As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride (27 page)

Oh, boy!

Best-case scenario was that even though it would still hurt, I might be able to at least move about relatively free of limping in approximately two to three weeks. I knew the schedule pretty well by this point. The swordfight wasn’t scheduled until November, so I figured I had time to heal and get ready for the most physical part of the film. Up until that point, I’d just have to fake any scenes involving running or jumping. And rely on the magic of cinema to mask the severity of my injury.

But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t still completely racked with guilt and anxiety over the whole thing. We were six weeks into production. Deep but not so deep that I felt like I couldn’t or wouldn’t still be replaced, Rob’s declaration to the contrary notwithstanding.

Over the next couple days we had to figure out how to execute the reveal scene between Westley and Buttercup, despite the fact that I was hobbled by a broken toe. Not quite
Misery
-style hobbled, thank
goodness, but hobbled enough. In true Hollywood fashion, much of this was accomplished with smoke and mirrors, as they say. We shot our scene on top of the hill with the Man in Black taunting Buttercup about her love for Westley, then the sequence of them both rolling down the hill with Westley yelling, “As . . . you . . . wish,” which I did in post. A shot that thankfully had always been planned with our stunt doubles, Andy and Sue. Robin and I then took our places at the bottom of the ravine, where Buttercup and Westley are reunited, apparently no worse for the wear after careening several hundred meters down a steep hillside packed with rocks and other obstacles. It should be pointed out that by this point the Man in Black is no longer the Man in Black, as his mask has fallen off. He is once again Westley.

“Can you move?” asks Westley. An interesting question since I could barely move myself.

“Move? You’re alive—if you want I can fly,” replies Buttercup.

During this sequence, if you look closely, you can see that my leg is positioned oddly just prior to the moment when Westley crawls toward Buttercup. That’s no accident. That is me trying to find a comfortable position for my poor, very swollen foot.

Moments later, Westley and Buttercup scramble to their feet and race toward the Fire Swamp, in the apparently suicidal hope of eluding Prince Humperdinck’s soldiers.

Again if you look closely, you can clearly see that my character has a noticeable hop in his step. My apologies for that. I did the best I could to hide it, but a strange skip was all I could manage. Fortunately, since Robin and I were supposed to run together while holding hands, I convinced myself it looked appropriately awkward.

Fleeing, after all, is rarely a graceful exercise.

And neither is fencing, unfortunately, when you can barely walk. Nevertheless, I was allowed only a small reprieve from training. Peter
and Bob came to see me the morning after my injury, asked how I was feeling, but expressed only a little bit of sympathy (which, to be honest, was about all I deserved). They then suggested we get back to training the very next day. Which we did. There was absolutely no messing around with these guys. They were concerned enough as it was about not having enough time to train Mandy and me adequately to meet the demands of the screenplay and the schedule. If we couldn’t convincingly portray two men capable of staging an epic swordfight, then they would bear some of the responsibility.
Failure
was not a word in their vocabulary. Neither was
excuse
.

“Can you move your arms?” Bob asked me.

“Yes.”

“Good, then you can train. Don’t worry about your footwork,” he said. “We’ll just rehearse from the waist up. The arm movements are the key anyway. In the end, that’s what the audience is going to be watching.”

So for the next couple weeks, I trained while standing in place, going through the entire fight sequence without moving my feet, or by moving very slowly and carefully. It actually proved to be an effective method, almost like cross-training: by focusing only on the arm movements, I developed a deeper understanding of the sword choreography involved in the fight. I guess you could say it was an unplanned benefit.

A lesser injury occurred about a month later in Burnham Beeches forest in Buckinghamshire, not long after the pain in my foot had finally begun to subside a little. We were filming the scene in which Buttercup and Westley, having survived the Fire Swamp, find themselves exhausted, filthy, and ambushed by Humperdinck, Rugen, and a bunch of crossbow-toting Florinese soldiers. When it becomes apparent that there is no chance of escape, Buttercup barters for Westley’s freedom by agreeing to return with Humperdinck and become his bride, an acquiescence that surprises both the Prince and Westley. Humperdinck agrees,
albeit duplicitously, as he has no intention of following through on his end of the bargain. Before riding off with Buttercup, he says quietly to Count Rugen, “Once we’re out of sight, take him back to Florin and throw him into the Pit of Despair.”

As drawn by Goldman and played marvelously by Chris Guest, Rugen is a deliciously malevolent character, with an evil glint in his eye and an Inquisition-style zest for doling out pain and punishment. A menacing figure indeed, and the glee with which he accepts Humperdinck’s orders is both humorous and hateful as he repeats the Prince’s fake oath to Buttercup to return Westley to his ship, back to him.

“I swear it will be done!”

Moments after Humperdinck leaves with Buttercup, Westley notices the strange glove worn by Rugen.

“You have six fingers on your right hand,” Westley says. “Someone was looking for you. He was . . .”

But before he can finish his sentence, Rugen cuts him off by hitting him over the head with the butt of his sword, knocking him unconscious.

I know I have said this about everyone in the cast, but it is true: Chris Guest is one of the nicest people you will ever meet. He is also one of the funniest. You only have to look at his body of work before and after
The Princess Bride
to know that.
This Is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind,
and
For Your Consideration,
to name but a few. For me, all I have to do is look at his face and I crack up. The man is a comic genius. Which only made his portrayal of Count Tyrone Rugen even more impressive. Of all the actors who performed in
The Princess Bride,
I would say Chris is the one who had the least in common with his character. Ironically, given that he is such a great comedian, Chris only has one funny line in the whole movie, when he says
to Humperdinck, “Get some rest. If you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything.”

For the most part Rugen is a sadist. Chris, however, wouldn’t hurt a fly, gentle fellow that he is. So when it came to doing this particular stunt, he was concerned about even touching me with the sword. That’s because his sword was a real sword. There was no rubber “double” on hand to use for the stunt. It was an actual metal weapon—dense and heavy. As a result, during the first couple of takes, it was obvious that Chris was holding back; I could barely feel the handle tapping my skull, which made it difficult to react appropriately. We tried it a few times, but our camera operator, Shaun O’Dell, told Rob that he could see that the sword was not touching my head and that I was reacting either too soon or too late. That’s when I made a fatal error in judgment by opening my big mouth with a silly suggestion. One that I would come to regret.

“You know what, Chris,” I said, “why don’t you just go ahead and
give me a slight tap on the head. Just hard enough that I’ll get the feeling and then I think the timing will work.”

Understandably, Chris was initially reluctant. As was Peter Diamond, who was on hand to coordinate the stunt. Eventually, though, it was decided after a couple of rehearsals that he could put a little force behind the blow, just enough to help me “sell” it. So we started to roll . . .

“Turnover!”

“Sound speed!”

“One forty. Take five!”—
Clap!
went the clapperboard.

“And . . . action!” yelled Rob.

Chris swung the heavy sword down toward my head. However, as fate would have it, it landed just a touch harder than either of us anticipated. And that, folks, was the last thing I remember from that day’s shoot. In the script Bill’s stage directions from the end of this scene state:

The screen goes black. In the darkness, frightening sounds.

Which is precisely what happened.

I woke up in the emergency room, still in costume, to the frightening sound of stitches being sewn into my skull. From the same doctor, no less, who had treated me only a few weeks earlier for my broken toe. I remember him saying to me after I came to, “Well, Zorro! You seem to be a little accident prone, don’t you?”

And of course Chris felt absolutely terrible about the whole thing, even though I kept telling him it wasn’t his fault. It was my dumb idea. But you know what? That particular take was the one that ended up in the film. So when you see Westley fall to the ground and pass out, that’s not acting. That’s an overzealous actor actually losing consciousness.

The next day on set, the cast and crew went out of their way to make sure I was okay. I’m not sure whether I was admired for suffering for my art, or looked upon as a bit of a nut, given that I actually asked another actor to hit me with a real medieval sword. I do know that I already felt like I had become part of a rather large and diverse family, if a bit of a clumsy, accident-prone addition.

On the 26th of October, 1986, we shot part of the sequence where the Man in Black climbs up the fake Cliffs of Insanity back on C Stage at Shepperton. After we wrapped I headed to my dressing room and went about the process of changing from Westley back into Cary. I washed my face, dressed back into my regular clothes, packed up my script bag, and got ready to head home.

I usually like to listen to music when I unwind from a day’s work. And, after Rob told me that Mark Knopfler had agreed to score the movie, I began listening to
Brothers in Arms
by Dire Straits, which had come out only the year before. I recall becoming hooked on the album all over again. And on the title track in particular. Rob told me that Knopfler had only one request before agreeing to do the film: that Rob had to find a way to place Marty DiBergi’s USS
Coral Sea
baseball cap that he wore in
Spinal Tap
somewhere in the movie. Clearly Tom Petty and Sting weren’t the only rock stars who had a special place in their hearts for the mockumentary. For those of you who never spotted it, the hat can be seen on a shelf in Fred Savage’s bedroom.

According to the liner notes on the
Princess Bride
album, Knopfler stated that he “was only kidding about the hat.” But Rob is the kind of guy who loves a challenge. Especially if it’s a fun one.

Just as I was leaving my dressing room in my regular clothes after switching off the tape deck (this was the ’80s, after all), one of the assistant directors came running up to me.

“Cary, sorry,” he said out of breath. “They need you back on the set.”

“Oh. I thought I was wrapped?”

“They need to get one more shot, and they need to do it quickly. Can you get dressed again?”

“Okay. But just let them know it’s going to take a little while,” I said, “as I’ll need to put makeup on again.”

The AD continued breathlessly. “Rob said not to worry about that. It’s a wide shot so no one will notice. They just need you in your costume.”

This sounded a bit strange, but not unusual. On a film it is rare but not out of the ordinary to be called back to set if the director suddenly realizes he needs another shot. Even after you have returned to your
hotel sometimes. So I went into my dressing room, put my costume back on, grabbed my mask, sword, and gloves, and headed back with the AD to the soundstage.

As I walked onto the set, the first thing I noticed was a distinct lack of movement. Everyone was just milling about. They weren’t working. They were just standing there . . . as if waiting for something to happen.

Then everyone turned to face me, revealing what they had actually been hiding—a large cake with
The Man in Black
crafted in icing and lit candles. They all smiled and yelled: