My
daughters were very young when the film version of The Princess Bride released
in October of 1987. It had a Motion Picture Association of America rating of PG
which warned that it might contain material that parents would not want for
young audiences. A Parental Guidance rating usually means bad language,
violence or frightening scenes not recommended for young children. And there
might be kissing, of course.
And so, a PG rating meant that the little
girls in my family – and we adults, too – missed the experience entirely in the
late 1980s. My daughters undoubtedly watched the video as they grew up when it
was earning its cult-following (after its widespread VHS release in the 1990s.)
We rented plenty of videos at our local video store. I have vague recollections
of watching some scenes in the movie as I busily moved through the room of
giggling sleepover girls who were now pre-teens, ready for sword fighting, bad
language and kissing.
I finally watched The Princess Bride this weekend
in its entirety, in one sitting. I now
totally regret that I waited 27 years to do so.
The movie is full of amazingly funny scenes
and has a fairytale of a cast. It is
Robin Wright’s debut performance as Princess Buttercup (several years before her
epic role in Forrest Gump.) Comic Mandy Patinkin, hilarious Wallace Shawn, cute
Fred Savage (later of The Wonder Years) and handsome Cary Elwes are other
stars. One of the world’s favorite actors, the late Andre the Giant, stars as
Fezzik. Sadly, this was six years before his death in 1993.) Another
favorite, Peter Falk, plays the grandfather. Billy Crystal has a hilarious
performance under mountains of makeup that transform his younger face into that
of Miracle Max.
The Princess Bride is a story within a
story, and it is based upon the book within a book by William Goldman. The
whole title, The Princess Bride – S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love
and High Adventure, the Good Parts Version is meant to be confusing. The ruse
is that there is no author named S. Morgenstern, who wrote this classic tale.
It claims to be an abridgment which is merely a device used by Goldman to speed
up some parts. “Flash forward,” he writes, in the story.
In the story, Goldman, as the narrator,
recalls that as a young boy he returned home from a 10-day stay in the hospital
with the pneumonia. His father comes in to say good night, sits on the edge of
his bed with a book, and begins to read Chapter 1: The Bride. Wait! “"Has
it got any sports in it?" he cries?
Oh yes. “Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True Love,” his father
replies.
Of course, this is where the fun begins in
the film when a young boy (an unnamed grandson, played by 11-year old Fred
Savage) is very skeptical. Peter Falk plays the grandfather who begins to read
his sick-in-bed grandson a story called The Princess Bride, a book that
certainly sounds like a fairytale which must be full of love, romance, girls,
and kissing. Ick! Grandfather Falk
promises it is full of adventure, intrigue, kidnapping, sword fighting, action,
pirates, thievery, and killing. And, yes. There will be kissing, he
admits.
The Princess Bride (the book, that is) is
usually shelved in the teen (or young adult) collection in libraries. That
said, the literary device, satire, and comedy is not lost on adults. It’s a
laugh-out-loud appreciation that makes both the book and the movie so fun.
Which brings us to Rob Reiner, director
extraordinaire and king of comedic romances. Carl Reiner, a friend of the
William Goldman, apparently gave Reiner the 1973 book while they were filming
All in the Family. Genius that he is,
Reiner apparently knew it would make a great movie. IMDB.com (The Internet Movie Database) has a
list of great trivia about the making of the film, and it includes the story
that Rob Reiner became nauseated while watching Billy Crystal acting as Miracle
Max. It’s hardly far-fetched because that is a terrifically funny scene.
Another significant source of Princess
Bride trivia is a website entirely devoted to it. PrincessBrideForever.com
includes the very best of film clips, especially the much-loved Battle of the
Wits (which I admit I had seen before.) There are also more than enough links
to trivia quizzes across the Internet and an online store called “Tweasure.”
The treasure trove of stories about the
film, however, did not appear until last October 2014 with the publication of
“As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of the Princess Bride” by
Cary Elwes who played Westley, the hero who outwits them all and saves
Buttercup from a disastrous marriage to an evil prince. It’s a
behind-the-scenes story which, inconceivably (but understandably) takes a whole
book to tell.
Once you’ve seen the movie, of course, the
terms familiar to The Princess Bride worshippers make sense. “Inconceivable,”
“as you wish,” “tweasure,” “mawwidge” and “I am Inigo Montoya” are hilarious moments
during the first viewing in the film. Inconceivably,
they become more and more laughable every time. Trust me on this.
A 25th anniversary edition of The Princess
Bride was published in 1998, and an illustrated version was published in 2013.
Minuteman Libraries have copies of all of them, including the original book
published in 1973. Author Goldman also
wrote The Marathon Man (the film version was released in 1976) and he wrote the
screenplays for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), All the President’s
Men (1976) and Stephen King’s bestselling thrillers, Misery (1990) and
Dreamcatcher (2003).
Minuteman libraries also have multiple
copies of the film on DVD and the 25th anniversary version contains tons of
extras including commentary by Reiner and side stories about the acting, the
fencing, the make-up, and the fairy tale.
Don’t wait to watch this kid’s film. It’s
just as funny, if not more amusing, for adults. Or read the book (also
available on audio CD) which includes the hysterical and very original satire.
Trust me on this. But. There will be
kissing.
