As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride

by Cary Elwes

  And that was exactly true as far as Robin was concerned. It was as if I were looking at a young Grace Kelly. She was that beautiful. My awkwardness must’ve been obvious because Rob gave me a little nudge to the ribs and a grin that seemed to say, “Huh? Am I right or what?”

  I do remember Robin mimicking a perfect English accent, something she does remarkably well, and then totally disarming me with a giggle that mushroomed into the most wonderful laugh. I remember thinking to myself, Wow! How many women are that beautiful and that funny as well? I mean, it figures that Rob would find someone talented to play Buttercup, but to have that combination of beauty and comic sensibility . . . that’s a rare and wonderful thing.

  It turns out Robin had stopped by the studio for her own last-minute costume fittings. I think we ended the conversation with her saying she was really looking forward to working with me and me stammering something hopeless in return, like “Me, too.” To use a phrase that would be perfectly appropriate in the fairy-tale realm of The Princess Bride, I was smitten. Within a few minutes we had gone our separate ways—Robin off to her fitting, and I back to the production office to sign some paperwork and pick up a copy of the schedule. But, to be honest, I couldn’t concentrate on much of anything after that first encounter with Robin. She was the perfect Buttercup in my mind’s eye. I couldn’t wait to get started.

  3

  THE TABLE READ AND MEETING FEZZIK

  A few days later everyone in the cast gathered for our first table read in the banquet room of the Dorchester Hotel, one of London’s oldest and most stylish five-star inns, situated in the elegant Mayfair district where Rob, Andy, and Bill were staying. As I entered the room I looked around and noticed that most of the cast was already there, looking very relaxed. The room was also fully stocked with soft drinks and snacks laid on silver platters, including the hotel’s famous watercress and egg sandwiches. At the center of the room was a large oak table with some twenty chairs around it. On the table were a number of scripts. A couple dozen more chairs ringed the perimeter—seating for the heads of various departments. I saw Rob and Andy talking to a man whom I immediately recognized as Bill Goldman and made a beeline for them.

  “Hey, Cary,” said Rob, giving me another bear hug, “have you met Bill yet?”

  “N-no,” I stammered. “Hi.” There he was. Standing right in front of me . . . the legendary William Goldman. A man whose work had enthralled me as a kid. He was tall and thin, and had wisps of gray hair. He also had a warm smile and an easy demeanor about him.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said, shaking my perspiring hand.

  As I began to tell him how much I enjoyed the script and the book—dialogue I am sure Goldman was well used to by this point in his career—the topic came around to Fezzik.

  “So who’s playing him?” I asked.

  “Oh, man. We got the perfect guy,” Rob said excitedly. “Remember the wrestler I told you about in Berlin? His name is André the Giant.”

  “His last name is really ‘The Giant’?”

  “You never heard of him?” Bill Goldman asked, cracking a smile.

  “I think I’d remember that name.”

  “Oh, he’s terrific. He’s a world-famous wrestler!” Bill replied. Turns out he was a self-described “lunatic fan” of André’s.

  “Did you ever see that episode of The Six Million Dollar Man where he meets Bigfoot?” Rob asked me.

  WILLIAM GOLDMAN

  I knew I had a giant in the story. And then I was watching television once, years before I ever wrote the screenplay, and I thought, André could play the giant. Then I went to Madison Square Garden and I saw him and fell in love with him like everybody did. And he was wonderful for us.

  “I think so,” I said as it started to dawn on me. “I’m not sure.”

  “Anyway, that’s him! The Bigfoot guy!” exclaimed Rob.

  “And it was perfect casting as his feet really are big,” Andy chimed in with a hilarious understatement.

  ANDY SCHEINMAN

  Finding André was interesting. You know, there’s a scene where Westley rides on Fezzik’s back while they’re wrestling, right? Well, I ended up riding on the backs of so many gigantic people trying to find this guy because when we’d meet and ask them to read, they all said, “I could do it better if you were on my back for this scene.” There was the guy who won the World’s Strongest Man contest, and I’m riding around on his back while he’s trying to say his lines. We met a couple of other guys, including Richard Kiel, who had played Jaws in the James Bond movies The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. But none of them were right.

  ROB REINER

  Bill Goldman was the one who said, “You should look at André the Giant.” We all knew André because we’d seen him wrestling. But I had no idea if he could act or not. We met him at a hotel in Paris, and when we walked in, the manager said, “There’s a man waiting for you at the bar.” So we walked into the bar and it was literally like Fezzik was described in the book. It was like a landmass sitting on a barstool. He came up to our hotel room to read. We had a three-page scene for him to audition with, and I didn’t understand a word he said. Also, he’d never been in one place for more than two weeks; he was always traveling all over the world. So I said, “You know this is fifteen weeks, right, André? You’ll be in town for fifteen weeks.” And he says, “I do it, boss.” Then he says, “You want me to play these three pages for fifteen weeks?” He thought that was his whole part. So I said, “No, no, you’re all throughout the film. There’s a lot of scenes.” And again he says, “I do it, boss.” So he leaves—and he was a really sweet guy—and I turn to Andy and say, “Oh, my God. I don’t know if he can do this or not.” But he was perfect for the part. He looked exactly right.

  “So he’s a real giant, then?” I asked.

  “He’s literally the biggest guy on the planet. And you get to fight him! How about that?” Rob said with a huge laugh.

  The biggest guy on the planet?

  I tried to conjure up an image in my head.

  At that very moment the door to the ornate room opened and in walked the giant himself . . . André. It was like a scene from an old Western, where the guy enters the saloon and everyone stops what they are doing, including the piano player. The first thing I remember about him, besides his immense height, of course, was his beautiful, sweet, beaming smile. It was a giant smile, and the reason for this was because his teeth were regular size, so you could see all of them as he opened his mouth. He had to bow down low as he came through the doorway so that he wouldn’t crack his head on the doorframe—obviously something he had become accustomed to over the years. I remember Rob introducing us, and watching my fingers disappear as we shook hands, completely engulfed by a palm bigger than a catcher’s mitt. If you want to get a sense of just how big they were google “André the Giant” and “beer can” and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. According to his official website, his shoe size was twenty-four and his wrist was nearly a foot in circumference. Standing next to him, I only came up to his belly button!

  In retrospect, André seemed to have been born to play the role—like Rob said, “It’s not like you put out a casting call for a giant and get a ton of callbacks.” He was a real giant, standing seven feet four inches tall and weighing 540 pounds. According to Rob, André had at first expressed trepidation about being in the film. Being French (his real name is André René Roussimoff), he was apparently highly insecure about his ability to speak English fluently. Rob eased his concerns by sending him an audio-taped version of the scene he wanted him to look at involving Fezzik so André could listen to it and study it, and then, if he was so inclined, read for the part. Which he did for Rob and Andy when they flew to Paris after meeting with me in Berlin. When the reading was over Rob turned to him and said, “That was great, André. You got it, buddy!”

  “Thanks, boss,” came the reply. It should be noted that despite his gargantuan size André took to calling everyone “boss”
as a way of disarming them in a very charming way.

  Eventually the whole script was put on tape for him so that he could understand and memorize his role. And he did a great job with it, despite English not being his first language and his not being in the best of health. He was apparently due for an operation on his back.

  ROB REINER

  So what I did was put down on tape his entire part. I acted it out for him and he studied it over and over and he got it. I mean, we never had to even loop him. So André was the third piece. If I don’t get any one of them, I can’t make the movie.

  ANDY SCHEINMAN

  So Rob and I ended up recording all of André’s scenes on tape. Rob did André and I did whoever else was in the scene. And André would walk around in headphones, with that tape playing all the time. Listening, figuring it out. And it worked! He was great.

  That first table read was an extraordinary experience. There seemed to be so many gifted people in one room. On more than one occasion, I had to choke back nerves provoked by working with such an extraordinary group of talented people. I looked at Chris Sarandon and thought, This is the guy who was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Leon, his very first film role, in one of my favorite Sidney Lumet movies, Dog Day Afternoon.

  I looked over and saw Wally Shawn, and I instantly thought not only of his remarkable performance and wonderful writing in My Dinner with Andre but his roles in All That Jazz and Manhattan.

  CHRIS SARANDON

  The audition went something like this: I walk in the door and Rob and Bill Goldman were both very lovely and friendly. And I said, “I’m sorry, I can’t hold myself back. The Knicks drafted so-and-so!” Bill Goldman and I then proceeded to talk about the Knicks draft choice for like the next ten or fifteen minutes. Both of us being totally pissed off. By the end of that conversation, I felt totally comfortable because it was just a couple of New York guys talking about basketball. And then Rob said to me, “Would you mind reading the scene?” So I read, and it was the scene in which Humperdinck asks Buttercup if she would consider him as an alternative to suicide. I think they chose that scene because it’s very funny, but I read it totally straight. And Rob just cracked up because . . . well, first of all he’s the greatest audience in the world. And the next thing I knew, I was on a plane to England to make the movie!

  And there was Mandy, whom I now recognized from Miloš Forman’s Ragtime, standing in the corner chatting with Chris Guest. Both of them serious veterans of the business. It was crazy! Everyone seemed to have a more prestigious résumé than I did. Even Fred Savage had already managed to cram in an incredible amount of television work by the tender age of ten. This was “not your ordinary Hadassah group,” as Goldman once famously put it. Even though I did my best to hide it, I began to develop a slight inferiority complex.

  There were other surprises that day, like the unexpected presence of the screenwriter Buck Henry, wearing his trademark baseball cap and glasses. He had nothing to do with The Princess Bride, but happened to be in London on other business and was staying in the hotel. Even though I had never met him, I obviously knew his work. Here was a guy whose acting and writing career had already spanned across three decades, from creating Get Smart in the mid-1960s with Mel Brooks to writing screenplays for The Graduate, Catch-22, and Heaven Can Wait, among many others. He was a friend of Rob’s and a repeat host of Saturday Night Live. I guess everyone felt that if Buck wanted to sit in on the reading, why the heck not? Clearly he wasn’t there to comment on the screenplay—nobody “punches up” Bill Goldman. I suppose the thought was that if we could make Buck Henry laugh, chuckle, or even smile during the read, then maybe we were in good shape.

  ROB REINER

  I did sense that Mandy was very nervous about doing the movie, and I had to talk him off the ledge a couple of times. But I never had to do that with Cary. He was, you know, very stiff upper lip, or whatever those Brits do. He carried it off.

  Ironically—given that our characters were at the center of the story—Robin and I were the relative newcomers in the group. Even André was a far more experienced performer than we were. Besides appearing on The Six Million Dollar Man, he had been on a number of TV shows, including B.J. and the Bear, The Fall Guy, and The Greatest American Hero, and made an uncredited appearance as a favor to his friend Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan the Destroyer. It could also be said that he was a showman in every sense of the word. This was a guy, after all, who put on a leotard just about every night of his life and staged a show for thousands of fans.

  Up to that point I had only made British films, and table readings were not really fashionable in the UK back then. A table reading basically serves a dual purpose: The first is to give everyone a sense of the rhythm of the script (there is a difference between reading the words by yourself and hearing them recited aloud by all the actors playing the roles), and the second, to allow everyone to meet one another in a relaxed, fun atmosphere. Basically, it’s a play day, at the end of which, if it’s successful, you can begin to get a sense of the movie in your mind’s eye.

  After a suitable amount of time had passed, Rob signaled to our production manager, David Barron, for the proceedings to begin.

  CHRIS SARANDON

  Cary and Robin were just perfection. They were the perfect physical casting for these two characters. And my recollection of Cary was that I thought this guy is a leading man but he can do so much more. He does dialects and tells great stories. He’s a very talented guy. And I think we were all sort of a little smitten with Robin because she was so lovely. There’s a sense of mystery with Robin that I think she just has naturally. And so I never for a moment thought, Oh, boy, we’re in for it with these two newcomers. I just felt like we all bonded. Plus it’s so much easier when you’re all together and you become friends on location, because then you trust each other. You know each other really well. You know what you can get away with and what’s apropos. You learn to get along.

  “Everyone please take a seat,” David announced.

  We all took our assigned seats around the table—a little placard stating our name in front of each of us. Rob was seated at the head of the table, to his left was Andy, and to his right, Bill Goldman.

  “Let’s go around the table and introduce ourselves,” Rob announced.

  “I’m Rob Reiner and I’m the director. Thank you all for being here. I just wanna say how thrilled and excited I am to be making this movie. I know we’re gonna have a lot of fun.” He paused, then gestured to his left and said, “And this is Andy Scheinman, our producer, who will also be directing second unit. And because Billy and Carol aren’t here yet, I will be reading Miracle Max and Andy will be reading Valerie.”

  Andy then lifted his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Valerie.” That got a laugh.

  As I would find out later, it is customary at table reads for each person around the table to introduce themselves followed by the character they are playing. I sat next to Robin, number four or five on the list of introductions. I remember feeling my hands start to sweat just thinking about it. I folded them in my lap so that no one would notice. When the appropriate time came, and my heart rate was at an all-time high, I blurted out, “Hi, I’m Cary Elwes. And I’m playing Westley.”

  I had no idea whether this reading was a test. Suppose they heard my rendition of this character and decided to replace me?

  Calm, Cary! Try to remain calm! I kept telling myself.

  The only thing that even began to bring my pulse down was watching Bill. If there was one person at the table who appeared to be more nervous than me, it had to have been him. As I would soon discover, his colossal talent notwithstanding, Goldman was a rather famously anxious writer. As I looked over at him, he seemed to be withdrawing into himself, trying to become smaller. When it came his turn to introduce himself, he offered a brief background about how he came to write the book, and how the book became a screenplay. How it had been a true labor of love and a storybook gift to his da
ughters. How for years he had wondered whether it would ever be adapted to the screen; even whether it could be.

  He then grew even quieter.

  “Please understand that this is a very personal project,” Bill said, his voice fading almost to a whisper. “Normally I don’t care much for any of my work. But this one is different. It is my favorite thing I’ve ever written in my life. So if I appear a little nervous, that’s the reason.” He then thanked Rob and all of us for being there, and assured us that the project was in good hands.

  On some deep and profound level, I think the prospect of The Princess Bride coming to life must have terrified him. After all, this was clearly the most cherished accomplishment of his artistic life. And I don’t think many people in the room knew that it was that personal to him until he mentioned it. In hindsight it made sense that he formed a very close bond with Rob. He didn’t want just anyone making the movie. He really wanted it to be done right.

  I can only imagine what it must’ve been like for him—sitting there quietly and listening to other people read the lines he had so meticulously written. To watch the actors bring his words and characters to life and hope and pray to God that it worked. It wasn’t just that he wanted the film to be successful; I think he was actually fearful it might fail. I’m sure he was thinking, What if no one laughs at the jokes? Worse yet, what if they laugh in places where they’re not supposed to? There are so many ways it could all go wrong. Then, after the last actor announced themselves, Rob started to read from the script.

  “The Princess Bride by William Goldman . . . Fade in on: a video game on a computer screen . . .”

  I looked over at Goldman. From that point on, he just sat quietly, taking it all in. No doubt dissecting every word uttered as he silently turned the pages. Every so often he’d pick up his pencil and scribble something in the margin. I noticed he did it a couple of times while I was reading. Perhaps he was just making a note on the dialogue? I certainly hoped that was the reason. Rob did this as well, but mostly he just laughed a lot.