As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride (20 page)

“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 lunch 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.

7

T
here is nothing ordinary about life on a movie set, particularly when you shoot a film on location for any length of time. There is a wonderful line in Cameron Crowe’s movie
Almost Famous,
when Russell Hammond, the charismatic lead guitarist played by Billy Crudup, tries to explain to the wide-eyed, and increasingly skeptical, adolescent journalist William Miller, played by Patrick Fugit, the appeal of the endless nights living on the road.

“This is the circus,” Hammond says. “Everybody’s trying not to go home.”

I’ve never been on tour with a band or with a circus for that matter, but I imagine it has something in common with the moviemaking experience. On most films you find yourself sequestered far from home with a tightly knit group of people, trying to create something special while passing the hours in ways most people can’t even imagine.

When you are on location for months on end, your job almost becomes your whole life. You don’t go home to the wife and kids at the end of the day. You have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with your coworkers, and in the evening you gather together over coffee or a drink and rehash the highs and lows of the day while getting to know one another. It can be an intense, almost claustrophobic environment. But with the right group of people, and the right director, it can also be the adventure of a lifetime.

And so it was with
The Princess Bride
.

Acting, by any reasonable standard, cannot be merely defined as just “work.” Actors do get paid to work, but we also get paid to essentially play, something most people abandon when they enter the adult world (if not well before that). In a way, as I have said, there is something very childlike in getting to perform either onstage or on film. All kids like to play dress-up, whether it’s cowboys and Indians or knights and princesses. When it gets to be both fun and work at the same time, it can be a truly wonderful, rewarding experience, as it was on this movie.

If I had to describe our production, I would say it was more like a circus troupe than any I had been on—traveling around Sheffield, pitching
tents, putting on costumes and makeup, and staging our show. If you think about it, we had a “show” that involved giants, little people, wizards, albinos, swordfights, and death-defying stunts (and plenty of clowning around), all with Rob as the ultimate ringmaster. Heck, we even had four white horses! Looking back I feel certain that Bill must’ve spent some quality time at the circus with his kids while the idea for the book was still fermenting in his head. When I asked him this, he just laughed.

I also think there is a reason everyone involved with
The Princess Bride
still enjoys talking about it more than twenty-five years later: it really was that much fun. There is a certain pride in the finished product, of course, and of being forever associated with such an enduringly popular movie. But it’s the process itself that I remember most, and how much fun it was to go to work every day. I would say it was as close to a perfect moviemaking experience as I have ever had, or expect I’ll ever have. That’s a rare thing on a movie set, and it all starts with the director. He sets the tone for the whole show.

Directors, like anyone in the process of recruiting employees, tend to be on their best behavior when you meet them for the first time. They can be generous of spirit, warm, even compassionate. Unfortunately, one occasionally discovers from time to time (and in some cases not long after the ink on the contract is dry) that one has been tossed into
a lifeboat with wounded people who have been using the medium of filmmaking to either exorcise their demons or air their dirty laundry or other hang-ups in public. When that happens it can be a thoroughly unpleasant and depressing prospect for everyone on the whole crew. One finds oneself asking, Oh boy, what have I signed on to?

Luckily for us, we had a director who, being an actor himself, not only nurtured his cast and respected their technical ability, but was the same with his crew. Rob was like a big kid on the set, laughing, applauding, encouraging, and generally acting like a fan as well as a filmmaker. Any guy who greets you with a “Hiya!” before saying your name is clearly someone in touch with their inner child, which is a beautiful thing. The unpleasant alternative is if you happen to arrive on the set to find out you are working with either a benevolent dictator or a narcissist to some degree. Then you find yourself in the awkward position of having to stroke their ego. But, every so often, if you are fortunate,
you find yourself working with someone who is as excited as you are to make each day’s discovery. Someone who views the entire process as an adventure, and invites everyone along for the ride. In other words, someone like Rob.