This is Bill Goldman who wrote this and the novel.
It's a little spooky for me right now because I haven't seen this since it came out.
And I remember liking it a lot then and I hope at the end of this, I still do.
The novel was around for a long, long time before it was finally made into a movie...
and I never thought the movie would happen.
And I was wrong.
Now you're gonna cut all this and make me seem intelligent, aren't you?
Isn't that the deal?
It's funny. This scene...
There was a wonderful director named Norman Jewison...
who wanted to do Princess Bride, and we couldn't get the money.
And this sequence now was gonna take place in the Depression in a snowstorm...
and an immigrant family was carrying their sick child up the stairs in a tenement.
And that was how Norman was gonna set up the story.
It's the same frame, it's the same deal. It's just that's how he wanted to do it.
If that makes any sense.
I don't have to say much. I really like this.
[ Laughs ]
We were lucky with Peter Falk.
Well, we wanted... I think originally we thought...
It was not somebody we could get...
but Jimmy Stewart would have been somebody.
And Falk has this wonderful ability because of Columbo.
You just care for him when he walks in.
You understand...
he's someone who's a little dangerous, but he's also someone...
who you're gonna care for.
They were two unbelievably beautiful young people, obviously...
and marvelous in this.
Cary was extremely handsome, and...
and could be funny, as you'll see.
And she was this, just, California kid who'd been in a soap...
called Santa Barbara...
but she had a great ear.
She could do the accent, everything. It was wonderful.
I thought Robin Wright was gonna be the biggest star in the world...
and she didn't wanna be.
She was... had the lead in a huge movie, Robin Hood with Kevin Costner...
and she got pregnant.
And I remember thinking that Barbra Streisand...
does not get pregnant at a time like that.
Robin just... You know, she was in Forrest Gump...
and I think she was the reason for the success of Forrest Gump.
I'm alone in that, but I thought she was so winning...
that you wanted poor dopey Tom Hanks to... to have her.
And now she just... She's a wonderful actress still...
but to be a movie star, you have to want it so terribly.
I wrote a line once about stars.
I said, "Stars have no friends. They have business associates and serfs...
but they get the good table at Spago." And I still think that's true.
[ Grandson ] Is this a kissing book?
[ Goldman ] I always liked that line, "Is this a kissing book?"
I'm a sucker for it.
The great cinematographer Gordon Willis...
who did the Godfathers and Annie Hall and stuff...
I interviewed once, and he said his greatest skill, he felt, was not lighting, particularly.
His greatest skill was remembering...
when you start making a movie what you wanted to come out with.
'Cause when you start and you're in the making of a movie...
and there's no reason for people to know this, it's a huge mess.
There are hundreds of people.
You're under terrible pressure from the studio.
The actor won't come out of his trailer. It's miserable.
Things happen that are better than you thought.
You start saying, "Oh, I like that guy. Let's use him again."
And suddenly, instead of making a movie...
that's supposed to go north, you go northeast.
And Gordon Willis's great skill, he said...
was remembering, "We're supposed to go north, and that's not that."
And that sounds probably nutty and useless...
but it's very hard to make a quality movie.
Every time you come out with one, it's a miracle...
'cause everything is conspiring against you.
The sheep going across that bridge...
we were wondering how we were gonna make them do that...
and they just belted across the bridge, I think, without being told.
And that was why I remember Rob laughing and saying...
"That's why they have the expression 'You're as much a follower as a sheep."'
'Cause they do that.
[ Humperdinck ] My people...
a month from now, our country will have its 500th anniversary.
On that sundown, I shall marry a lady...
who was once a commoner like yourselves.
But perhaps you will not find her common now.
Would you like to meet her?
[ Goldman ] For budding screenwriters...
it was hard to say "you may not find her common now"...
because one word ending with an "N" and the next word beginning with an "N"...
it came out like "commonow," so it was difficult.
I should have written a different line.
She's really good in this, isn't she?
[ Goldman Chuckles ]
We were very lucky with this trio.
Wally Shawn came in to read in New York.
And there were about four or five of us sitting in a room.
It was Robin, Andy Scheinman, the producer, and I was there.
And he... he opened the door and peeked in and saw the number of people...
and he said, "Oh. Oh, my."
And then he closed the door. He was gone.
Then we got him, and he came in and he read.
He has this marvelous... He has a little speech thing that's just marvelous.
André was the most popular figure I've ever been around a movie with in 35 years.
People just were appealed to by him.
Part of it was because he was so sweet and so huge.
It was hard finding a giant to play the part.
I wanted André, 'cause I used to go to wrestling matches...
during the years when I thought the movie would never happen, to see André.
And he was always wrestling, and we couldn't get him to read...
so we'd have big people come in.
[ Montoya ] Fezzik, are there rocks ahead?
[ Fezzik ] If there are, we'll all be dead.
[ Vizzini ] No more rhymes! Now I mean it!
[ Fezzik ] Anybody want a peanut?
[ Goldman ] I love that. It's not me. I just love it, the "peanut" line.
Anyway...
it was the weirdest casting I've ever been in...
because these guys came in...
pro football players would come in and would, like, be 6'8 "-6'9", 270...
and they were way too small...
and then giants would come in, and we had one giant who was too thin.
He was a skinny giant, and he did us no good.
And we said we could give him a huge costume to make him seem big...
and then we decided not to have a giant who was too thin for the part...
and then, fortunately, we found André.
The movie... The book was written in '73...
and, in '74, Twentieth Century Fox decided to make the movie...
but they weren't sure if it was a movie, so we struck a strange deal...
which is they bought the book and I owned the screenplay.
And they would buy the screenplay if they decided to make the movie.
And what happened was they sent me to London...
where a wonderful gentleman named Richard Lester...
an American from Philadelphia who had done the Beatles' movies, was living.
And I went and did a draft...
I did a draft for myself, then I did a draft for them with Lester...
and the studio had liked it.
And we would have come out in 1975, but the studio head got fired.
And when that happens and the new studio head comes in...
he has determined that anything the old studio head made...
or "green lit" as they say, would never get made...
'cause if it did get made and it was a hit...
people would snicker at him knowing it wasn't his movie.
Sneaking... The squeaking eels, by the way, are because of budget.
We would have had much more, but we had very little money to make this movie...
so the special effects are not what they would be under different conditions.
Anyway, the movie almost got made two or three, four times...
and people kept getting fired.
I did something I'm very proud of. I bought the book back, so I owned it all.
And...
Oh, I like this scene.
She doesn't get eaten by the eels at this time.
- What? - The eel doesn't get her.
I'm explaining to you because you look nervous.
I wasn't nervous.
Well, maybe I was a little bit concerned, but that's not the same thing.
Because we can stop now if you want.
[ Goldman ] After Butch Cassidy came out in 1970, I guess, '69...
I decided to try and write nonfiction, which I'd never written...
so I wrote a book about the Broadway theater called The Season.
And I saw everything that came on Broadway that year...
and Carl Reiner, Rob's father...
had a wonderful comedy called Something Different, which I wrote about.
And after, Princess Bride... Carl and I became good acquaintances...
and after Princess Bride, I sent it to him and he gave it to Rob...
who was then younger, and said, "Here's something you might like."
And after Rob's first couple of movies...
Spinal Tap and he'd just finished shooting Sure Thing...
he was looking for something else.
And he and Andy Scheinman remembered this and they decided to do it.
And Norman Lear...
gave us $16 million, which was all that...
which was not much money for a special effects movie, but we got through it.
Norman Lear gave Rob that much money, and that was it.
It's very spooky because a lot of the special effects are what they are.
I mean, if it had been a Spielberg film, you would have had...
you would have had the cliff and this and that. We didn't have that.
We just had to get it up and it's okay, I think here, because it...
it's not about the climbing of the cliff.
That's... Well, it's about what happens...
you know, and on and on and on, but it's...
No. It cost exactly that.
And if he had given us 10, we would have made it for 10.
I don't know what you would have done.
I don't know how you'd do it. I'm not involved with the budget.
Well, at one point, they basically...
When Westley's in trouble in the machine, at one point, there's a whole sequence...
when they go down through the Zoo of Death...
and have all kinds of fights, and the original draft of the script...
that was all there, but we simply had no money...
so they just suddenly find him, zap. It's all...
I mean, this is not...
This is not the world's greatest special effect you're looking at now.
And... But we didn't have the money. This is what we had.
I don't know who it is climbing. A lot of it's...
No. I don't know if they're climbing at all.
I don't know how they did it, and maybe the rope's being pulled up.
I mean, I know it can't be... You can't risk the actors in a stunt like that...
'cause if it goes badly, your whole movie stops.
So I suspect that's not Cary either.
It may not even be a cliff, the way movies are done.
I have no idea.
The sword fight, which is coming up, was something quite remarkable for the actors.
Rob had planned, I think, to use all kinds of stuntmen and whatever.
And Mandy Patinkin and Cary Elwes...
whenever there was a break and they weren't on the set...
they would go outside and they would fence with a teacher, is my memory.
And they would fence for hours.
And they got good enough so there's only one, I think, trick shot in the thing.
It's all them, except for one shot.
He didn't fall? Inconceivable.
You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
[ Goldman ] One of my favorite lines.
I was there for some casting of Buttercup, and some casting of the giant.
I was there... I was around for some casting.
No. For the most part, that's not...
You know, you say what you want to say when the actor's out of hearing...
and then it's a matter of, basically...
who can you get, who's available, who can you afford...
who's free then.
You know, we didn't know at this point what schedule we'd have, I don't think.
Maybe we did. I don't know.
But it's... No. I never heard the cast read until the first day of rehearsal in London.
I'm trying to think, 'cause there was... Stars disappear, and there is...
You know, they have their few years on top and then they're gone.
And those people you want, suddenly you don't want anymore...
because the studio decides, "Well, we don't want to pay that much money for so-and-so.
They're dead now," whatever it is.
You know, for women, it's brutal in Hollywood...
'cause the minute they hit 40, it's over.
Very rare that a female star can basically survive past that age.
I mean, $16 million is almost a low-budget movie now.
And when we made it, obviously it was more money than it is now, but it was still...
It's a very inexpensive film for what it is.
I mean, there's a lot of stuff in it, and...
No. We couldn't afford stars.
I don't know if we'd gotten...
If we'd gotten Schwarzenegger, could we have afforded him to play Fezzik?
I don't know.
Mandy's just wonderful in this. He really had the emotional...
Well, what you did... what you do in this...
There's a narrative in this sword fight.
We know so far that Mandy's gonna fight left-handed.
And so what happens in the first part of the sword fight...
is that Mandy fights left-handed and is beginning to lose...
and then he changes hands.
And Westley is also left-handed.
And then when Westley is about to lose, it turns out he's not left-handed either.
So there's a narrative to keep it going.
That gave me a great deal of confidence when I was trying to write this.
I did a lot of research on the various words, the various moves...
the various things people did in fencing, and...
none of it matters if you don't care, but I thought this worked nicely.
This is a big line coming up now.
Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya.
You killed my father.
Prepare to die.
[ Goldman ] Mandy told me once that... He's a fabulous singer.
It's one of the freak voices, and he gives concerts and stuff...
and at the end, when he's doing colleges...
for his curtain calls, he would say, "All right. I'll say it once."
And he would say, with the accent...
"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
And he's marvelous in this.
But this is... I think you'll see it's mostly them.
I mean, that's hard.
I can remember them outside the studio, outside the soundstage where the...
I think it was where the Fire Swamp was...
...the Bonetti's defense against me, uh?
There is a Bonetti's defense.
And there is a...
There's also a Capo Ferro.
Anyway, you'd go in... you'd go to the soundstage and they'd be there...
the two of them practicing, practicing, practicing this stuff.
That's not Mandy.
There's also a lot of talking in the sword fight, which helped me.
[ Goldman Chuckles ]
Fairbanks and Errol Flynn, I mean it's like...
I love this stuff. We used to have more of this when I was a kid.
I don't know, basically, that they were terrific fencers when they...
They worked at this. They really did.
They got... They got really good, and they just did hours of this stuff.
And you can see, it's quite remarkable. It's all them except for the flips.
I mean, look at that.
What happened was, when Rob Reiner and Andy Scheinman finally found him...
in the Ritz Hotel and they read him, I mean, he was unintelligible.
But he's so physically fabulous for the part that they gambled.
And Rob, I believe, made a tape of all of André's lines.
And we didn't shoot for six months after André was cast.
He was wrestling around the world.
And Rob made a tape and André learned his lines by rote, as it were.
So he's really... This is the most intelligible you're gonna have André.
André was so big... He was, like, 7'5", 550.
He didn't know how big he was.
All that he knew was...
He had a house in North Carolina, I think, near Duke University, that he had built...
which had gigantic high ceilings and big doorways...
so he didn't hit himself constantly.
He said once that he'd gotten, I think, pneumonia or flu...
and he went to the hospital at Duke University.
He'd lost a hundred pounds in three weeks.
But he didn't... I mean, he was... he was so big, when I...
He showed me a photograph of himself when he was 17...
and he was very handsome and about 6'8".
Big kid, but not a giant. Then the giant thing kicked in...
and he doubled in size between when he was 17 and when he was 25.
But the biggest thing about him were his hands.
You can't believe how massive they were.
I'll tell the story about Mandy slapping him...
when they come to the scene where it happened. Okay?
There's a scene at the end...
when Robin jumps out of a window into his arms...
and the way they staged it, they had her, literally, a foot above André.
And she dropped, and Robin was a very light creature and André's...
I remember, he got this... his knees buckled...
he almost fell to the ground, and he went pale like paper...
'cause his back was in terrible shape then.
And, eventually... He died at 46.
But he knew he was gonna die.
He said to Billy Crystal, "We do not live long, the big and the small."
And he knew he was gonna die and he was gonna die young...
and he never whined about it.
I owned it and there was interest in it, and I wouldn't give it except to certain people.
I mean, Norman Jewison I'd known for a long time, had great faith in.
And I got a call from my agent about Rob Reiner...
and I had not seen Spinal Tap.
And Sure Thing had not... was about to test.
My agent said, "Don't do it," and I said I'd meet with him.
But first I ought to see Spinal Tap.
And I... I went to see it. I had it screened in a room in midtown.
And it was so funny, I just shrieked out loud laughing.
And, basically, I thought, "Yeah. He's the guy."
And then... It was a great decision on my part.
They're both an odd blend. Rob can be very funny.
And Rob was a comic and has done a lot of comedy...
but he's very good at finding that level of reality.
Like, Spinal Tap has a double reality, doesn't it?
It's a beautiful spot, isn't it?
It was all filmed, I think... I want to say around Sheffield, England.
One of the reasons I was able to write this sequence...
I told you confidence is everything?
I knew both glasses were poisoned.
So I... Basically, it gave me great confidence...
in being able to fiddle around with it.
It's just basically... I still see him coming in the door...
saying, "Oh, my" and closing the door.
He was so unlike what we thought, but he's so smart.
He's a wonderful writer, successful playwright.
His father was the great, great editor of the New Yorker, William Shawn...
for many decades.
And it's just the mix of the three of them, I think is wonderful.
He's very bright. You can see that. He can do... You know.
I have to watch this. I'm sorry.
You have a dizzying intellect.
- Well, wait till I get going. Where was I? - Australia.
Yes, Australia. And you must have suspected...
I would've known the powder's origin...
so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
- You're just stalling now. - You'd like to think that, wouldn't you?
You've beaten my giant, which means you're exceptionally strong.
So you could've put the poison in your own goblet...
trusting on your strength to save you, so I can clearly not choose...
[ Goldman ] I worked so hard on this to try and see that it made sense.
You get "I cannot choose the wine here. I cannot choose the wine there."
So you would've put the poison as far from yourself as possible...
so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
[ Goldman ] I'm sorry. It's so feeble.
Two of the great figures of my time, George Roy Hill and Elia Kazan...
great directors both, both said the same thing to me...
which is that your work is done your first day of rehearsal.
By which they meant, if you've prepared the script properly...
and cast it properly, and cast the crew properly...
you had a chance to have something of quality.
If you made a mistake there, you were dead.
In other words, as I look at these kids now and the actors now...
who I haven't seen in 15 years, I don't want to mess around with anybody.
They're all just swell. And if we'd done anything...
I'm not saying they're the only actors who could have played these parts.
What I'm saying is, I think they're proper, as well as being talented...
and if we had made a mistake in casting...
I think, for example, one of the things André did for us...
is he's so huge and so unusual looking...
that there's a fairy tale thing to him.
I don't think people have ever seen anybody as big as André the Giant...
and there's a whole feel of fairy tale about this that we were very lucky with.
I mean, Wally Shawn being... They're a lovely trio, you know.
And the two kids... I don't know.
And then with Billy Crystal...
coming up on the horizon, it's really a neat cast.
"Neat" is my word for the night. It's a terrific cast.
Norman was basically around in the '80s.
In the '70s, I don't know that Dick Lester and I...
ever got to talking about who was gonna be in it.
It probably would have been some of the people...
that Lester used in The Three Musketeers.
I don't know. I mean, a lot depends...
The decision in the casting here... Rob's very good on this.
In Misery, for example, the Kathy Bates part, which won the Oscar...
Rob was pretty much convinced that that ought to be played by an unknown...
because, in the movie, she is an unknown.
Misery is the story of a famous writer...
who gets rescued in a terrible snowstorm by a nurse.
And she saves his life, and it turns out she's crazy.
And, in the end, bad things happen to them.
What was interesting about Misery, a lot of it...
What was interesting about Misery was the casting...
because I wrote it for Kathy Bates.
And I said to Rob, "I'm writing this for Kathy Bates, who's a fabulous Broadway actress."
And he said, "Oh, she's great. We'll use her."
That's how she got the part. Great Kathy Bates story.
Kathy never had a lead, I don't think, in a movie.
And Rob brought her in...
and said, "You've got the part."
And she said, "I've got the part?" He said, "That's right."
And she said, "The Annie part, I've got that part."
Rob said, "You've got that part."
She said, "Annie, the lead in Misery." Rob said, "That's right. You're Annie."
And she said, "And it's all set and everything?"
And Rob said, "It's all set."
And then she paused and said, "Can I tell my mother?"
I love that. It's one of the great... Rob tells it. It's one of the great true stories.
The great thing about that was Castle Rock is a small studio.
If we had been at a major studio... Clearly, the part of Annie is a terrific part.
Kathy Bates won the Oscar for it. I don't mean that arrogantly.
It's the lead in a two-character movie. She gets to do all kinds of nutty stuff.
A studio, a major studio would have said... We could have had anybody, I believe.
A major studio would have said, "Cast"...
I don't know who... Glenn Close, Meryl Streep.
I don't know that we could have had them. We never went to them.
And the reason we didn't was there's... For example, there's a scene in it where...
Jimmy Caan, the lead, is a writer, a novelist, and she wants him to burn his book...
which is the thing on earth he least wants to do.
And he's crippled in bed, and he says, "I don't want to do it."
And she says, "Fine. I love you.
I would never ask you to do anything on earth you wouldn't want.
Forget I asked. It's over. It's done."
And while she's saying that, she's flicking lighter fluid on the bed.
And since you didn't know who Kathy Bates was...
there was the thought, we hoped, in the audience's mind...
that she might incinerate him.
Whereas, we knew if it was one of those other wonderful actresses...
I said, "Meryl Streep's not gonna blow anybody up. She's not gonna do that."
The other thing with Jimmy Caan.
We couldn't get an actor to play that part...
'cause male stars don't want to play at anyone's mercy...
and especially at the mercy of a woman.
We couldn't cast it. I have a list somewhere.
We went through every conceivable male star and no one would play it.
And the great thing, from my point of view, if this had been a studio picture...
the studio would have said...
"Well, this script must suck or we would have gotten somebody."
And Rob said, "No. The script is fine."
And he understood that stars don't want to do that.
And, uh...
I mean, I'm just... The people who didn't want to do it are just incredible.
But it's an odd thing.
The making of a movie, the casting of something is so...
There's no reason for you out there to know this...
because when you see a movie, you see the people who are in the movie.
You can't imagine, "Well, it didn't have to be that guy. It could have been that guy."
Or 20 other guys or women.
And when you're casting, you don't really know...
See, if this had been a major studio, they probably would have insisted on a star...
to try and get their money back, which is madness...
'cause they don't know if they can get their money back.
So I mean, this is... I'm just looking at Robin and Cary.
They're the right ages. You know, they're young.
You know, I think he was 23 or four and she was 20.
Or whatever they were. I mean, they're just...
They're just swell, and you didn't have to deal with a star.
But I think, in this case, we cast this properly.
I mean, that's a wonderful-looking, you know, young couple.
This set was so magical.
It was this whole soundstage, at, I think, Shepperton Studios.
It's just... It's just this wonderful thing. We used to just love to be in it.
And you'd have various places you could sit around on roots and stuff.
I mean, it was a big set.
This is our big... This is our big expensive number, folks.
And it's just terrific.
It was just a great set. I loved it.
I screw things up.
I'm not around the set much. I don't want to be around the set much.
There's a shot coming up where they're walking...
and there's a spurt of flame and her dress is on fire.
Which is... I wrote it in the book...
and I wrote it in all the versions of the screenplay.
And I knew... I made it up.
And they're shooting this shot...
and it's a big thing with a big cast.
And the minute the flame spurt happened, and her dress went in flames...
I screamed, "Her dress is on fire."
Totally destroying the shot.
They had to cut it.
And I think Rob turned to me and said, "Bill, it's supposed to be on fire."
It was an amazingly stupid thing on my part.
It's just when I look at it now...
I was just standing there by the camera, and I screamed, "Her dress is on fire."
Which is one reason I'm not around movies very much when they shoot.
One of the things... I'm just watching this now.
I think all those vines were, like...
They were attached by tape, I think is what...
I mean, it was all this great huge...
I mean, this is not a big set for a Spielberg-Lucas set...
but for us, this was.
And they were able to move around it and stuff.
It just is wonderful.
Three years he said that. "Good night, Westley. Good work.
Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning."
It was a fine time for me. I was learning to fence, to fight...
anything anyone would teach me.
And Roberts and I eventually became friends.
- And then it happened. - What?
Go on.
Well, Roberts had grown so rich he wanted to retire...
so he took me to his cabin and told me his secret.
"I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts," he said.
"My name is Ryan. I inherited the ship from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts...
just as you will inherit it from me.
The man I inherited it from was not the real Dread Pirate Roberts either.
His name was Cumberbund.
The real Roberts has been retired 15 years...
and living like a king in Patagonia." Thank you.
Then he explained the name was the important thing...
for inspiring the necessary fear.
[ Goldman ] I think this speech hasn't changed from the first day.
It always was that with those names, 'cause it was this nutty notion of Roberts.
I think there's a certain reality that basically...
If you didn't know who Blackbeard was...
and everybody said, "Oh, my God. That's Blackbeard"...
you would assume it was.
So I think, basically, that psychologically it's valid.
So I mean, the screenplay was written 28 years ago and the movie...
You know, the screenplay was around for a dozen years before the movie ever shot.
It kept changing, but it was essentially the same.
When I talk about the Jewison opening, the despair of the Depression.
No. I think it's pretty close. I mean, it's my screenplay, so...
And I didn't want to mess with it much.
This was no fun for them, 'cause there was...
You got sand in your face.
Mind you don't... It's not the audience's point of view.
When the R.O.U.S.'s attack in a minute...
and Westley fights them, you have to decide...
how much blood... how bloody is the scene gonna be.
And what's hard about that is... I mean, you can do it five different ways.
We didn't. We just did, I think, what we had.
But it's a matter of how... You're going for a certain tone.
This is not a bloodbath movie. This is a fairy tale.
Theoretically, what we were trying to do was appeal to both kids and grown-ups.
Blah, blah, blah.
And you could have made it a great deal gorier than it is, etc. etc.
It's just tricky.
But I remember there was a long discussion as to how bloody it should be.
It's one of those things people in the movie business are constantly talking about.
'Cause if you have to reshoot it, it's tricky, 'cause the set is gone.
Yes, I was there for this shoot again.
We're getting into it now. We're getting into the blood thing I was talking about.
Yes. That's a guy in there.
It's a very small guy, whatever.
And when you're doing a movie...
you have to remind yourself... you have to say it's not silly.
Great wound on Cary's shoulder, I think, coming up.
Now I have to remember. Do we have any blood at all when the R.O.U.S. dies?
I can't remember.
That was the discussion.
When you're dealing with a horse in a movie...
A great producer, a line producer, once said to me, "Sonny."
This was many years ago.
"Never do a movie with WAAK." And I said, "What's WAAK?"
And he said, "Water, animals, airplanes or kids."
Animals are a problem, because when you...
There was a shot of the two Chris's sitting there on their horses.
If the horse moves, it ruins the shot.
People he knew... Chris Guest, he knew, obviously.
Billy Crystal, he knew. I think Carol Kane, he knew.
I think he knew Mandy Patinkin. I mean, it...
Who we had to cast...
We had to find these two, 'cause they had to be unknown.
And... And André.
There's a piece of nice storytelling here.
This is what I mean.
You have six fingers on your right hand.
Someone was looking for you.
[ Goldman ] This is the Pit of Despair in the movie.
In the novel, it's the Zoo of Death. Again, budgetary reasons.
We didn't have the money for the animals for the Zoo...
so we didn't use it.
This is another terrific set, I think.
In the Zoo of Death...
trying to get...
Fezzik and Inigo are trying to find...
At the bottom of the Zoo of Death, they're trying to find Westley.
And each floor, something attacks them. The biggest snake that ever happened...
It's all awful, one floor after another, and they save each other.
And finally, they're at a staircase where there's nothing.
They're going down from floor to floor, and there's a challenge each place.
And there's nothing, and they know there's something awful, and there is.
There's a tiny deadly spider by the doorknob...
and Fezzik kicks it open, 'cause he's panicked.
But we couldn't do that.
That was all, as I said there. It was a big...
In terms of screenwriting, we were right to cut it.
'Cause what you care about...
Even though Westley's dead, what you care about is getting on with it.
I am now thinking about, "Is that proper storytelling?"
Yeah. He's dead, so you can take a long time getting there...
but we didn't have the money for it.
This is an English comic named Mel Smith, who Rob knew.
[ Grandfather] The king died that very night.
And before the following dawn, Buttercup and Humperdinck were married.
And at noon, she met her subjects again, this time as their queen.
My father's final words were...
[ Grandson] Hold it. Hold it, Grandpa.
You read that wrong. She doesn't marry Humperdinck.
[ Goldman ] I love the moment when the kid says, "You read that"...
In the book, they have a bigger fight.
In the book, and it was originally written this way...
the kid gets really upset with the grandfather, and the grandfather leaves.
He says, "Get out. I don't want to hear any more of this."
And then later the grandfather comes back.
You can't do that in a movie, 'cause it breaks tension.
I am glad I was not around for the casting of the Booer.
[ Woman ] Boo!
[ Goldman ] You'll see the lady who boos in a moment.
'Cause I assume they just listened to people coming in and booing for hours.
We should all look like that when we wake up, right?
After a nightmare.
You're coming to Robin's... My favorite line reading of Robin's...
which is "It comes to this."
I don't know why I love it.
It comes to this.
[ Goldman ] I love that.
It's odd, but when I hired Vizzini...
to have her murdered on our engagement day...
I thought that was clever, but it's going to be so much more moving...
when I strangle her on our wedding night.
Once Guilder is blamed, the nation will be truly outraged.
They'll demand we go to war.
[ Goldman ] That's called "exposition"...
for anybody who wants to know what that is.
And you want to get through it as quickly as possible.
I'm so thrilled it ever got made because I thought for so many years...
it would never get made...
and I look at it without a great deal of objectivity.
I don't know who buys it and who watches...
Kids do, I know. I know kids love it.
And I think their parents must, 'cause they watch it with them.
That's the hope.
And teenage girls and all that stuff. I don't know.
I don't know. For me... So, you know, it's just...
I don't like what I write and I really like this...
so, I mean, it has a very special place in my...
in my lexicon of stuff.
I just...
There's a thing in the book that you can send in...
for the reunion scene of Westley and Buttercup.
And there... I mean, tens of thousands of people over the years, I think...
Well over 10,000 people have sent in asking for it.
It's very strange.
The publisher never thought anybody would send in.
But it has a very strong appeal, and I'm thrilled for that.
John Patrick Shanley, who won an Oscar for a brilliant film called Moonstruck...
and is a friend...
said about the machine scene, the torturing scene...
he said, between that and the "Is it safe?" thing in Marathon Man...
he thought if there was a torture scene to be written...
he thought I was probably as sick as anybody around to write one.
I don't know where any of that comes from.
I never thought when I was writing this I would kill Westley.
And...
I was going to my office one day when he was in the machine...
and I didn't know how I was going to get him out.
I didn't know how to rescue him.
And I, basically, did what I always do when I start work.
I read sports sections and drink coffee.
And then I realized he was gonna die.
And I remember I wrote the words, "Westley lay dead by the machine."
And I just stared at them. I couldn't believe I'd done it. And I...
This is something that's only happened once...
in over 45 years of storytelling.
I burst into totally unexpected hysterical tears over what I'd done...
and I ran to put water on my face.
I can still see my face.
It was all red, and tears poured down.
I didn't know what I had done...
but I knew I had touched myself terribly in this book...
and I don't know what that means, or why.
I never really wanted to.
But it was... This is a very important book for me...
for reasons I cannot explain.
This is a moment for screenwriters when, again, you're dealing with exposition.
And you want to get through this as quickly as you can...
because nothing matters now but rescuing Westley.
And the only people who can rescue Westley are Fezzik and Inigo...
and there's a surprise coming up, so you want to get to them as fast as you can.
Look at the size of André's hands. I mean, it's just...
We were rehearsing this scene the first day in a hotel in London.
And as I mentioned...
André had learned the script by heart.
And they were rehearsing.
They were rehearsing, and they had come to this scene.
And André was sitting, and Mandy was standing and walking around.
And...
Mandy gave André his line, and André gave his reading.
It was very rote and very slow.
And André wanted... Mandy wanted more speed.
And he kept saying, "Faster, Fezzik, faster."
And they'd do it again and again.
And André would do the same line the same slow way.
And then Mandy, suddenly and startlingly said, "Faster, Fezzik"...
and slapped André in the face.
I think they just met that day.
And there was this sound in this room.
We all were stunned, 'cause I don't think André had been slapped...
since he was a little boy.
And his eyes went wide...
and I think I thought he must have thought...
"Oh. This is how you do it outside the ring. Let's try it for a while."
And he got faster and he got better.
And his lines got, you know...
That's one of the high points for me on this movie was, as I sit here...
seeing André's face when Mandy hit him.
Because no one had the least idea...
And I don't know why Mandy thought it would be a good idea...
because André, even though his back was bad at that point...
was still one of the strongest men on the planet.
And if he'd gotten angry, you don't know what he would have done.
But he just was very happy.
He would never talk...
André would never talk about wrestling being fake.
Because in those days, it... They hadn't legally admitted it was fake.
All he would ever say... But he would wrestle 300 times a year.
All he would ever say was that...
And he would never see who he was wrestling.
He would never see them before the match.
And if... He always said that if he thought the other man might be on drugs, that he...
He ended the match immediately. I mean, pin him immediately.
And the crowd would boo 'cause it would be...
like, a five-second wrestling match they'd paid for.
But he just thought... In his prime...
250 and 300-pound men would jump off ring ropes...
and he would catch them easily.
And... But that's all a matter of strength and timing.
And...
I have a great André story.
Schwarzenegger... I think strong guys all know each other.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is shooting, I think, the first Conan in Mexico City...
and André is wrestling, and...
Arnold Schwarzenegger goes to see him. There's 25,000 screaming fans.
After he's pinned his man...
André gestures for Schwarzenegger to come up into the ring.
And he says, "I speak Spanish. They want you to pose.
Take off your shirt. Take a pose."
So, he leaves Schwarzenegger alone in the ring...
and Schwarzenegger is posing like an idiot...
and then he goes back to his friends.
And it had all been a put-on.
They didn't want to see him pose at all, and they di...
It was just one of those things that André did.
He...
André always paid for meals.
And they were eating together several times...
and André always paid.
And Schwarzenegger decided he had to pay.
So, he excused himself from the table.
And Schwarzenegger's a big man.
And he went into the kitchen where the ca... maître d' was...
and he started to pay for the meal.
I love this story.
When Schwarzenegger told me this story...
Schwarzenegger's a big guy. He's, like, 6'1 ", 250, whatever it is.
And when he was telling me this story about... He was talking.
André came up behind him and lifted him up, and went like that.
And he felt himself being lifted up like a toy and spun.
And there was André who had him off the ground...
and André said, "I pay."
And he carried him back out of the kitchen...
plopped him back on his seat, and that was it.
This wonderful thing.
And that was in reference to how strong was André.
And Schwarzenegger had said...
"He's very strong."
And if Schwarzenegger tells me someone's very strong, I believe it.
I mean, Patinkin's a big man.
He's over six feet, I think.
[ Chuckles ] Absurd.
This is a sweet moment because it's so emotional.
And he says, "Please, Father, help me," and then it doesn't work.
Then he finds the knot by luck. It's nice.
I think Rob had him find the knot by luck.
See, that's really swell, isn't it? It's a nice...
I think... I'm sure it's Rob who had the idea that his head hits the knot.
And then this was the Zoo of Death.
This was, like, 25 pages, I think, of all kinds of action.
He's dead.
[ Grandson] Grandpa, Grandpa, wait.
Wait. What did Fezzik mean, "He's dead"?
[ Goldman ] This is the big moment for me in the book and the movie.
I just love that. I just think that's...
Fred Savage is so good in this scene.
He's so wonderful in that scene...
because he's reaching out toward Peter Falk...
and he's saying, "It's okay," or whatever his line is...
and his hand is just moving.
He's so touching in that thing.
I don't know. I just thought it was terrific...
and I hope your viewers do too.
The king's stinking son fired me...
and thank you so much for bringing up such a painful subject.
While you're at it, why don't you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it?
We're closed!
[ Goldman ] So, a lot of this... I mean, Miracle Max with the paper...
Some of this stuff is Billy. The paper cut.
It's, it's... It was there, you know. It was there in the book.
It's there... It just was part of it.
I just thought Miracle Max was...
I guess I had Max all the way too.
I guess that's why I was able...
I guess that was why Westley was able to die.
But it's...
I mean, if this movie was ever remade...
which it will never be, I don't imagine, but if it was ever remade...
since they now know certain parts score, okay...
it would not be hard to find somebody to play Miracle Max.
You could get... You could get Jim Carrey to play Miracle Max...
or whoever the big comedy star is gonna be in 15 years.
'Cause it's a terrific little part. It's a week of your life.
You get to do a lot of funny stuff, and people love you.
And you could cast it around. You could cast...
Or you could cast the Tom Cruise of his time as the...
as Cary Elwes.
And it would cost a huge amount of money.
It would cost a huge amount of money.
But I thought it worked here and was wonderful.
Great line coming up.
This is Billy's line that Carol says.
The chocolate coating makes it go down easier.
But you have to wait 15 minutes for full potency.
And you shouldn't go in swimming after for at least... what?
- An hour. A good hour. - Yeah, an hour.
[ Goldman ] Not to go in swimming. [ Chuckles ]
That's just a brilliant comedy line.
I think Cary's wonderful when he's dead.
I mean, the way he falls around, and stuff.
The physical ability he's got here is marvelous.
And when he's walking later, or trying to.
When they work, I think movies are magical.
It's like the theater.
When the theater works, it's better than anything.
It doesn't work very often. It's hard.
No one sets out to make a flop.
No one... I mean...
It's just hard to know.
Nobody has the least idea what's gonna work...
which is why I always love it when people say after it's over...
"Oh, you knew that was gonna be a big hit because it was Adam Sandler in it."
Wait a minute. Nobody went to see Little Nicky.
Why didn't they? I don't know why.
They have all kinds of reasons why.
I have no idea why they didn't go to see that.
Why is everybody going to see Jim Carrey in The Grinch...
and not "X" other wonderful Jim...
It's strange. There's no predicting.
It's a total crapshoot. Movies are a total crapshoot.
The media does not say that.
The media pretends there is a logic to it, that it's a real business.
We'll make this hot dog and sell enough and we'll be Nathan's.
It doesn't work that... It doesn't work that way.
My dearest friend on earth, now dead, Ed Neisser...
was a money manager in Chicago.
I know nothing about the stock market.
And I... We were having dinner, and I said, "Why did the market go down today?"
And he said, "Because, Billy, it didn't go up."
And I said, "Don't humor me." He said, "I'm not.
That's the truth. No one knows why a market behaves that"...
But he said, "We in the business can't tell you that.
So, we say it went up or down on news of profit this...
or bad news in Asia, or an earthquake in India, so the market went down."
There's no logic to anything. There's no logic in the movie business.
There's no logic as to what people will go to see or what they won't go to see.
It's always a crapshoot.
This is one of the great comic minds of the century, Peter Cook...
who plays the...
this figure with the speech impediment.
With the lisp.
"Mawwiage."
"Mawwiage" is what "bwings" us together today.
[ Goldman ] I'm sorry. He's just so funny.
That "dweam" within a "dweam."
[ Goldman ] That line comes from a Chicago rabbi.
When I was a little boy, I think I was at a wedding...
and a rabbi said, "A dweam within a dweam."
And I got the giggles.
And it was not a great thing to do.
But I swear that's where that came from...
for any of you historically interested Chicagoans.
I can't think of the man's name.
A very famous Chicago rabbi.
[ Chuckling ] Anybody who knows what that was, please speak up now.
That was André being...
Well, it's tricky. You're right here.
You're going from the, you know...
you're going from the minister with a speech impediment...
to people in flames, and all this stuff, and is it funny or isn't it funny?
When we came out, the studio...
We tested the second highest of any movie the year we came out...
behind Back to the Future.
I tell you, it was one of those things where it was so despair-making.
We had real hopes when we tested in front of audiences...
which is one of the things you do out there.
They loved it. They loved it.
And ordinarily, that means a gigantic hit.
Some the people did go to... I don't mean it was a...
I don't mean it was a flop, and we weren't.
We were what they call in their terminology a "double"...
which means we did fine.
We weren't a big hit until we got to cassette.
We weren't that important.
You know, we were... We had our dates.
We had all that stuff, and this trailer comes out...
And the book was successful, but not really successful.
And the... You know, it was one of those things where...
I saw the trailer's gonna be here.
It would be interesting to put it in here if you can.
They had no idea how to sell it.
They didn't know, basically, was it... You're watching Mandy with his sword...
They didn't know was it a swashbuckler, was it funny, was it a romance.
It's all these things mixing.
As a rule, when you mix genres in movies, you're in trouble.
See, I mean, if you... It's really nutty.
You've got a dead hero...
and a giant, and you've got a...
I mean, it's a nutty thing. And the girl's about to kill herself.
What is it?
There was a story... I wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
At the first sneak, George Roy Hill, who directed it so wonderfully...
was in despair 'cause the audience laughed too much.
And we were mixing genres there too, and he said...
And he consciously cut lots of laughs out of the movie.
Here you're dealing with a strange thing.
Now, people will say, "I want something like Princess Bride."
Meaning "Get me something that mixes"...
But at the time it came out, we didn't know...
They didn't know what in the world we were...
and they had no idea how to sell us, and they didn't sell us.
And it was not out of malice. They weren't trying to bury us.
They loved the movie. They just didn't know what to do with it.
And it just... Even as you look at it now, it's an odd movie.
And I'm just thrilled that it's...
I'm thrilled it got made. I mean, that's a big deal for me.
This is my theory. I've said it to you before.
Movies are successes because people like them.
Movies are failures because people don't like them.
Everything else is mythology.
All the stuff you read about why this movie is a hit and this movie is a flop... total bull.
They have no idea before a movie opens what's gonna happen.
And this movie, people that went to it loved it...
and they would tell their friends.
For me, the best movie of this year is You Can Count on Me.
If I tell enough people, when it comes out on cassette, they might rent it...
'cause they heard it was good.
And again, here, enough people went around...
and, basically, talked about this movie.
They just didn't want to go see it.
And by the time it came out in cassettes...
it was the hit that it should have been, I think, when it was in theaters.
Which is always... We're very lucky this all happened...
because when you have a movie that you like...
and it doesn't find the audience you hoped for...
it's heartbreaking, 'cause you don't get it that many times.
And we're very lucky this thing happened.
I mean, here we are, 2001, doing a DVD...
about a movie I wrote in 1973.
And the movie happened in 19... what... '86?
And now we are all... And kids are watching it.
You know, little kids are saying, you know, "My name is Inigo Montoya." It's wonderful.
[ Chuckling ] No, it's really odd.
I mean, it's basically...
I mean, this is a big moment, though, for me.
I love this. I love Mandy.
No comment on that scene. That's really...
Nothing moves me as much on earth as stupid courage.
And that's the moment... Here is this guy who's bloody...
and he's done this whole 20-year stupid quest...
and finally, he gets his revenge, and it's just marvelous for me.
- To the death. - [ Westley ] No!
To the pain.
I don't think I'm quite familiar with that phrase.
I'll explain. And I'll use small words, so that you'll be sure to understand...
you warthog-faced buffoon.
That may be the first time in my life...
a man has dared insult me.
It won't be the last.
"To the pain" means the first thing you lose will be your feet, below the ankles.
Then your hands at the wrists. Next, your nose.
And then my tongue, I suppose.
I killed you too quickly the last time...
a mistake I don't mean to duplicate tonight.
[ Westley ] I wasn't finished!
The next thing you lose will be your left eye, followed by your right.
And then my ears. I understand. Let's get on with it.
Wrong! Your ears you keep, and I'll tell you why.
So that every shriek of every child at seeing your hideousness...
will be yours to cherish;
every babe that weeps at your approach, every woman who cries out...
"Dear God, what is that thing?" will echo in your perfect ears.
That is what "to the pain" means.
It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery forever.
When I wrote this, I remember thinking I didn't know if it would work...
'cause you've got a dead hero and this great hunter, and I've got...
Does "to the pain" work?
And it's the best I could do, and I think we got away with it.
That's the shot where André almost went to his knees when they did it the first time.
It's just... She's not jumping out a window.
It's, like, little... One little six-inch drop.
Well, I was just there for a little bit when...
That's wonderful stuff. It really is, I think.
What's awful is if I hated it, I'd say it was wonderful...
because this is all, you know...
Everybody's being cute.
We're talking about a movie, and you always...
I happen to really love this movie.
I... I mean, I just watched it.
I never watch what I write. And I never read what I write.
I can read this book.
This was the one reshoot I can remember.
At the very end, when he says, "As you wish"...
I think Rob went for a very emotional thing from Peter Falk.
And it didn't play.
And if you look at this close-up of Peter Falk, it's not the same.
As you wish.
[ Goldman ] It's an odd experience...
because I haven't seen this movie since it came out...
and you don't know what you're gonna think.
One of the things that happens...
One of the reasons I don't like to look at movies I've written...
I can look at Butch Cassidy.
It's because you always think it stinks. You should have... You did that wrong.
I believe...
when a movie I'm involved with is a success...
it's because it's a group endeavor.
It's all of our... It's all of our skills.
And I believe when a movie I'm involved with fails...
it's my fault.
The storytelling was not as clear as it should have been.
You were telling people the wrong thing.
You had the wrong people on screen...
telling them news they didn't want to hear, whatever it was.
Audiences get...
What I've discovered after all these years...
is audiences react exactly the same way to the movie around the world.
No matter what language, they laugh, they cry, and they get bored and leave.
I want to look at the credits.
[ Chuckles Softly ]
[ Soft Explosion Sound ]
That's not André riding on the horse, I think...
because he was so massive that he would have killed it.
And so, I think that's someone else they got.
You don't know.
And one of the things about the movie is it's short.
And one of the things that happened, I...
George Roy Hill said, "If you can't tell your story in an hour and 50...
you better be David Lean."
I think that's true. I think movies are disgracefully long now.
I think it's... Part of it's director's ego.
I think part of it's... People think oh, if it's long...
it's equated with important, which is total madness.
But I thought this movie went right along.
We didn't really leave anything out, which I don't think...
There aren't chunks of this movie on the cutting room floor.
This is what we wrote, this is what we shot, this is what you saw.
And it was a...
I really enjoyed it a lot, and I hope you did too.
Bill Goldman, author of the novel and adaptation, also the screenplay.
As I sit here musing in my head over what I've just seen...
there wasn't anything I was...
There was nothing I thought, "Gee, why did I do that?
Why didn't I do that?"
I mean, I thought it moved right along.
I thought the actors were terrific.
And I thought, you know, it's swell.
And I find the moments...
I don't know. I just thought it was terrific, and I hope your viewers do too.