order. He offers, for example:
It is clear that Katie is not just a striver but also an underdog and perpetual outsider, which is why Pollack’s silent nighttime shot of Streisand walking by a sorority house is so oddly affecting; as rich sorority girls dance and laugh it up, Katie, briefcase in hand, walks by outside, glancing up wistfully but knowing she’ll never be invited to join.
While certainly a fair assessment of the character and the scene, it’s not clear what interest the reader has in Santopietro’s musings. The Way We Were is detailed and thorough, but its frequent promises of excitement are never borne out, and at some point, James Woods threatens to hijack the account altogether.
Hofler’s title, The Way They Were: How Epic Battles and Bruised Egos Brought a Classic Hollywood Love Story to the Screen, is somewhat ironic as Hofler doesn’t sweat nearly as much promising either epic battles or bruised egos. But Hofler does the superior job exploring the primary figures (e.g., Streisand, Redford, Pollack, Laurents), their motivations, and occasionally their personal lives, making The Way They Were a human story of an iconic film. Like most movies, The Way We Were involved artists collaborating imperfectly and making compromises they did not want to make. Unlike most movies, the end product is something really beautiful.
Only Hofler was granted interviews with Redford (I have no clue why Santopietro was not), but there is not a great deal in terms of Redford’s emotional arc working on this movie: Redford wanted to make sure that his character was a more fleshed-out person worthy of his star power; he liked Streisand but kept some distance both for the sake of their performances and to avoid Streisand developing a crush on him; he sometimes made people on set wait. One is reminded of the anecdote about the casting of The Graduate (1967), when Redford was considered for the lead but proved unable to put himself in the headspace of someone who didn’t get laid a lot. Here, too, he balks at a scripted scene that suggests that his drunken lovemaking would be anything less than stellar. A movie star like Robert Redford understands how to preserve his image.
In the case of EGOT winner and dog cloner Barbra Streisand, both books exhaustively stress how nearly everyone involved with the movie found Streisand unattractive. Twist: It’s her nose. Apparently, it’s too big. Hofler cites a few 1960s reviews of Streisand’s work emphasizing her apparent unsightliness, but archival research be damned: I speak for the millennial population when I say that Barbra Streisand was obviously gorgeous. How is it that her every screen appearance proves this—not just this movie but Funny Girl (1968), Yentl (1983), The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), and others—but these experts need more proof every time? In search of drama on the set, did both men miss the striking drama of Streisand’s unforgettable, and unforgettably beautiful, face?
Toward the end of Hofler’s book, Laurents, a repeated irritant to Pollack and Stark throughout production, begins to take center stage. The original story and screenplay of The Way We Were (and a novelization Laurents wrote concurrently) are based largely on his own experience as a campus-radical-turned-Hollywood-radical. Katie’s character and her swooning affection for the handsome WASP Hubbell is meant to reflect Laurents himself and, Hofler suggests, his own swooning affection for a series of handsome WASPS, including Laurents’s longtime partner Tom Hatcher.
As Laurents would not have been able to get a movie made in the 1970s about his own gay love story, his character became Katie. Thus, as Redford (and Pollack, desperate to retain Redford) insisted on beefing up his character, Laurents fought frequently with the producer and director. Since Katie was a die-hard radical in occasional conflict with Hubbell, the latter had to have an even-handed point of view to make him something more than a roadblock to Katie’s political fulfillment. Laurents hated the idea that the “reasonable” character would be one who didn’t fight tooth and nail against the blacklist. When test audiences responded much more strongly to the love story than to the story of the Red Scare, scenes were cut and Laurents became a fierce critic of the movie. But once the movie was a critical and commercial hit, he softened somewhat.
Laurents’s opposition to the blacklist was genuine, of course, but his own personal connection to it was somewhat exaggerated. In his memoirs and in stories told in person (Laurents was a renowned raconteur), he fudged timelines a bit and beefed up his own heroism to appear, as Hofler writes, “in the august company of Dalton Trumbo, Ring Lardner, and eight other blacklisted writers who ended up being imprisoned. […] The sympathetic view of Laurents’s early career in Hollywood was that he ended up being ‘graylisted.’” Laurents’s apparent devotion to emotional truths came at the occasional expense of facts. By digging through the fact and fiction of Arthur Laurents’s life, Hofler arrives at a truth more interesting than bruised egos or epic battles. Laurents is rightly treated as a fascinating figure whose appetites for epic narrative and passionate romance could be consuming, even destructive.
Both books conclude with details about various attempts by the movie’s stars (mostly Streisand) to get going on a sequel to the 1973 movie. While Pollack never appeared particularly interested (less so since his death in 2008), Redford flirted with the idea sporadically over the years, seeming to eventually settle in on a stance opposed to sequels in general. Streisand rarely let up, and here, Santopietro’s book is more interesting, detailing nearly every time the original film’s director, writer, or stars floated the idea of a sequel on the record. There absolutely have been some fascinating angles, particularly setting a sequel in 1968 and seeing Hubbell radicalized. This idea, developed largely by Laurents, would have allowed him to reintroduce some of the political themes that he felt the original had ended up jettisoning. Laurents has died now too, and neither Redford nor Streisand seem to think a sequel could happen. We may never return to the characters Katie and Hubbell, though with the publication of these books, we finally have something more than misty, watercolor memories.
IT’S UNQUESTIONABLY exciting when the production of a movie has enough drama to fill its own movie—or at least a miniseries. And there’s little better than telling a story where the main characters are already movie stars. Millions of dollars at stake, sexy people behaving badly, and, in some cases, mild criminality resulting in family-friendly wide releases? If only all classic movies had these kinds of engaging stories behind them, the sort of stories that make you look back on the movie in amazement that it was ever produced at all.
The Way We Were is not one of those movies.
It is, however, a justifiable classic: a heartbreaking doomed love story with challenging political themes and two movie stars working in their exact wheelhouses. This year has brought with it two new books about its production to coincide with the movie’s 50th anniversary—Tom Santopietro’s The Way We Were: The Making of a Romantic Classic and Robert Hofler’s The Way They Were: How Epic Battles and Bruised Egos Brought a Classic Hollywood Love Story to the Screen. Perhaps unfortunately, the production of The Way We Were had only small doses of the drama that fans crave and was a fairly straightforward production with the kinds of hiccups any big movie with big stars might experience. As a result, one of these books desperately clutches to any disagreement or challenge as evidence of a deeply troubled production; the other wisely tells the story of the movie’s production with such involved, gossipy detail that the reader hardly cares if the production was a disaster (it wasn’t). Together, these accounts prove that it can be enough to tell a story well and focus on its most interesting figures.
From an original script by theater maven Arthur Laurents, Sydney Pollack’s The Way We Were tells the story of two people who meet in college in 1937. Katie (Barbra Streisand) is a left-wing activist and Hubbell (Robert Redford) is a golden boy athlete and preternaturally gifted writer; they do not get along. Reconnecting close to the end of World War II, they begin to fall for one another, and their romance carries them into Los Angeles and the Hollywood blacklist, where her strident politics and his desire not to make waves trouble their relationship until it reaches a breaking point.
If you haven’t seen it, or haven’t seen it recently, I really do recommend it.
Producer Ray Stark pushed for casting Streisand in the lead as Katie; Pollack had worked with Robert Redford previously and wanted him. Redford wouldn’t commit to doing it, partly because he felt the character Hubbell was a supporting player to Katie and partly because he was the kind of movie star who didn’t commit to doing things easily. Eventually, Pollack convinced Redford there would be enough rewrites to beef up his character, and Redford agreed. Somehow, the numerous rewrites Redford insisted on never impinged on his image as a chill, breezy movie star. Thanks to a sexist double standard, the same was not true for Streisand.
Redford and Streisand didn’t fight much, but they had very different styles of working. Streisand was detail-obsessed and adamant about rehearsing. She called Pollack every night after shooting to go over the next day, something Hofler quotes Pollack calling “not a problem […] just time-consuming,” which adequately describes most of the production’s dramas. Redford, conversely, liked to be thought of as spontaneous, seemingly disinterested in the nuts and bolts of making the movie beyond his own performance: at one point, Streisand, Pollack, and Bernie Pollack (costumer and brother to Sydney) had a lengthy conversation about a military uniform Redford would be wearing, which Redford cut short with, “Guys, it’s fine. A uniform’s a uniform.”
Streisand and Redford’s different working styles weren’t irreconcilable, and such tensions are not a rarity in Hollywood (let’s call it the Four Christmases problem). Screenwriter Laurents felt strongly that the movie should focus on Katie and the story of the blacklist, but by the time the movie was edited and released, it was much more of a two-hander and a love story. He was angry, but gladly took the screen credit and payment. The first few cuts of the movie were longer and not as good as the version eventually released in theaters. These are, in essence, the “epic battles and bruised egos'' to which Hofler’s title refers.
In the case of Santopietro’s The Way We Were, the actual lack of real-life drama appears to be itself a crisis. The book is peppered with end-of-chapter teasers like, “The battles were just beginning,” or “Barbra Streisand […] was proving to be the least of his problems.” This sort of breathless reporting only underlines how relatively undramatic the whole production seemed to be. Santopietro dutifully reports every available detail about the making of the movie, including dedicated sections about the production designer, set decorator, cinematographer, costume designer, and editors—all important jobs, but almost none of which makes for interesting reading outside a reference text. He relies too heavily on interviews with erstwhile actor, now right-wing social media influencer, James Woods, who had a relatively small role in the movie but apparently has a great deal to say about its entire production.
At around the book’s halfway point, having taken us from the story idea through to the movie’s Oscar wins and losses, Santopietro begins to retell the story, providing something like a special-features commentary on the movie in running order. He offers, for example:
It is clear that Katie is not just a striver but also an underdog and perpetual outsider, which is why Pollack’s silent nighttime shot of Streisand walking by a sorority house is so oddly affecting; as rich sorority girls dance and laugh it up, Katie, briefcase in hand, walks by outside, glancing up wistfully but knowing she’ll never be invited to join.
While certainly a fair assessment of the character and the scene, it’s not clear what interest the reader has in Santopietro’s musings. The Way We Were is detailed and thorough, but its frequent promises of excitement are never borne out, and at some point, James Woods threatens to hijack the account altogether.
Hofler’s title, The Way They Were: How Epic Battles and Bruised Egos Brought a Classic Hollywood Love Story to the Screen, is somewhat ironic as Hofler doesn’t sweat nearly as much promising either epic battles or bruised egos. But Hofler does the superior job exploring the primary figures (e.g., Streisand, Redford, Pollack, Laurents), their motivations, and occasionally their personal lives, making The Way They Were a human story of an iconic film. Like most movies, The Way We Were involved artists collaborating imperfectly and making compromises they did not want to make. Unlike most movies, the end product is something really beautiful.
Only Hofler was granted interviews with Redford (I have no clue why Santopietro was not), but there is not a great deal in terms of Redford’s emotional arc working on this movie: Redford wanted to make sure that his character was a more fleshed-out person worthy of his star power; he liked Streisand but kept some distance both for the sake of their performances and to avoid Streisand developing a crush on him; he sometimes made people on set wait. One is reminded of the anecdote about the casting of The Graduate (1967), when Redford was considered for the lead but proved unable to put himself in the headspace of someone who didn’t get laid a lot. Here, too, he balks at a scripted scene that suggests that his drunken lovemaking would be anything less than stellar. A movie star like Robert Redford understands how to preserve his image.
In the case of EGOT winner and dog cloner Barbra Streisand, both books exhaustively stress how nearly everyone involved with the movie found Streisand unattractive. Twist: It’s her nose. Apparently, it’s too big. Hofler cites a few 1960s reviews of Streisand’s work emphasizing her apparent unsightliness, but archival research be damned: I speak for the millennial population when I say that Barbra Streisand was obviously gorgeous. How is it that her every screen appearance proves this—not just this movie but Funny Girl (1968), Yentl (1983), The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), and others—but these experts need more proof every time? In search of drama on the set, did both men miss the striking drama of Streisand’s unforgettable, and unforgettably beautiful, face?
Toward the end of Hofler’s book, Laurents, a repeated irritant to Pollack and Stark throughout production, begins to take center stage. The original story and screenplay of The Way We Were (and a novelization Laurents wrote concurrently) are based largely on his own experience as a campus-radical-turned-Hollywood-radical. Katie’s character and her swooning affection for the handsome WASP Hubbell is meant to reflect Laurents himself and, Hofler suggests, his own swooning affection for a series of handsome WASPS, including Laurents’s longtime partner Tom Hatcher.
As Laurents would not have been able to get a movie made in the 1970s about his own gay love story, his character became Katie. Thus, as Redford (and Pollack, desperate to retain Redford) insisted on beefing up his character, Laurents fought frequently with the producer and director. Since Katie was a die-hard radical in occasional conflict with Hubbell, the latter had to have an even-handed point of view to make him something more than a roadblock to Katie’s political fulfillment. Laurents hated the idea that the “reasonable” character would be one who didn’t fight tooth and nail against the blacklist. When test audiences responded much more strongly to the love story than to the story of the Red Scare, scenes were cut and Laurents became a fierce critic of the movie. But once the movie was a critical and commercial hit, he softened somewhat.
Laurents’s opposition to the blacklist was genuine, of course, but his own personal connection to it was somewhat exaggerated. In his memoirs and in stories told in person (Laurents was a renowned raconteur), he fudged timelines a bit and beefed up his own heroism to appear, as Hofler writes, “in the august company of Dalton Trumbo, Ring Lardner, and eight other blacklisted writers who ended up being imprisoned. […] The sympathetic view of Laurents’s early career in Hollywood was that he ended up being ‘graylisted.’” Laurents’s apparent devotion to emotional truths came at the occasional expense of facts. By digging through the fact and fiction of Arthur Laurents’s life, Hofler arrives at a truth more interesting than bruised egos or epic battles. Laurents is rightly treated as a fascinating figure whose appetites for epic narrative and passionate romance could be consuming, even destructive.
Both books conclude with details about various attempts by the movie’s stars (mostly Streisand) to get going on a sequel to the 1973 movie. While Pollack never appeared particularly interested (less so since his death in 2008), Redford flirted with the idea sporadically over the years, seeming to eventually settle in on a stance opposed to sequels in general. Streisand rarely let up, and here, Santopietro’s book is more interesting, detailing nearly every time the original film’s director, writer, or stars floated the idea of a sequel on the record. There absolutely have been some fascinating angles, particularly setting a sequel in 1968 and seeing Hubbell radicalized. This idea, developed largely by Laurents, would have allowed him to reintroduce some of the political themes that he felt the original had ended up jettisoning. Laurents has died now too, and neither Redford nor Streisand seem to think a sequel could happen. We may never return to the characters Katie and Hubbell, though with the publication of these books, we finally have something more than misty, watercolor memories.
October 8, 2022
Just in time for the 50th anniversary of the classic romantic drama, ace entertainment historian Robert Hofler delivers a deeply researched account of the making of ‘The Way We Were.’ Hofler details the deep disagreements over the content and style of the film between director Sydney Pollack, producer Ray Stark and leading lady Barbra Streisand. The portrait of the Hollywood blacklist in the second part of the film was whittled down to focus on what preview audiences responded to most deeply - the mismatched love story and the chemistry between Streisand and Robert Redford who was a reluctant participant in the movie (his friend and previous collaborator Pollack lobbied Redford hard).
Hofler shows us how the editing and scoring of the film were crucial in the creation of a hit that has delighted audiences for a half century.
Hofler shows us how the editing and scoring of the film were crucial in the creation of a hit that has delighted audiences for a half century.
February 27, 2023
I received this book from Kensington Books in exchange for an unbiased review.
It’s hard to believe it’s been fifty years since the movie The Way We Were came out. This book celebrates that anniversary by giving behind the scenes details on the tug of wars between the writer, the producer and the director as well as the efforts to get Robert Redford on board to play the part of Hubbell.
As a regular person who doesn’t know much about the various personalities of the Hollywood scene, the first few chapters were challenging. There was a lot of name dropping without context and I had to stop reading to google who these people were and why they might be important to the book. That was a bit annoying. I think the author might have done a better job in the opening chapters in introducing the people involved a bit better. It felt as if the reader was dropped into a cocktail party where everyone knew each other and were gossiping about others not present and the reader was at sea without a navigator.
After getting myself oriented, the book moved a bit quicker. There were still a lot of names dropped in here and there and trying to remember who was who took me a while but eventually, things smoothed out and I enjoyed the read.
The writer of the story the movie was based on, Arthur Laurents, was really an interesting person and not in a good way. He seemed like an ego maniac and very focused on what he wanted even if it wasn’t best for the movie. Sydney Pollack deserved some sort of award just for what he had to put up with from that man. It sort of surprised this reader that they were actually able to get the movie made and on the screen in a form that made sense. Lots of filming scenes that never got used and cutting scenes they spent a lot of money making and it seemed to this reader that the film should have been a disjointed mess based on all this moving around of scenes. It sure didn’t seem as if they made the movie they started out to make.
Disagreements among all the principals about what the movie was actually about was a theme running through the whole book.
Sydney Pollack must have been a relentless man. His pursuit of Robert Redford for the lead male part and his commitment to make the role larger to get Redford on board was tenacious. I felt sorry for Redford with how hard Pollack tried to get him to agree to play the part.
I expected more gossip about Barbra Streisand as we’ve all read how much of a diva she is but the parts about her were mild compared to the parts about the writer, Laurents. He was much more of a diva than she was—at least in how the book portrayed them. She was definitely a control freak, but Laurents and his shenanigans put her in the shade.
Overall, I liked the book. I read it quickly after the first couple of chapters. It gave a lot of insight into the movie and the battles to get it on the screen. The author clearly did a lot of research and interviewed a huge number of people. His work paid off in an intriguing and informative work. A comprehensive bibliography and index showed exactly how much effort he put into this book.
May 7, 2023
1.5 stars rounded up.
This book is supposedly about the making of The Way We Were, one of many favorite movies. What should have been a 10-15 page article in Vanity Fair magazine is a bloated 244 page book that has a little to do with the making of the movie and more to do with side issues. The author goes off on tangents about “fantasy WASPs”, HUAC, gays and Jews in Hollywood, Arthur Laurents’ love life (he wrote the book of The Way We Were) Barbra Streisand’s micromanaging of her role and Robert Redford’s indifference towards everything. No one comes off well in this book, and the best way to get through it is to skim…a lot. One of the funnier parts is how Streisand insisted on multiple takes of the scene where Redford rolls on top of her in his sleep to have sex. It should have only taken one or two takes, but Streisand kept asking for more takes until Redford got fed up. (Full disclosure: I’d ask for extra takes too. Just saying.)
A definite don’t bother. Watch the movie instead.
This book is supposedly about the making of The Way We Were, one of many favorite movies. What should have been a 10-15 page article in Vanity Fair magazine is a bloated 244 page book that has a little to do with the making of the movie and more to do with side issues. The author goes off on tangents about “fantasy WASPs”, HUAC, gays and Jews in Hollywood, Arthur Laurents’ love life (he wrote the book of The Way We Were) Barbra Streisand’s micromanaging of her role and Robert Redford’s indifference towards everything. No one comes off well in this book, and the best way to get through it is to skim…a lot. One of the funnier parts is how Streisand insisted on multiple takes of the scene where Redford rolls on top of her in his sleep to have sex. It should have only taken one or two takes, but Streisand kept asking for more takes until Redford got fed up. (Full disclosure: I’d ask for extra takes too. Just saying.)
A definite don’t bother. Watch the movie instead.
February 21, 2023
What a hoot it was to read this - it's amazing the movie ever got made.
May 31, 2023
More Streisand, less Laurents!!
December 11, 2023
This just never grabbed me. Perhaps because it has been eons since I've seen the movie. (Although, I may re-watch it after listening to this.) More modern day (21st century) than I expected.
March 30, 2023
A poorly put together book by a guy that simply doesn't know how to write. It's laughably bad and the first chapter is certainly the worst-written opening to any moviemaking book ever.
The author is a totally biased researcher who accumulates all sorts of details through interviews and magazine articles but doesn't know how to put two paragraphs together and tosses in completely inconsequential gossip or his own opinion that fail to have factual support.
It's too bad because there are some interesting behind-the-scenes stories of the making of The Way We Were but it's lost in the hands of Robert Hofler, who seems eager to please Barbra Streisand because she finally granted him an interview very late in the creation of the book.
Let me walk you through the book's opening. The first words are a quote from Streisand: "Arthur remembers it being a hundred twenty-five pages. I remember reading a fifty-page treatment."
That's how the book starts. What a dull statement. Who is Arthur, and who cares how long the first script draft was that Streisand saw?
By the end of the book you've figured out why Hofler started the book this way. He had a "falling out" with the named Arthur, who was Way We Were scriptwriter Arthur Laurents. Hofler considered Laurents a liar, shades him throughout, and uses the final page of the book to point out one more "false story" Laurents told. So the entire book is tinged with vindictiveness and Hofler's first sentence in the book subtly slams the man who came up with the story for The Way We Were.
The first page then goes on to tell some history about Streisand's rise to fame. But by the sixth paragraph the author is off on a tangent discussing Jews and Gentiles, complaining that non-Jew Omar Sharif played Nicky Arnstein in Funny Girl. That quickly skips to the film's creator Laurents, who wrote the books for Broadway musicals West Side Story and Gypsy. Hofler says Laurents "has not found much approval from either the critics or the public since the late 1950s." (More shade is inserted throughout the book that makes no sense or has nothing to do with The Way We Were.)
That segues into the history of the House Un-American Activities Committee, an unnecessary mention of Streisand being on Richard Nixon's enemies list, a weird aside comment from director David Lean saying if any film has five great scenes it would be a success (seriously?), and finally a mention of Robert Redford as hating The Way We Were and being "the reluctant odd man looking for a way out to escape this box of movie popcorn."
That is all in the first six pages, no flow or sense from paragraph to paragraph, just tossing in any random thoughts and people that make this written ADHD. He confuses readers in the rest of the first chapter and by the end of those 16 pages I had no interest in reading on because it was filled with venom, fan-girling, jumbled disorder, bad writing, and warped opinions.
The author makes ridiculous, catty, negative comments about every aspect of the production (with the exception of Streisand, whom he seems to only adore and doesn't doubt her statements even though she's famous for taking credit for things others came up with). For example, when the producers had to find a quick last minute setting change for the college in the film, they got Union in Schenectady to sign on. Hofler writes, "The far less prestigious Union College, with its far less bucolic grounds, needed the publicity and welcomed the attention." Not only is the sentence poorly written, but what a rude jerk he is, having no idea what school officials really had in mind but assumed it was purely for PR purposes.
He was just as bad with totally unnecessary opinions about things that had nothing to do with The Way We Were. Why, for example, did Hofler write: "Hollywood's old conservative political guard of stars like James Stewart and John Wayne maintained enough control to award Duke his first and only Oscar in 1970....Its younger and more liberal generation actors, like Paul Newman and Jane Fonda, had not yet transformed the place"? What ignorance and unfairness. (Paul Newman was nominated five times by 1970 and Jane Fonda was nominated the same year as John Wayne.) If the movie town had been that conservative almost none of the racy films of the 1960s would have been released and Wayne would have won years earlier, nor would have then X-rated Midnight Cowboy won for Best Picture the same year Wayne took home the trophy! So much for conservatives "maintaining control" of 1970 Hollywood, right Hofler? Proof that the author filters everything through his liberal, distorted bias that is often just plain wrong.
Hofler also became ridiculously focused on homosexual implications of any person or topic he mentions, even if they have nothing to do with The Way We Were. He says that the hated Laurents was gay and spends a lot of unnecessary space on Laurents boyfriends but seems to hold that against the scriptwriter.
It's not worth wasting any more time on this and editor John Scognamiglio should be fired for not doing his job. Yes, there are things in it that will interest the lovers of the film, but what it really needs is an objective journalist who knows how to put paragraphs together, keep out personal opinions, and tell a cohesive narrative. Instead of picking apart others as he does throughout the book, Robert Hofler should instead spend time having his own failed work picked apart.
The author is a totally biased researcher who accumulates all sorts of details through interviews and magazine articles but doesn't know how to put two paragraphs together and tosses in completely inconsequential gossip or his own opinion that fail to have factual support.
It's too bad because there are some interesting behind-the-scenes stories of the making of The Way We Were but it's lost in the hands of Robert Hofler, who seems eager to please Barbra Streisand because she finally granted him an interview very late in the creation of the book.
Let me walk you through the book's opening. The first words are a quote from Streisand: "Arthur remembers it being a hundred twenty-five pages. I remember reading a fifty-page treatment."
That's how the book starts. What a dull statement. Who is Arthur, and who cares how long the first script draft was that Streisand saw?
By the end of the book you've figured out why Hofler started the book this way. He had a "falling out" with the named Arthur, who was Way We Were scriptwriter Arthur Laurents. Hofler considered Laurents a liar, shades him throughout, and uses the final page of the book to point out one more "false story" Laurents told. So the entire book is tinged with vindictiveness and Hofler's first sentence in the book subtly slams the man who came up with the story for The Way We Were.
The first page then goes on to tell some history about Streisand's rise to fame. But by the sixth paragraph the author is off on a tangent discussing Jews and Gentiles, complaining that non-Jew Omar Sharif played Nicky Arnstein in Funny Girl. That quickly skips to the film's creator Laurents, who wrote the books for Broadway musicals West Side Story and Gypsy. Hofler says Laurents "has not found much approval from either the critics or the public since the late 1950s." (More shade is inserted throughout the book that makes no sense or has nothing to do with The Way We Were.)
That segues into the history of the House Un-American Activities Committee, an unnecessary mention of Streisand being on Richard Nixon's enemies list, a weird aside comment from director David Lean saying if any film has five great scenes it would be a success (seriously?), and finally a mention of Robert Redford as hating The Way We Were and being "the reluctant odd man looking for a way out to escape this box of movie popcorn."
That is all in the first six pages, no flow or sense from paragraph to paragraph, just tossing in any random thoughts and people that make this written ADHD. He confuses readers in the rest of the first chapter and by the end of those 16 pages I had no interest in reading on because it was filled with venom, fan-girling, jumbled disorder, bad writing, and warped opinions.
The author makes ridiculous, catty, negative comments about every aspect of the production (with the exception of Streisand, whom he seems to only adore and doesn't doubt her statements even though she's famous for taking credit for things others came up with). For example, when the producers had to find a quick last minute setting change for the college in the film, they got Union in Schenectady to sign on. Hofler writes, "The far less prestigious Union College, with its far less bucolic grounds, needed the publicity and welcomed the attention." Not only is the sentence poorly written, but what a rude jerk he is, having no idea what school officials really had in mind but assumed it was purely for PR purposes.
He was just as bad with totally unnecessary opinions about things that had nothing to do with The Way We Were. Why, for example, did Hofler write: "Hollywood's old conservative political guard of stars like James Stewart and John Wayne maintained enough control to award Duke his first and only Oscar in 1970....Its younger and more liberal generation actors, like Paul Newman and Jane Fonda, had not yet transformed the place"? What ignorance and unfairness. (Paul Newman was nominated five times by 1970 and Jane Fonda was nominated the same year as John Wayne.) If the movie town had been that conservative almost none of the racy films of the 1960s would have been released and Wayne would have won years earlier, nor would have then X-rated Midnight Cowboy won for Best Picture the same year Wayne took home the trophy! So much for conservatives "maintaining control" of 1970 Hollywood, right Hofler? Proof that the author filters everything through his liberal, distorted bias that is often just plain wrong.
Hofler also became ridiculously focused on homosexual implications of any person or topic he mentions, even if they have nothing to do with The Way We Were. He says that the hated Laurents was gay and spends a lot of unnecessary space on Laurents boyfriends but seems to hold that against the scriptwriter.
It's not worth wasting any more time on this and editor John Scognamiglio should be fired for not doing his job. Yes, there are things in it that will interest the lovers of the film, but what it really needs is an objective journalist who knows how to put paragraphs together, keep out personal opinions, and tell a cohesive narrative. Instead of picking apart others as he does throughout the book, Robert Hofler should instead spend time having his own failed work picked apart.
December 6, 2022
Robert Hofler The Way They Were How Epic Battles and Bruised Egos Brought a Classic Hollywood Love Story to the Screen, Kensington Books Citadel, January 2023.
Thank you NetGalley for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.
The ‘story behind the making of’ is an appealing idea that suggests that by the end of the book we will know all the ins and outs of the script writing, direction and impact on the stars – the actual search for those stars, and how they react to each other off the screen, the budget overruns and box office returns, the critics’ responses…This book offers all of this, and at times branches into much more, providing an insight into the way that society was, not as to be expected that which was the subject of the film, but the 1970s when the filming took place. There was not enough of the latter for me as I was constantly aware that I would have liked more about the political environment in which a political novel with a romance, became a romance with some politics – the scenes that fell to the cutting room floor seemed to be mainly the latter. However, there is a strong enough theme of the discriminatory attitudes towards Jews, homosexuals, and on the periphery, women, to provide a context for the way the film gravitated towards the romance that the trial audiences seemed to want.
Robert Hofler is devastatingly honest and deft in drawing a picture of a group of self-willed, slightly unpleasant (and more at times), attractive and engaging people embarked on a lengthy period of demanding work. Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford are included in that mix, neither escaping the suggestion that they could have been better people, whatever their acting skills might be! There was some excellent material describing the latter, and this leads into so much about the way in which this film was made and provides clues to the industry as a whole.
The love affair on which the novel, and then the film was based was that of the writer, and eventual scriptwriter of the film. His dedication to his novel intrudes at almost every point, and additional writers are brought in. The future debate over who contributed what (including Streisand’s claims on some features) makes an interesting contribution to understanding the job of the novelist whose work becomes a film – a mixed experience, clearly.
Interestingly, I recall seeing the film in the 1970s, and despite it becoming a romance, the scenes that stand out to me for their passion and importance are those that were political: Katie Morovsky’s reaction to Hubbell’s friends’ destructive commentary on the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and jokes at Eleanor Roosevelt’s responses, and the end of the film where she is distributing Ban the Bomb leaflets. Arthur Laurents won his point that the political dimension was important, at least in my case.
For those who saw and responded to The Way We Were on the screen Hofler provides a wonderful story of reminisce, explanation and sympathetic exploration of the making of this particular film. As a contribution the understanding the time in which The Way We Were was set, and then the period in which the film was made; the engaging and hard solid slog in making a film; the way in which what is seen on the screen is but one aspect of the industry this book is makes a powerful contribution to that understanding.
The writing is accessible, the bibliography comprehensive, and the notes detailed and a valuable component of the whole. This is a book well worth reading. I enjoyed it immensely.
Thank you NetGalley for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.
The ‘story behind the making of’ is an appealing idea that suggests that by the end of the book we will know all the ins and outs of the script writing, direction and impact on the stars – the actual search for those stars, and how they react to each other off the screen, the budget overruns and box office returns, the critics’ responses…This book offers all of this, and at times branches into much more, providing an insight into the way that society was, not as to be expected that which was the subject of the film, but the 1970s when the filming took place. There was not enough of the latter for me as I was constantly aware that I would have liked more about the political environment in which a political novel with a romance, became a romance with some politics – the scenes that fell to the cutting room floor seemed to be mainly the latter. However, there is a strong enough theme of the discriminatory attitudes towards Jews, homosexuals, and on the periphery, women, to provide a context for the way the film gravitated towards the romance that the trial audiences seemed to want.
Robert Hofler is devastatingly honest and deft in drawing a picture of a group of self-willed, slightly unpleasant (and more at times), attractive and engaging people embarked on a lengthy period of demanding work. Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford are included in that mix, neither escaping the suggestion that they could have been better people, whatever their acting skills might be! There was some excellent material describing the latter, and this leads into so much about the way in which this film was made and provides clues to the industry as a whole.
The love affair on which the novel, and then the film was based was that of the writer, and eventual scriptwriter of the film. His dedication to his novel intrudes at almost every point, and additional writers are brought in. The future debate over who contributed what (including Streisand’s claims on some features) makes an interesting contribution to understanding the job of the novelist whose work becomes a film – a mixed experience, clearly.
Interestingly, I recall seeing the film in the 1970s, and despite it becoming a romance, the scenes that stand out to me for their passion and importance are those that were political: Katie Morovsky’s reaction to Hubbell’s friends’ destructive commentary on the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and jokes at Eleanor Roosevelt’s responses, and the end of the film where she is distributing Ban the Bomb leaflets. Arthur Laurents won his point that the political dimension was important, at least in my case.
For those who saw and responded to The Way We Were on the screen Hofler provides a wonderful story of reminisce, explanation and sympathetic exploration of the making of this particular film. As a contribution the understanding the time in which The Way We Were was set, and then the period in which the film was made; the engaging and hard solid slog in making a film; the way in which what is seen on the screen is but one aspect of the industry this book is makes a powerful contribution to that understanding.
The writing is accessible, the bibliography comprehensive, and the notes detailed and a valuable component of the whole. This is a book well worth reading. I enjoyed it immensely.
December 29, 2023
A fun, quick read. Four stars if you're a big fan of the film and are already aware of the behind the scenes tug of war. If you're not a big fan and curious about things you've heard, I'm not sure why you'd pick this up. I don’t have the time right now for Barbra’s massive memoir, so this sated me. I wanted to prepare for the new 4K blu ray of “The Way We Were” with restored scenes. (A quick note on that. The UCLA scene wasn’t hugely necessary other than the fact that the camera tracking in on Barbra’s face is one of the most beautiful images ever made of her…so it was essential in that way. The first half of the scene where Katie and Hubbel decide to divorce, however, is highly essential. They’re not torn apart by one instance of infidelity; she decides to divorce him to save his career. There’s a big difference and it makes the ending even more poignant! I don’t know why Sydney Pollack resisted restoring this scene for 40 years. Barbra was totally right that it is terribly important.)
According to this book, Redford was more of the prima donna on this set. He could be late, he was very worried about his image, he wasn’t totally committed to the project. In some ways it sounds like he feared he was too much like Hubbel, that things had been too easy for him. But they really hadn’t been. He was constantly having to prove that he was more than a pretty face, and that although he had the looks of a privileged person, he came from a working class background.
Barbra, according to this book, was attentive, workable and punctual. There seem to have been two different movies made by two different camps. Producer Ray Stark, writer Authur Laurents and Barbra were on one side, while Bob Redford and Sydney Pollock were on the other. Each side had their own editor, and there were also writers working on rewriting when Laurents would refuse. Laurents had based the character of Katie on himself, and his romantic life usually centered on goyish men like Hubbel. He had directed Barbra in her big Broadway break as Miss Marmelstein in “I Can Get It For You Wholesale”. They didn’t always get along then, or during TWWW or later in life…both very strong personalities who may have been a little too similar. Ray Stark didn’t understand the Blacklist angle and wanted it reduced, but it’s what had interested Pollock originally. Pollock had also had to beef up Redford’s role to get him interested, so that he was a lead and not a supporting player to Streisand. Eventually Pollock realized the film worked better as an across the board romance. Also, they had spent so much time and money on the 1930s/40s scenes on the east coast, they were cutting Hollywood/Blacklist scenes before they were even shot in order to save time/money. I don’t think we’re really missing much. What remains of the lefty Hollywood milieu is a bunch of rich people playing tennis and talking about how they’re oppressed. It only goes so far. Good to keep it focused on Redford and Streisand.
According to this book, Redford was more of the prima donna on this set. He could be late, he was very worried about his image, he wasn’t totally committed to the project. In some ways it sounds like he feared he was too much like Hubbel, that things had been too easy for him. But they really hadn’t been. He was constantly having to prove that he was more than a pretty face, and that although he had the looks of a privileged person, he came from a working class background.
Barbra, according to this book, was attentive, workable and punctual. There seem to have been two different movies made by two different camps. Producer Ray Stark, writer Authur Laurents and Barbra were on one side, while Bob Redford and Sydney Pollock were on the other. Each side had their own editor, and there were also writers working on rewriting when Laurents would refuse. Laurents had based the character of Katie on himself, and his romantic life usually centered on goyish men like Hubbel. He had directed Barbra in her big Broadway break as Miss Marmelstein in “I Can Get It For You Wholesale”. They didn’t always get along then, or during TWWW or later in life…both very strong personalities who may have been a little too similar. Ray Stark didn’t understand the Blacklist angle and wanted it reduced, but it’s what had interested Pollock originally. Pollock had also had to beef up Redford’s role to get him interested, so that he was a lead and not a supporting player to Streisand. Eventually Pollock realized the film worked better as an across the board romance. Also, they had spent so much time and money on the 1930s/40s scenes on the east coast, they were cutting Hollywood/Blacklist scenes before they were even shot in order to save time/money. I don’t think we’re really missing much. What remains of the lefty Hollywood milieu is a bunch of rich people playing tennis and talking about how they’re oppressed. It only goes so far. Good to keep it focused on Redford and Streisand.
December 14, 2022
I saw The Way We Were at an age (late teens or early 20s) where I couldn't understand it. Why couldn't two attractive white people be together if they wanted to be? At the time, as a Gen-X kid, I knew nothing about Jewish and Gentile. About class lines. Or about communist and non-communist in a time when to say you were a communist was as much of a career killer if you said now you were racist or homophobic. I also can't say I'm a Streisand or Redford fan, they are both a bit before my time. However, I like old movies, and I like to read about how movies were made.
The Way They Were follows the trajectory of how the classic "opposites attract" love story came to be through interviews with Streisand, the screenwriter Arthur Laurents, and director Sydney Pollack, and others. (Redford has a few quotes here and there but doesn't seem to have contributed to this book.) It mostly follows Laurents (not a likable person by any means), a Broadway legend who also wrote West Side Story. This is also a story of a time when the best person to write a movie about a woman was—a man! Actually, several men! If it wasn't for the one woman - more like a secretary - who was allowed to add her two cents, it's likely the Robert Redford character (with the odd name of Hubbell) would have been even more awful than he is.
I didn't want to watch the movie again while reading the book as I wanted to judge the book on its own merits, but I did look up several key scenes (thank you, YouTube) as I was reading. One, I think Laurents and Streisand are correct and the deleted scenes, which mostly had to do with Streisand's character's communist activities and a plot involving the Hollywood blacklist, should be reinstated somehow. Those scenes are more relevant than ever and would make this movie relevant again! Secondly, seeing the romantic scenes - the Katie character so in love with a man pretty much only because he's gorgeous and she feels special around him - well, we've all been there. Most of us have fallen for a person because of the fantasy they represented rather than the reality of the person. I think the movie would be much more relatable to me now. And I plan to watch it!
Thank you to NetGalley, author Robert Hopfler and Citadel Press. I just reviewed The Way They Were by Robert Hofler. #TheWayTheyWere #NetGalley
The Way They Were follows the trajectory of how the classic "opposites attract" love story came to be through interviews with Streisand, the screenwriter Arthur Laurents, and director Sydney Pollack, and others. (Redford has a few quotes here and there but doesn't seem to have contributed to this book.) It mostly follows Laurents (not a likable person by any means), a Broadway legend who also wrote West Side Story. This is also a story of a time when the best person to write a movie about a woman was—a man! Actually, several men! If it wasn't for the one woman - more like a secretary - who was allowed to add her two cents, it's likely the Robert Redford character (with the odd name of Hubbell) would have been even more awful than he is.
I didn't want to watch the movie again while reading the book as I wanted to judge the book on its own merits, but I did look up several key scenes (thank you, YouTube) as I was reading. One, I think Laurents and Streisand are correct and the deleted scenes, which mostly had to do with Streisand's character's communist activities and a plot involving the Hollywood blacklist, should be reinstated somehow. Those scenes are more relevant than ever and would make this movie relevant again! Secondly, seeing the romantic scenes - the Katie character so in love with a man pretty much only because he's gorgeous and she feels special around him - well, we've all been there. Most of us have fallen for a person because of the fantasy they represented rather than the reality of the person. I think the movie would be much more relatable to me now. And I plan to watch it!
Thank you to NetGalley, author Robert Hopfler and Citadel Press. I just reviewed The Way They Were by Robert Hofler. #TheWayTheyWere #NetGalley
February 18, 2023
This new book gives a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the classic love story.
Do you like to know the stories behind famous movies, the things that might have changed everything if they had come to fruition? I’m always fascinated by film history, so when Kensington Books offered me an advance copy of this book, which looks at the hard road to get The Way We Were onto the screen, I jumped at the chance.
Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, The Way We Were is a quintessential love story, about two completely different people in the 1930s—Katie, a Jewish activist who supports communism, and Hubbell, the handsome, privileged WASP—who fall in love and struggle with the world around them. The movie is on the American Film Institute’s list of top 10 movie romances.
While Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford seem tailor-made for their roles, the truth is, Redford didn’t want to make this movie. At first, he bristled against playing what he described as a “Ken doll” to Streisand, and he demanded that his role be expanded, so a bunch of screenwriters had to rework the script.
This was a really interesting story, a battle of egos, machinations, and compromises. What I found most fascinating is that Arthur Laurents, the original screenwriter, actually based the story on his own romance with his partner. Laurents was essentially the Streisand character while his partner, Tom Hatcher, was Redford.
Definitely a great read for film buffs and fans of this movie.
See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com.
Follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/getbookedwithlarry/.
Check out my best reads of 2022 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2022.html
Do you like to know the stories behind famous movies, the things that might have changed everything if they had come to fruition? I’m always fascinated by film history, so when Kensington Books offered me an advance copy of this book, which looks at the hard road to get The Way We Were onto the screen, I jumped at the chance.
Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, The Way We Were is a quintessential love story, about two completely different people in the 1930s—Katie, a Jewish activist who supports communism, and Hubbell, the handsome, privileged WASP—who fall in love and struggle with the world around them. The movie is on the American Film Institute’s list of top 10 movie romances.
While Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford seem tailor-made for their roles, the truth is, Redford didn’t want to make this movie. At first, he bristled against playing what he described as a “Ken doll” to Streisand, and he demanded that his role be expanded, so a bunch of screenwriters had to rework the script.
This was a really interesting story, a battle of egos, machinations, and compromises. What I found most fascinating is that Arthur Laurents, the original screenwriter, actually based the story on his own romance with his partner. Laurents was essentially the Streisand character while his partner, Tom Hatcher, was Redford.
Definitely a great read for film buffs and fans of this movie.
See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com.
Follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/getbookedwithlarry/.
Check out my best reads of 2022 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2022.html
March 15, 2023
Calling all romance fans!! This book dissects one of cinema's classic opposites attract love stories. Hofler goes deep into the pre-production, production, post-production of the film and looks at where the film sits now.
Can you believe this film is turning 50 this year??
Here’s what I learned that I found fascinating:
Barbara Streisand wanted her then boyfriend Warren Beatty to play Hubbell. Beatty said he didn’t want to play the “girl” character and felt Hubbell was too soft.
It took a year to convince Redford to play Hubbell. He felt the character was too flat and wanted him to be more political. He was also aware that Streisand was linked romantically to her co-stars. When he first met her he made it clear that he was happily married. She continued to crush on him for the duration of the film.
Streisand wanted hours of rehearsals and meetings and would show up two hours before each shooting day. Redford would show up 10 minutes before the camera rolled and refused to rehearse with her. He drove production mad with his lateness.
The film’s original runtime was three hours! They cut the majority of the political blacklist scenes to make it two hours. The constant issue with the script, that they constantly rewrote while shooting the film, was the debate of is this a love story first or a political story. The love story won out.
In the 90s Streisand wanted to make a sequel with their daughter now in college. She wanted their now adult daughter to bring the two back together. Redford refused and it never got made. Streisand still wants a version of the film with the extra scenes included. She felt she didn’t get the Oscar because of the cuts.
If you love Streisand, Redford and learning about Hollywood this is a must add to your TBR!
Can you believe this film is turning 50 this year??
Here’s what I learned that I found fascinating:
Barbara Streisand wanted her then boyfriend Warren Beatty to play Hubbell. Beatty said he didn’t want to play the “girl” character and felt Hubbell was too soft.
It took a year to convince Redford to play Hubbell. He felt the character was too flat and wanted him to be more political. He was also aware that Streisand was linked romantically to her co-stars. When he first met her he made it clear that he was happily married. She continued to crush on him for the duration of the film.
Streisand wanted hours of rehearsals and meetings and would show up two hours before each shooting day. Redford would show up 10 minutes before the camera rolled and refused to rehearse with her. He drove production mad with his lateness.
The film’s original runtime was three hours! They cut the majority of the political blacklist scenes to make it two hours. The constant issue with the script, that they constantly rewrote while shooting the film, was the debate of is this a love story first or a political story. The love story won out.
In the 90s Streisand wanted to make a sequel with their daughter now in college. She wanted their now adult daughter to bring the two back together. Redford refused and it never got made. Streisand still wants a version of the film with the extra scenes included. She felt she didn’t get the Oscar because of the cuts.
If you love Streisand, Redford and learning about Hollywood this is a must add to your TBR!
November 10, 2022
I recently watched The Way We Were for the first time and really enjoyed it. This book is the perfect excuse to watch it again. I had no idea there was so much conflict making the film and such a struggle to cast Redford. The author provides an incredibly detailed history behind the making of the film. I was pleased to see the author set the tone concerning the Hollywood blacklist and what each of the film’s crucial players were doing before the start of this production. It helps put a lot of their motivations into context. The rewriting process was interesting. The author went into great detail about what each version of certain scenes looked like and how they ended up being shot or not shot for the movie. He gives you a fuller picture of what could have been and perhaps why certain scenes or dialogue weren’t considered for the final cut.
There are a number of people mentioned throughout but the author makes sure to describe each and remind you of who they are if they pop up again later. The book makes you question whether The Way We Were is a good film or if it could have been better had some additional scenes been added in. It certainly provides context to scenes that may not have resonated as strongly as they should have. The author keeps the flow of the book engaging by placing you in a bubble of time and keeping your attention till the end.
Thank you to Kensington Books for this ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
There are a number of people mentioned throughout but the author makes sure to describe each and remind you of who they are if they pop up again later. The book makes you question whether The Way We Were is a good film or if it could have been better had some additional scenes been added in. It certainly provides context to scenes that may not have resonated as strongly as they should have. The author keeps the flow of the book engaging by placing you in a bubble of time and keeping your attention till the end.
Thank you to Kensington Books for this ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
January 20, 2023
ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
It’s always interesting to hear the backstory of something you love, whether it’s a movie, show, book, etc. Well researched and with lots of detail, Hofler’s book is the opposite of the film (which had many scenes trimmed off to fit it to a 2 hour run time) - I don’t think he left a single thing out! I do feel like it ended rather abruptly, rather than with a proper conclusion to close out the narrative. And of course, I love Robert Redford so I would have loved to hear more about him and less about everyone else!
Page 140 (in the ARC, maybe this will be corrected or omitted in the final version, or maybe my opinion on the matter is invalid) states that Robert Redford was a family man with four children. His first child died of SIDS, so when he accepted this role he had three children AT HOME, which I think was the author’s point (it is mentioned because Streisand often had affairs with her costars). I can’t decide if the author is being sensitive to Redford’s having lost a child (anyone who has outlived their offspring may choose to include their deceased child when asked how many children they have, or they might omit them, lest the conversation become more in depth and they would rather not visit the topic in a particular moment or with a particular individual) OR if in his research he may have missed that Redford’s first born had passed.
It’s always interesting to hear the backstory of something you love, whether it’s a movie, show, book, etc. Well researched and with lots of detail, Hofler’s book is the opposite of the film (which had many scenes trimmed off to fit it to a 2 hour run time) - I don’t think he left a single thing out! I do feel like it ended rather abruptly, rather than with a proper conclusion to close out the narrative. And of course, I love Robert Redford so I would have loved to hear more about him and less about everyone else!
Page 140 (in the ARC, maybe this will be corrected or omitted in the final version, or maybe my opinion on the matter is invalid) states that Robert Redford was a family man with four children. His first child died of SIDS, so when he accepted this role he had three children AT HOME, which I think was the author’s point (it is mentioned because Streisand often had affairs with her costars). I can’t decide if the author is being sensitive to Redford’s having lost a child (anyone who has outlived their offspring may choose to include their deceased child when asked how many children they have, or they might omit them, lest the conversation become more in depth and they would rather not visit the topic in a particular moment or with a particular individual) OR if in his research he may have missed that Redford’s first born had passed.
December 7, 2022
The movie came out when I was in high school. The movie makes more sense the older I get and as I see it in different stages of my life. I couldn’t wait to see what was going on behind the curtain.the book changes the was I look at the stars. They couldn’t be more different and both unrelenting in their self image. Each a uncompromising diva. Redford always late. Barbra a stickler for starting timesheet was always the nervous Nelly. She had to get the take perfect always the perfectionist. Redford just wants to wing it whatever happens it will be good if not over rehearsed.Then there was her publicist trying to run buffer actually not helping the situation. Writer, directors, producers.working for a movie company that is teetering on bankruptcy. This movie has got to bring in the money to save them all. No pressure. I was in high school and didn’t understand the political stuff. Understand little more now to be able to put it into perspective.it wasn’t a good fit for me but if you want a detailed version of what happens then this book is for you. Would be a good a Christmas present for someone looking for a vacation read.
Thanks to the following for allowing me to review early and give my personal opinion.
#NetGalley
Publisher: #KensingtonPress
Author: #RobertHofler
Title: #TheWayTheyWere
Pub. Date: 24 Jan2023
Thanks to the following for allowing me to review early and give my personal opinion.
#NetGalley
Publisher: #KensingtonPress
Author: #RobertHofler
Title: #TheWayTheyWere
Pub. Date: 24 Jan2023
March 16, 2023
Unimpressive. Not terribly well written. As "usually" a fan of Streisand, I was saddened to the extent that Hofler went out of his way to diminish both Streisand ("she only wanted Redford in the movie because she had the hots for him") and Redford (who apparently instantly regretted agreeing to do the picture and behaved accordingly.) There is far, FAR too much incidental gossip written here about Arthur Laurents, his gay relationships with...well, just about everyone....and what a nasty SOB he was. (Just read Laurents' memoir Original Story By...and you'll learn that from page one.) Lots of bitchy details, many of which have nothing to do with the making of this movie. A character "Feinstein" (who?) is quoted two pages before he is introduced as Ashley Feinstein...As for the assertion that "Had she (Streisand) sung the title song on Oscar night, it would have improved her chances of winning that night"....um, does Hofler not know how Oscar votes work? Voting has ended by Oscar night! The author mentions that the song lyrics are "Mem'ries...like the corners of your mind." (How is a memory like the corner of a mind? The lyric is "Memories...LIGHT the corners of MY mind.") There are lots of errors like that, that a decent editor would have fixed. Somewhat interesting if you're a fan of Streisand, Redford, Pollack or the movie...all others can probably skip this.
January 30, 2023
In 1973, when the film first came out, I remember going to our local theater that first weekend to see, "The Way We Were". Although we were big fans of both Streisand and Redford, we became even bigger fans. Over the years we've watched and rewatched it on television over and over again; still feeling the same way at the end, as we did in 1973.
After reading, " The Way They Were", I find it amazing that the film was ever made. Although it was wonderfully written and filled with interesting anecdotes, the books make all involved seem shallow and self centered. Sydney Pollack, the director, seemed like a cardboard cutout. He never came to life; perhaps because he died in 2008 and the author never got a chance to interview him. Ray Stark, the producer, came off as a raging bully who had too much say in the making of the film. Today he would be called a micromanager. And as for Arthur Laurents, he came off as totally unlikable, difficult and vindictive.
The book is definitely worth reading, especially if you've seen the film. It just makes you privy to the shenanigans that go on behind the scenes of all those involved in making a movie. And it also makes you wonder how any film ever gets made in Hollywood.
After reading, " The Way They Were", I find it amazing that the film was ever made. Although it was wonderfully written and filled with interesting anecdotes, the books make all involved seem shallow and self centered. Sydney Pollack, the director, seemed like a cardboard cutout. He never came to life; perhaps because he died in 2008 and the author never got a chance to interview him. Ray Stark, the producer, came off as a raging bully who had too much say in the making of the film. Today he would be called a micromanager. And as for Arthur Laurents, he came off as totally unlikable, difficult and vindictive.
The book is definitely worth reading, especially if you've seen the film. It just makes you privy to the shenanigans that go on behind the scenes of all those involved in making a movie. And it also makes you wonder how any film ever gets made in Hollywood.
December 6, 2022
I wish to thank NetGalley and Kensington Books for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book. I have voluntarily read and reviewed it. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
I was delighted to be given the chance to read this book as Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford are two stars that I just love and have watched the movie The Way We Were several times and always loved it. That being said, I must explain that I did not enjoy this book at all. It was so negative about both of the stars and went on and on and on about male relationships in Hollywood at the time. Robert Hofler was a theater critic and therefore knew all the major players but his emphasis just dwells way too much on homosexual and anti-Semitism activities at the time. A little was expected because the undercurrent of the movie was about that. I do feel the book was thoroughly researched but this reader did not appreciate the excessive dwelling on some issues. The back and forth arguments between directors, writers and edits just got tiresome. I can only imagine the tension with the actors. No wonder a sequel has not been made. I did read this book in its entirety hoping it would get better.
I was delighted to be given the chance to read this book as Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford are two stars that I just love and have watched the movie The Way We Were several times and always loved it. That being said, I must explain that I did not enjoy this book at all. It was so negative about both of the stars and went on and on and on about male relationships in Hollywood at the time. Robert Hofler was a theater critic and therefore knew all the major players but his emphasis just dwells way too much on homosexual and anti-Semitism activities at the time. A little was expected because the undercurrent of the movie was about that. I do feel the book was thoroughly researched but this reader did not appreciate the excessive dwelling on some issues. The back and forth arguments between directors, writers and edits just got tiresome. I can only imagine the tension with the actors. No wonder a sequel has not been made. I did read this book in its entirety hoping it would get better.
January 5, 2023
My Thoughts:
This book talks about the making and how the movie The Way We We’re came to be. I had heard rumors of behind the scenes problems and how everyone didn’t like each other but until I read this I had no idea I am amazed this movie ever came to be. This movie is one of my all time favorite romance movies. I am a huge fan of Barbra Streisand and I love Robert Redford and them together I fell in love. I am a fan of behind the scenes look at movies but I have to be honest I am not sure I wanted to know all the stuff that went on with this movie was true. It’s a classic that I love and will still love and I am not sure when I watch it again if I will be thinking of all the information that I learned now or if I can just love the watching the movie I guess I will find out. I am glad I did read this because I really appreciate everyone that finally came together and put all their differences aside and made a beautiful movie if you havent seen it I highly recommend it it’s a beautifully love story. Then read this after and you will appreciate all that went in to making this movie Thank You @netgalley for letting me read this for my review.
This book talks about the making and how the movie The Way We We’re came to be. I had heard rumors of behind the scenes problems and how everyone didn’t like each other but until I read this I had no idea I am amazed this movie ever came to be. This movie is one of my all time favorite romance movies. I am a huge fan of Barbra Streisand and I love Robert Redford and them together I fell in love. I am a fan of behind the scenes look at movies but I have to be honest I am not sure I wanted to know all the stuff that went on with this movie was true. It’s a classic that I love and will still love and I am not sure when I watch it again if I will be thinking of all the information that I learned now or if I can just love the watching the movie I guess I will find out. I am glad I did read this because I really appreciate everyone that finally came together and put all their differences aside and made a beautiful movie if you havent seen it I highly recommend it it’s a beautifully love story. Then read this after and you will appreciate all that went in to making this movie Thank You @netgalley for letting me read this for my review.
January 30, 2023
3.5 stars rounded up to 5. I was a bit let down by this book - it's certainly well-researched but I felt it dwelled excessively on Arthur Laurent and the ins and outs of his life and career more than it focused on the movie and its challenges. I enjoyed learning about how both Streisand and Redford approached the narrative, how Pollack struggled to keep all the pieces moving in the right direction, and how Ray Stark fit into the picture but sometimes the data Hofler had gathered about Laurent felt forced into the novel rather than flowing organically. This is one of my favorite romance stories and it was fascinating to hear the behind-the-scenes machinations that went into crucial scenes, lines that were dropped, sub-plots that got left on the cutting room floor. The insight into how a film gets edited and changed during production and even afterwards, makes this an interesting read for cinema buffs but again, I wished more time had been spent on the actual movie than Laurent who lived a fascinating life but ultimately came off as an egotist who harmed more than helped the making of this classic film.
Many thanks to Net Galley for providing me with an Advanced Reader Copy
Many thanks to Net Galley for providing me with an Advanced Reader Copy
April 13, 2023
Now I must preface this by saying I don’t love Streisand 😱. I have just always found her a bit cloying and over the top for my taste. The Way We Were is the exception. I came to this movie later in life and it instantly became of my favorites.
Hofler’s book is a love letter to this particular film and the art of film making and I loved reading about everything that went into making this cinema classic.
I loved reading about all the intimate details. Barbra Streisand wanted her then boyfriend, Warren Beatty to play the male lead that eventually went to Robert Redford, whom it took a year to convince to take the role. Streisand was 2 hours early every day, while Redford was habitually late. The early previews of the film were abysmal and much to Streisand’s dismay, the film had to be cut substantially for release.
An entertainment historian, Hofler’s love of the movies and this one in particular, shines throughout the book. He does a wonderful job of making the behind the scenes events of this classic entertaining and relevant. It made me love the movie even more. This is the 50th anniversary of The Way We We’re and I highly recommend this book if you are a film lover like me.
Hofler’s book is a love letter to this particular film and the art of film making and I loved reading about everything that went into making this cinema classic.
I loved reading about all the intimate details. Barbra Streisand wanted her then boyfriend, Warren Beatty to play the male lead that eventually went to Robert Redford, whom it took a year to convince to take the role. Streisand was 2 hours early every day, while Redford was habitually late. The early previews of the film were abysmal and much to Streisand’s dismay, the film had to be cut substantially for release.
An entertainment historian, Hofler’s love of the movies and this one in particular, shines throughout the book. He does a wonderful job of making the behind the scenes events of this classic entertaining and relevant. It made me love the movie even more. This is the 50th anniversary of The Way We We’re and I highly recommend this book if you are a film lover like me.
July 21, 2023
I appreciated this reflective book on behind-the-scenes of making one of the most well-known romances starring one of my favorite actors, Robert Redford, and of course, Barbra Streisand. I appreciated the details on how the writer, director and producer - as well as actors - went back and forth on scenes to include to make the story come across just right, to portray the right balance of politics and love to make this a story about two opposites who attract but cannot stay together. It even included some gossip about the actors on set. I only gave this three stars because I felt while interesting, there were some repetitive passages - like they tried to do when the movie clocked in at 2 hours and 20 minutes. In this eBook version I also noticed a couple spelling errors and errant formatting a handful of times where suddenly a sentence stopped in the middle but picked up indented as if it were a new paragraph, or unindented. Odd! My impression of the writer is one of a reporter who is a junkie for behind-the-scenes drama and relationships and creation, and it is a thirst that produced a good look at a movie that takes place during a culturally/politically important time.
November 22, 2022
Thank you so much to the author and the publisher, Kensington Books, for sharing an e-ARC of this book with me on NetGalley!!
“By his presence alone, Redford would make Hubbell likeable. By her presence alone, Streisand would make Katie strong”
This book has been absolutely amazing. I loved every second of it. As a story, I think it could be considered as a biography. Although we’re talking about the great movie, starring Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand, “The way we were”.
As a movie, I’ve always been a huge fan and honestly I felt like getting an insight of what was truly happening behind the scene of the making of this film was exactly what I needed.
The story and the message behind the film was explained in this book as strongly as the difficulties in making these two amazing authors working together !!
I never thought there would have been such complicated dynamics but the fact that the chemistry we see on scene was actually truly felt on stage, is amazing !!
I’m so glad I had the chance to read this book!!
“By his presence alone, Redford would make Hubbell likeable. By her presence alone, Streisand would make Katie strong”
This book has been absolutely amazing. I loved every second of it. As a story, I think it could be considered as a biography. Although we’re talking about the great movie, starring Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand, “The way we were”.
As a movie, I’ve always been a huge fan and honestly I felt like getting an insight of what was truly happening behind the scene of the making of this film was exactly what I needed.
The story and the message behind the film was explained in this book as strongly as the difficulties in making these two amazing authors working together !!
I never thought there would have been such complicated dynamics but the fact that the chemistry we see on scene was actually truly felt on stage, is amazing !!
I’m so glad I had the chance to read this book!!
January 26, 2023
I remember watching this movie over and over again with my sisters, and never tiring of seeing Barbra Streisand as Jewish working-class firebrand Katie Worosky and Robert Redford as all-American golden boy Hubbell Gardiner. Yet, I had heard some of the stories over the years of the issues surrounding the making of the iconic ‘The Way We Were’.
To read about the casting issues and the rewrite of the script, brings new light to this love story, that might not have come together but just worked, so beautifully. Hofler’s ability to align the historical events taking place outside of the movie to the storyline, highlighted the power of this story, beyond that of a romance. He has successfully managed to integrate interviews from key players and did so, with honesty and clarity.
I now find myself rewatching the film, through a different lens, of someone more aware of the complexities, and finding myself in awe, that it actually came to be.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
To read about the casting issues and the rewrite of the script, brings new light to this love story, that might not have come together but just worked, so beautifully. Hofler’s ability to align the historical events taking place outside of the movie to the storyline, highlighted the power of this story, beyond that of a romance. He has successfully managed to integrate interviews from key players and did so, with honesty and clarity.
I now find myself rewatching the film, through a different lens, of someone more aware of the complexities, and finding myself in awe, that it actually came to be.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
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