by Cary Elwes
And so, for a time at least, the Nobel Prize–winning author of Waiting for Godot chauffeured the young man who would eventually become the most famous wrestler in history to and from school. I always said there might have been another play Beckett could have written, perhaps entitled Waiting for André. When I mentioned this to Billy Crystal, I saw a light bulb go off in his head. Later on he would make a very sweet film semibased on his experiences with André called My Giant.
I asked André what he and the famous author talked about when they were together.
“Mostly cricket,” André recalled.
I can only imagine André playing cricket. He must’ve sent a ton of cricket balls into the stratosphere as a youth, hitting them with that powerful swing of his.
He told me he wasn’t fond of school, where I’m sure he was teased by the other kids, and dropped out after only the eighth grade to begin working as a full-time laborer on his father’s farm. He then took an apprenticeship in woodworking, followed by a stint in a factory that made engines for hay balers. I remember thinking André had to have been a proficient one-man hay baler himself. Bored with these prospects, he told me he left for Paris shortly thereafter to seek his fortune. He said he was first “discovered” by an entrepreneurial furniture mover who saw in the teenage André someone who could do the work of five men for the price of one. And that it was while he was shifting a couple of armoires at the same time into the back of the removal van one day that he caught the eye of a Parisian wrestling impresario.
“That’s when I started to travel all over, boss.”
It should come as no surprise that the moment André set his gargantuan foot in the ring at seventeen, he became an instant star. Within a couple of years he became both literally and figuratively the biggest (i.e., highest-paid) wrestler in the business, and a household name across the globe. He told me that after his first event fans began mobbing him. Especially in Japan, where it was apparently good luck to touch or “rub” a giant. They felt that if they touched him, they would get magic or some sort of power. And even though that made him a little uncomfortable, that didn’t prevent him from going there anyway. He also told me that some of the top Japanese wrestlers were so scared to wrestle him they would suddenly “go on vacation” when they heard he was coming to town.
Once he started wrestling he basically never stopped since promoters would fight over one another to book him, given that his name on a bill guaranteed a sellout year in and year out. I asked him how many matches he had been in and he told me that he had been averaging about three hundred a year for the past twenty years. Which is pretty incredible. I subsequently found out from Andy that his matches with Hulk Hogan had become legendary and that one of them, which took place at the Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit just before shooting started, even beat out the Rolling Stones for the all-time record for indoor attendance at a live event, with more than seventy-eight thousand screaming fans going absolutely ape at the sight of these titans. The wrestling equivalent of Beatlemania at Shea Stadium!
One day André pulled out a thick wallet from his canvas bag and motioned me over. As I sat down next to him he produced from it a handful of well-worn black-and-white photos. Some were of himself with celebrities like Muhammad Ali and others were of himself in his youth, looking very smooth, as I recall. I remember in one of them he was dressed in a very dapper dark suit walking down a street in London. In another he was lifting an Aston Martin off the ground with his bare hands—a talent he discovered while living in Paris. After that he said he used to move his friends’ cars while they weren’t around, wedging them in tiny spaces or moving them around to face the wrong way. I asked him if he ever worked out but he told me he had never been interested in lifting weights, which means when Fezzik says the line, “I don’t even exercise!” it was a moment where art was imitating life.
I also remember there being a few of him in swimming trunks on the beaches of the South of France or in various studios in Paris either lifting numerous ladies on his shoulders or stretching his massive arms over their heads like a bird—another apparently favored publicity pose.
I told him he must have been quite popular with the girls.
“Oh, yes, boss,” came the response, followed by that great, very deep laugh of his—precisely the kind you would expect from André, and which, over the course of the movie, we would all come to love.
Meanwhile, back on set: There were the three of us, Fezzik, Inigo, and Westley (Larry, Curly, and Moe in an alternate universe) ready to storm the castle. We rehearsed the scene a few times, making some adjustments to the timing of my head-flops, as per Rob’s instructions. And, when we reached the point where he was happy with it, we began rolling.
However . . .
We got to the moment where I wake up from being “mostly dead” and say, “I’ll beat you both apart! I’ll take you both together!”, Fezzik cups my mouth with his hand, and answers his own question to Inigo as to how long it might be before Miracle Max’s pill begins to take effect by stating, “I guess not very long.”
As soon as he delivered that line, there issued forth from André one of the most monumental farts any of us had ever heard. Now, I suppose you wouldn’t expect a man of André’s proportions to pass gas quietly or unobtrusively, but this particular one was truly epic, a veritable symphony of gastric distress that roared for more than several seconds and shook the very foundations of the wood and plaster set we were now grabbing on to out of sheer fear. It was long enough and loud enough that every member of the crew had time to stop what they were doing and take notice. All I can say is that it was a wind that could have held up in comparison to the one Slim Pickens emitted in the campfire scene in Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles, widely acknowledged as the champion of all cinematic farts.
Except, of course, this one wasn’t in the script.
At the moment of impact, I couldn’t help but look up at André, at first wondering, like a good many others, if we were experiencing an earthquake and then, having discovered we were not, out of sheer concern for his well-being. The sonic resonance was so intense I even observed our soundman remove his headphones to protect his ears. As the fart continued, I looked back at André. What struck me, besides, of course, the sheer immensity of the wind, was that steam appeared to be rising from his hairpiece, which, given that it was a particularly hot day, was apparently not unusual for him.
It was, however, combined with the fart itself, a highly unusual sight. I remember looking up at him as a huge grin flashed across his face and remained there—a grin of both amusement and, I suspect, of blessed relief. Finally the roar subsided and the set fell completely silent. Everyone was in a state of complete shock, not knowing what to say or do, as is usually the case whenever anyone passes gas in public, especially in polite England. The next line was mine—“Why won’t my arms move?”—but at that moment no words would move from my lips. They were in there somewhere, rattling around in my head, searching for an exit, but it soon became apparent that getting them to utter forth from my mouth was useless. Between the fart, André’s grin, and the steaming hairpiece, I was done for. I could not help but burst out laughing.
Then André started to laugh, too.
Not a snicker, mind you, but that wonderful, deep guttural laugh of his. Then, as was usually the case on most movies when “the giggles” (as it is commonly known in our profession) happen, it spread like a virus, hitting Mandy, Rob, and the entire crew. Now it should be noted that when this happens on a set, some directors try to let the cameras continue rolling, in the hopes that everyone can regain their composure in a fairly short space of time and get back to the scene. On this occasion that hope was pure folly.
And so it went, for the next couple of takes, André’s line followed by the sound of uncontrollable laughter. And not just from the three of us but from everyone as I tried to say my line, “Why won’t my arms move?”
But it was no use. We tried a few more takes, but they were all
in vain. Every time I would think I was past it, I’d look at André and his big grin and the smoking hairpiece, and the giggles would erupt all over again between myself, Mandy, and André. Finally Rob realized that someone had to try to get the scene back on track.
“Okay, guys, let’s try this again,” he said. “André, are you okay? You need to take a break?”
“No, boss. I’m okay.” He paused. “Now.”
More laughter, even from André.
“All right, I got an idea, guys,” Rob said, nodding and smiling. “Just laugh it out. Think of the fart, and laugh until you’ve got nothing left. Until you’re completely spent. Maybe that’ll work.”
We did and then we reset and started to shoot another take.
Concentrate, Cary! I said to myself before Rob yelled, “Action!”
But the more I tried not to think about the fart, the more impossible it became.
Then Mandy began laughing again . . . then André, too.
And so it went. We kept cracking up, ruining one take after another, until it reached the point where I couldn’t even look at André without both of us losing it. Finally, I pleaded with Rob for assistance.
“You’ve got to help me on this. I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I can’t get through the scene.”
Rob threw an arm around my shoulder, and walked me along the parapet.
“It’s all right, Cary. Just flip it.”
At first I was confused as to what he was trying to get at.
“What do you mean?”
“Try to change the way you think of André. Think about what it’s like for him, being a giant and getting laughed at just because he’s different.”
I looked over at André. He was still smiling happily. I looked back at Rob and knew he was right. The truth is, André may have seemed like one of the happiest and most content people I had ever met. But I’m sure there were times when he wasn’t, especially when he was younger and trying to find his place in the world.
“Better?” Rob asked.
“Yeah, but now I feel awful,” I replied.
“Don’t. These things happen.” He gave me a pat on the back. “C’mon, let’s try it again.”
Even though I still felt bad, the sage advice Rob had given me worked. On the very next take, we did it perfectly, and that is the take that is in the movie. After Rob yelled, “Cut,” I immediately turned to André and apologized.
“It’s okay,” he replied, “my farts always make people laugh . . . That was a big one, wasn’t it?”
He still managed to make me smile, in order to make me not feel bad. That’s how special André was.
* * *
The following week we shot the actual storming of the castle with dozens of extras and a good deal of pyrotechnics, including Fezzik on fire in his holocaust cloak, with “Captain Kangaroo” hovering nervously off camera. We also shot nearly all the scenes involving Humperdinck, Rugen, and Buttercup, including her marriage and dream sequence, which brought out the better part of Bakewell’s local population as extras. That was Bill’s last week before heading to New York. This location also brought us the amazingly talented Peter Cook as the Impressive Clergyman with the speech impediment and the wonderful Malcolm Storry as the cowardly Yellin. In the courtyard we shot one of the final scenes of the movie, in which Fezzik shows up with the four white horses.
Meanwhile, during every free moment, Mandy and I were subjected to long hours of sword-training with Bob and Peter. I would finish a scene, and just as I was about to sit down, Peter would be at my side, blade in hand.
CHRIS SARANDON
Here’s my favorite André story. I had two young daughters with me on location at the time. I told them, “Daddy’s making a movie about a princess, and I’m going to play the Prince, and there’s a pirate in it, and a giant.” As soon as I said the word giant, my daughters immediately were like, “What?! Daddy, there’s a giant in the movie? What’s the giant like? Is he big? Is he really, really big—as big as a house? Is he as big as a car? Is he bigger than a doorway? Does he talk with a really low voice . . . or a high voice?” They were just awed from that moment onward. So I went to André and I said, “André, do you mind terribly doing me a favor? My children have talked about nothing but you. I would love to bring them over to meet you.” And he said, “Of course,” because he was so utterly charming and guileless. So I walked my kids over to André’s huge trailer, which was the size of a boxcar. As we walked up the steps into the trailer, I saw André at the other end. And I said, “André, these are my daughters.” And the moment André stood up, one of my daughters goes, “Aaaaaaaahhhhh!” and starts screaming in complete panic. Then her sister starts screaming. Now these two little girls are screaming at the top of their lungs and we finally had to leave because they wouldn’t stop. So I go to see him afterward and I’m so embarrassed. I said, “André, please forgive me, I had no idea. They were so excited to see you, and yet when they saw you they were just terrified.” And he just smiled and shrugged. “Don’t worry. Either they come to me or they run from me.” And that was André. He was very much at home with who he was. And the way people reacted to him was, either they flocked to him or they ran away in terror. And he was okay with it. There was a perfect equanimity about it. He was just the loveliest guy.
“Don’t get too comfy,” he’d say with a twinkle in his eye.
The training never stopped. Even on my days off I would rehearse with Bob at the Hallam Tower Hotel in Sheffield, where we were staying. When we left for Derbyshire, the set where we would be filming our duel was still under construction at Shepperton. It was understood that by the time we returned, near the end of the production, Mandy and I would be at least competent fencers, if not quite the legendary sword masters described in the script, and the set would be ready for us to practice on.
Since nearly all the cast and crew were housed in the same hotel, for much of the next few months we lived more or less as a family. From the hotel we would bus to various locations, including Lathkill, where we shot the Battle of Wits scene with Wally Shawn.
It’s funny the way certain things fade from memory over the years, but other, seemingly inconsequential things remain embedded. Food, for example, was a source of endless discussion throughout the shoot. Being a New Yorker, Rob had been accustomed to working with American crews, but this was his first time working with an English one. I remember the look of disbelief on his face when he discovered that British crews were permitted two tea breaks each day: one in the morning and one in the afternoon; and while on location these included another sandwich break in the afternoon. Shooting would come to a complete halt while everyone had a cup of tea and a “sticky bun” or “chip buttie,” which consisted of French fries covered in melted butter on a bun—a real treat for your arteries.
The first time a tea break happened Rob was bewildered. Even though he might have been warned about it in prep, it had obviously slipped his mind.
“What the heck is going on?” Rob asked one of the crew.
“Tea break, guv’nor,” the crew member said. “Half an hour for tea.”
Clearly dumbfounded, Rob responded, “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, guv. Union rules.”
By the time the crew returned from their tea break, Rob was fretting—or as close to fretting as I saw him during the entire shoot, except for the days when the weather got the better of us. He turned to Andy.
“Two tea breaks and a sandwich break every day?” he said under his breath. “At this rate we’ll never get the movie done on time!”
David Barron, our unit production manager, who overheard this, let him know that this was not a negotiable issue. If the crew didn’t get their tea breaks, we might be looking at a potential strike.
“And then,” David said matter-of-factly, “we won’t have to worry about the schedule, as we won’t have a movie anymore.”
There were other issues with catering. On our first day on location, our lun
ch consisted primarily of tiny meat-filled pastries, which they called chapati (pronounced “japuti”), supplied by an Indian caterer. If you Wikipedia “chapati,” besides a video of how they are made, this is what you will find in the way of a description:
An unleavened flatbread (also known as roti) from Nepal, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.
Now, I happen to be a fan of Indian food, having spent some time in that country, so the following story is by no means an indictment of that nation’s extraordinary cuisine. But this story is about quantity, not quality. At first we were all quite surprised that we had landed a caterer that seemed to be exploring exotic fare to share with us all. We had illusions that our palettes would be sated by the myriad of flavors the Far East cuisine has to offer. Unfortunately that was not to be the case. The second day brought even more Chapatis. As did the third. By the fourth day, the rolled pastries had become a running gag between Rob and Chris Guest.
Chris would come up with new, hilarious phrases every time lunch-time drew near, each one delivered with that deadpan look of his. I remember one of them being “Fancy a fruity Chapati?”, delivered in a flawless Indian accent, which totally slayed me. Chris is always that quick with a ridiculously brilliant line.
By the end of the week, word spread that there were grumblings from both the mouths and the stomachs of our otherwise very patient and easygoing crew. Even André, being brought up on French culinary delights, took pity on all of us and his own palate. When fans ask me about André, for the most part what they know is about his wrestling and his legendary drinking. What most folks don’t know about him is that André was actually a real connoisseur of fine food and even co-owned a French restaurant in Montreal. During a break in his shooting schedule on the movie he chartered a truck and took the ferry across the channel back to his homeland, ostensibly to see his folks. When he returned, though, he arrived back on the set with a crate of pâté, cheese, foie grois, and a crate of fine wine. The crew, who already loved him, worshipped him after that. David Barron tried to confiscate the wine, lest it have an “adverse effect on the shooting schedule” as he tactfully put it, but André assured him he would “look after it,” which he did! So eventually Rob had to let the well-intentioned but highly unimaginative caterers go and asked David Barron to enlist the services of another company. Preferably a caterer that knew how to make more than one dish, I believe, was the polite request.