(Ergo it is well worth watching — or at least scanning through with your trigger finger ready at the fast forward button — to marvel at how the producer of the huge hit Saturday Night Fever could take the iconic music of the most important rock band ever, The Beatles, as well as the pop superstardom at the time of The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton, and from it all create a movie — to use that term very loosely in this case — that was monumentally bad in just about every way possible.)

I immediately thought how truer words about the film business and the making of movies — and by extension writing them — have never been spoken. So keep that notion always in mind… even as you read the sheer genius — which I say with a sardonic “Ha!” even as I am confident of my wisdom — that are my observations and advice in this space.

The conundrum that is behind and even implied by Goldman’s sagacious maxim is that the film game is rife if not overflowing with “experts” who know nothing. Movies are frequently the work of auteur directors with strong visions and even dictatorial control, yet at the same time the most collaborative art form on the planet. And you can bet that some grip or craft services grunt or Teamster truck driver on every film set has their thoughts and opinions on what makes a film work and become a success cinematically and/or commercially. And may be as right as the director may be wrong.

The studios are run by and peopled with top executives who all think they have the magic knack for knowing what the public wants to see and what it takes to identify and create a great movie. Then again, all you have to do is look at all the awful and even just mediocre films that get made year after year as well as the box office dogs and straight-to-DVD losers that are the bulk of what gets produced in Hollywood to know that, again, nobody knows anything. The blockbusters pay for all the stuff that loses millions (at least some of the time but hardly all of it). So keep in mind that if these folks were in the business of making and selling shoes, they would have gone out of business long ago.

Then there are the many (many) books on screenwriting as well as seminars and conferences and competitions and script gurus and film school professors and even computer programs that are supposed to help you come up with a winning screenplay. With all of the above — and me — listen to everything, and then take what you need or makes sense, and leave the rest (but don’t forget any of it).

And ultimately you need to embrace the virtual Zen koan that you are both a naïf and ignorant fool and a know-nothing, yet also at the same time have the confidence in your abilities, talent, vision and even genius to write a movie that if not can and will get made at least should, and might and perhaps will even make money when it is. The secret to being a successful writer of any kind is to be able to have the chutzpah to know you have something worthwhile to say and a story to be told, and then in almost the same thought be able to critically doubt all that you do and look at what you think and write and honestly assess it with the aim of making it as good as it can be.

You have to know that you are both brilliant and also suck big time, and love your work enough to create it while also hate it enough to kill it when need be (or at least abandon or revise). Can you manage that? If so, maybe you are on your way to knowing at least a little something that might help you write a successful screenplay, even if you (and I) still know nothing at all.