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

by Cary Elwes

  “Then what happened?” Rob asked, genuinely intrigued.

  “So I try to tell him he’s making a big mistake,” Danny continued, becoming more animated as the tale went on. “I says, ‘You don’t understand! I can’t go down to the station! I’ve got an important day’s work today.’ And the cop says, ‘Work?’ Just like that—‘Work?’—like he don’t think I can earn a decent wage or something. ‘What do you do for a living?’ So I tells him, ‘I’m an actor!’ right? And he just laughs and says, ‘Yeah, right, pull the other one!’ And I says, ‘No, it’s true, officer! I’m an actor and a stuntman and I have to be on the set in a few hours.’ Then the cop asks me, ‘Okay, what part are you playing?’ And I says, ‘I’m playing a rat.’ And he goes, ‘All right, I’ve heard enough. Back of the van for you!’ He didn’t believe me, guv’nor. So I spent a few hours in the clink, didn’t I? Finally I was able to call someone in production to come bail me out.”

  Far from angry, Rob threw an arm around Danny.

  “Wow. I’m so sorry to hear that. We wouldn’t have known what to do without you. I’m glad you made it out. Cary was getting kinda tired of wrestling a dummy.”

  The poor fellow seemed relieved.

  “Thanks, guv’nor! It was quite an ordeal, I can tell you!”

  “But you’re okay now, right? Or do you need some time?” Rob asked.

  “No, guv. I’ve been locked up all night. I’m ready to go.”

  And with that, there was a round of applause and a cheer from the crew. Within minutes Danny had transformed into a Rodent of Unusual Size, and helped us all find our way out of the Fire Swamp, once and for all.

  6

  STORMING THE CASTLE AND BEING MOSTLY DEAD

  BAKEWELL, DERBYSHIRE

  After being given the weekend off to recover from our long shoot in the Fire Swamp the whole crew packed up and traveled to our next location: Derbyshire’s famous Peak District, arriving on the first day of September. A good deal of the movie was to be filmed in and around this area, most notably at Haddon Hall, an ancient manor home located on the River Wye in Bakewell. I can attest that it’s almost impossible to visit Haddon Hall and not feel a sense of awe.

  In America sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the world is an ancient place. The United States is, after all, but a few hundred years old, a veritable blip on the timepiece of Western civilization. In parts of Europe, though, there is no mistaking the history; it is palpable and overwhelming. Haddon Hall has a very rich history. The place cannot be measured in years or even decades, but in centuries. You can feel the ghosts of medieval times; they practically whisper from the walls.

  Parts of it date back to the late eleventh century, when the property belonged to a noble by the name of William Peverel the Elder, allegedly the illegitimate son of William the Conqueror, the great Norman king. It also has a wonderful romantic past, which made it a perfect setting for our tale. In the late sixteenth century, the property belonged to the Vernons, a powerful family closely associated with the infamous King Henry VIII. Sir George Vernon, known as the king of the Peak District, had a daughter by the name of Dorothy, who fell in love with a young local man named John Manners. Sir George, however, did not approve of the match between his daughter and the local fellow who was a nobleman (unlike our Buttercup and Westley) and tried to keep the lovers apart. According to lore, Dorothy’s lover would arrange to meet her in the nearby woods for secret trysts, disguised as a forester so that he wouldn’t attract attention. One night, in 1563, Manners spirited Dorothy away on his horse so that they could live happily ever after, much like the ending of our movie.

  True love prevails!

  Four years later, Haddon Hall passed into the hands of the Manners family, where it has remained ever since. The castle stayed intact for hundreds of years, until it was abandoned in the early 1700s and almost fell into ruin. In the 1920s, it was carefully restored by the Duke and Duchess of Rutland. Four years after that, Hollywood came calling, when a film of Dorothy’s famed love affair, entitled Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall, and starring Mary Pickford, was the first movie shot there. More than sixty years would go by before the estate was featured in another film, and this time it was one I was intimately familiar with: Lady Jane. In fact, had I not been in that film, I don’t know that I would have ever come across Rob’s radar while he was casting. So there was, for me, a feeling of fate, or maybe serendipity, when it came to the place.

  Needless to say I was thrilled to be back at the estate, which would double for Prince Humperdinck’s castle in Florin. I knew it well and felt like I belonged there. And I’m glad to be part of a group of filmmakers that helped alert the world to its exquisite architecture and the stunning beauty of the surrounding countryside. In the past twenty-five years, dozens of movies and television series have used the property for a period setting, including Jane Eyre (three different versions!), Pride and Prejudice, and Elizabeth. But perhaps no film has done more to boost the recognition of the hall and the tourism industry of the Peak District than The Princess Bride.

  The very same sweet family, the Mannerses, who were living in Haddon Hall when I shot there only a year before were still living there when I returned, residing in one of the wings of the estate while the rest of the hall remained open to the public. I remember them coming out to greet us the morning we arrived from London. They were very gracious and friendly, and remembered me from Lady Jane, which was nice. Walking onto the property was like stepping back in time, not only to when I’d last been there but also several centuries.

  CHRISTOPHER GUEST

  I can only speak for myself, obviously, but for me, I’ve spent a lot of time in England and I like being there. So that was a good place to start anyway. But on the most basic level, the romance for actors of being in a situation where you get to dress up? This is what actors like to do. Putting on costumes of people from a long time ago and having swordfights, you know? It’s almost like going to a movie camp where you just get to have fun. It was just one of those magical things. And even though I didn’t know the other actors except for Billy, what subsequently happened was that it became a very tight-knit group of actors that were about to have one of the great experiences that you could have.

  It’s one thing to film a movie on a soundstage, where you have easy access to the most current technology, without regard to weather or other issues that can wreak havoc with continuity and schedule. But working on location can be an utterly joyful experience, fueling creativity and an esprit de corps in ways that inevitably show up on the screen. I’m not suggesting that a gorgeous location can offset the problems inherent in a feeble script, unfortunate casting, or unsteady direction. But The Princess Bride was delightfully free of those weaknesses. We had the right actors, the right crew, the right script, and a sure hand at the helm in Rob.

  Moreover, in Haddon Hall we had a setting that was ideally suited to our project. I can still see the looks on the faces of our art director, Richard Holland, and set decorator, Maggie Gray, the first time I saw them in the fourteenth-century banqueting hall that they had miraculously transformed into Humperdinck’s study. They had the air and countenance of kids in a candy store. With its grand Tudor architecture and an abundance of medieval accoutrements, the place was almost like a movie set in itself. It provoked the right combination of epic scale and intimacy. Very little was required to make it look exactly as one envisioned it while reading the screenplay. That didn’t prevent Richard, Maggie, and their crew from adding incredible designs to all the rooms we would be using, to give them that wonderful medieval fairy-tale flair.

  “Pretty neat, huh?” Rob said as we walked around the sets.

  “Amazing! Simply amazing.”

  I could tell from his demeanor that he couldn’t wait to get started. He was genuinely excited. As we all were. I also recall, on our first day there, noticing a rather heavyset-looking guy with big red muttonchops and a pudding-bowl haircut, dressed in formal wear, followin
g us around. It turns out he was the local fire marshal, or “fire warden” as they are known in the UK, assigned by the owners of the property to oversee our filming. They had been made aware by our production that there would be scenes involving fire and possibly open-flame torches on the walls, and they justifiably wanted to protect their very precious property from any potential damage. I remember this fellow had a look to him that seemed familiar but I just couldn’t place it. It was Rob who finally made the connection.

  “He looks exactly like Captain Kangaroo!” he said.

  And he was right. So much so, that Sarandon and Guest took to humming or whistling the theme song of the show every time they passed him on the set. The poor guy had no idea what they were doing, since the Captain Kangaroo phenomenon never made it to British TV.

  The next fortnight’s shooting at Haddon would be focused on all the scenes that involved the exteriors of Florin Castle. The first scene up was one that takes place relatively late in the film, in which Inigo, Fezzik, and my character prepare to “storm the castle” to rescue Buttercup. Westley at this moment is still unconscious—described by Goldman as being “mostly dead.” He is hoisted onto a perimeter wall outside the castle, with the help of his newfound allies, to assess the huge odds that face them before the assault. For this scene Norman Garwood and his team had designed and built a fake parapet on the outskirts of the property so that we could have a clear view of the Hall, now dressed with fake towers and sporting huge chevron-shaped flags to look like Humperdinck’s fortress, in the distance.

  I remember talking to Rob about being “mostly dead,” and how exactly to play that state of semiconsciousness. I knew how to portray most things when it came to exploring a character, but being “mostly dead” was a new one for me. We discussed what coming back to life should look like, with only limited use of my body. The only description of this I had to go on was Miracle Max’s line from the book, when he tells Inigo, “If we’re lucky, the tongue will work and absolutely the brain, and he might be able to walk a little if you give a nudge to get him started.”

  I knew this was meant to be a funny scene, perhaps even a bit silly. But I also knew it had the potential to be ridiculous if played too broadly. Rob and I discussed the nuances at great length and I told him it might be interesting and kind of fun to see Westley not have complete control of his neck muscles after he came to; that way my head could flop all over the place at specific moments for comedic effect.

  “Also,” I said, “since Fezzik is so excited about Westley getting his motor skills back, maybe we could have him grab my head and use me as a marionette.”

  “I like it,” Rob said. “Let’s try it.”

  When André strolled onto the set that day, it was also the first time I had seen him in costume. Somehow it had the effect of making him appear even larger, if that was possible. Fezzik’s uniform, as it were, consisted of a huge, thick burlap sack cinched at the waist, along with great baggy striped pants and massive leather boots. Since his hair was starting to thin, the hair department had provided him with a hairpiece that lent him a younger, more robust appearance. It was, however, extremely hot that day, unusually hot for that part of England in September, and by the time he arrived on set, André was noticeably uncomfortable. He experienced warmth and heat far more acutely than a normal person. And yet not so with the cold. As the production rolled deep into the fall, and the temperatures routinely fell into the forties, when most of us would stand around shivering between takes, wrapping ourselves in blankets and sweatshirts to keep warm, André, even on the chilliest days, either walked around in short sleeves or wore no shirt at all and had just a towel around his shoulder (which would look the size of a face cloth, given his magnitude). He was actually more comfortable in the cold. It was the heat that gave him trouble. Still, he soldiered on admirably. One of the makeup artists would occasionally mop the sweat from his forehead just before the cameras rolled, but other than that, he was always ready to go, with that beaming smile of his.

  It had only been a month and a half or so since I last encountered him, but already I’d forgotten about just what an impressive physical being he was. André had that effect. Each time you saw him, it was like meeting him for the first time, in the sense that one could never really become accustomed to his extraordinary size. Memory did not do him justice. He had to be standing there in front of you, blocking the sun or enveloping your hand in his, like an adult taking the hand of a baby, before you really got a sense of what it meant to be in the presence of this impressive human being. Goldman said he was like the Pentagon—“no matter how big you’re told it’s going to be, when you get close, it’s bigger.” Each day when he walked on the set was like being reintroduced to one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

  ANDY SCHEINMAN

  André was a very sweet and friendly man, but he did frighten people sometimes. Robin Wright completely freaked out the first time she met him. She ran out of her dressing room in a panic. It was actually pretty funny. She didn’t know who he was or what was going on. She just saw this giant man and ran away in a panic. I felt terrible for André, but he didn’t seem to mind. He used to say that with children, “Half of them run away when they see me, half jump on my lap.” Even the biggest, baddest dogs were afraid of him. Maybe they thought he was a bear or something. And that was just part of his life, part of his everyday experience, that people and animals—everyone and everything—reacted differently to him.

  I can’t stress strongly enough what an incredibly sweet and wonderful guy André was. Here was a man who had taken the cards that had been dealt him in life and instead of wallowing in self-pity, had made the most of every situation. He told me he suffered from a form of gigantism known as acromegaly, which I would find out later was a result of his anterior pituitary gland producing excessive growth hormones—which, in layman’s terms, essentially means that his body growth was expanding at a rate twice to three times greater than normal from the moment he hit puberty.

  Carrying his 500 pounds, combined with the acromegaly and decades of outrageous physical punishment absorbed in the ring, had left him by the mid-1980s in a state of acute pain, particularly in his back and neck. Yet André never complained. His outlook on life was relentlessly upbeat and his ability to put others at ease a thing of wonder.

  Most actors who have experienced any degree of celebrity know the occasional discomfort that comes with being recognized in public. At least if you don’t want to be recognized you could wear sunglasses or a hat.

  ROBIN WRIGHT

  He was a smiler and he never complained. You could tell he was in tremendous pain, but he would never complain about it. You could see it in his face when he would try to stand up from a seated position. But he was just the most gentle giant. So incredibly sweet.

  But there was no hiding for André. When you are that big, there is no possible disguise; no way to shrink into the background. Even if he had not been the most famous professional wrestler in history, he still would have drawn a crowd of gawkers wherever he went. But it never seemed to bother him. Whether innate or acquired, he had an impressive ability to simply float above all the attention, smiling and shaking hands, even posing for pictures and signing autographs. He was a walking, talking handbook for how to be a gracious and grateful star. I think it’s safe to say that he was easily the most popular person on the movie. Everyone just loved him.

  MANDY PATINKIN

  He was constantly being mobbed for autographs and pictures by people. And I remember one particular day watching him wait patiently while a hundred or so members of the crew brought their families to the set and stood in line like tourists at Disneyland to meet him. And he let every single one of them take a photo with him.

  The only topic you could not get André to budge on was whether or not wrestling was fake or rehearsed in any way. I don’t know if in André’s case it was real, considering all the severe punishment he experienced, or whether he believed in the wrestler’
s code of never giving away trade secrets. I think, if truth be told, it was probably a combination of the two.

  As the shoot continued I began to spend more and more time with him. And slowly he began to open up to me about his life. He told me he had two brothers and two sisters and that he was the middle child. That he grew up on a farm built by his father, Boris, in the small village of Molien, which was about forty miles from Paris. He told me that by the time he was twelve he had already grown to a height of six feet two and 240 pounds and that he was so big that he could no longer ride on the local bus that transported the other children to school.

  Sometime after that, the great Irish playwright, Samuel Beckett, bought some land in Molien and decided to move there (there is still a street named after him). Being a handyman as well as a farmer, Roussimoff Sr. offered to help Beckett build his country cottage and eventually the two struck up a friendship. When the playwright learned of young André’s issues with the school bus, he offered to drive the boy to school, explaining that he had a convertible—the only one in town—and thus, the only vehicle that could possibly accommodate André’s size.

  MANDY PATINKIN

  I’ll never forget, I was having lunch at the commissary at Shepperton with André, Rob, and Andy. And I was busy trying to connect with him because we had to be partners for the next four months, and I wanted to bond as quickly as possible. We were all chatting away, and at some point during the lunch I said, “So this wrestling thing, it’s obviously all fake, right?” And the conversation just stopped on a dime. And André looked at me and said, “What do you mean?” And I went, “It’s all planned, right? It’s all fake?” And he said, “Nooooo, boss.” And he was serious. André felt it wasn’t a fixed game. That it wasn’t decided who was going to win or lose. He was rather proud of that. He seemed very humble at that table, and very much wanting us to believe him, and to take him seriously. He wasn’t playing games. I didn’t feel I was being schmoozed by him. Ever.