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

by Cary Elwes

  That, as it turned out, was an understatement.

  Peter Diamond was a good three decades into what is generally regarded as one of the most legendary careers of any stuntman or stunt coordinator in both television and film. As a sword-trainer he had worked with both Errol Flynn and Burt Lancaster. And in the previous decade alone, he had served as stunt coordinator on the original Star Wars trilogy. For you “Wookieepedias” reading this, the Tusken Raider that surprises young Luke Skywalker on the Tatooine cliff top with that horrifying scream? That was Peter. He had also been the stunt arranger and coordinator on movies like From Russia With Love, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Highlander. Classically trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Peter had also appeared in front of the camera, not only as a stuntman but sometimes as an actor as well. That’s him as the German soldier Indy notices in his side mirror climbing along the side of the eighty-mile-an-hour speeding truck without a harness in Raiders. Peter logged more than a thousand credits before passing away in 2004, at the age of seventy-five. He was vibrant and actively employed until the last year of his life.

  Bob Anderson was also a native of England and also something of a national hero, having served in the Royal Marines during World War II and as a representative of Great Britain on the fencing team in the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He later became president of the British Academy of Fencing and a coach for the British national team. His expertise as a swordsman eventually took him to Hollywood, where he became a sought-after stuntman and fight coordinator. The man’s résumé was breathtaking, from coaching Errol Flynn like Peter in the 1950s to choreographing fight scenes for several James Bond films in the 1960s, and working alongside Peter in From Russia With Love and (Star Warrior alert) on the Star Wars trilogy. That is Bob using the dark side of the Force as Vader in all the light-saber sequences. Bob also passed away, in 2012, at the age of ninety, but worked until the last, serving as “sword master” for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

  There was no Google back then, and in hindsight, I almost think it was better that I was blissfully unaware of the incredible reputations of the two men with whom I would be training. Had I known of their backgrounds, I might have been completely intimidated. But I was curious about the man I would be dueling with. Over drinks after the first table read, I had started to get to know Mandy a little. At some point the conversation naturally turned to the subject of sword fighting and the preparation we’d both be expected to endure prior to filming. I casually asked him if he had any experience with fencing.

  MANDY PATINKIN

  Goldman wrote in the introduction to my character that he is “the world’s greatest sword fighter,” and I figured, that’s what I’ve got to learn how to do. So I immediately got in touch with Henry Harutunian, who was the Yale fencing coach, and we worked together for two months. He taught me the basics of fencing. I was a righty, and he taught me first how to fence with my left hand; we worked the left before the right, and I actually became a better left-handed fencer than a right-handed fencer.

  He sort of frowned a little—in much the same way that Inigo Montoya might have done—and said, “Not really.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Neither have I, really. Just a little at acting school. But I don’t remember any of it,” I told him.

  I figured we’d be going in raw, the two of us. It was only later on that I discovered that he had been training for two months in the US and was thus already way ahead of me in the process.

  Looking back, I do believe he was sizing me up from the moment we shook hands, trying to determine if I was someone he could “beat.” That’s the funny thing about acting: it can be collegial and collaborative, but it can also be intensely competitive. A healthy competition between actors is never a bad thing. As actors you work together, but you also try to push each other . . . bring out the best in each other. I knew I would not only have to bring my A-game as an actor on this film but I also had to be on my toes in the duel with this guy. We would, after all, be using swords on the day, not the protected rapiers we would be practicing with.

  ROB REINER

  I’m sure there was a sense of competition between Cary and Mandy, and I think that was probably healthy. This is a duel to the death, supposedly, and so it is a competition. I think that was there, for sure.

  MANDY PATINKIN

  It was 1986. My father died in 1972. I read that script and I wanted to play Inigo because my mind immediately went, If I can get that six-fingered man, then I’ll have my father back, in my imaginary world. He’ll be alive in my imagination. So that was it for me. It was like, I’ll become the greatest sword fighter, and my reward will not be to be in this movie that ended up being what it’s become to all these people; my reward will be that my father will come back.

  Having gotten to know Mandy a bit, I can safely say with some assurance that Inigo Montoya was indeed the perfect role for him; he was born to play it. Like Inigo, Mandy was passionate and ambitious, if not a little competitive. Even today, when you watch him perform, you can tell that here is an actor who still has splinters in his feet from all the years treading the boards on Broadway. That is where he honed his confidence and professionalism—from performing live on a stage literally thousands of times. And there’s no question that some of the best actors have honed their skills in the theater. Mandy certainly fell into that category.

  By the time I met him, he’d already been established as a uniquely versatile performer, having starred not only in Ragtime but also in Yentl (for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe). He had also received a Tony Award for his role as Che Guevara in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita in 1979. You don’t build a body of work like that without a significant degree of talent and ambition. Mandy had both in abundance. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing Inigo Montoya. He seized the role and made it his own, embracing it with a zeal and intensity that would have made the Montoya family proud.

  ROB REINER

  Mandy is a great actor, but you know, every actor is insecure. I didn’t see Cary’s insecurity but he obviously had it. I don’t know any actor that isn’t insecure. With Mandy, though, at that time he would carry his insecurities on his sleeve. It would be out there. He had done Evita and Sunday in the Park with George, he had won a Tony, and he’s a brilliant actor, extremely talented. But he’d worked on Heartburn, and they replaced him with Jack Nicholson and he was all worried that he wasn’t going to do well in The Princess Bride. He wanted it to be perfect, and after one of the first days of shooting, I went into the trailer with him and I said, “Mandy, you don’t have to do anything. You are so talented you don’t have to try; just get out of your own way. You’ve got great words to say, you’re a brilliant actor, and you just let them come out and you’re going to be great.” And from then on he was cool.

  So I had a formidable foe in Inigo. That much was obvious the moment we began training for the dueling sequence, which for us began almost immediately. The very next morning after the table reading, I got a very early call from one of the trainers.

  “Good morning, Cary. This is Peter Diamond,” came the voice on the other end. “Are you ready to do some sword fighting?”

  “Absolutely,” I said enthusiastically, if a little groggily.

  “I have to ask before we start . . . have you had any training?”

  I shared once again about my amateur skills honed at acting school.

  “Do you remember any of it?”

  “Um . . . no. Not really.”

  “Right. That’s no problem. Probably better, actually,” came the response.

  MANDY PATINKIN

  I remember Rob saying to me that these guys, meaning the characters in the film, are holding poker hands, but they just kind of hide it. Then he held up an imaginary hand of cards at the table, and sort of turned his hand around as though he was hiding the cards in his pocket, and he said, “Every now and then, one of these guys shows his cards.” And I remember that
image of hiding your hand, and letting one of the cards peek out every now and then, meaning a smile, or something that you were hiding. The sense of humor about it, a little bit of tongue-in-cheek-ness.

  “What do I need to bring?” I inquired.

  “Sweats, sneakers, and a T-shirt,” he said.

  “That’s it? Nothing else?”

  “No, just be ready to work. We’ll break for a quick lunch, but basically we’re going to be training from nine to five, five days a week.”

  I thought about that for a moment. Eight hours a day? That meant forty hours a week.

  “Seriously?” I asked half jokingly.

  There was a pause on the other end of the line.

  “Oh, yes, Cary. We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he replied in a no-nonsense manner. “We start tomorrow bright and early. Nine a.m. sharp.”

  He then gave me the details of where to meet. I jotted it down on a notepad, we said our good-byes, and I hung up the phone. I had no idea what to expect. I still hadn’t figured out that he and Bob Anderson were not merely stuntmen but the finest sword-trainers available. Nor had I fully grasped the concept of a forty-hour workweek devoted entirely to becoming proficient in an athletic endeavor. To put it mildly, it was a little more than I had bargained for.

  The next day I arrived promptly at 9:00 a.m., as requested, at a dance studio the production had rented for us off Oxford Street in Soho. As I walked through the door, I immediately noticed that Mandy was already there, sword in hand, his breathing labored and his face glistening with sweat; it was obvious he’d been there for some time.

  Damn you, Inigo!

  I introduced myself to Peter and Bob. In all candor, my first thought was, Wow! They really picked some old-timers to work with us. But boy, was I wrong. At five foot six, Peter may have been a short, barrel-chested man with thick arms, big hands, rosy cheeks, and an easy, jovial smile; but at fifty-seven he was still in peak physical condition and tough as nails, too. He had an air of athleticism and physicality. You just knew that he could take care of himself in almost any situation and could easily disarm anybody within a nanosecond, with or without a weapon in his hand. I once saw him demonstrate it in a bar, all the while holding a beer in one hand without spilling a drop.

  By contrast physically, Bob was tall and lithe, perhaps six feet, and equally impressive, but in a different sort of way. He had the stature that you’d expect in a fencer. And, even at the age of sixty-four, he was just as light on his feet as Peter and as insanely flexible and proficient with a blade. Both were fitter than most men less than half their ages. Which was precisely my demographic.

  Nervous much?

  Bob proceeded to explain to Mandy and me that the most efficient use of his and Peter’s time would be to split their tutorial efforts: I would be working with Peter, while Mandy would be working with him. He then asked me a few basic questions about fencing and swordsmanship, none of which I could answer. Mandy, it turns out, could, having already started his training in the US.

  Damn you again, Inigo!

  “Okay,” Peter said. “Both of you, pick up a sword. First things first. You need to know how to hold it properly.”

  MANDY PATINKIN

  I went to London and began working with Bob Anderson, training religiously with him every day. Cary and I were in different scenes often, so he would be filming and I would be free to train with Bob for eight to ten hours a day, and then I would be filming and Cary would be free to train eight to ten hours a day. We’d meet each other at lunchtime to practice together. And we did this for four months of the filming, and all the fencing sequences for the most part were placed toward the end of the movie so that we would have the optimum amount of time to prepare.

  We did as instructed. I looked out of the corner of my eye at Mandy, who clearly appeared far more comfortable than I did.

  “Like this,” Peter said, demonstrating to both of us, but looking at me. “ ‘Not too tightly, not too lightly’ is the phrase to remember.”

  He adjusted my grip. The sword, a light rapier, felt foreign in my hand, and surprisingly awkward.

  “Think of it like you’re holding a bird in your hand,” Peter said. “If you hold it too tightly, you’ll strangle it. Too loosely, and it’ll fly away.” Then, as if to prove his point, Peter tapped my sword faster than lightning with his blade—so fast I barely saw it move—causing it to fall out of my hand and land with a clatter on the floor.

  “See?” he said with a smile.

  “Yes.”

  The answer, of course, was really “No.” I hadn’t even seen it coming. I was instantly transfixed by the skill and expertise of these guys. I only hoped that I could live up to their expectations.

  Peter then adjusted Mandy’s grip, ever so slightly.

  “Ah, yes,” he said. “You’ve done a little of this, I see.”

  Mandy sort of shrugged. No big deal for him. The novice in the room had already been spotted.

  And then we went to work. The first day was devoted to the most basic body mechanics, starting with the proper stance. Mastery wasn’t really the goal—there wasn’t enough time for that. Rather, it would have to be the illusion of mastery, and that could only be achieved by adhering to the fundamentals of fencing: how to stand, where to place your arms and feet. How to hold your free hand, not clenched but relaxed (something I had a hard time perfecting). A professional fencer, they explained, could watch a sword-fighting sequence on film and tell immediately if the actors involved were complete amateurs. The easiest to spot were when the actors or stuntmen could be seen just hitting the swords back and forth, over and over in the same manner, the way kids do with sticks.

  They explained that they had requested that the fighting sequences be filmed late in the production, allowing us a few weeks of intense daily training in prep, followed by a few months of training while on location. Bob then pointed out that although it wasn’t possible for either of us to become an Olympic-caliber fencer in that amount of time, maybe with the help and guidance of both himself and Peter, we might just be capable of fooling all but the most discerning of viewers. Their reputations were at stake as well, after all, he pointed out.

  Learning the posture of fencing is rather like calisthenics, they explained. You have to have very strong legs, and in particular thighs, as it’s your thighs you have to train to get the stance correctly. If you don’t, then all of it just turns to mush, Peter said. You have to rest on your haunches, with your knees slightly bent at all times but with your back straight and your legs spread apart—one foot facing one way and the other foot facing the other—so that you’re able to go backward and forward at any given time. Almost like a crab. And it’s far more stiff and uncomfortable than you might imagine.

  By noon on the first day I was silently screaming in my head for a lunch break, and not because I was particularly hungry but because the muscles in my very core, ones I didn’t even know I possessed, throbbed in agony. I was covered in sweat in no time; Mandy only slightly less so.

  “Keep your left hand up in the air,” Peter said, referring to my free hand. “Your right wrist has to be relaxed and free. You should never be tense. If you feel tense, you will look tense.”

  I listened carefully and tried to follow every direction, but as any athlete can tell you, things begin to break down when the mind is willing but the body unable. My abdominal muscles cried out in pain, as if I’d done a thousand sit-ups. My calves and thighs burned as if I had climbed a hundred stairs. “Back and forth, back and forth,” Peter instructed. I scurried across the room, shuffling awkwardly from one wall to the other. The idea was simply to become acquainted with the motion. I was told not to worry about the sword so much at this point, to just hold it aloft and not even think about doing anything with it for now—all of that would come later. The weapon, they explained, would eventually become an extension of my arm. Of course, merely holding the sword for that amount of time was exhausting. Every couple minutes Peter would
tell me to stop and adjust my grip or stance. Then we’d do it some more.

  Later that afternoon, we were treated to a rather extraordinary little show.

  “We’re going to show you what fencing really looks like,” Bob said. Mandy and I were ordered to the side of the studio while he and Peter took positions opposite one another and began to duel. It was an incredible sight to behold! They moved at lightning speed. And the fact that they waited until we were both tired and feeling utterly inept was a stroke of professorial genius, as it greatly enhanced our appreciation for the skill and dexterity on display. Had their demonstration come at the beginning of the day, before I’d had an opportunity to fumble around a bit with the weaponry, I might not have fully appreciated what I was seeing. But now, while my muscles were aching and my frustration building, I could not possibly have been more impressed.

  I looked at Mandy. He looked back and smiled. Very quietly, I mouthed, “Wow!” He nodded in agreement.

  I think we may have even applauded when they finished. Bob then explained that what we had just witnessed was a finely tuned version of the first of many sequences they hoped to teach us.

  The first of many? How many?

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Bob said, looking at me. “After we train you for a while, we’re going to flip it around and I’ll teach you Mandy’s moves.”

  Hmmmmmmm. Okay . . .

  “Then Peter is going to go teach Mandy all of your moves. You are basically going to learn each other’s moves, as well, so there can be no room for error.”

  Another pause. A hard look in the eye, teacher to student.

  “All clear?”

  Again I looked at Mandy. We nodded in unison.

  The amount of creative freedom that had been given to Bob and Peter was both remarkable and logical. Apart from the statement by Goldman that this was to be the Greatest Swordfight in Modern Times, and the references to the period techniques, there was in fact limited stage direction in his script while Westley and Inigo clamber up and down rocks and engage in witty repartee.