As You Wish

British actor Cary Elwes opens his memoir at the 25th-anniversary screening of The Princess Bride at Lincoln Center on October 2, 2012. Standing onstage with cast members including director Rob Reiner, Billy Crystal, Mandy Patinkin, and Robin Wright, he reflects on how a modestly budgeted fairy-tale film, shot in under four months, became one of the most quoted movies in cinema history. Two original cast members, Peter Falk and André the Giant, have died, but the film's popularity has only grown, passed from parents to children like the storybook at its center. Elwes frames the book as his attempt to express what the experience meant to him.

The story begins in June 1986, when Elwes, a 23-year-old with only a handful of film credits, received word from his agent while shooting an indie film in Berlin that Reiner and producing partner Andy Scheinman wanted to meet him about the role of Westley, the farmhand-turned-pirate at the heart of William Goldman's novel. Elwes had read the book at 13 after his stepfather gave it to him. He recounts how Goldman's screenplay had languished for over a decade as multiple directors and studios failed to bring the project to the screen. Reiner won Goldman's trust by demonstrating a deep understanding of the material, then secured financing from producer Norman Lear's Act III Communications and a distribution deal with 20th Century Fox.

When Reiner and Scheinman arrived in Berlin, the meeting revolved around comedy rather than a formal audition. Reiner asked Elwes to read only a few lines from the script, then stopped him and effectively offered the part. The next morning, Elwes's agent confirmed the offer. Scheinman later reveals that Elwes was the final essential piece of casting: Without Elwes as Westley, Wright as Buttercup, or André as Fezzik, the film could not have been made.

In London, Elwes underwent costume fittings with Academy Award-winning designer Phyllis Dalton and toured the sets at Shepperton Studios. Reiner introduced Elwes to Wright, a young actress from the daytime soap Santa Barbara whose photo had been on the casting wall but was overlooked because the search focused on British actresses. At the Dorchester Hotel, the full cast gathered for the first table read. Goldman, visibly anxious, told the group this was his favorite thing he had ever written. André the Giant, the French professional wrestler, entered and everyone stopped; standing seven feet four inches tall and weighing 540 pounds, he had worried about his English, so Reiner recorded the entire script on audiotape for him. Framed as a story a grandfather reads to his sick grandson, the plot follows Westley's quest to reunite with Buttercup after being presumed dead, battling kidnappers and villains along the way.

Training for the film's centerpiece swordfight began immediately. Elwes and Patinkin worked eight hours a day, five days a week, under Peter Diamond and Bob Anderson, legendary fight coordinators whose credits include the Star Wars trilogy and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Patinkin had a two-month head start from training with the Yale fencing coach. The trainers warned that stunt doubles might be needed, but both actors insisted on performing every move themselves. Training continued throughout the entire production, with Diamond and Anderson pulling the actors aside during any gap in the schedule.

Principal photography began on August 18, 1986, on the Fire Swamp set. Goldman, lurking behind a giant toadstool, was caught mumbling prayers into the microphones. He later screamed when Wright's dress caught fire during a planned stunt, having missed the safety meeting. For the Rodent of Unusual Size (R.O.U.S.) fight, stuntman Danny Blackner wore a 50-pound rat suit and arrived late one morning after spending the night in jail; he had been pulled over while driving under the influence, and the officer refused to believe he was an actor playing a rat.

The production moved to Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, an 11th-century manor doubling as Humperdinck's castle. Elwes devotes considerable space to André's background: his childhood on a French farm, his friendship with playwright Samuel Beckett, who drove him to school because he was too large for the bus, and his rise to become the highest-paid wrestler in the world despite chronic pain from acromegaly, a condition causing excessive growth. During the "storming the castle" scene, André released an enormous fart that reduced the cast and crew to uncontrollable laughter across multiple ruined takes. Reiner advised Elwes to consider what it was like for André to be laughed at for being different, which sobered Elwes enough to finish the scene.

Elwes reflects on Wright's underrated performance, arguing that Buttercup has virtually no comedic lines yet Wright anchored the story's emotional core while maintaining a flawless accent. He states he fell in love with Wright from the moment they met; Wright confirms she was "absolutely smitten" with Elwes.

Wallace Shawn, cast as the scheming Vizzini, experienced intense anxiety throughout production after hearing the role was first offered to other actors. His most difficult scene, the Battle of Wits, was scheduled as his first moment before the camera. Billy Crystal and Carol Kane, who plays Valerie, arrived for approximately three days to shoot the Miracle Max sequence, in which Crystal's healer character revives the "mostly dead" Westley. Crystal improvised relentlessly, forcing Reiner off the set because his laughter ruined takes. Elwes, required to lie motionless on the table, could not maintain composure and was eventually replaced by a rubber dummy. Patinkin bruised a rib holding in laughter.

Elwes recounts two injuries during production. He broke his left big toe after foolishly riding André's all-terrain vehicle and tried to hide the injury from Reiner, who discovered the truth and responded with gentle disappointment rather than anger. Weeks later, Christopher Guest, playing Count Rugen, struck Elwes on the head with a sword harder than intended, knocking him unconscious. The take ended up in the final film.

In mid-October, Elwes and Patinkin demonstrated their completed swordfight for Reiner, who responded: "That's it?" Months of practice had compressed the duel to barely a minute and a half, far too short for what Goldman's script describes as the greatest swordfight in modern times. Reiner sent them back to expand it to at least three minutes. They studied classic swashbuckling films, added acrobatics and new sequences, and sacrificed their days off. Filming spanned nearly a week, with every frame performed by the actors themselves. The finished sequence runs approximately three minutes and 10 seconds.

The day after completing the swordfight, Elwes visited his dying grandfather, a former military intelligence officer whose adventurous stories had inspired Elwes's love of swashbuckling tales. His grandfather died the following morning. On November 21, Elwes filmed his final scene, the kiss between Westley and Buttercup. He and Wright kept requesting additional takes, neither wanting the experience to end.

The Princess Bride premiered at the Toronto Festival of Festivals in September 1987 to a standing ovation and won the People's Choice Award, but Fox's marketing department could not determine how to sell a film blending fairy tale, adventure, romance, and satire. The poster featured only a silhouette of Falk and Fred Savage, who plays the grandson, with no images of the main characters. The film earned a respectable but unspectacular $30.8 million. Around Christmas 1988, the film began an unexpected resurgence through the VHS market as families purchased copies and passed them down through generations. Elwes recounts encounters with notable fans including Pope John Paul II and President Bill Clinton, who told Elwes he and his daughter Chelsea had watched it over 100 times.

Elwes shares one final evening with André: a night barhopping across Manhattan while an NYPD officer tailed them. André confided that he would give anything to spend one day at regular size but added that he was grateful for his life. André died in January 1993 of congestive heart failure at 46.

At the Lincoln Center screening, the audience chanted lines, cheered each character's entrance, and wept at Falk's first appearance. Goldman, who had not watched the film with an audience since 1987, was stunned. Elwes concludes that the film endures because Goldman and Reiner made it with genuine heart, and that it no longer belongs to its creators. It belongs to everyone.