As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride (9 page)
Read As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride Online
Authors: Cary Elwes,Joe Layden
Gulp!
As we walked back to the production offices, I asked Rob about the rest of the cast. He mentioned that he’d already recruited his friends Billy Crystal and Chris Guest, which was very cool. And that Mandy Patinkin would play Inigo Montoya, the avenging Spaniard. I didn’t recall Mandy’s body of work at that point but I assumed, given Rob’s meticulous casting, that he would be a perfect choice. He then ran through a stellar lineup of talent that they were apparently in negotiations with, including Wally Shawn to play Vizzini.
“Oh, I love him!” I said. “How great is
My Dinner with Andre
?”
“Amazing,” Rob said. “And I think we also got Chris Sarandon for Humperdinck and Carol Kane for Miracle Max’s wife.”
“No way,” I responded incredulously.
“How about that for casting?” He was almost as excited as I was.
This was turning out to be a much bigger production than I had initially imagined.
“And we’re so lucky. We also found our Buttercup,” Rob added. “It took a while, but we found her.” I became intrigued by Rob’s fascination with his discovery of the “perfect” Buttercup.
“How did you find her?” I asked.
“Turns out the casting director had her picture on the wall the
whole time. But for some reason we never called her in because we were so busy looking for Brits!”
CHRIS SARANDON
My ex-wife, Susan Sarandon, had done a movie with Robert Redford and Redford at the time owned the film rights to the book. He wanted to make the movie, and he gave a copy of it to her to read. I read it as well, and I just flipped over it. There was such a wonderful combination of adventure, romance, satire, and parody; having fun with different genres. And I just thought, This is amazing. I hope this movie gets made. But of course, years went by and nothing happened. So jump-cut to many years later and suddenly I get a call from one of my agents saying, “Rob Reiner and Bill Goldman want you to read for
The Princess Bride
for the role of Prince Humperdinck,” and I went, “Oh, my God. This is a dream come true! I love this book.”
CAROL KANE
I was beyond lucky to be a part of this. I got a call from Rob about being in it, and to play Billy’s wife. At the time I was doing a play in Williamstown. I don’t think I even thought about it much. I just said yes. The idea of being Billy’s wife in a big old fairy tale just sort of . . . well, it’s not something to think about. You just do it. Then I read the screenplay and I loved it. And then Billy and I got together in my apartment later in LA, and we kind of built ourselves a life, a little backstory for our characters.
“Who is she?” I asked curiously.
“Her name is Robin Wright. Have you heard of her?”
I had not, and admitted as much.
Rob nodded. “She’s on this TV show
Santa Barbara—
it’s a daytime soap. But don’t let that fool you, she’s amazing. She came in and read for us and just blew us away!” Rob went on. “Wait till you meet her. Oh, my God! You’re going to love her.”
With that we continued walking down the hall. And just as we
turned a corner, less than a minute later, there she was, walking up the stairs.
“Hey, there she is!” Rob called out to her. “Hiya, Robin! I want you to meet someone.”
She was tall and willowy, with long blond hair and large, blue,
expressive eyes. In a word: gorgeous. She was also very young, as I’d soon discover, barely twenty, and I felt a small sense of relief that I wouldn’t be the youngest person on the movie (not counting Fred Savage).
ROB REINER
I saw hundreds of girls, but they had to be as described in the script: the most beautiful girl in all the land. And she had to have an English accent. And Robin, even though she’s American, has an English stepfather, so she came by that very naturally. And she was stunningly beautiful and the right age. She was literally the only one I saw who could play the role.
WILLIAM GOLDMAN
I went out to California because we were trying to find Buttercup. She had to be the most beautiful girl in the world, and all these beautiful girls came in, and they were gorgeous, but they weren’t Buttercup. Finally, Rob called and said, “I think I found her,” and then Robin came in the room and we talked for a minute and I immediately called Rob and said, “Grab her!” Because she was, as you know, just unbelievable. And she still is.
ANDY SCHEINMAN
Robin was perfect. But you know what? They made her do an extra year on
Santa Barbara
in exchange for giving her time off to do the movie, which I thought was kind of rotten. But she didn’t complain. Robin was . . . well . . . I mean she’s such a beautiful girl. And the part called for that. But there was a sweetness, too. There are a lot of beautiful women, a lot of beautiful actors, but there aren’t a lot of beautiful women who are also really funny. Not that she has to be hysterically funny to play Buttercup, but she has to be able to understand what’s funny about the script and the role, and have a great sense of humor.
I’ll never forget the first time Rob introduced us. “Cary,” he said. “This is Robin. She’s playing Buttercup! The girl you’re going to fall in love with.”
A huge smile formed on her face as she turned to him and said, “Oh, Rob!” as if to say, “Please!” and then she extended her hand to shake mine. “Hi,” she said in a very sweet tone. What I said besides “Hi” back I cannot recall. I probably didn’t say a great deal, since I felt like I had been poleaxed. I remembered Goldman’s description of Buttercup in the book:
She was the most beautiful woman in a hundred years. She didn’t seem to care.
ROBIN WRIGHT
My theory is that they were so completely tired of meeting girls—I think I was the five-hundredth girl they saw—at that point they were like, “Just cast her! Make her the princess!” They were so stunned, after meeting all the ingénues of Hollywood. That was my lucky fate—they were exhausted.
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 FEZZIKA
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.
