As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride (6 page)

Having arduously penned the script himself, Goldman had long declared it to be his favorite among those he had written. High praise, given that by this time his oeuvre included
Marathon Man, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
and
All the President’s Men,
the last two earning him Academy Awards for screenwriting.

And yet, despite Goldman’s impressive résumé and passion for the piece, the project seemed destined to languish in what is commonly known in the business as “Development Hell”—meaning it had been passed around the studios a lot with all of them either unable to get it made, or simply uninterested. As Goldman himself once famously put it, “Even François Truffaut couldn’t make this movie.”

It became this legendary unproduced script, even being mentioned in the prestigious French film journal
Cahiers du Cinéma
as such. And so it seemed that the author’s favorite work was destined never to see the light of day . . . that is, until it fell into the right hands.

For those of you unaware, it should be noted that Rob Reiner’s career was on a clear upward trajectory by this point. No longer merely a sitcom star, he’d proven himself to be an A-list director with a deft ability to meld genres with his work on
The Sure Thing
and especially
This Is Spinal Tap,
released in 1984. Everyone who cared about rock music or comedy instantly fell in love with the movie and memorized its largely improvised dialogue. It was the first and maybe the best of what would become a new category of film and television: the mock documentary (or “mockumentary”), and it was Rob who steered the project expertly from its conception to the cult status it now enjoys, even among musicians. Tom Petty once declared his fondness for the dim-witted, aging rock stars by revealing that he and his bandmates
routinely gather and recite lines from the film before going onstage. Rob also told me that when he met with Sting about playing Humperdinck, the musician told him he had watched
Spinal Tap
over fifty times and that every time he “didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.” For a director or writer (Rob’s coauthors on that film were Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, and Christopher Guest, who would be among the
Princess Bride
ensemble), that has to be just about the highest praise imaginable.

Around this same time Rob was putting the finishing touches on
Stand by Me,
an adaptation of a Stephen King novella that would be recognized as one of the best coming-of-age stories Hollywood has ever produced. Later on, after I arrived in London, he arranged a private screening for me at Pinewood Studios, and I remember being deeply moved by it. I hadn’t seen that kind of honest acting from kids since watching Truffaut’s
The 400 Blows
. It was clear to me that from
This Is Spinal Tap
to
The Sure Thing
to
Stand by Me,
Rob was basically on a winning streak. His films were all very different in tone and genre, and they all ended up doing very good business. He was a director with a unique vision who made memorable films. There was really no one else doing the kind of work that he was doing. So with that impressive body of work behind him, Rob had earned the right to choose his next project based primarily on what he wanted to do rather than what was expected of him. Essentially, he was given carte blanche. As I understand it, the conversation between Rob and the then head of Columbia Pictures, which was releasing
Stand by Me,
went something like this:

“Anything you want,” the studio head told him. “Anything at all.”

“Really? Anything?” Rob responded with glee.

“Yes.”

“In that case I want to do my favorite book,” Rob replied.

“What’s that?”

“The Princess Bride.”

“Anything but that!” came the instantaneous response.

And so for a while the project seemed to stall.

But, to Rob’s credit, he was steadfast. Although he has an extraordinarily warm and generous spirit, and is not at all prone to the sort of rampant ego that is not uncommon among some of the upper echelon of Hollywood talent, he is hardly a pushover. In fact, it was his sheer determination and his vision that were largely responsible for making the film happen.

Time has obviously proven that Rob was the right man for the job. Like most people who read it, he had been a huge fan of the novel. He also had supreme confidence in his ability to blend all the different genres that filled its pages: romance, adventure, fantasy, drama, comedy, action. He would take these elements and turn them on their heads. He would have fun doing it and, in turn, create a movie that would be fun for others. To accomplish that task requires a very sure hand, and I don’t believe many filmmakers then or now could have pulled it off.

With apologies to Bill Goldman, who dislikes the term, Rob really was, for lack of a better description, a
young auteur. One whose success had left him with nearly complete artistic control over his projects. He was able to release his films the way he wanted them to look, as he had final cut in the editing rooms, something that hardly exists today. And he used his clout not to accumulate staggering wealth with superficial blockbusters, but rather to
tackle something far more ambitious. Something near and dear to his heart.

How could one not admire that?

Apparently the same studio head at Columbia ended up telling Rob, “You’ll never get the rights anyway, as Goldman will never let anyone make it!”

So Rob decided to go ahead and try to meet with Goldman, who by that time had reacquired the rights to his own novel, to see if he could convince Goldman to let him have the material. He took with him the person who accompanied him to all his meetings: his producing partner, Andy Scheinman. It turned out the studio head had indeed been accurate in describing Goldman’s reticence to let the movie be made. As Rob and Andy were to soon discover, the writer had evidently nearly lost all enthusiasm for the movie business. He hadn’t liked the way the studios had dealt with him in the past, especially when it came to this, his favorite project. Nor had he had any luck with them, or with anyone else for that matter, trying to get it made.

In order to better understand Mr. Goldman’s frame of mind I should perhaps furnish you with a little history about the various attempts to make the picture. As I understand it, at one point the project was initially a “go” at 20th Century Fox, which had purchased the book before it was even published, with Richard Lester (famous for the Beatles movies
A Hard Day’s Night
and
Help!
) attached to direct. That was when who Goldman refers to as the “Greenlight Guy” (i.e., the person who decides which projects are to be made for the studio) was fired at Fox. Then, as luck would have it, the next Greenlight Guy proceeded to clear his desk of all his predecessor’s work (a surprisingly not uncommon occurrence in our business) so that he could start with a clean slate. Which is when Goldman bought the rights to his book back from Fox (unheard of to this day, I imagine), to protect his cherished work
and prevent them from letting someone else rewrite the script. As Bill wrote in the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of the book, he felt he was “the only idiot who could destroy it now.”

By this time no other major studio was willing to touch the material but one. And believe it or not, the Greenlight Guy was in the middle of negotiating with Goldman when he, too, was fired over the weekend just as the deal was about to close. Another small movie studio literally folded during negotiations. At one point Norman Jewison, famous for having directed
Jesus Christ Superstar, Fiddler on the Roof,
and
Moonstruck,
was going to make it as an independent film but he couldn’t raise the money even with a then virtually unknown Arnold Schwarzenegger attached to play the role of Fezzik. After that, John Boorman, Robert Redford, and even François Truffaut tried their hand at getting the movie made but somehow couldn’t get it off the ground.

And so it made sense that Goldman was naturally reticent to let his heart get excited all over again only to be potentially disappointed. I guess he hadn’t gotten “used to disappointment” when it came to this particular project.

Fortunately for Rob and for us all, he finally got Goldman’s blessing, which was a feat in itself. He then went to his mentor, producer Norman Lear (the genius behind Rob’s successful sitcom
All in the Family,
and many other classics like
Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times, Archie Bunker’s Place
and
Maude
), to ask if he might produce the film. Lear read the script and immediately agreed to finance the movie. The project was to be the second feature at Lear’s new company, Act III Communications, the first being
Stand by Me
. Lear’s only prerequisite was that the movie had to have a distribution deal at a major studio, otherwise he would be out of pocket for possibly the most expensive independent movie ever. To everyone’s relief Rob then successfully pitched the project back to 20th Century Fox. And, after a few false starts, Fox
reluctantly agreed to distribute the film, whereupon Rob immediately set about the task of assembling a cast.

The first people Rob hired were his buddies for two of the pivotal roles: Billy Crystal as Miracle Max and Chris Guest as Count Rugen. Of course, this wasn’t just a case of nepotism. Chris Guest was coming off his genius performance as Nigel Tufnel, the dim but lovable metal guitarist in
Spinal Tap
. He and Billy were also both stars on
Saturday Night Live
and Billy himself had starred in one of my favorite American sitcoms,
Soap.