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51 S U M M E R Q 2 I S S U E B O O K R E V I E W Margaret Booth, ACE — worked to make some sense of the footage in rough cuts. As Hofler describes it, the production was in a constant state of uncertainty about what sort of movie they were even making. "We didn't know how to mix the politics and the love story and make it work," said Pollack, who, at another point, was asked by Stark what the movie was even about. "I think it is the story of a girl who thinks she isn't pretty, and a guy who is afraid that he is only pretty." Well, that's a start. Laurents was never satisfied with the final balance, but Pollack became more res- olute in his instincts once Burnett prepared a finer cut. "I was pretty quick in putting movies together," said Burnett, a former Guild president who also collaborated with such leading directors as George Cukor, Blake Edwards, and Norman Jewison (who is one of this book's best and most candid sources). "With 'The Way We Were,' [my editing] wasn't a whole new construction where you tear it all apart. I've never done that in my whole career." Instead, it was a matter of shaping and honing. "You put the movie together and it's not exactly what the director for a year or two has had in his head," Burnett said. "What he had in his head is not shot. The first screening is a shock, even though [the director] may like it. After they've run the film two or three times, now they're ready to talk about the movie." Burnett and Pollack agreed that the blacklist material had to be further reduced and made less narrowly specific. "The important thing was that Katie had to have a cause, whether it was Franco or the black- list or the bomb, or handing out flyers," Burnett said. This was further affirmed when a preview audience became restive at a screening of a cut that still included sev- eral more overtly political scenes as well as those that simply didn't work. After Burnett eliminated 11 minutes, a second preview proved to be a resounding success. "Never in my career have I seen such a reversal of fortunes, from having a near-disaster one night to a big success the following night with those cuts," Pollack said. In the end, de- spite all the angst and agonizing that went into its making, "The Way We Were" was a huge hit with ticket buyers. Even the im- perious, unforgiving New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael was not immune to its appeal: "It stays afloat because of the chemistry of Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford." Streisand perhaps put it even better: "For me, the attraction of opposites — the yin and the yang — was very real. Their physical passion as well as their emotional bond was so strong, and that's what makes you root for them as a couple." The wisdom of Samuel Goldwyn was again affirmed — this time, anyway: "If you want to send a message, call Western Union." For her part, Streisand was sufficient- ly disappointed in several deletions to arrange for the cut scenes to be stored in "a temperature-controlled vault that was also home to outtakes from her recordings, TV shows, and other films," Hofler writes. "And I've been trying since 1973 to restore some of the most crucial scenes back into the film," she said. (Pollack once told Hofler he had no interest in a director's cut.) Ideas for a sequel circulated, including one in which Katie and Hubbell are brought back together by their now-grown daughter, "a Berkeley hippie with a drug problem," Pol- lack told gossip columnist Marilyn Beck in 1980. Pollack also talked about integrating the cut scenes as flashbacks into a possible new film. But, even here, there was dissen- sion in the ranks. "I never believed in or supported a sequel," Redford said. "Stark and Laurents were willing to do anything to keep the project alive. To me, it was a one- off, left to the assumptions and imagination of the audience." Hofler's endlessly entertaining book reminds the reader that even really good movies can rise out of challenging produc- tion circumstances and often fail to please all of their participants. ■ The Way They Were: How Epic Battles and Bruised Egos Brought a Classic Hollywood Love Story to the Screen By Robert Hofler Citadel, 2023 Hardcover, 304 pages $28 Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand in "The Way We Were." P H O T O : P H O T O F E S T