The Princess Bride

This is Rob Reiner, and welcome to my comments...

on The Princess Bride.

Act III Communications. That's Norman Lear's company.

Norman Lear, uh, who basically owned the rights to The Princess Bride...

and put his own money up so that we could make this film...

and a week before I went to London to start shooting...

we didn't know if we had the financing.

And, uh, we finally were able to get it, and it was put together.

Now this little boy, Fred Savage...

eventually became the boy who was in The Wonder Years.

And the whole film was shot in England at Shepperton Studios...

and even this scene was shot at Shepperton.

And there's a little thing... I don't think you can see it in this shot...

but I'll point it out when we get to it.

Um, Mark Knopfler, who did the music for the film...

a great, brilliant musician from Dire Straits...

uh, basically said he would only... he would only do the music...

if I had the hat that I wore in Spinal Tap somewhere in evidence.

And so... Like I say, you can't see it in this shot...

but there'll be a shot in this...

in these sequences with Peter Falk, who plays the grandfather...

where you'll see the hat that I wore.

Let's see. Maybe the camera's gonna move around here.

Nope. Not yet.

...used to read to me when I was sick, and I used to read it to your father.

At any rate, this... I read this book when I was about 25 years old...

Princess Bride... 'cause I had been a huge fan of William Goldman's.

My father gave me the book because Bill Goldman had given it to him.

They had become friends when Bill Goldman...

wrote a book about Broadway called The Season...

which looked at a particular season on Broadway...

and all the plays that had opened.

My dad had a play that opened called Something Different...

and Bill Goldman devoted a chapter in his book to that play.

And they became friends, and he gave this to Bill Goldman...

back when I think the first... The book first came out like in the early '70s...

and said, "What do you think about making a movie out of this?"

And my dad said, well, he wasn't really...

You know, he didn't really... hadn't read it...

but he gave me the book and said, you know, do you wanna read it?

I read it, and at the time it was the favorite book of my life...

that I'd ever read at that point, and probably to this point.

And so then, years later, when I was thinking about making movies...

I went back and reread it, and it again spoke, like, to me.

It was like as if Bill Goldman had been in my head...

and had written something that, uh... that was inside my head.

So I went to him and met with him, and he said...

"This is... This is the favorite book I have ever written in my life.

I want it on my tombstone. What are you gonna do with it?"

And I was shaking in my boots, thinking, you know...

he was gonna, you know, really criticize...

And there's Robin Wright, by the way, the most beautiful, you know...

She's incredibly beautiful.

And, um, we had to find the most beautiful girl in all the land...

and I think we found it with her.

Who could not only... was beautiful, but acted...

and did a wonderful British accent...

and was the perfect embodiment of the Princess Bride.

At any rate, Bill Goldman was totally, um...

you know, challenging me as to whether or not I could pull this off.

Like when I told him that I basically wanted to honor his book...

and be as faithful as possible, he agreed to let me do it.

At that time, I'd only made Spinal Tap. That was the only picture I'd made.

And actually I'd finished this short thing, but it hadn't come out yet.

And he saw those two pictures, and then he agreed to let me... to let me do it.

So I got a chance to work with my favorite writer...

and he entrusted his favorite book to me, and, um, I was very grateful that he did that.

You still can't see that hat, so I'll have to...

maybe find the shot where it comes out.

At any rate, this was all shot on a country farm in Derbyshire...

which is in the northern part of England...

and we were up there for about five weeks.

Hear this now.

I will always come for you.

But how can you be sure?

This is true love.

Of course, this is Cary Elwes, who, um...

Again, we had the perfect match here with Cary and Robin Wright.

Cary is very reminiscent of Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

We needed somebody who had that swashbuckling image...

and Cary was perfect for this part.

In casting him, it was interesting.

We met him just after there was Chernobyl.

And there was...

We had to go to Germany to meet him there...

and there was talk about being fallout in that area, and there was concern...

about people's, you know, getting... becoming radioactive.

But we-we-we, uh...

we risked being permanently contaminated...

just so we could meet with Cary Elwes.

And it was... I think it was the smart thing to do...

because I don't think anybody else could have played this part.

This was shot at Haddon Hall...

which is in Bakewell which is up in Derbyshire...

which is an abandoned castle that was built in 1086.

It was built by William the Conqueror for his illegitimate son.

And those... If you look up the... this...

this parapet that Humperdinck is now standing on...

we built actually for the film.

We added some extra structural architectural elements.

The one if you look right up above there.

That was all added to the existing Haddon Hall.

And this was a, um... a national monument...

and people would come and look at this and look through their guides...

and they'd find all kinds of things that were added to it that weren't there...

and they were confused because it didn't look like anything that they...

were in their guides.

And when there was a wedding...

I think it was either Fergie's wedding, or somebody had a wedding here...

they asked that all these things that we had added be kept there...

because it made the castle look better.

So, basically, Hollywood added a little touch to this castle.

It was...

We added a portcullis that wasn't there, which you'll see later as well.

And this was all at Haddon Hall here where we shot this.

And here we're gonna be introduced to Fezzik and Inigo Montoya and Vizzini.

We are but poor lost circus performers.

There's Wally Shawn, who's Vizzini...

who, needless to say, he's not Sicilian.

But, uh, in the vernacular of this film, it actually worked.

And there, of course, is Andre the Giant as Fezzik.

And again, it wasn't like there was a lot of options in casting this part.

It's not like you could throw a stick and find 50 giants.

Um, when Bill Goldman wrote the book...

he had always envisioned Andre the Giant playing Fezzik.

And so it took us again weeks to track down Andre...

'cause he was traveling around the world as a wrestler.

And finally we were able to pin him down, and we were accorded a meeting in Paris.

And Andy Scheinman and I had just been at a location scout...

to find the Cliffs of Insanity...

and we were in Ireland, and as we came back to our hotel room in London...

we walked in, there was a message saying Andre would be in Paris the next day at 2:00.

We went right back out the hotel, right to the airport and we went to Paris.

We stayed there overnight, and then the next day we met Andre.

We walked into the bar, and it was like it was described in the book.

There was a landmass sitting on a bar stool, and it was Andre the Giant.

And he was, you know, like I say...

the only person who could've played this part.

And I actually recorded his whole dialogue on a tape...

because he, you know... he didn't read and couldn't, you know...

And he had to memorize it that way, and he memorized his whole part that way.

And then of course, Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya...

who's absolutely brilliant in this film.

And, uh, you know, the most quoted line anybody has, uh...

"My name is Inigo Montoya.

You killed my father. Prepare to d... Prepare to die."

So that... everybody still quotes that.

Kids are still running around with swords saying...

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

- ...charmed. - You have a great gift for rhyme.

Yes, yes. Some of the time.

Enough of that!

Fezzik, are there rocks ahead?

If there are, you'll be dead.

No more rhymes! Now I mean it!

Is it okay that I tell these stories? Is that okay?

Okay, 'cause here's a great story about that-that line...

which is I once went to a restaurant...

in New York that Nick Pileggi and Nora Ephron took me.

And John Gotti would come there every Thursday night.

And we... At 8:00 he walks in. There was a group of wise guys with him...

and I'm sitting there, and we kind of recognized each other.

I didn't talk to him, but after the meal was over...

I went outside, and there was a huge limousine parked outside.

And there was a man standing in front of it...

that looked like Luca Brasi from The Godfather. Big plug of a guy.

Looks me right in the eye and said, "You killed my father. Prepare to die."

And I almost... I almost, you know, went in my pants right there.

But he said, "I love that picture, The Princess Bride."

So we know that...

When one of Gotti's wise guys is quoting your lines...

you know you've penetrated the culture.

And no one in Florin could've gotten here so fast.

Out of curiosity, why do you ask?

No reason. Suddenly, I just happened to look behind us and something is there.

This sequence was shot in a tank on a soundstage...

at Shepperton Studios.

This... That's a little miniature back there, so it looks...

It's a forced perspective to make it look like you're out on the high seas...

but it's actually inside a tank, and this was all shot in the tank.

I don't swim.

I only dog paddle.

And matter of fact, I remember a moment...

where I was actually out in the tank which is about three feet of water...

and I was in with hip waders, and there's a pit... an eight-foot pit.

It's a small area where you can dive into if you have to make a dive...

where Robin Wright just did that.

And I was looking for an angle...

and I walked around the boat, and I stepped into that hole...

and my pants filled up with water.

The hip waders filled up with water, and I just started sinking to the bottom.

And there was nobody there. I couldn't get back up.

And finally I was splashing around...

and somebody found me and they dragged me out.

So I almost... I almost drowned in the making of this movie.

Even inside of a controlled tank.

- - And then this.

Of course the shrieking eel we have here...

was a nice effect.

And this is one of the things I liked about the movie and the book...