10 "Princess Bride" Facts Revealed from Academy Live-Commentary Screening

[JamesG]

"The Princess Bride": 10 INCONCEIVABLE Facts from the Academy's Live-Commentary Screening
by Anthony Breznican
Aug 16, 2013


“If you came tonight hoping to watch The Princess Bride completely uninterrupted, you really should just leave now.”

This was Up in the Air and Juno filmmaker Jason Reitman introducing last night’s live-commentary screening of the 1987 fairy-tale satire at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. As the film played out on the big screen, Reitman sat in the theater with director Rob Reiner interviewing him about the action onscreen.



“Tonight we’re trying an experiment,” Reitman told the crowd.

“I thought there must be a way to take a film everyone has seen a million times, that we love, that occupies such a strong part of our hearts, and somehow get more access to what it was like actually making this film. That’s where this idea came from.”



Reiner started out by asking: “How many people here are under 30? Let me see. Raise your hand.” About a third of the moviegoers raised their hands.

“Okay, so you are used to multitasking and not paying attention to anything anyway. This should be fine for you! You’ll watch, you’ll talk, you’ll text … You can play a video game. Whatever!”

“We’ll start watching the film and then, uh, see what comes out!”









1. Peter Falk Too Young at 60?

Reiner said that Peter Falk thought he was too young to play a grandfather. Falk wanted to try prosthetics to make him look older and later said that it made him look like a burn victim.

They all then decided not to use it.





2. Hidden Spinal Tap Easter Egg

Rob Reiner told a story about composer Mark Knopfler saying that he agreed to score The Princess Bride only if he threw in something from This is Spinal Tap.

Reiner agreed and he hung the cap he wore in Spinal Tap in Fred Savage's bedroom.





3. The True Meaning of "As You Wish..."

Reiner commented on William Goldman's brilliant script saying that "as you wish..." really means "I love you."

Reiner also mentioned that Cary Elwes still has women coming up to him today asking him to say that to them.





4. An Unexpected Fan: A Mafia Henchman

Reiner told a story of being in an NYC restaurant and one of John Gotti's henchman, Lucca Brasi, spotted him and came up to him going, "You killed my father … Prepare to die! I love dat movie, da Princess."





5. Robin Wright's First Fiery Day on Set

Reiner mentioned how happy he was to find Robin Wright. She had only done soap opera "Santa Barbara" up to that point and she perfected the English accent from listening to her British father.

He mentioned that the first scene they shot with her was lighting her up in the Fire Swamp. "We're setting our leading lady on fire," he said with a laugh.





6. The Least Sicilian Sicilian

"Wally Shawn is probably the furthest thing from a Sicilian you could possibly imagine," said Reiner.

"He thought we were going to fire him after the first day, because the first thing we did with him was The Battle of Wits scene with the iocane powder. He was sure we were going to fire him. ‘I can’t get the Sicilian accent!’ I said, ‘Wally, we want the Sicilian to sound just like you.’"





7. Andre the Giant was Fragile

Reiner mentioned that they all thought that Andre the Giant could easily do the stunt work due to his wrestling background. "He had a very bad back and couldn't do much of it," Reiner said.

"Cary’s feet were on a wooden plank to take his weight off of Andre and he couldn’t catch the Princess Bride at the end either."





8. The Arsonist in the Fire Swamp

Reiner mentioned how they did the large rodents.

"The shrieking eels were interesting. We had a special effects guy named Nick Allder and we called him ‘No-Problem-At-Allder’ because anytime you’d say, ‘Can we have an eel that goes under, and comes up …?’ He’d go [in a Cockney accent]: ‘No problem at all, gov’ner! No problem at all!’ It was always a problem. It never worked.

It was on a track so it looks like it’s coming at you. It’s kind of cheesy by today’s standards, but it worked.



Here’s an interesting thing. You’ll see the rodents come in, and there’s a scene where one rat kind of sniffs around. They were little people in rat suits. And the scene where he fights the rat, there was another guy named Anthony who could scurry really good. He could run around.

One was good with slow movements, but Anthony was good with fast movements. For the fight, I said, ‘We need Anthony for this,’ and the crew said, ‘Well, let’s try the other guy.’ I said, ‘Whaddaya mean try the other guy? Anthony’s good!’ They said, ‘We can’t use Anthony. He got arrested this morning.’ They said he got into a fight with his wife, and they owned a kennel, and he burned the kennel down. So we had to bail him out of jail so he could come and fight as an ROUS."





9. Buttercup was (Briefly) Played by a Man

Reiner mentioned that a stuntman wearing a wig did some of Robin Wright's stunts.





10. The Scrapped Ending

Reiner talked about how they originally planned to end the film. "At the end of the movie, we had a scene where Peter Falk leaves and the little boy picks up the book and is leafing through it, wanting to relive the book again. And he hears a voice outside his window and sees the four white horses with the four heroes on it, waving at him.

In order to find a horse that could carry Andre, we had to find a pulley system to lower him onto the horse, to take the weight off the horse.

We shot the sequence, but I decided during the editing that it didn’t work. A more meaningful ending was written and shot later between the old man and the sick little kid."

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2013/08/1...itman-academy/

[Torgo]

3. The True Meaning of "As You Wish..."

Reiner commented on William Goldman's brilliant script saying that "as you wish..." really means "I love you."

Reiner also mentioned that Cary Elwes still has women coming up to him today asking him to say that to them.

I thought everyone knew that that's what it meant.

[Penny Lane]

1. Peter Falk Too Young at 60?

Reiner said that Peter Falk thought he was too young to play a grandfather. Falk wanted to try prosthetics to make him look older and later said that it made him look like a burn victim.

They all then decided not to use it.



That's crazy!I became a grandmother at 41. My husband was 48.
So by the time that my grandson was the age of the boy in the movie I would have been only 51 and my husband would have been 58.

Anyway, I love this movie! I mostly liked Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya. He was great!

[gidgetgrape]

Originally Posted by Torgo

I thought everyone knew that that's what it meant.

Me too. It was pretty obvious.

I watched this movie constantly in middle school. Still love the dueling scene.

[80sTrivia]

Such a fantastic film! I watch it whenever I'm channel surfing and catch it playing!