Back in the day I loved this movie and rewatching it over the years I would I still love it but would see things a little differently each time. I thought the book was going to tell how the movie came about and more of the dynamic between the two actors and the main characters. It was that but not much. It seemed to focus more on Arthur Laurents, the author, and his arguing with everyone involved in the production. There were a lot of people and it was tiresome. I didn't realize that Redford seemed to be the only one wanted to play Hubbell except he didn't want the part. I will probably watch the movie again with a new set of eyes.

Thanks to Netgalley and Kensington for providing me with a digital copy.

Interesting and insightful read about one of my favorite Movies "The Way We Were" I'm glad I read this as there were lots of instances in the movie that I didn't get. The stars, cast crew and backstories galore some of it repetitious and what I though non pertinent. Overall an interesting read.
Thank you to Netgalley, Kensington Citadel and the Author, Robert Hofler for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Princess Fuzzypants here: For fans of the 1973 hit movie, this is a great look behind the scenes at the making of the movie. At the time Barbra Streisand had the reputation of being a problem child, which in parlance of the day meant she worked hard and was a perfectionist. Robert Redford had been at the top of his game for many years, cruising by with his extraordinary good looks. The chemistry between the two on screen was amazing. They were an odd couple both in the film and real life.

One of the things that I found most fascinating was the fact that Streisand never lived up to her tough cookie rep but Redford was a diva. There are all sorts of interesting details and gossip in the book and as a 50th anniversary tome, it will fit very nicely in a library. Four purrs and two paws up.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Kensington Books, Citadel for allowing me to read this book. I have loved the movie The Way We Were since I first saw it when I was 13. I grew up in NJ and I remember my mom and aunts taking me to FAO Schwartz and all I cared about was seeing the front of the Plaza Hotel and the place of the infamous last scene of the movie. I loved everything about this book!

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.

The Way They Were is a nonfiction book about the making of The Way We Were. This 1973 romantic drama is one of my favorite movies, so of course I wanted to read the book! I loved the detailed glimpse behind the scenes of this movie, and some of the scene by scene analysis. Of course this book made me want to see the movie again! Recommended for other fans of The Way We Were, Barbra Streisand, or Robert Redford.

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. 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. 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. 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.

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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.

The Way We Were is one of my favourite films, and I loved reading about its making. A must read if you've loved the movie.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

For the 50th anniversary of the release of THE WAY WE WERE, this book provides a history of the film, beginning with the selection of the cast and continuing through the discussion of the sequel that never happened. This book provides considerable insight into filmmaking, much of which was new to me. Although Robert Redford was interviewed for the book, he still does not emerge as a sympathetic character--his initial reluctance to participate in the project continued through the filming. Barbra Streisand is a bit of a control freak, which is not surprising. It's amazing that the project ever came together with the frequent rewrites, extraneous scenes, etc. I think I would have preferred the movie if it had remained more true to Laurents' vision, but I do like overt political themes. The book seemed a bit disjointed at times, much like the film was thought to be, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. #TheWayTheyWere #NetGalley

Highlighted this engaging new release for the Nostalgia section of Zoomer magazine article on the 50th anniversary of The Way We Were. (see column and mini-review at link)

And Breathe!!!!

The Way They Were by Robert Hofler was just a book that took my breath away. It's about how Epic Battles and Bruised Egos Brought a Classic Hollywood Love Story to the Screen The 50th anniversary of "The Way We Were", and One of my favourite films of all times. The chemistry between the greatest singer of all time Barbra Streisand who was a Jewish working-class firebrand Katie Worosky and Robert Redford who was an all-American golden boy Hubbell Gardiner remains potent.

This was a friction film but it could of been true of its time. It's still loved to this day by millions. This book was just amazing from start to finish. A great book for fans of Barbra Streisand and the film "The Way We were". I am so glad this film was made especially as this film was nearly never made.
This book a treasure to have sitting on your book shelf.

The Way We Were is one of my favorite movies, and I really enjoyed learning the story behind it. This book is so thorough and well-researched, and it’s perfect for film fans or anyone who loves some good Hollywood drama. An informative and fun read—I’d definitely recommend!

My thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Books for an advance reader’s copy.

A great insight into the behind the scenes of one of my favorite movies and favorite actresses. Sometimes I am hesitant when it comes to non-fiction but I loved how Hofler told this story and I came away from this tell-all with a new perspective regarding what happens behind the scenes. It makes me wish there was a book like this for all my favorite movies!

I loved this movie, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand starred in one of the greatest love stories in American cinema.

After reading this book, I wish I didn’t! There were a few quotes from Streisand and Redford but nothing worth mentioning. Most of the story was about the in-fighting between the producer, director and writer before, during and after the filming.

Arthur Laurents was the screenwriter who wrote the screenplay (and the 1972 novel); based on his own personal life. I feel that Hofler (author) had some sort of grudge against Laurents and used this book as a means of expressing his personal views (aka “hatchet job”). Too much time devoted to Laurents. I can’t recommend this one.

I voluntarily read and reviewed a complimentary advance reader copy of this novel from Kensington Books via NetGalley. I was not required to give a positive review. All thoughts and opinions are my own, and this is my honest review.

Insightful book on the drama behind the film The Way We Were. Hofler really gives us an insight into the tensions behind the scenes and the differences between the lead stars, and how it helped the film become a success.

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.

50 years have passed since the release of the much loved film ‘The Way We Were’ and author Robert Hofler takes the reader behind the scenes of the making of this Streisand - Redford romantic drama. The ‘warts and all’ reveal travels through casting disagreements, rewrites, writer-producer-director disputes and a movie company veering towards bankruptcy.
I have always been a fan of this film, more so now that I know all of the ‘blood, sweat and tears’ it took to make this film the classic it has become.
Very recommended with thanks to NetGalley, the author and Kensington Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest book review.

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.

I was so excited to read about the making of one of my favorite movies, but was disappointed that the author seemed to be obsessed with the screenwriter's background and love life. He went into way more detail than was necessary to explain its relevance to the movie's story. I wish he would have devoted more time to the actors and actual filming of the movie. Thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Books for an advance copy to read and review.

I’m a big fan of behind-the-scenes stories and Making Of books and documentaries. The movie The Way We Were is one of my favorites so I was excited to read this. This should totally be up my alley! But I was disappointed what Hofler covered in the book; a lot of it felt irrelevant, or barely relevant. I just didn’t care for his writing style at all. It made me feel like I didn’t really understand his purpose in writing this.