shoot the moon

“What we’ve just heard are attempts to shoot the moon,” Segal said in a rebuttal, closing with, “These are two passing ships in the night, and all they have in common is the sea.”

As gripping as the courtroom scenes are, the movie’s centerpiece is a ferocious argument that instantly joins “Kramer vs. Kramer,” “Shoot the Moon,” “Scenes From a Marriage” and “Marriage Story” in the cinematic pantheon of marital fights.

Things changed after Goldman wrote his first screenplay, “Shoot the Moon,” about a mother of four whose husband has an affair with a younger woman.

“Shoot the Moon” was eventually made, directed by Alan Parker in 1982 and starring Diane Keaton and Albert Finney.

Mr. Goldman was struggling to make a living as a writer until the director Milos Forman saw the script he had written for a project called “Shoot the Moon” — his first screenplay — and, impressed, invited him to take a crack at adapting Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” for the screen.