Making of film a rich, gossipy tale
“The Way We Were,” released in fall 1973, had a bittersweet ending.
At the box office, though, it was one of the most popular movies of the year. Its title song, powered by star Barbra Streisand, was Billboard’s top single of 1974. For Robert Redford, it was the first of a one-two punch with moviegoers, the second coming months later with “The Sting.”
Author Robert Hofler’s detailed look at the movie’s creation, “The Way They Were,” tells a sweet-andsour story behind the cameras. In doing so, he lays out just how difficult it can be to create a movie from whole cloth when several people are allowed access to scissors.
In Hofler’s telling of the back story, supported by excellent research and analysis, the script was the main problem. Playwright and screenwriter Arthur Laurents had drawn from his own life in creating a love story between a Jewish political radical and an apolitical WASP.
Key elements of Laurents’ story, which he turned into a novel before the film’s release, changed many times before, during and after principal filming. Writer after writer was called in to raise the profile of Redford’s character, make Streisand’s more appealing and tone down the political elements. Many people, including the stars, expressed varying opinions on what worked and what didn’t.
The script was so unsettled — producer Ray Stark and director Sydney Pollack were at odds over what story they were telling and how to tell it — that expensive scenes were shot and not used, the shooting schedule went long and nerves were frayed all around.
Then the miracle happened. Audiences loved the movie, particularly women, some of
whom were sobbing at the end. Made for about $5 million, it brought in 10 times that at the box office, generated a hit single and made everyone look good.
Hofler might lose some readers as he leads them through a forest of details. But for those who like to know how the cinematic sausage is made, it’s a rich, gossipy tale of the dream factory in full throttle.
— Douglass K. Daniel, Associated Press
Hacking is universally understood as
the exploitation of a software vulnerability by a malicious actor. But hacking encompasses oh, so much more. By gaming systems, it achieves outcomes for which they were not designed. People do it to the economy, the tax code and the law. Discover a loophole, profit from an oversight.
Security guru Bruce Schneier’s latest book, “A Hacker’s Mind,” surveys hacking’s most effective applications — the good and bad — with both hope and dread, the latter because digital technology and artificial intelligence are putting it on steroids. His focus: hacking as a lever of power. If data is the new oil, hacking is the new lube. Bots will be the delivery system.
‘A Hacker’s Mind’
Some things humans have hacked to great effect: the IRS, stock exchanges and airline frequent flier programs.
Following a Hacking 101 that many readers won’t need, Schneier provides an easily digestible, mindopening treatise on how hacking exacerbates inequality. The elite have long hired smart folks to shimmy in and around the rules of high finance, law and politics to their profit.
Much hacking tears at society’s fabric. Schneier is particularly worried about how to counteract destructive mind-meddling — cognitive hacks that affect people’s ability to make deliberate and effective decisions. AI will make them even more so, hacking “our society in a way that nothing heretofore has done.” After a halfcentury of digital advances and ubiquitous computing devices, hacking minds has gotten easier. Algorithms and automation make disinformation — one type of cognitive hack — more effectively corrosive.
Schneier argues that if strict guardrails aren’t put on AI, robots with agency could unravel trust in vital institutions, social cohesion and civil engagement.