Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1500026
48 C I N E M O N T A G E B O O K R E V I E W By Peter Tonguette H ow appealing — and how naïve — it would be to imagine that when a talented group of f ilmmakers get together to make a movie, they man- age to stay on the same page from the first day of pre-production until the red-carpet premiere. Egos and agenda are put aside; the screenwriter and the director work collaboratively; the actors come to work promptly and enthusiastically; the editor puts all the pieces together; and the pro- ducer or studio head oversees it all in a spirit of benign beneficence. Over the course of Hollywood history, surely some movies have been made with s u c h u n a n i m i t y, b u t m a ny m o re h av e sprung from an atmosphere of contention, disagreement, and dissent. "Movies were, are, and always will be a rather cutthroat business because you're dealing with a lot of money and fame," the director Peter Bogdanovich once told me, and it is doubtful he will ever be disproven. Yet pitched battles between filmmakers can also result in good and memorable films. Such is the argument advanced in a fascinating, chatty, and wonderfully well-told new book about the making of Columbia Pictures' 1973 release "The Way We Were," a romantic drama set amid the World War II years. The film starred Barbra Streisand as Katie Morosky, a young Jewish woman unyielding in her liberal MISTY WATERCOLOR MEMORIES STREISAND CHERISHED THE BEDROOM SCENES, BUT REDFORD FOUND THE SCRIPT 'DRIPPY.' HOW 'THE WAY WE WERE' MADE MOVIE MAGIC. political principles, and Robert Redford as Hubbell Gardiner, a WASPy aspiring writer committed to little but himself and his own advancement, but for whom Katie carries a torch and in whom she invests many of her hopes and dreams. The characters marry and have a child, but their differences prove unbridgeable. Written by Arthur Laurents, produced by Ray Stark, and directed by Syd- ney Pollack, "The Way We Were" — whose title song, with music by Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, won an Oscar — tapped into the same audience appetite for glamorous screen romance that propelled "Love Story," with Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw, to the box-of- Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand in "The Way We Were." P H O T O S : P H O T O F E S T