Read As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride Online
Authors: Cary Elwes,Joe Layden
As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride (23 page)
WALLACE SHAWN
Cary is this good-hearted, lovely, fairy-tale character. And that’s what the movie is supposed to be about in a way. So there was something always outrageously lovable about him during the filming itself, and to this day. He’s just a genuinely good-hearted person and he was fantastically hardworking during the shoot.
And the reason for his uncertainty? It wasn’t a case of the first day heebie-jeebies that I had suffered but a real fear that he was going to be replaced. Apparently Wally had heard from somewhere that Rob had wanted another actor to play the role of Vizzini, and the rumors left him with something of an inferiority complex, as well as a near-crippling case of the jitters during production. I remember him being a veritable bundle of nerves from day one, starting with the table read all the way through to his final day of
shooting. He told me later that every time Rob yelled, “Cut,” after one of his takes, he felt for sure he was about to be fired.
WALLACE SHAWN
I knew I was wrong for the part because for whatever reason I had been informed by someone in my agency that it had first been offered to Danny DeVito and then to Richard Dreyfuss and that they had both turned down the part. And I know that Danny comes from an Italian background. I am from a Jewish background. But that was the least of my concerns. My greater concern was that I knew that Danny would understand the sense of humor that was called for by the script, and would have done such a beautiful job. And before every single shot of the film I imagined how Danny would’ve played it so much better than I could. I was haunted by that during every single shot of the film. So if any agents are reading this book, my advice to them is, don’t tell your client that he’s the third choice.
ROB REINER
Wally was funny. The first day he messed up a bunch of takes and kept thinking that I was going to fire him or something. I never thought about that. Never even considered it. But in his mind that’s what I was going to do. He kept saying to me, “I don’t really have a Sicilian accent.” I said, “That’s okay, Wally. This Sicilian talks just like you. He talks exactly like you.” And he did exactly what I wanted him to do and he was great.
CHRIS GUEST
I remember a dinner I had with Wally in the hotel in Sheffield, and he kept saying, “Chris, this just isn’t going to work. Rob’s going to send me home. This isn’t going to be good.” And I said, “No, no, it’s fantastic! What are you talking about?”
ANDY SCHEINMAN
He kept saying to me, “I’m going to get fired, Andy! I’m going to get fired! You’re going to fire me!” And I’d say, “We’re not going to fire you, Wally.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but he later said he had no understanding of the comedy of this movie. He wrote something once about the experience, and how miserable he was on a particular day, or in a particular scene. Wally is a highly respected playwright, but he was amazed that what he did in this movie is as loved and respected as anything else he had done in his career. It’s such a weird thing, because to this day, I don’t think he quite gets why it’s so good.
I don’t know whether his anxieties were based on fact or fiction. I do know that both Rob and Andy have said over the years that they never seriously pursued any other actors for the role and that they love his performance. Just as we all do. Rob told me he was not only an enormous fan of Wally’s but even fought on his behalf to have him in the movie.
Rob also did everything in his power to calm Wally, and to coax what surely will be remembered as one of his most memorable performances. Much of the credit (and this is true of any of us fortunate to have been cast in
The Princess Bride
) should rightfully go to Goldman, who scripted the countless quotable lines, of which Vizzini was given more than his fair share. But Wally deserves recognition, too, for the unmistakable stamp he put on the character, and the unique manner in which he delivered those lines.
WALLACE SHAWN
To be honest, I didn’t think Rob was very pleased with me. I mean, he never said anything like, “You’re fantastic in this part! It’s going to change your life! You’re wonderful in the role.” Nothing of that nature. I think he may well have been pleased by the time the whole movie was put together and edited, but I think that at least at first, he may have thought, Well, you know, he’s okay but I wish Danny were here. Let me put it this way. I know that Billy Crystal and Carol Kane spoke about how Rob laughed so hysterically during their scenes that he had to leave the room. That didn’t happen during my scenes.
A diminutive Jewish man from New York playing a tyrannical Sicilian crime boss?
Inconceivable, you say?
And yet, how perfectly it all worked. In hindsight one cannot envision anyone else in the role. But there were some interesting and tension-filled moments, when it seemed uncertain whether Wally would survive the production.
We began filming our only scene together, known affectionately as the Iocane Powder scene, or more appropriately as the Battle of Wits scene, in mid-September at a place called Lathkill Dale—a beautiful river valley in the Peak District.
Wally, bless him, was demonstrably nervous. Which actually helped me a bit since I was completely in awe of him at the time. Granted, I had seen only one of his movies, but that was enough for me. The minute he walked onto the set in his beautiful, ornate red and green velvet outfit, he looked like a wonderful prince from a Florentine fresco. Phyllis Dalton had even designed a matching hat for him—a flat medieval cap with a great big red feather sticking out of it. Wally tried it on once, quickly looked at all of our faces to gauge our reactions, and decided not to wear it. With apologies to Phyllis, it was probably a wise decision, as it might have been overkill.
As we began rehearsing the scene, I had no notion of Wally’s insecurity, but I did notice he was sweating quite a lot, which struck me as odd because it was a rather chilly and overcast morning. Perhaps it was the heavy velvet doublet he was wearing, I thought. But as we continued to run the lines, his anxiety and perspiration became more apparent. At first I couldn’t understand it. Here was this man, always the smartest in the room, experienced and lauded for his stage and screen work, concerned about a funny little scene in a fairy-tale movie. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t until many years later that Wally would reveal what was in his head that day, that it all made sense. Even now I feel for Wally, because the schedule required him to film his most difficult scene (and without a doubt the most loquacious one in the entire movie) as his first moment in front of the camera.
If you’ve only seen
The Princess Bride
once or twice, or haven’t seen it in many years, the Battle of Wits scene is the one with the long, complicated passages of dialogue between the Man in Black and Vizzini as they try to outwit each other and trick their opponent into drinking a glass of wine dosed with iocane powder, which is “odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid, and is among the deadlier poisons known to man.” (By the way, if you are wondering whether iocane really exists,
it does not, except in the fertile imagination of Mr. William Goldman.) It might feel, in retrospect, as though Westley and Vizzini are burdened with equal amounts of tongue-twisting, mind-bending dialogue, but that actually is not the case. Not by a long shot.
ROBIN WRIGHT
Oh, he was nervous. He had all the lines to memorize. And Rob wanted him to recite it very fast. And Wally was not really an actor at the time. He was more of a writer.
ROB REINER
It’s true Wally had the most difficult sequence in the movie. The Battle of Wits was very difficult. But you know, I’ve heard from Wally, and from other people who’ve told me the same thing, that a day doesn’t go by when somebody doesn’t say to him, “Inconceivable!” Or ask him to say, “Inconceivable!”
WALLACE SHAWN
Here’s another piece of advice that I’m going to give to any filmmaker who reads this book. It’s not always kind to the actor to make his most difficult scene be the first scene that he does. That can be very, very hard. It takes a few days or a week to get into the mood of a picture and to get to feel comfortable with being in that film, and with the other actors, and to recognize their faces, etc. So to suddenly have to do your hardest scene on the very first day is not desirable. But obviously, scheduling a complex film sometimes means that’s the only day that it could be shot. That’s what happened to me. Actually, we shot it over two days and the ghost of Danny DeVito was devastatingly present the whole time.
Whereas Wally did all the heavy lifting in the scene, my job was fairly simple: to sit there and react to his character’s histrionics. A subtle nod here, a slight wave of the hand there. One line of dialogue to every five or six lines spoken by Wally. In the scene, the Man in Black figures
that Vizzini is too clever by half, and that he will ultimately tie himself into knots trying to outwit his opponent. And that is precisely what happens.
Even though Wally was unconvinced of his talent in being able to pull off Vizzini, it’s a beautifully crafted performance, and it anchors the most hilariously convoluted scene in the movie. It is both perfect and timeless. Even though it was stressful for him.
WALLACE SHAWN
At my request, Rob acted out the part. Before I would do a section of it, I would ask him to do it for me. Then I would try to imitate what he had done. So you could say that what you see on-screen is a kind of collaboration. It’s 40 percent me, 40 percent Rob Reiner, and 20 percent Danny DeVito. Because I was obviously in some way imagining what Danny might have done. And a lot of it was totally Rob’s idea. For example, the way the scene ends where I sort of fall over sideways dead? I would never have done that. Totally Rob’s idea.
Equally stressful for Wally was his work on and around the infamous Cliffs of Insanity. The exterior shots of this sequence, where the Man in Black chases Buttercup’s kidnappers up a cliff, were actually filmed on the massive Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, using stunt doubles filmed from a great distance to obscure the fact that it wasn’t really me racing up the side of a sheer rock face and that André wasn’t really carrying Wally, Robin, and Mandy as he hoisted himself up. The effect was achieved by using a massive crane and pulleys to yank the stuntmen up the side of the cliffs. It’s kind of funny to look at the film now—the way it’s so obviously not André pulling himself up, but rather Peter Diamond wearing a bulky suit and a rubber Fezzik mask strapped to a harness. And the speed at which the Man in Black scales the cliff. It really doesn’t matter, though. In hindsight, it all somehow seems charming, much like the Rodents of Unusual Size.
Our actual climbing sequences were filmed in comparative safety on the same soundstage at Shepperton where the duel would take place, with man-made cliffs that stood only thirty feet high. I wore a safety harness and was either reeled in effortlessly by a pulley or actually fastened to the plaster cliff for the dialogue, so it wasn’t like I had to do any actual climbing. There were, however, obstacles to overcome for Wally’s team. For one thing, André’s bad back precluded him from actually “carrying” anyone or from being hoisted in a harness. So the crew devised a system in which André could stand on a platform attached to a forklift and hold on to Wally, while Robin and Mandy sat on modified bicycle seats next to them. All would appear perfectly safe and sound. Except for one thing:
Wally was terrified of heights.
While thirty feet of stucco and plaster might seem safe and surmountable when compared to the breathtaking 390-foot Cliffs of Moher, to Wally the prospect of scaling even a ten-foot wall seemed, well, inconceivable. I’m sure he didn’t want to tell Rob too early in the production, in case he might provide the director with another excuse to replace him.
Once again, though, he overcame his fears and turned in an epic performance. In reality, it was also André’s compassion and protective nature that helped calm Wally’s acrophobia. In many ways André really was like Fezzik: a gentle giant.
* * *
Wally may have had some of the movie’s most quotable lines, but if you were to stop people on the street and ask them to name a character in
The Princess Bride
besides Buttercup and Westley, I would be willing to bet that a great majority would respond first with “Miracle Max.” This is surprising, given that Billy Crystal, who played Max, was on the set for all of about three days and appeared in just a single scene that
spanned less than five minutes on film. It is also perfectly understandable, given that this scene is one of the funniest in the movie. In fact, it is so funny and strange, and the tenor so unique, that it almost feels like it was dropped in from another screenplay. But it wasn’t, of course.
Miracle Max is Bill Goldman’s creation, albeit one supplemented by Billy’s comedic talent.
WALLACE SHAWN
I don’t like heights and I remember I asked Rob and Andy, “Are we really going to be on the world’s tallest cliffs, or what? We’re not really going to have to do all of those things, are we? All those stunts?” And they said, “No, no. That’ll all be done by stuntmen.” Which was only partly true, because although we did not go to the world’s tallest cliffs, we were obliged to act in a small forklift that in my memory couldn’t have been more than four or five feet square, thirty-five feet up in the air on a soundstage at Shepperton. And even that was mind-bogglingly frightening to me. I would never have taken the part if I’d known we were going to have to do that!
MANDY PATINKIN
Wally was terrified of heights, and he was worried that he was going to ruin the whole scene. There was even a double for him on the set, just in case. But he stepped up to the plate, got on that forklift, and hung on to André for dear life. And André just patted him like a little kid and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.” I’ll never forget it. The moment André said that to Wally, Wally calmed down and stopped feeling anxious. Then he just played the scene beautifully. And it was because of André’s gentle assurances that Wally was able to even breathe!
WALLACE SHAWN
André was very kind that day. I was physically tied to him during the part of the film that was the most terrifying to me. He had a flask of cognac in his costume that he offered me. I declined because it was sort of dizzying up there anyway. And Rob was very kind also. He realized how panicked I was, so he shot the film in a way that minimized the need for me to be up there. So he actually gave up some good shots out of kindness.
