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.

This book goes in to the making of The Way They Were from back when they are casting the iconic movie. It's very detailed and tells the story of how different things effected how this movie came to be.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Kensington for allowing me to read Robert Hofler's The Way we Were. I found it fascinating and will now have to watch it again. I never stopped hoping for a sequel.

Though the topic for this book was intriguing to me as The Way We Were is one of my all -time favorite movies, was unable to finish this book. I felt it was all over the place in the first few chapters. There was a ton of name dropping, which is important in a book like this, but the jumping around the author was doing made it confusing about who was who in the early pages. I lost interest trying to go back and figure out who he was talking about and what time period he was talking about. I might give it another shot someday but with the stack of other books to review I have going right now, I just wasn't able to dive into this the way that I wanted to. My rating is based only on the first few chapters I was able to finish.

this was what I was hoping for in a making of a movie book, Robert Hofter has a great writing style and did everything to keep me invested. I was hooked from the first page and was glad I was able to read this.

"They started shooting and got into trouble, and Ray called me,” the writer explained. “By then I was over the pain, but I was also over the Walter Mitty dream. I asked for a lot of money.” Laurents had only good things to say about Streisand. He called her a “pack rat” who remembered bits of dialogue that had been cut and who insisted they be reinstated."

Just in time for the 50th anniversary of the classic romantic drama, ace entertainment historian Robert Hofler delivers a deeply researched account of the creation of ‘The Way We Were.’ Hofler details the deep disagreements over the content and style of the movie between director Sydney Pollack, producer Ray Stark and leading lady Barbra Streisand,
The portrait of the Hollywood blacklist in the second half of the movie was whittled down to what preview audiences responded to most deeply - the mismatched love story and the unusually strong chemistry between Streisand and Robert Redford.

I loved this film, and I absolutely love the book describing the making of it. I would absolutely recommend reading it. perhaps my only critique is that there are absolutely no photos from the film, or the set included in the book.