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

by Cary Elwes

  “And each farmer that owns that dog in the competition uses his whistle to make the dog herd the sheep into the paddock, and the fastest dog to get them in there wins, right?”

  “Right,” I said, smiling at Rob’s amusement. “So?”

  “So . . . how dumb do these sheep have to be?” he exclaimed, gesturing at the TV. “I mean, after the twenty-sixth dog, they’re still confused about where they should be herded?”

  He was right. It was pretty funny. But that didn’t stop him from watching the show start to finish.

  8

  TRUE WUV

  I didn’t know much about Robin before The Princess Bride. I wasn’t even familiar with her work on Santa Barbara, so I didn’t know what to expect when I met her. I’m sure she knew nothing about me, either. I was only marginally more experienced than she was, and certainly not as popular, as daytime fans tend to be fervently loyal.

  I found myself thinking, Wow, she can act. She’s funny. And she’s beautiful. What’s wrong with this girl? Well, truth be told, there wasn’t a thing wrong. Even her British accent was flawless, which is not nearly as simple an achievement as you might think. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in America, and listened to many Americans try to affect a British accent, and it’s not easy. But Robin has a great ear, and, like myself, Billy, and Chris Guest, she loved to imitate accents. Not maliciously, but in a fun sort of way. And in doing so make a study of that dialect. I have always been that way as well. Whenever I hear an interesting accent, I feel an urge to make a study of it, too. Which I guess goes back to my father, who was an incredible mimic, and to my love for Peter Sellers, who may have been one of the greatest connoisseurs of dialects of all time. From his very first role playing an East End thug in The Ladykillers and all the varied roles in Dr. Strangelove to his flawless, yet wonderfully absurd, French accent portraying Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther series, he switched something on in my brain as a kid.

  So naturally, when Robin and I arrived in Sheffield and heard that the folks from the Midlands had a very distinct vernacular, we would find ourselves trying to finesse the sound. As we were both Python and Fawlty Towers fans, we would watch their movies and shows on VHS whenever we had some downtime in our trailers. And it was during that time that I also turned Robin on to my favorite Python, Michael Palin, and one of his shows, called Ripping Yarns. In return she and Andy introduced me to SCTV, which I had never seen. Andy arranged for his office to have the whole series recorded, transferred from NTSC to PAL (the local format) and shipped to us on VHS on location.

  Sheffield is also, incidentally, the birthplace of Palin. I am such a fan of his that when Rob asked me for suggestions of English comic actors to play the Impressive Clergyman, Palin was my first suggestion. It turned out that even though he loved the script, he sadly had to decline, as he was just about to play a character afflicted with one of the most notorious speech impediments ever put on film: Ken Pile in A Fish Called Wanda.

  Rob then mentioned that Peter Cook had also been suggested for the role and asked me about him, as he was not familiar with his work. I told him we should get Peter right away before he changed his mind, as he was part of one of the most celebrated British comic duos when he partnered with Dudley Moore in the sixties. We were lucky to get Peter, as he was flawless in the role of the Clergyman with the flawed accent.

  Looking back I think Robin’s performance in The Princess Bride is vastly underrated. Her role was to play the victim—the titular Princess Bride—a young woman who goes through a lot of trauma, having lost her true love, but who has to essentially look beautiful in the process. Here is another description of her from the book:

  Buttercup doesn’t care much about clothes and she hates brushing her long hair, so she isn’t as attractive as she might be; but she’s still probably the most beautiful woman in the world.

  That was Robin’s job: to look like a woman who would inspire a young farmhand to leave home and set off in search of wealth and security so that he might one day be worthy of her hand in marriage.

  Sounds easy enough, right? Most people think if you’re blessed with the right bone structure, or if you just let the makeup and lighting crew do their work, all you have to do is bat your eyes at the camera and your job is done with a role like that.

  Not quite.

  Buttercup falls in love, loses her love, gets kidnapped, is forced into an arranged marriage, reconnects with her one true love, and then lets him go in order to save his life. It really requires a great deal of emotional range. What it doesn’t require—or at least doesn’t display—is the comedic talent for which The Princess Bride is so well known. Goldman wrote a screenplay that we now know is filled with great, classic funny lines. Unfortunately, few, if any, of those lines are given to Buttercup. Robin is not merely the victim in the film; she is also the straight man (or, in this case, the straight woman). And even though Westley is not exactly a comedian, he does have some funny lines, and is involved in some rather broad physical comedy. Robin’s character is permitted no such relief. From start to finish, she had to play it straight, exactly as the role demanded.

  CHRISTOPHER GUEST

  Robin was very young. She must have been in her early twenties, but she was so astoundingly beautiful, it was almost strange, you know? And she was incredibly sweet. She did a wonderful accent, which is very hard for most Americans to do. And Cary . . . for a young, handsome guy, had a great sense of humor. Fortunately the script is not just some straight part. It has all these twists and turns, and he has great lines. So it wasn’t a one-dimensional sort of young hero part; it had a lot of other angles to it. It was much more nuanced than you would find in a conventional script. So here are these two people and they’re surrounded by crazy people, basically. There are these two evil people, myself and Chris Sarandon, and Mandy is this out-of-control sort of guy who’s out to get revenge, and there are some other oddities. But there’s a spine of sorts, and Cary and Robin have to be kind of regular people. That’s always much harder to do than to be the bad guy. It’s just a dream to play the guy in the torture chamber because, again, it’s fun for actors. The other thing is much harder.

  That kind of professionalism, I’ve since discovered, is more apt to be found in actors who have honed their craft on the stage or in television, as opposed to movies. This is especially true of daytime television. I remember one time when Robin and I were looking at the call sheet together after a day’s shoot, and I couldn’t believe the sheer volume of work we faced in the morning and the pages of dialogue we would have to learn. And Robin just shrugged.

  To her it was no big deal. On Santa Barbara she had to routinely bite off vast chunks of dialogue with virtually no time to memorize or rehearse.

  In fact, we were all kind of blown away by her steadfastness and professionalism; how she never dropped her character or her accent while the camera was rolling. Since her role is neither flashy nor funny, her performance is sometimes underappreciated, which is a shame, because it’s actually pitch-perfect. She never once overacted or reached for something that wasn’t there. All of the action revolves around her character, and it was her job to capture that sense of innocence and helplessness—and she did it beautifully. Some actors frequently stumble through scenes and sometimes require a couple of takes to get it right. Not Robin. As I recall, she nailed just about every scene on the first take. She was flawless. The perfect choice to play Buttercup.

  WALLACE SHAWN

  I was impressed by how hard a worker she was. Not to be self-pitying—I mean, obviously being in a movie is easier than being a coal miner—but she was incredibly hardworking and disciplined. And you know, she was clearly in a foreign country and surrounded by these fast-talking, very vivacious people, who all, in a way, shared a vocabulary that she didn’t know. And she just did her job and was great.

  I fell in love with Robin from the moment we met—as indeed did nearly everyone who either met her, or got to know her. She is a rem
arkable woman and a great talent to work with. All I recall is that we had a really fun time working together on the film. With myself as a pirate. And she as a fair maiden. Running off together in the spirit of love and adventure. I mean honestly, how much more fun can you have than that? I like to think that chemistry between us translated onto the screen. I have already told you how much fun she is just to hang with. But she also brings that same sense of fun and joy to the set and can light up any room with her smile. She is so genuinely relaxed and comfortable in her own skin and also very focused at the same time. Getting to play her knight in shining armor on-screen also made me feel very protective of her off-screen—not that Robin couldn’t handle herself in any situation.

  ROBIN WRIGHT

  I was absolutely smitten with Cary. So obviously that helped with our on-screen chemistry. And we also really enjoyed one another. He was and is still hilariously funny. So much so I often ended up with a sore belly from laughing so hard!

  In fact, I think it’s safe to say that everyone felt protective of Robin. I know there is a famous story (that has now actually been made into a cartoon!) where Robin was really beginning to feel the cold chill on the Derbyshire moors while shooting her kidnapped scenes with Mandy, André, and Wally. And she began to get the shivers. And once you get the shivers, it’s very hard to stop your teeth from chattering. So André, sweetheart of a man that he was, devised a technique to keep her warm that was very simple, really. He would use one of his hands as a hat on top of Robin’s head. She said it was like having a giant hot water bottle up there. It certainly did the trick; he didn’t even mess up her hair that much!

  * * *

  In the years since we made the movie, the industry has acknowledged what those of us who knew her back then already realized: that she is an extraordinary actor. And she seems to only be getting better with time—something that can be said about very few actors. As I write this now, she is just a few weeks removed from her triumph at the Golden Globes, where she received the award for best performance by an actress in a leading role for her remarkable work as the devious and scheming Claire Underwood on the Netflix series House of Cards. In every role, she gives something of herself that’s unique. She never holds back and has that rare ability to tap into something deeply profound within herself that is appropriate for the character. She is a very observant and intelligent woman. That is why she is a marvel to watch. And I am proud to call her a friend.

  ROBIN WRIGHT

  It doesn’t matter how many years go by, I will love Cary forever. I feel closer to him because we worked together and spent so much time together.

  9

  VIZZINI AND MIRACLE MAX

  One of the great things about working on The Princess Bride was having an opportunity to perform alongside some of the smartest and most gifted comedic talents in the business. Just about everyone in the film had a chance to show off their comic chops, but I think two performances in particular are generally regarded as among the “funniest” in the movie.

  The first is that of Wallace Shawn in the role of the Sicilian, Vizzini.

  I knew Wally from My Dinner with Andre, directed by the great Louis Malle, in which he was both the costar and the screenwriter. The film contains some of my favorite lines, many of which are perhaps very revealing and personal from Wally’s standpoint; for example, when he says:

  That’s what scares us. That moment of being face-to-face with another person. I mean, you wouldn’t think it would be so frightening.

  Wally, I should point out, is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. The kind of mild-mannered, amiable, polite guy who still uses words like gosh and gee as part of his speech. And he truly does have a “dizzying intellect,” having graduated with a BA in history from Harvard and studied economics and philosophy at Oxford. Which is hardly surprising, since both his parents were journalists for The New Yorker—his father eventually becoming the editor of that magazine for thirty-five years and a very close friend of J. D. Salinger. After college Wally had originally intended to become a diplomat, but instead opted to travel to India as an English teacher on a Fulbright scholarship.

  BILL GOLDMAN

  I remember being at the casting session for Vizzini with Rob and about five or six other people. And the door opens and Wally Shawn walks in. He took one look at us all and said, “Oh my,” and then turned around and walked right back out again. We had no idea what was going on. Finally he was persuaded to come back in and read and he was terrific.

  While we were shooting at Shepperton, he and his longtime partner, Deborah Eisenberg—another brilliant writer, actor, and professor—invited Rob, Andy, and the whole cast over to the apartment they had rented near Sloane Square in London for drinks one evening. I recall being impressed by the remarkable library in the study and Wally telling me that it was one of the main reasons he picked the place. He also told me that during his time off he was going to give a lecture at Oxford on English and American literature, something that prominent universities around the world, not surprisingly, paid him handsomely to do.

  Still, none of Wally’s “dizzying intellect” as a writer, philosopher, or literature professor could dispel his insecurities as an actor. And even though I obviously do not possess anything close to his level of intelligence it was something I could easily relate to myself. I may be no dolt, but in a real “battle of wits,” I am hardly a worthy match for Wallace Shawn. Frankly, I don’t think many people are.

  WALLACE SHAWN

  Cary is this good-hearted, lovely, fairy-tale character. And that’s what the movie is supposed to be about in a way. So there was something always outrageously lovable about him during the filming itself, and to this day. He’s just a genuinely good-hearted person and he was fantastically hardworking during the shoot.

  And the reason for his uncertainty? It wasn’t a case of the first day heebie-jeebies that I had suffered but a real fear that he was going to be replaced. Apparently Wally had heard from somewhere that Rob had wanted another actor to play the role of Vizzini, and the rumors left him with something of an inferiority complex, as well as a near-crippling case of the jitters during production. I remember him being a veritable bundle of nerves from day one, starting with the table read all the way through to his final day of shooting. He told me later that every time Rob yelled, “Cut,” after one of his takes, he felt for sure he was about to be fired.

  WALLACE SHAWN

  I knew I was wrong for the part because for whatever reason I had been informed by someone in my agency that it had first been offered to Danny DeVito and then to Richard Dreyfuss and that they had both turned down the part. And I know that Danny comes from an Italian background. I am from a Jewish background. But that was the least of my concerns. My greater concern was that I knew that Danny would understand the sense of humor that was called for by the script, and would have done such a beautiful job. And before every single shot of the film I imagined how Danny would’ve played it so much better than I could. I was haunted by that during every single shot of the film. So if any agents are reading this book, my advice to them is, don’t tell your client that he’s the third choice.

  ROB REINER

  Wally was funny. The first day he messed up a bunch of takes and kept thinking that I was going to fire him or something. I never thought about that. Never even considered it. But in his mind that’s what I was going to do. He kept saying to me, “I don’t really have a Sicilian accent.” I said, “That’s okay, Wally. This Sicilian talks just like you. He talks exactly like you.” And he did exactly what I wanted him to do and he was great.

  CHRIS GUEST

  I remember a dinner I had with Wally in the hotel in Sheffield, and he kept saying, “Chris, this just isn’t going to work. Rob’s going to send me home. This isn’t going to be good.” And I said, “No, no, it’s fantastic! What are you talking about?”

  ANDY SCHEINMAN

  He kept saying to me, “I’m going to get fired, Andy! I’m going to get
fired! You’re going to fire me!” And I’d say, “We’re not going to fire you, Wally.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but he later said he had no understanding of the comedy of this movie. He wrote something once about the experience, and how miserable he was on a particular day, or in a particular scene. Wally is a highly respected playwright, but he was amazed that what he did in this movie is as loved and respected as anything else he had done in his career. It’s such a weird thing, because to this day, I don’t think he quite gets why it’s so good.

  I don’t know whether his anxieties were based on fact or fiction. I do know that both Rob and Andy have said over the years that they never seriously pursued any other actors for the role and that they love his performance. Just as we all do. Rob told me he was not only an enormous fan of Wally’s but even fought on his behalf to have him in the movie.

  Rob also did everything in his power to calm Wally, and to coax what surely will be remembered as one of his most memorable performances. Much of the credit (and this is true of any of us fortunate to have been cast in The Princess Bride) should rightfully go to Goldman, who scripted the countless quotable lines, of which Vizzini was given more than his fair share. But Wally deserves recognition, too, for the unmistakable stamp he put on the character, and the unique manner in which he delivered those lines.

  WALLACE SHAWN

  To be honest, I didn’t think Rob was very pleased with me. I mean, he never said anything like, “You’re fantastic in this part! It’s going to change your life! You’re wonderful in the role.” Nothing of that nature. I think he may well have been pleased by the time the whole movie was put together and edited, but I think that at least at first, he may have thought, Well, you know, he’s okay but I wish Danny were here. Let me put it this way. I know that Billy Crystal and Carol Kane spoke about how Rob laughed so hysterically during their scenes that he had to leave the room. That didn’t happen during my scenes.