thursday 13: things about The Princess Bride

play along here

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One of my favorite movies in all the world is The Princess Bride. The acting is so good, with many great actors, and every scene is memorable in its own way. The storytelling is just fantastic. So, in homage to the movie (and the book), here is a list of interesting things about it.

Where to watch: Hulu, Disney+ (streaming)

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1. the director and his laughter

The movie was directed by Rob Reiner, who reportedly often required scenes with Billy Crystal to be refilmed multiple times. Why? Because he continually ruined takes by laughing so hard and so loudly!

2. Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya

The actor apparently felt deeply connected to his role, particularly in one famous scene, in which he prepares to kill his father’s murderer. Pantinkin’s father had recently passed from cancer, and he’s said he felt that in this scene, he was speaking to the cancer itself.

3. Max and Valerie

The characters, played by Billy Crystal and Carol Kane, were named after the William Goldman’s (the author) parents.

4. the backstory

Billy Crystal and Carol Kane decided to read the book together, as well as the screenplay the same author wrote. They had so much fun with it that they made up their own backstories for their characters, well beyond the scope of the original work. In that backstory, they decided that they’d married for well over a century, and that they deserved a spin-off!

5. a bad choice

Cary Elwes (Westley) asked Christopher Guest (Count Rugen) to actually hit him during a fight scene. Guest did, and Elwes ended up having to go to the hospital. Filming was halted for the rest of the day.

6. swordsmaster extraordinaire

The swordmaster for the movie was Bob Anderson, an English Olympic fencer. He trained all the actors who had sword-fighting scenes in the movie, as well as those in other notable movies like Star Wars, The Mask of Zorro, The Lord of the Rings, and Die Another Day. He was even the stunt double for Darth Vader’s lightsaber battles in both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

7. the fear and the calm

Wallace Shawn, who played Vizzini, had a terrible fear of heights. That wasn’t great when it came time for him to rappel up a cliff with Mandy Pantinkin and André the Giant. It took the Giant to put his hand on his head and to tell him he’d take care of Shawn. It worked, and the actor was able to continue the scene despite his fear.

8. the Cliffs of Insanity

The Cliffs of Insanity was the location of an intense sword-fighting scene. In preparation, Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin decided to watch any swordfight ever filmed. Apparently, their favorite was in the 1952 film Scaramouche with Stewart Granger and Mel Ferrer.

9. the swashbuckling Cary Elwes

He was chosen for the role of Westley because Rob Reiner thought he embodied the charisma of Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks. It’s interesting that all three of these legendary actors also played Robin Hood.

10. the end wasn’t always the end

An alternate ending was filmed for the movie, but it was cut in the end. In the deleted scene, the grandson (Fred Savage) goes to the window after the grandfather (Peter Falk) leaves the room. When he looks outside, he sees Fezzik (André the Giant), Inigo (Mandy Pantinkin), Westley (Cary Elwes), and Buttercup (Robin Wright) riding on their white horses.

11. diving into the Fire Swamp

Originally, the script called for Westley to jump headfirst into the quicksand to rescue Buttercup. But Elwes decided that wasn’t heroic enough for Westley. The stunt included a trap door under a layer of sand, under which was foam padding for a soft landing. So for Elwes to do this stunt in the way he wanted, it required the trap door to be opened at exactly the right moment to avoid injury. After the stunt double did it successfully, Elwes tried it. He nailed it in one take, and that was the one used in the final cut of the movie.

12. actors and self-doubt

Wallace Shawn, playing Vizzini the Sicilian, is a notably intelligent person, much like his character. In real life, Shawn has a degree in history from Harvard and studied both philosophy and economics at Oxford. On his days off, he lectured at Oxford on British and American literature. But even with all of that, he suffered from much doubt during the filming of the movie. Apparently, his agent told him that Rob Reiner had originally wanted Danny DeVito for the part. He spent most of filming comparing himself to DeVito, terrified that he couldn’t live up to his acting skills, that he would be fired every time there was a bad take.

13. lifesaving movie

A woman once told Rob Reiner that The Princess Bride saved her life. She was skiing when an avalanche occurred. She was lodged in the snow for hours and proceeded to recite every line in the movie to keep herself and those with her occupied and alert while they waited for rescue.