The Princess Bride: Everything You Didn't Know

Jordan and Alex scale their own personal Cliffs of Insanity to take listeners deeper into the warm heart of "The Princess Bride" than ever before! They round up the (practically) inconceivable list of directors who tried and failed to adapt the beloved novel, take a quick sidebar into pirate code, and demystify some of the stories about Andre the Giant's youth ... and drinking habits. They'll also shed light on the marvelous sword fight between Westley and Inigo, and explore the deep personal motivation Mandy Patinkin brought to his role as Inigo. Too Much Information: Never try to match wits with a podcaster!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone,
and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings
you the secret histories, a little known facts behind your
favorite movies, music, TV shows and more. We are your
dread pirate Roberts of details. You're six fingered men of minutia.

(00:22):
You're inconceivables of inanity, your very own personal rouss recounters
of unusual stories. My name is Jordan run Tug and
I'm Alex Hegel. And you killed our fathers prepared to die. Sorry,
I had to kind of worked. Yeah. Well, folks, today,
if you haven't figured it out, we are talking about
The Princess Bride. Truly, I'd have to say, one of

(00:43):
the most beloved films of our lifetime. You know. I mean,
it's an overused cliche to say a movie has something
for everyone, but this one truly does. It's thrilling, but lighthearted, funny,
but I've also shed a tear. It goes down easy
when you're a kid. There's more than enough meat for adults.
There's row Man's Adventure fantasy, there's swashbuckling whatever that is.

(01:04):
She said that like it was a Jewish meal. Yeah, swashbuckling.
There we go. And then there's also the guy who
played Colombo. There's the kid who played Kevin Arnold in
The Wonder Years. There's Robin Wright. There's Wallace Sean, There's
Billy Crystal, there's Andre the Freaking Giant. All written by
the guy who wrote Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid

(01:25):
and directed by Meathead from All in the Family. Where else?
I ask you, are you going to get that kind
of lineup nowhere in the damn world? That's for sure.
I have nothing especially intelligent to say about this movie.
I remember enjoying it as a kid, and my memories
of it remain pure and honestly, that's kind of the
highest compliment I can pay a piece of pop culture.
Yepigl What do you think? Just a great film, just

(01:47):
a great solid if you'd like if you know it's
it's the Rooky Bobby. If you don't choose Big Regred,
if you don't like The Princess Pride, you yeah, I
don't know. I don't know. I don't know how empty
you're dead inside you'd have to be to not enjoy
this film. I mean, it's uh, I guess more than
me apparently, And I'm a pretty but I'm pretty tried.
I'm pretty tried up. Um. Yeah, it hits on every level.

(02:10):
It's well written by one of the greatest ever to
do it. H nobody's you know, going Daniel day Lewis,
but everybody's likable and charming and well cast, and it
pacings great. Uh. It's not doing like especially dizzying or
virtuosic camera work, but it's also not like inert or flat.
It's got production design that's good but doesn't distract practical effects. Yeah,

(02:35):
it moves along at a good clip. And yeah, man,
no notes. I I if anything, when I balked a
little when you pitched it. It's just because I like
when BuzzFeed started to reach critical mass in like twenty
twenty fourteen, I just started blanching every time I would
see this come up in there, like Quiz and like
Listical and gift round up endless gray slurry of content

(02:56):
that they were serving and still do. But yeah, I
mean that's just because it's a great movie, because it's
so damn good. Yeah. I love movies that make fun
of a genre while also being wildly successful of that genre.
I think Shaun of the Dead is another one of those,
like it makes fun of horror movies, but it's genuinely
scary at points. This what we do in the Shadows, Yes, yes, yes,

(03:19):
yes yeah. The Princess Briane is a traditional, classic love
story told in the classic tradition of fairytale storytelling. Yet
it also makes fun of all that, and it reminds
me of Shrek also, and the fact that it's this
very self aware of self effacing fantasy. And maybe Patinken,
who played the immortal Nico Montoya, had a great line
when describing a piece of directorial advice from the movies

(03:40):
Autour Rob Reiner. He said that Rob told them what
I really want the actors to do in this movie
is act as though they're holding their poker cards in
their hands, but they're just hiding one card. And according
to Mandy, this one card was the twinkle in our eye.
The one card was the fun we knew was underneath
everything we were saying, there was always a little secret,

(04:00):
and that secret was the fun. I thought that was great.
I love him. I think that's a great way to
sum up the kind of the wink that's being done
by every character in this movie. But not in an
annoying way. Yeah, nobody's mugging. Yes, yes, yeah. TikTok star
Mandy Patankin was on TikTok. He's huge on TikTok. Yeah,
just for like it, just bumbles around his house with

(04:23):
his wife and like puts in shelving, like it's just
super norm core stuff. But he's beloved. I really laughter
reading about him for this episode. I really really like him.
I mean that's the other thing. Everybody in this movie really,
with no exceptions, I think, is so insanely likable. Yeah,

(04:43):
like both as their character and the actor themselves. Yeah yeah,
I mean yeah, no one's no one's canceled yet. I mean,
you know who comes the closest, Wallashawan, probably just for
being a dick to fans constantly. Yeah yeah, I was
gonna say, Robin Wright by virtue of being married to

(05:04):
Sean Penn for his life. But you know that wasn't
her fault. She just brushed up against a bad person.
There's a I started experimenting for this other show that
I'm working on, involving all sorts of AI crap, And
there's like voice modulators out there now that can turn
your voice into dozens and dozens of celebrities, and one

(05:25):
of them was Sean Penn, who was very nearly going
to call you as Sean Penn from a restricted number
and pretend that he was still mad about whatever it
was he wrote about him at people that got himself
pissed off, And then I said he wasn't a journalist. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah.
I didn't do that because I didn't want to spike
your heart rate that much. I think I'm on the
right side of history there. Yeah. Well, from a physic

(05:47):
sized pile of delightful stories about Andre the Giant to
the insane lengths Carrie Eloiz and Mandy Potankon went through
to nail their immortal sword fight to the depths of
emotion Patankin brought to his classic fight to avenge his father.
Here's everything you didn't know about the Princess Bride. Whenever

(06:09):
you say pyle and like describe it by size, you're
really only ever talking about one thing. I feel like,
you know, did we get into the scatological a little
bit later on A little teaser for the for the
for that, for that weird corner of our fan base.

(06:30):
Keep yours out, fans, The film version of The Princess
Bride is based on the book of the same name
by William Goldman. And if you are a film buff,
you are certainly familiar with this man's name. And if
you're not, he has shaped it to a twentieth century
cinema in many, many ways. He's better known as a
screenwriter than a novelist, but he's He's one oscars for

(06:51):
Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, all The President's Men,
plus he wrote Marathon Man, The Stepford Wives. He wrote
the adaptation of Stephen King's Misery. He is rumored to
have ghost written Goodwill Hunting, though he denies that. What
do you think? Do you think is any truth to that?
He might have done a punch? He might have done
a pass I had a ghost written is strong. The

(07:12):
dialogue is very assured from from first time screenwriters who
have not been known for their crackling, assured dialogue. Since
have you read his book on screenwriting? He also wrote
a literal Well that's his memoir, right, or doesn't he
have like a how to? Oh? You're right? Yeah? That
was in screenwriting classes they had us read like every

(07:34):
book he'd ever written. That wasn't fiction. I actually didn't
realize he wrote novels until very very recently. But yeah,
they had us read a lot of his just books
about writing and then just stories from the screenwriting trade.
He wrote the book that the Burt Reynolds movie Heat
was based on. So it'd be funny you if he
wrote Heat, the Michael Mann movie. I know. When I

(07:55):
first read that, I was like, wait, what, Yeah, anyway,
this is the guy who wrote the book Princess Bride,
which I read. Actually, I think like after I saw
the movie. Our school library had a copy and it
became one of my favorite books. I just read it
all the time. It's very funny. Predictably, the idea came
to him one night in the early seventies when he
was putting his two young daughters to bed, and, as
he told Entertainment Weekly in twenty eleven, I had two

(08:18):
little daughters, I think there were seven and four at
the time, and I said, I'll write you a story.
What do you want it to be about. One of
them said a princess and the other one said a bride.
I said, that'll be the title. The book was published
in nineteen seventy three and quickly became a favorite. Goldman
wrote it in an unusual way. He has this. The
framing device of the book is that the story is

(08:39):
an abridged version of a longer book by the fictional
s Morgan Stern, and Goldman adds his own kind of
commentary to that tale aside through the book, which gives
it a kind of not just the satirical edge that's
president of the movie, but rather groundbreaking meta textual interrogation
of the very notion of storytelling. I didn't go to NYU,

(09:01):
but I can talk like it sometimes. Yeah, I mean again,
it's look where we're saying. It's very self aware, it's
very It tells the story from a certain remove where
you can kind of like make fun of the silly parts.
So the book made its way to a number of
folks who would subsequently work on the movie. Actor Carrie Els,
who plays Westley, it's so funny that his name is Westlee.

(09:22):
I had like triple check back. Yeah, yeah, because we
have a very dear friend and bandmate, Wesley. Yeah. Actor
Kerry Els, who plays Westley, was given the book by
his stepfather as a thirteen year old, and Rob Reiner,
the director of the film. Was given the book by
his father, comedy legend Carl Reiner at some point in
the mid seventies. Rob was in his mid twenties at
the time, so that was an interesting choice. But despite

(09:45):
this mid twenties Rob loved the book. It became his
favorite of all time, and all throughout the seventies. While
he was starring as Mike Meathead Stivic in the groundbreaking
CBS sitcom All in the Family, he carried a little
flame for bringing this story to the big screen would
take a decade for him to get all those ducks
in a row. Ryner quickly learned that many before him

(10:06):
had tried and failed to adapt The Princess Bride into
a film. In fact, it had something of a reputation
around Hollywood as a cursed project. Jordan Clue was down
another cursed project rolling around Hollywood at the time. Yes,
probably one of the most famous supposedly cursed scripts Hollywood history.
Cursed Excuse Me is attic, which is a fish out

(10:29):
of water comedy about an Inuit trying to make it
in the big city, which sounds terrible. Did they rewrite it?
Did it become crocodile? Dundee? No? I mean this literally
was floating around Hollywood. I mean it still is. It's
never been made from I think the early seventies, and
I think they were still trying to get it done
as late as like the mid two thousands, and it's

(10:50):
considered cursed, not only because it just was floating around
for so long, but a disproportionate number of the actors
who read for the lead role died soon after due
So John Belushi, who I think was rumored to have
had a copy of the script in his bungalow at
the Chateau Marmont where he died. Sam Kinnison actually was
cast in the movie, and they mightn't even started filming it,

(11:14):
but then there was some disagreement between him and the
studio where I guess he felt they had initially promised
him creative control and they renegged on that, so the
production got shut down. So John Belushi, Sam Kinnison, John Candy,
and Chris Farley were all up for consideration to play
the lead role of the titular Inuit, and I think
Phil Hartman was also somehow in this. It was somehow

(11:36):
like Tangentially, I don't think that's going to be the
highest body count for an unproduced script. Yeah, it's pretty crazy.
And this whole thing very kind of understandably gave rise
to the urban legend that the script is cursed. In reality,
it's probably just bad. It's all this to say. The
Princess Bribe was regarded as a similarly troubled enterprise. Twentieth
Century Fox had bought the rights to the book soon

(11:58):
after it was published in seventy three, and intended to
give it to Richard Lester, who directed The Beatles two
feature films and then the head of production of Fox.
The time was fired and the project was put on ice.
And this more or less would play out repeatedly over
the next decade. Every time someone tried to make this movie,
some kind of disaster or malfortune would befall them. One

(12:22):
studio was going to make the movie, but days before
they were due to ink the deal, they closed down
because Hollywood. Another studio loved it, but days before the
executive was going to ink the deal, he was fired.
Director Norman Jewison, whould later direct Moonstruck, one of my favorites.
With Cher, tried to drum up interest, but he couldn't
raise the funds and other big name directors who would

(12:43):
try to make The Princess Bride in the seventies include
Robert Redford, who would go on to make his directoral
debut with Ordinary People in nineteen eighty, John Boorman, who
the director of Deliverance. And this is the most inconceivable
to me, French new way of director, friend Swat Trufoe
of the Four Hundred Blows, Junzegim and many more, presum

(13:09):
and the rest, and they all failed. Um So, after
a few years of watching his beloved work languish and
development hell thanks to various levels of Hollywood chicanery, William
Goldman was pissed off enough to take the relatively unprecedented
move of buying back the rights to his book with

(13:29):
his own money, and for years he subsequently turned down
attempts to remake the film. Holding out for a Hero?
What is it waiting for hero? Holding out for hero? Yes,
much like Bonnie Tyler, he was holding out for a hero.
Do you know do you know that song? Oh yeah,
love from Footloose written by Jim Steinman, friend of the

(13:52):
pod Jim Steiman. Baby he told the Eclipse of the
heart too, right, Yeah, Steiman did total Eclipse of the heart.
I think so, because I think that caused a huge
riff with Meatlow. Yes he did. You're right, Loffe wanted
to sing that song. Yeah, there was another song recently
that I just learned that he did that. I had
no idea, and I'm trying to remember what it was.
I'm pretty sure you told me. Oh, it's all coming

(14:14):
back to me now, yes, yes, yes, yes, God Jim
Stammond whips Anyway. I didn't think we get there in
this episode, but clad because holding out for a hero baby,
and that hero came in the form of a Rob
Meathead Reiner of him a seventy star, a schlumpy Jewish

(14:35):
guy with a mustache and no hair, and he succeeded
where Robert Redford and France wat trufo failed. I love
that so much. That better part of that better repart
of his New York Times, Oh bit, Rob Reiner who
succeeded where Rob Redford and France wat Trufau failed, and

(14:55):
he got the gig for the pretty much the best
reason imaginable. Basically, William Goldman really loved This is Spinal Tap?
Did we describe what this is? Spinal tap? Is? Everyone?
He needs to know what the spot Tap is is
the greatest. It's a rock humentory, if you will, Yes,
It's one of the greatest comedies of all time. It's
a fictional documentary about a on their way down British

(15:16):
rock band that sets the template for every great Christopher
Guest movie, Best in Show, Waiting for Goffman, A mighty
wind that would follow Pioneers, the kind of talking head
confessional comedy style. Yeah, figures the office. Go watch spinal Tap,
you dummies? Good lord? I mean who who do who?

(15:37):
Do I need to explain spinal tap to the zoomers?
They're not listening anything. Uh yeah, well, I mean, as
we previously said. Rob Reiner, Uh, he's basically comedy royalty.
His father was Carl Reiner and Carl Winner got to
start working in Sid Caesar's writing room alongside the likes
of Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Neil Simon, before going

(15:57):
on to work even more closely with Mel Books on
his classic two thousand Year Old Man comedy album and
also star in The Dick Van Dyke Show. And Rob
himself got his start writing for the groundbreaking and highly
controversial CBS show The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the
late sixties alongside a young Steve Martin, and then, of course,

(16:18):
in nineteen seventy one, he began starring in All in
the Family, one of the funniest sitcoms of the seventies,
possibly of all time. For my money, it's hilarious. And
then he made his directorial debut with Spinal Tap in
nineteen eighty four, which is a hell of a first
time out. Then he made a John Cusack romcom right
after Spinal Tap called The Sure Thing, which I'm less

(16:39):
familiar with, but he is very fondly remembered. Do you
remember this at all? No, no idea first, I'm hearing
him aout it moving on. All was to say, by
the mid eighties, Rob Reiner had some serious juice, but
it still wasn't enough to get the Princess Bride off
the ground. Speaking the variety of years later, he recalled
a meeting with Studio Brass in this period. He said,
I had a meeting with this ecutive at Paramount. She said,

(17:01):
we love your films. What do you want to do next?
I said, well, you don't want to do what I
want to do. She said, no, that's not true. I
want to do what you want to do. I said no, no,
you don't want to do what I want to do.
You want me to do what you want to do?
She said no, no, no, just tell me what do
you want to do? What is it? I said, The
Princess Bride. She got quiet and said, oh, well, anything

(17:22):
but that, because this movie has such a terrible reputation
around town. That's sort of an unmakeable film. So instead,
Rob Ryner made his adaptation of Stephen King's Coming of
age stories stand by Me, a movie that opens with
do you guys want to see a dead body? And
closes with me weeping? We should do that soon, I mean,
does the River Phoenix Stories alone? Oh it's so good.

(17:45):
And once that movie was a hit, it gave Rob
ryan Or even more juice to push for his passion project,
The Princess Bride. William Goldman, who was famously very protective
of his story rights after a decade of being jerked around,
liked Rob because he liked this spinal Tap, and he
also really liked the movie that he did after that,
The Sure Thing. As Goldman later explained, Spinal Tap was
a satire and The Sure Thing was an adventure, tinged romance.

(18:09):
Put them together, you basically get the Princess Bride. But
he especially liked Spinal Tap. He said later that he
went to see it with his daughter as the ones
who inspired the Princess Bride, and he was just shrieking
the whole time. And that makes me love William Goldman
so much more so. Rob Ryder convinced William Goldman to
trust him with his story, but that was only half
the battle. As Ryner would recall, no studio wanted to

(18:30):
make a movie of The Princess Bride. Nobody was interested
in it. We kept tearing the budget down. I had
to cut my salary, I cut the cast salaries. It
was crazy. I think we had like sixteen million dollars,
which even at that time wasn't very much. In the script,
it described the Army of Floren Florin as a fictitious
land where the story takes place. I had like seven
people in the Army of Floren, so it was a

(18:52):
real skeleton crew. And in order to raise funds I
didn't realize this. Rob Ryner appealed to TV Mega producer
Norman Lear, who was the man behind all the family
and like seriously half of the TV shows in the
seventies and all the Family played a semi major role
in the creative development of The Princess Bride. Not only
did Norman Lear help raise the money, but both Christopher

(19:14):
Guest and Billy Crystal appeared in small roles on the
show as Rob Ryner's character's friends. I just forget now
what an insane run Rob Riner had in the eighties
and early nineties with his movies and tinked it with
North Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, stand by Me, The
Princess Bride, when Harry met Sally, Misery and a few

(19:36):
good men, just a hell of a lineup. And let's
not forget he also did the voice acting for The
Rodents of Unusual Size and The Princess Bride. So there's
truly no end of this man's talents. And now we
get to casting. For the lead role of the dashing Westley,
Ryner wanted a handsome, swashbuckling type. I can't say that

(19:57):
word bush buckling. Swashbuckling do we ever determine what swashbuckling meant?
You know? I was looking that up and then I
got sidetracked by thinking about Andre the Giant. What does
it mean? What does it mean to swash a buckle?
I definitely think we've talked about this maybe in the
Gooneys episode, but I forget mm hmmm. Yeah. Swashbuckling comes

(20:18):
from a fighting style popular in the at one point.
At one point sword and buckler play fighters were armed
with a short heavy fencing style rapier and a small
center grip shield called a buckler. So it's not actually
referring to a belt buckle, it's referring to the kind
of shield, and part of the technique of this style

(20:42):
was banging on the shield to like distract as like
a faint or a bluff, and that action was actually
called swashing. So swashbuckling literally just means hitting your shield
to distract someone and annoy them. So it's like one
of those things that means like like cut purse means
like pickpocking, because that was the actual action that they
would do, like cut somebody's purse and catch the coins

(21:04):
they fall out are or turn keys like a for
guard had to literally turning keys. Swashbuckle literally means a
guy who fought with a sword and shield and hit
the shield a lot to distract his opponent and just
passed into modern use, you know. Anyway, Rob Ryner wanted
a swashbuckler, and damnit he found one. Early in the

(21:25):
development of The Princess Bride, he was considering Christopher Reeve,
which would have been that that's a good choice. I
could see that. And also a very young Colin Firth.
He must have been very young, which I can also see.
But then Rob Ryner saw Carrie Els in a movie
called Lady Jane, and from that moment on he had
his heart set on him. He just had that silver
screen adventure hero Douglas Fairbanks Errol Flynn energy that he

(21:48):
was after. He looks a lot like Errol Flynn. Yea.
And fittingly both of those men played Robin Hood. And
then a few years after The Princess Bride, Carry went
on the spoof those movies in Robin Hood Men in Tights,
which is great yep. In order to audition Carry, though,
Rob and his production partner had to fly to East Germany,
where Carry was shooting an independent film, and unfortunately this

(22:10):
was in the immediate aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster and
East Germany was very close to the fallout danger zone
and Rob Briner's production partner was very terrified about this.
He refused to touch the bottled water on offer at
the hotel and also forgot his thousand dollars jacket in
a cab after sprinting from the taxi to the hotel lobby,

(22:32):
and this may have contributed to the fact that Carry's
audition was fairly quick. I guess they gave him the
part after hearing him read just half a page of dialogue,
and though he looked amazing, it was clearly a great actor.
Rob Browner's main concern was that Carrie wasn't funny, and
ultimately Carry got the part because he did an impression
of Bill Cosby's cartoon character Fat Albert, which is weird. Again,

(22:58):
like Jim Stemon, not thing I thought we were going
to bring up on this episode, but there we go,
and this brings us to Heigel's pirate corn. Yeah, fans
of the movie know that ELA's character Wesley is also
known as the dread Pirate Roberts, an inherited title passed
down from one swashbuckling ne'er do well to swashbuckling ne'er
do Well, although I don't think pirates had shields. Once again,

(23:20):
now that we've learned the true meeting of the word swashbuckling.
But actually, funnily enough, the dread pirate Roberts was actually
a real guy born Bartholomew Roberts, arguably the most successful
pirate in history, who was born in sixteen eighty two,
and he captured over four hundred ships during his relatively
brief career. Those are Jordan piracy stats, Michael Jordan. Yes,

(23:42):
not me. I have never captured a ship for all
my love of Titanic. Wait, I just want to crunch
the numbers on this though. He died at age forty,
So at what age do you qualify to be a
true pirate twenty eighteen twenty. Just to keep it sure,
I feel like those, I feel like younger, but go nuts.
So let's say he started like pirrating at the level

(24:05):
where he could capture ships on his own at age twenty.
He died at age forty. That's twenty ships a year,
So every two weeks this guy is capturing a ship,
which is amazing. And I also love the fact that
his name is Bartholi man like Bart the pirate, that
name is not gonna fly no wonder he went with
dread Pirate Roberts. Yeah, and he's uh. He was known
for his bravery, and he was also known for his

(24:26):
role in instituting the pirate code. He's one of the
familiar with. It's just pretty makes sense. I don't know, Yeah,
I was reading up on it. Uh, do a little
pirate pirate code reading. I do a little pirate coding. Um. Yeah.
The first one was supposedly written by a Portuguese buccaneer

(24:48):
also named Bartholomew, but Bart Roberts His were similar. And
this is funny, this whole thing about humidating name. It's
like Bart Roberts. It's like a town assessor, yes, local Lowell, Massachusetts,
alderman Bart Roberts. Yeah, he actually got his pirates. This

(25:11):
whole thing about oral transmission or transmitting of piracy is
hilarious because, as in the movie, because Roberts got his
set of pirate code from his captain Howard Davis, and
then his articles of piracy went on to influence all
the pirates under him. So there's like a grain of
reality of this pirate code. Every man has a vote

(25:34):
in affair of the moment has equal title to fresh provisions.
Strong liquors may use them at pleasure. Every man must
be called fairly in turn on the board of prizes.
No person to cheat at cards or dice. Lights and
candles to be put out at eight o'clock at night.
They have quiet hours. Keep your pieces, pistols and cutlass

(25:57):
clean and fit for service. No boy or women allowed
to desert the ship or your quarters in battle is
punishable with death. No striking one another on board. Every
man's quarrels to be ended on shore, and the musicians
have to rest on the sabbath. That's article eleven. The
rest of it's all about like divvying up Booty. I

(26:18):
didn't realize it was codified. Yeah, you know. Pie. There's
a really interesting book called TAZ Temporary Autonomous Zone that's
by this anarchist thinker that posits this really interesting theory
that some of the most successful implementations of like anarchist
society were like pirate islands that were set up. The

(26:39):
guy's name is Hakeem Bay because he was arguing that
they were like self governing, self regulating, and you know,
operated independently of any governing structure. Basically during this era,
like Pie, they would gather at like unmapped inlets, and
stuff and create these little you know, the temporary societies,
and he argued that those were successfully operating examples of

(27:02):
successfully operating anarchist zones, temporary autonomous zones by Hakim Bay.
I's like what we were talking about in the Chumbawamba episode,
because Chumbawamba where anarchists. Anarchists, So anarchists actually you know
this reputation in pop culture of being like these lawless people,
but they actually very much love laws who are enforcing,

(27:25):
they who write them and enforce them. Uh what else? Oh? Yeah,
So the dreadpirate Robert died in a battle with the
HMS Swallow off the coast of Western Africa in seventeen
twenty two when he was struck in the neck. He
was shot with a grape shot cannon and then he
bled to death on the deck of his ship. So

(27:47):
womp wamp. But even the Royal Navy was shocked that
they'd gotten him. This concludes high goals piracy corner. We
need like a trumpet blast? Yeah, un in there, what's
are good? What's a good piracy thing? Where's my soundboard?
I can pull up a pirate noise? Anyway? Back to casting, George,

(28:08):
Back to casting finding the actress to play Buttercup was
a bit more of an ordeal for Rob ryaner than
finding his Wesley. He reportedly auditioned upwards of five hundred
women for the part, and among those up for consideration
were Courtney Cox, Meg Ryan, Uma Thurman, and Whoopie Goldberg.
Author William Goldman said he'd been the visioning the character

(28:29):
of Buttercup as more of a carry Fisher type, but
to play what he described in his book as the
most beautiful girl in all the lands, they went with
a nineteen year old Robin Wright, who was very much
a newcomer, though she had a small role in the
nineteen eighty six penelopiece of Ferris movie Hollywood Vice Squad.
Robin Wright was chiefly known at the time for her
work on the soap opera Santa Barbara. She'd auditioned for

(28:51):
Rob Ryan's previous movie, The Surer Thing, the rom com
with John Cusack, but she was turned down for just
being too young and inexperienced. So when he was called
to try out for this new Rob Ryner project, her
hopes were not high. She later told the Chicago Tribune,
I know there were about five hundred other girls dying
to play the part. I had heard that Rob wanted
someone to look like Julie Christie in the film Doctor Gavago.

(29:14):
I didn't quite think I fit the bill, and honestly,
Rob Ryner wasn't quite so sure either. Her first audition
wasn't very great by all accounts, but then in her
second audition they asked her to read the lines in
an English accent. And though robin Wright was born in Texas,
her stepfather was British and she grew up watching Monty
Python in other British comedies, so she had the accent
pretty well mastered. And Ryner was very taken with the performance,

(29:38):
and that was pretty much that. In a commentary at
a recent screening for The Princess Bride, he described finding
robin Wright as quote the greatest gift, and he immediately
brought her to see William Goldman to get his sign off.
And when she arrived at the author's door, the first
thing he said was, well, that's what I wrote. She's

(29:58):
so pretty. Robert Write herself downplayed all this somewhat in
her retelling of the story. She told Entertainment Weekly, quote,
I was literally the five hundredth ingenue to read for
rob and I think he was so exhausted at that
point he was like, oh God, just hire her. And
she also admitted to CNN that she spent the whole
shoot trying not to quote be an idiot in front

(30:20):
of more established actors. Oh. I don't like how self
effacing she is, but at least she had a good
time while making The Princess Bride, due in large part
to her costar, who, it must be said, was a
very handsome leading man. God he's good looking. Yeah. Robert
Wright developed a massive crush on her, Wesley Carrie. I

(30:41):
was describing him as quote gorgeous and the blonde zoro. Yeah.
She elaterated to Town and Country magazine in twenty fourteen,
Carrie was so good looking. I was convinced we were
going to be married. And she also added I was
absolutely smitten with Carrie, so obviously that helped our on
screen chemistry. We really enjoyed one another. We made each

(31:02):
other laugh constantly. He was and is still hilariously funny,
and the feeling was predictably mutual as far as Carrie
was concerned. He wrote in his twenty fourteen book, As
You Wish Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride.
It was as if I was looking at a young
Grace Kelly. Robin was that beautiful. To be honest, I
couldn't concentrate on much of anything after that first encounter

(31:24):
with Robin. She was the perfect buttercup in my mind's eye.
And this is all very handy for the movie, except
for the kissing scenes, during which the two leads conspired
to flub their lines repeatedly so they would have to
kiss each other over and over again, which is adorable.
Yeah that warms my heart. Yeah, yeah, Carrie wrote, I

(31:45):
could have gone on shooting that scene all day, as
I don't think I wanted the movie to end. It
was also a very tender way to end the movie,
sealing it with a kiss, so to speak. Everyone in
this movie is so damn likable. I love it so much.
Yeah really, yeah, and that's so pure too. It wasn't
even like they weren't even like, uh you know, uh,

(32:07):
they had a sort of affair and any think they
were like, we just liked kissing each other. Yeah. I
had a crush on him, And though they didn't end
up together, they both said that they remained close, and
I think that is beautiful. And now we move on
to my favorite member of the cast, Mandy Potenken as
Inigo Montoya. Innigo Montoya. Yeah, and Nigo Montoya easily the

(32:33):
most quotable character of the movie. You gotta do it
for me, Inigo Montoya. Oh no, I'm not doing that line.
You don't. You don't get this. You just did a
third of it. No, okay, no, no. Rob Ronner was
nicer to him than you are being to me right now.
He let pick any character he wanted in the script,

(32:53):
or at least that's what Mandy said, and Mandy felt
drawn to a Nigo. He told Entertainment Weekly for their
or history on The Princess Bride in twenty eleven. The
moment I read the script, I loved the part of
a Nigo Montoya. That character just spoke to me profoundly.
I'd lost my own father. He died at fifty three
years old from pancreatic cancer in nineteen seventy two. I

(33:14):
didn't think about it consciously, but I think that there
was part of me that thought, if I get that
man in black, my father will come back. I talked
to my dad all the time, during the filming and
it was very healing for me. And this intensity carried
over into the final fight scene when he stabbed Count Rugen,
the fearsome man with six fingers who'd killed his father
years before. And before they shot the scene, Mandy Patinkin

(33:35):
took a walk around the castle where they were filming it,
talking to his dad, saying, I'm going to write it.
I'm going to right this wrong. So the line when
he thrust the sword into Count Rugen's chest and says
I want my father back. He's son of a bitch
that carried a lot of weight for him. And by
killing the Count, Mandy said he was imagining that he
was killing the cancer that had killed his father, and,

(33:56):
as he recalled in a making of feature for the
DVD release, for a moment when I killed him, my
father was alive and my fairy tale came true, which
is devastating and devastating. Yes, Mandi Potenkon's favorite line in
the movie occurred near the end when Inigo says, I've
been in the revenge business so long. Now that it's over,

(34:18):
I don't know what to do with the rest of
my life. And many later said that was a bit
how he felt as he grieved and matured following his
own father's early death. He said, quote, as a young man,
I think I was in a bit of the revenge
business for far too many years of my life. And
you know, somewhere in the last ten years, I stopped
being so angry and started being a little more grateful,

(34:39):
literally for things like the sunrise and sunsets, and my
kids and my family and the gifts I've been given.
And then recently I saw that movie The Princess Bride.
I didn't see the whole thing. I just caught the
end of it, and I heard that line, I've been
in the revenge business for so long, i don't know
what to do with the rest of my life. As
a young man, I remember saying it, and I went
back and looked at my script to see the notes

(34:59):
I'd put in for that scene, and I didn't have
any notes for that line. I just said it, and
I didn't realize what I was saying. And then I
heard it as a grown up or whatever you want
to call me now, and it meant everything to me today.
I just think that's that's a great perspective. I love
this guy. He seems like the best. He said. He
sobbed when he first saw this movie, and when his

(35:20):
wife asked him why, he said, I just never thought
I'd be in a movie like this. You know, he
was a Broadway guy. He wasn't just to be in
a swashbuckling movie, and as he later observed, he was
never in a movie like this again. So it was
a really nice moment for him. According to him, the
role of Enigo Montoya is his personal favorite of everything

(35:40):
he's ever done throughout his entire career, obviously, and he
says that he gets his famous line hello, oh please,
no okay, hello, my name is Enigo Montoya. You killed
my father, prepared to die. He says that gets quoted
back to it by at least two or three strangers
every day of his life, and he loves it. He's
quoted as saying when it happened, I have a smile

(36:01):
as big as can be from one end of the
room to the other. I this man forms my heart.
I want to give Mandy Patinkin a hug. You should
see him. My mom saw him live and said he
like leads the whole crowd in a rendition of that song,
and like tells a variation of this story, like as
his live thing, where does he perform? Like is he
doing something? Yeah, he just does like spoke like ram

(36:22):
just it's literally just like go see Mandy Patinkn talk
like that was how she saw him. He was saying
he like came to Pennsylvania and was just like I'm
just like talked about being on Broadway, talked about that,
what was he in Homeland? Talked about Homeland right, talk
about Princess Bride, and then he like, yeah, he led
the whole crowd in that line. Oh sweet, yeah, wala Sean.

(36:43):
Meanwhile us not quite as generous to his fans. I mean,
I'm sure he's fine in person. He gave some quote
I think it was in a Navy Club interview where
he talks about how people say inconceivable to him all
the time, and he said something bitchy about like, oh yeah,
people think that the first person has ever done to me.

(37:03):
The man has anxieties, don't we all. We're gonna take
a quick break, but we'll be right back with more
too much information in just a moment. Well, higo, we've

(37:27):
arrived here. It is Oh, you tell us about Andre
the Giant a stretch for this one. I don't know
if you folks know this about me, but I love
the Giant. I think he's such a fascinating guy and such.
All his stories are amazing. He's truly as he was
build the ninth Wonder of the World. Is that what
they called him? Yeah? This part of his ring introduction.

(37:50):
In wrestling, William Goldman had Andrea Giant in mind when
he wrote the part of Physick. He used to go
to Madison Square Garden to watch Andrea during his WWF heyday.
Casting director Jane Jenkins told Vice in twenty seventeen, I
asked during a meeting, so this giant guy, what are
we talking here? How big? And they told me like

(38:11):
Andre the Giant, And she didn't know who that was.
So her partner was like, Oh, he's literally the biggest
wrestler that there is. And she called World Wrestling Federation
to explain that they're interested in casting him from a movie,
gave him the dates that they'd be shooting, and unfortunately
their shooting schedule coincided with a wrestling match that he
was due to wrestle in Tokyo, for which he would

(38:33):
be paid five million dollars and they asked, will you
pay him five million dollars to be in the movie,
and Jenkins said, I don't think so. That's like half
the budget of this movie. So they pivoted. They considered
people like Liam Neeson, which is hilarious because he's tall,
but not like giant tall. He was like wirey, Yeah, yeah,

(38:57):
they probably would put him in prosthetics. Sure enough. Rob
Ryner was like, he's too short. So they started going
to the world of professional sports. They found a couple
of football players that they brought in. Jenkins said, I
proceeded to meet every tall person in LA and say,
if you didn't duck in to come through my doorway,
you're too short. At one point they offered the role

(39:19):
to Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who had previously done some acting
in Airplane. He plays himself as one of the plane's
co pilots, and one of the best scenes ask your
old man how it feels to be dragging so and
so up the court every night for forty minutes every night,
which is it'sself a riff on NFL star Elroy Hirsch's

(39:40):
casting in Zero Hour, the disaster movie that Airplane was spoofing,
so Kareem had had experienced in the field and he
was interested in the role, but he had to turn
it down because shooting conflicted with his NBA schedule. Lufer Rigno,
then known for playing The Incredible Hulk on TV, was floated,
as was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Early on, Arnold Schwashbuckler, Arnold schwartzen

(40:03):
Buckler just keep riffing. But by the time come on Baby.
But by the time the movie actually got made, Schwartzenegger
was too expensive because he would have gone from the
weirdo in Pumping Iron to the terminator and Conan and
short order. And Schwartzenegers also not as tall as everyone

(40:26):
thinks he is. There's that amazing photo of him on
the set of I think the Second Conan when he's
standing between Kirk Will Chamberlain and Grace Jones and and
one of his stunt doubles and they're like lifting him
off the ground like he's a child. Arnold is builled

(40:46):
as being six two, but people have said that he
actually is closer to five ten, which is adorable. Another
big tall guy, Dutch actor Karuskin, who would go on
to play Lurch in Adam's Family, was also considered, but
he was committed to filming The Witches of Eastwick at
the time. I don't remember what he played in the
Witches of Eastwick, Satan. I don't nobably a large yeah, yeah,

(41:08):
a large, weird looking guy. But Jenkins told Vice that
Andre's Japan match got canceled, and so Reiner and Goldman
dropped everything to fly to Paris and meet with him.
I think they literally walked out of an audition. I
think they're like, drop hold every we gotta get get
me Andre the Giant. I came into the hotel. The
guy behind the desk said, there's a man waiting for

(41:30):
you at the bar. Reiner said, I walk in and
there's a large man sitting on two bar stools. He
was huge a Reiner also described him as a landmass
at one point, which is amazing. I brought him up
to the hotel room to audition him. He read this
three page scene and I couldn't understand one word. He said.
I go, oh my god, what am I going to do?

(41:52):
He's perfect physically for the part, but I can't understand him.
So I recorded his entire part on tape exactly how
I wanted him to do it. And he studied the tape.
He got pretty good legends of the seven foot four.
It's been debated as to whether he actually got that tall,
but he was definitely in the neighborhood seven foot four,
five hundred and twenty pound. Andre the Giant and his

(42:15):
various appetites are many. Three bottles of cogniac and twelve
bottles of wine gave him a buzz. When the cast
would go out to dinner, Andre would drink out of
a forty ounce beer pitcher filled with a mix of liquors,
which was a concoction that he called the American and

(42:37):
according to Robin Wright, he ordered four appetizers and five
entrees for himself. There was a story that he ran
up a forty grand bar tab at one point during
the filming of this. That probably wasn't even his highest
like when he was entertaining people, he probably got it
higher than that. He hated the food that was on set,
so he would take his week off to drive to
France and bring back his favorite French foods, which he

(42:59):
would then share with the rest of the cast. He
has the best through all that trouble and then yeah,
sharing it with everybody. Yeah, he used to drink a
case of wine. He would just what is some of
the better Andre drinking stories? I didn't put these in
here when I was writing, but I wanna. He once
drank one hundred and nineteen beers in six hours, I

(43:22):
mean drinking anything of that number. Yeah, drinking one hundred
how much one hundred nineteen one hundred nineteen beers in
six hours? Or eighteen Seltzer's in six hours or one
beer every three minutes NonStop for six straight hours. That
was the one when they when he passed out in
the hotel lobby and they just covered him in a

(43:44):
piano cover and said, I thought that the velvet ropes up.
Maybe maybe this was multiplications? Yeah, oh yeah. It was
at the Hyatt in London that he ran up a
forty thousand dollar bar tab while filming Princess Bride. Let's see,
he once drank a case of wine in three hours.
How many bottles are in a case? Twelve bottles? Sorry,

(44:08):
that's according to Haul Kogan. Bobby Heenan, another wrestling story,
said that, so there is this the Marriott in Kansas City, Missouri.
Bobby Heenan was there in the bartender said, is Andre
with you this time, and Bobby Heenan said no, and
the bartender said, oh thank god. Last time he was here,
I gave him last call and he didn't want to leave,

(44:29):
so I told him he could own that I could
only stay as long as he was drinking. And Andrea
ordered forty vodka tonics and sat there drinking them until
four in the morning. So just pre frowned up Andrea,
the drink of Andre the drinker. He would go bar
hopping with Karriella's in New York and they were politely,

(44:50):
you say, tailed by an off duty cop who had
been hired by production to keep an eye on Andrea
in case he fell over and hurt someone, which I
had already happened again, So yes, to preclude further instances
of Andre passing out and injuring someone like a tree
falling on you. Essentially the Night of the Yeah, this

(45:11):
is one of the other passing out incidents is the
Night of the Princess Brides. First read through the script
read through, Andrea got so drunk that he passed out
in the middle of the lobby. Hotel employees obviously could
not move him, so they put velvet ropes around him
and told the maids not to vacuum until he woke
up on set. He would keep a flask of cognac
in his coat and share it with cast members. But

(45:32):
you know, there's a bit of tears of the clown
situation going on here too, because for every bit of
good nature jouis de vivre that Andre's boozing and eating
came from, there was an equal dose of pain just
simply from living in that body. You know. It was
it was as if gravity had embarked on a long
corrective campaign against him for daring to take up so

(45:53):
much space in the world. He was born with a
syndrome called acromegaly, which causes an excess of the growth hormone,
which may him enormous, but put terrible strain on all
of his joints and body. His ears wrestling exacerbated that
and took their toll on him physically. Just before Princess
Bride started shooting, he had undergone back surgery and was

(46:13):
just in constant pain throughout the shoot, and he couldn't
stand any pressure on his back, couldn't lift or carry anything,
Which is the kind of the grand irony that you
hire the biggest guy in the world to be this enormous,
imposing physical presence and he can't do anything. And the
final few scenes of the film really posed the biggest
challenge for this situation because he had to ride a

(46:35):
horse first of all, which poor horse, but to get
the shot and avoid injuring both Andre and the horse,
he had to be lowered onto the horse very slowly
using a crane. Yeah, that's a great image, yee. Keep

(46:57):
He's like drinking kognac on the way down for the city,
which he catches Princess Buttercup in his arms. She was
lowered into his arms on wires. And there's photos of
his stunt double out there, a guy named Randy Morris,
who surely would have been the only man in the
world capable of doing this job. And so for the
scenes where Westy's like jumping on his back and actually

(47:18):
fighting with him, that's a stunt double. But pretty much
everybody loved Andrea on the set. He called everyone boss
to help them relax around him. During cold filming days,
he would put his hand on Robin Wright's head to
keep her warm. His hand was so big it reached
down past her eyes and covered the back of her neck.

(47:39):
She said We're in the middle of a forest and
we'd be standing next to each other in our costumes
and it's freaking cold and wet. He put his hands
on my head literally to keep me warm from shivering.
His hands covered my whole head. The heat from his
hand was like an electric blanket. He was just very
sweet and thoughtful. He would always hand me his coat
if mine wasn't nearby. Christopher Guests said he made a

(48:00):
point of shaking Andrea's hand every day, just for the
sensation of having your entire hand disappeared into one of
his mits. He was like, it was like shaking hands
with somebody with a catcher's mit. And Mandy Patakian remembered
a moment when the two of them were sitting on
the boat set with a script supervisor and he asked
Andre if he was enjoying himself, and Andrea said, oh, yes,

(48:20):
nobody looks at me. His relationship with Billy Crystal on
the film I also served as the inspiration for Billy
crystals nineteen ninety eight film My Giant story of a
talent agent who, as you put it, makes a very
tall friend. Do you know that I don't remember this movie.
I remember seeing it, Yeah, tell us about it. I

(48:41):
mean I saw it when it came out in like
the late nineties, but I think it was a similar
situation of this very tall man. I mean, people who
are that tall usually have a lot of health problems
and don't live very long. So I think it was
one of those, you know, tear jerk comedies. Yeah, that's
all I remember about it. Chris Sarandon brought his two
young daughters to the set and recalled to variety. Andre

(49:02):
was sitting down at the end of his makeup table,
and we walked up the steps and turned the corner.
My daughter Stephanie, took one look at Andrea and started
screaming at the top of her lungs, and she wouldn't stop.
Of course, her sister picked up on it, and she
started screaming. We had to take them out immediately. I
went back and said, Andrea, I'm so sorry. Please forgive
their behavior, and he said, no, no, no, either they

(49:22):
come to me or run from me. All of humanity,
either they come from me or they run from me.
And they went and palmed Robin Ride's head to trew
himself up. There's a great bit of Andre's lore which
is that he grew up getting school rides, rides to
school in Samuel Beckett waiting for Godot and Endgame scribe

(49:47):
Samuel Beckett's tractor because he was too big a fitting
a bus. And that's Carrie talked about it in his book.
He's talked about in interviews. He said. He asked what
Andre and Beckett talked about on these rides. Andrea said,
mostly cricket. But there's a great Andrea the Giant documentary
that came out on HBO, and the director of that,
Jason Harrer, told a business insider that the tale has

(50:11):
told as it's evolved, it's someone exaggerated. He said, Beckett's
house is a few hundred yards down the road from
Andrea's childhood home. That is true. The reality is there
was no bus to school in that town. There was
a two kilometer walk from Andrea's house into the center
of town where the schoolhouse was, and all the kids
in the village took that walk to and from school
every day. Beckett had a truck and if he passed
the kids, he would stop and let them hop into

(50:32):
the flatbed of his truck and he would drive them
to or from school. But it wasn't singular to Andrea,
and he had no special relationship with Andrea any more
than he did with any other child in that area.
Andrea's brother laughed at us when we told him what
the legend is. I'm cutting that. I like to believe
the legend. Print the legend right, Yeah, Carrie Ella was

(50:52):
told Entertainment Weekly Andrea said, we big people don't live long. Ah. Yeah,
it's a crushing, rushing quote. He had that thing you
come across with people who are terminally ill, where they
have a secret most of us don't get. They understand
that life is precious and you have to cherish every moment.
He really imparted that to me. He was so filled
with life and fun and so sweet, such a truly

(51:15):
gentle soul. I mean, for a guy who could crush
you like squatting a mosquito, he was so incredibly gentle.
Andrea was born andre renee Russimof in nineteen forty six
at the foot of the French Alps in a town
called Grenoble, and he was just the sweetest boy. His
retirement included a farm in North Carolina, which he said
he loved puttering around because the animals didn't look twice

(51:37):
at him, and his more candid moments with people, he'd
talk about how tough it was for him, how they
build things and accommodate people with disabilities like blindness and
walking disabilities. They build wheelchair ramps, but they don't not
for people his size. You know. He was forced to
buy extra airplane seats nothing fit him. Hotel beds didn't

(51:58):
fit him. He was a porously proud of his work
on Princess Bride and insisted on watching it over and
over again with his fellow wrestlers in the years after
it came out. And Andre died in nineteen ninety three,
he traveled he had traveled in terrible pain from North
Carolina to France for his father's funeral. And there's a
wrestling writer named David Shoemaker who had a great eulogy

(52:19):
for Andre that I'd like to read. He was an
icon of a different era, the last in a long
line of real men, William Wallace, Flad the Impaler, Davy Crockett, etc.
Who became gods in the retelling of their tales. In
the modern era, with television and later the Internet, there
is no folklore, no myth making Andrea's death heartbreaking as

(52:41):
it was elevated him into the pantheon, into the world
of memory and legend, which is where he always belonged. Anyway,
I want to offset this by punching in the Austin
Powers line. No, really, how could you do it? The
sheer mechanics of it of mind boggling. I'm not going
to google that. And though you don't like to think,

(53:02):
you're gonna find something you don't want to find. Yeah, well,
now to cheer ourselves up, we're going to the Billy
Crystal corner of the program. For the part of Miracle
Max rob Ryner went with his buddy Billy Crystal, and
as I said earlier, the pair went way back, meeting
on the set of All in the Family in nineteen
seventy five after producer Norman Leary caught Billy Crystal set

(53:23):
at the comedy Store and cast him as the best
friend of rob Ryner's character, and the two became fast
friends in real life and eventual collaborators, with Billy having
a small role in Spinal Tap as a catering mime.
Mo money his money, It's so good. Did you do
the thing? You do the thing with the Wings, and
then of course he went on a Star and rob

(53:44):
Ryners when Harry met Sally in nineteen eighty nine, just
after The Princess Bride. But his part in The Princess
Bride required extensive prosthetics, and Billy brought two photos to
the makeup artist for inspiration. One of them was a
photo of his own grandmother and another was long time
New York Keys manager Casey Stangel. And if you look

(54:04):
at it, I mean, I've never seen a picture of
his grandmother. If you look at Casey Stangel, I can
kind of see it. These extensive prosthetics meant that Billy
and his co star Carol Kane, who played his wife Valerie,
had to get to the set each day at two am,
and it also took them an hour at the end
of the day just to remove the prosthetics. They were
only on the set for three days, but Billy and

(54:25):
Carol really put their sweat and blood into their performances.
Before the shooting began, they met up at Carol's apartment
to develop an elaborate backstory for their characters. Carol Kane
later said, we added our own twists and turns and
stuff that would amuse us because there's supposed to be
a long story between the couple. Who knows how many
hundreds of years Max and Valerie have been together. And

(54:46):
Rob Ryder gave Billy Crystal permission to go off script
and ad lib during his scenes, and, as Carrie ill
Was wrote in his book, for three days straight and
ten hours a day, Billy improvised thirteenth century period jokes,
never saying the same thing of the same line twice,
and the result was a string of hilarious yet mostly
unfamily friendly jokes that ended up on the cutting room floor.

(55:09):
Rob Ryner was laughing so hard during these scenes that
he had to leave the set, which I think that's
like a listicle of like directors who had to leave
the set because they were just laughing too hard. We're
talking about that and yeah, yeah, I forget. I feel
like that's come up a few times on here. Maybe

(55:29):
Putennka didn't have the luxury of leaving the set because
he was his scene partner and he needed to deliver
the lines off camera. He worked so hard to stifle
his laughter and hold it in that he bruised a rib.
Billy Crystal later told Entertainment Weekly we had lived a
lot of stuff lines like have fun storming the castle,

(55:51):
don't go swing for an hour, a good hour. Those
were all I'd lived. There was a lot of really
funny stuff that never made it into the movie, things
like don't bother me, Sonny, I had a bad day,
I found my nephew with a sheep, and true love
is the greatest thing in the world except for a
good bm And although it was only three days on
the set, Billy says he has really fond memories of

(56:12):
the experience. He remembers breaking for lunch one day and
walking down the hallway at Sheppard and Studios to the
cafeteria and he said, we got a leading man, a
giant Carol Kay looking like an apple sculpture, all just
looking at the menu, going well, what looks good. I
think it was the most normal thing in the world.
That was movie magic. And speaking of prosthetics, this brings

(56:36):
us to Peter Falk, a man who doesn't need prosthetics
to look like a human. Cartoon. Yes, we cannot forget
the humans who provide the framing devices for the plot
of The Princess Bride. In the real world, Peter Falk
plays the grandfather who's reading a story to his sick
young grandson, played by a pre Kevin Arnold Fred Savage,
who we will talk more about in an upcoming episode

(56:57):
about the One Through Years, which I've been writing for
like two months now. Sorry. It was Fred Savage's first
major role and he was thrilled about going on his
first international flight to England, which he is cute. Sixty
year old Peter Falk less cute. He had some fifteen
years of Colombo under his belt at the time, and
he felt he was too young to play a grandfather,

(57:19):
which a little bit denial there he's sixty, but instead
he insisted on using prosthetics to age him, which I
just seems like a very uncharacteristically diva move for a
guy who looks like Peter Falk who existed in a
wrinkled raincoat for most of the seventies. Sadly, he was

(57:40):
not impressed with the makeup. Rob Ryner later said, we
did a test with it and he looked at it
and said, Rob, I look like a burn victim. And
Rob said, Peter, maybe we do it without the prosthetics,
and he said, I think you're on this something and
I cannot mention. Peter falk without remembering this story that
I heard god knows how many years ago. Peter folk

(58:01):
Elos and I is a three year old. But he
was a very active athlete, which is impressive considering yeah,
lack lepth perception with one eye. Baseball was his favorite,
and he has this very colorful story. He said, I
remember once in high school the umpire called me out
at third base. When I was sure I was safe,
I got so mad. I took out my glass eye,

(58:21):
handed it to him and said try this. I got
such a laugh you wouldn't believe. He also described his
time in the Navy by saying, they don't care if
you're blind or not. The only one on a ship
who asked to see is the captain, and in the
case of the Titanic, he couldn't see very well either.
Sick Burn like Wallace, Shawn was another guy who was

(58:42):
somewhat nervous as he prepared for his role. Like his
character Venizi, the Sicilian Wallace, Shawn is truly a man
of dizzying intellect. He has a history degree from Harvard
and he also studied philosophy and economics at Oxford. Talk
about whole brained and he actually took a day off
of filming The Princess to return to Oxford to deliver
a guest lecture on British and American literature. So he

(59:05):
is wicked smat. But Wallace was crippled by nerves throughout
most of the production, and things really got off on
the wrong foot when his agent made a kind of
questionable move of telling him that Rob Ryner had originally
wanted Danny DeVito for the role. And I'm guessing his
agent shared this fact with Wallace to help him taylor
his performance, but all it did was make him angst

(59:25):
over the fact that he was nothing like Danny DeVito,
leaving him in a state of constant fear that he
was going to be fired Danny's inimitable. Wallace later said,
each scene we did, I pictured how Danny would have
done it, and I knew I could never possibly done
it the same way. It made it challenging, And he
also thought he was going to be fired on the
first day because he couldn't do a Sicilian accent. I'm

(59:46):
just imagining Danny DeVito like as in that role, just
being like poor as rob Ryner would later very correctly
observe Wally Sean is probably the furthest thing from a Sicilian,
which is true and eventually just the calmast nerves. Rob

(01:00:07):
Ryaner told them, we want the Sicilian to sound just
like you, Wally. But Wally Shan really struggled with this
part because he didn't really understand the humor of the
movie as they were making it, so rob Ryaner resorted
to giving him line readings, which directors are very loath
to do for him to imitate, and Walis, with classic
kind of deakish understatement, later told the av Club, I

(01:00:30):
must have done it adequately, as people compliment me on
it on a daily basis. Yeah, he's an I think
he's a nice man, but he just hasn't just nuclear
grade neurotic. Yeah, he also has. I think my favorite
line in the movie inconceivable, inconceivable because hes right, you're right, Yeah, yeah,

(01:00:55):
I mean, I think my favorite line in the movie
is actually made it Potenkin saying you keep using that word.
I don't think it means that's what you think it means. Yeah,
but Vinasa the Sicilian says that line five times in
the movie, making it second only two as you wish,
which you said seven times as the movies most frequently
reoccurring catchphrase. But Wallace Shawn wasn't just scared about his performance.

(01:01:15):
He was like all of us, scared of dying. The
scene where he MADEI Betinkin and Robin Write's character a
hole up the Cliffs of Insanity by Andre the Giant's
character physic, he was absolutely petrified due to his crippling
fear of heights. All he had to do was sit
on a bike seat and hold onto the rope and
get pulled up these cliffs on a winch. But he
was absolutely petrified, and then that was further compounded by

(01:01:39):
the fact that he was worried about how his fear
was affecting his performance and this poor guy he was
near tears, saying I'm worried. I'm gonna ruin the film.
I have no ability to do this. And eventually, in
yet another Andre the Giant is the Best story, Andre
sussed out that this guy was having a problem and
he went over and asked Wallace why he was so upset,
and Wallace told him, and Andre reply by patting him

(01:02:00):
on the head like a child and saying, don't worry,
I'll take care of you. And from that moment on
Wallace was fine, did the take and everything was great.
I think my favorite line from this movie is life
is pain highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. Yeah,
and we'll never survive nonsense. You're only saying that because

(01:02:23):
no one ever has. It's God the writing, and it
is so witty, so good. Another person was very nervous
during the production was the man responsible for these lines,
William Goldman. Despite all the blockbusters he'd written, two of
which had won him an Oscar by this point, he
loved The Princess Bride most of all, and after fifteen

(01:02:45):
years of confronting every disaster possible while trying to get
his passion project made, he was a little skittish now
that they were finally shooting it. To assuage any fear,
as Rob Ryner invited him onto the set, which Goldman
historically didn't like to do, saying, you're a screenwriter, it's boring.
But he broke his own rule in this case, visiting
the set of The Princess Bride on the first day

(01:03:06):
of shooting, where he promptly had a meltdown. Not long
into the shoot, the sound engineers noticed the weird noise
in the background of the audio tapes. They described it
as sounding like some strange incantation. The sound was William
Goldman chanting prayers to God the whole time, helping the
movie shoot would go okay. And Rob Wriner went over

(01:03:28):
and gave this guy a hug, trying to get him
to calm down, but William Goldman did not calm down.
A short time later that same day, Robin Write's character
has her red dress catch on fire, and the high
strung William Goldman apparently forgot that he had written this
into the script himself and assumed that a major onset
disaster had just occurred, and he panicked, ruining the take

(01:03:49):
by screaming, oh my god, her dress is on fire.
She's on fire. And he later backtracked, insisting that he
was mostly just horrified that they were doing fires stuff
on the first day. It was like, Rob, you're setting
fire to Robin on the first day, What are you nuts?
It's not like you could replace sir. Another excellent line
setting off. You see him a decent fellow, I hate
to kill you. You see him a decent fellow, I

(01:04:11):
hate to die. Thus begins one of the best sword
fights in cinematic history. It's not crouching tiger, hidden dragon
level stuff, but it has quite the pedigree. It's referred
to in the book and the movie as the greatest
sword fight in modern times, and Carrie Ewas and Mandy
Patankin put in the work, as did Bill Goldman. He
spent months researching seventeenth century sword fighting manuals to craft

(01:04:36):
their duels. I had no idea. I thought all of
that stuff was made up to mend funny. That is,
all historically accurate sword fighting terms like the la grip
and bizzini and zibaba doog when Jimmy, yeah, you know,
I'm just you know, I got nothing but no bad idea.
Bad as a breadstone. I can see you've studied your
la grip. It counters excellently unless your opponent has studied

(01:04:59):
the grip, which I had. But neither Elwez or Patakon
had any fencing experience, so they spent months training. Patankon
recalled an elass book. I knew my job was to
become the world's greatest sword fighter. I trained for about
two months in New York, and then we went to
London and Carry and I trained every day that we
weren't shooting for four months. There were no stuntmen involved

(01:05:20):
in any of the sword fights except for one flip
in the air, so as you mentioned before filming, they
trained for eight to ten hours a day for two
and a half weeks with a pretty legendary duo of stuntmen.
Peter Diamond has over a thousand credits in the industry
as a stuntman, coordinator or choreographer, including on various Star Wars,
writers of the Lost Arc from Russia with Love and

(01:05:40):
Doctor Who going back to the seventies. But Olympic fencer
Bob Anderson is the real deal here. He is behind
the sword fights in Highlander, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings,
The Mask of Zoro, many many more, as well as
stunt doubling for Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back
in Return of the Jedi, and he coached Errol Flynn

(01:06:01):
and Burt Lancaster. But more of a Hollywood sword fighting pedigree.
Do you want wow? So? But and this is funny.
Unbeknownst to Karry Ill was Mandy Potainkin had started his
lessons two months prior, so he came in with a
leg up and then these guys came to set, so
even after all of this pre shooting training, they would
still anytime they were minute, like just any free time

(01:06:23):
in between their shots, Diamond and Anderson would like caller
them and be like, all right, guys, time to work
on the sword stuff. And this was the last one
of the last scenes shot at the end of the
four months shoot to give them the maximum amount of
time to work on it perfected, and it took a
week to film. Funnily enough, even though both this is insane,

(01:06:45):
both Karry ill Was and Mandy Potainkin learned to fence
with their left and right hands like their characters did,
but the scene where they switched hands was actually shot
on mirrored sets so that the image could then be flipped,
which would create the illusion. So even though they went
through the effort of learning how to do it, they
used movie trickery to fake it. But as they started

(01:07:07):
filming this render was like, ah, this scenems too short.
Anderson Diamond add some stuff, so they did, and he wrote,
They wrote extra dialogue, they wrote extra quipping back and forth,
but yeah, they added. So they added extra stuff to
get it up to the run time. And then there
was one last thing that had to be changed Always
told the Huffington Post in twenty fourteen, there's a bit

(01:07:29):
of one of the sequences that wasn't working for the
camera and Rob said, we can't see it. You guys
have it faced the wrong way. Mandy said to Bob Anderson,
we've got to change it, and Bob said, we can't.
We're shooting it. Rob said, you've got twenty minutes. If
you can fix it, great, If you can't, we're moving on.
And in twenty minutes we actually got it and did it.

(01:07:50):
It was nice to remember that we could actually come
up with something on the spur of the moment and
fix it iconic. That's terrifying. What a great scene. Oh,
it's incredible. I mean it truly is one of the
best sword fights in cinema history. It stands alongside all
the Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbank stuff, all the truly two
of the best swashbucklers. It makes it. It's great. It's

(01:08:13):
a great scene too, because it's not just like the
choreography is great, camera works great and everything, but it tells.
It's a fight scene that tells a story, and the
pacing of the dialogue and the sort of slowly dawning
that Wesley is like a much better swordsman than an ego.
Like it just it all comes it. It's so perfectly paced.
It's a little I mean, this is why people study
William Goldman Man. It's just like a little microcosm of

(01:08:36):
like how to tell a story with an action scene.
You know, there's one thing to take away from just
all the dedication that these actors put into the sword
fighting is that they were not afraid of taking on
risky stunts, and this sometimes went well for the cast.
Sometimes it didn't go well. The same or Wesley has
to jump into the quicksand the follow Buttercup is a

(01:08:57):
prime example. The direction originally called for him to jump
in feet first, but Carrie os felt that this didn't
look heroic enough, so instead he opted to dive into
the quicksand head first. But this was a bit nerve
racking because the quicksand effect was accomplished through the use
of a trapdoor hidden beneath the sand, and if the
trapdoor wasn't opened at exactly the right instant, Carrie wrist

(01:09:19):
breaking his neck. Thankfully, they nailed the shot in a
single take, but it soon became clear that the film's
leading man was a little accident prone. For weeks on
the set, he nursed a broken toe, which makes so
many of those actions scenes all the more impressive. Like
during that sword fight scene, he had a broken toe,

(01:09:39):
and this toe, it was not a result of a
stunt gone wrong or anything particularly heroic. It was a
result of a joy ride on Andre the Giant's ATV.
As you previously menagtioned, Andrea's size meant that he was
in constant physical pain and needed some help getting around,
and given the fact that he was too big to
fit in the van but the rest of the cast,

(01:10:00):
was given an ATV to drive himself around the hills
where they were shooting exteriors, and one day, about six
weeks into the production, Andrea encouraged Carry to give it
a try. I mean, if Andrew the Giant rolls up
next to you on an ATV and welcome to you
to try his four wheeler, you you're gonna try it.
I mean, that's just how it goes. As Carry recalled,

(01:10:21):
one day, Andre pulled up to me with his ATV
and said, you want to try it, don't you? I can't.
I've never tried it before you know you want to.
It's so much fun. He's already drunk. Yeah, Carrie got
on and he said, I put the thing into gear
and I literally went over a rock and my toe
got caught between a rock and the clutch and bent

(01:10:41):
it back all the way. I knew I broke it instantly,
And unfortunately he still had to shoot a scene where
he was running, not to mention the sword fighting scenes,
both of which are very hard to do with a
broken toe, and he did his best to hide the
injury from Rob Reiner because not only was it still
in the early stages of production and he was frightened
and being replaced, he was also just embarrassed. He'd called

(01:11:04):
it the most cringeworthy moment of my life. You can't
have a hopping dread pirate Roberts. And when Rob Runner
ultimately did find out about it, it was one of
those cases of not being mad, just disappointed. Carry recalled
it as a quote valuable lesson in telling the truth.
He'd say, when Rob found out, he was upset that
I hadn't told him. I said, I was afraid you'd

(01:11:25):
fire me, and he said something very sweet to me.
He said don't be silly, carry I wouldn't fire you.
You're the only person who could play Wesley, and that
really boosted my spirit. Then he asked can you walk
and I said yeah, And he said can you run?
And I said, it'll be an interesting interpretive dance. And
there are little moments in the film when you notice
him hopping and limping. But shockingly, he filmed that sword

(01:11:47):
fight with Manni Patinkin with a broken toe. He later
explained in a strange way, I think the broken toe
actually helped because I had to focus more on the
movements in my arms and learned how to become proficient,
more proficient than I probably would have been if I
had broke on my toe at being left handed, because
I had just had to focus on the sword fighting itself.
But Carrie would sustain another injury on the set, this

(01:12:09):
time when the cameras were rolling, and it occurred during
the scene where Wesley recognizes Count Rugan played by Christopher
Guest as the evil six fingered man, and in the script,
the Count is supposed to knock Wesley unconscious with the
butt of his sword, and Christopher Guest understandably didn't want
to hit his fellow actor on the head with the
butt of his sword, but his reluctance made the take
seem a little bland. So eventually Carrie, who again is

(01:12:32):
the man who dove head first into quicksand, suggested that
Christopher Guests just hit him for real, and Christopher Guest
complied a little too well, and Carrie was knocked unconscious.
That's the take they used in the film. Yep, that's crazy.
It's so nuts. As he wrote in his book As
You Wish Inconceivable Tales from the Making of the Princess Bride,

(01:12:53):
I just want to plug this guy's book because he's
so nice and he deserves it. Christopher Guest swung the
heavy sword down towards my head. However his 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 Goldman,
stage directions from the end of the scene state the
screen goes black. In the darkness frightening sounds, which is

(01:13:16):
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 weeks earlier from my broken toe.
I remember him saying to me after I came in, well, Zoro,
you seem to be a little accident prone, don't you.
And of course Christopher Guest felt absolutely terrible about the

(01:13:38):
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 Wesley fall to the
ground and pass out, that's not acting. That's an overzealous
actor actually losing consciousness. Good for him. Christopher Guest had
bad luck with swords during the making of The Princess Bride.

(01:13:59):
He's the story of going horseback riding and his costume
for the film, and the horse just seemed to go
completely wild and lose control, took off, nearly running head
first into a wall. And it took a little while,
but they realized that the scabbard of Chris's sword was
whacking the horse on its side, almost like a spur,
so it was giving it the message to just go
faster all the time, and that led to it just

(01:14:21):
going out of control, which is scary. Have you ever
gone out of horse? No? Really? No? Oh I don't
trust him. Yeah, I don't know what they're planning small hands. No,
just you know, just grew up here and now Christopher
Reeve is a superman. Yeah. I wound up in a

(01:14:43):
wheelchair because of a damn horse. So I was like,
that's enough for me. They can take out Superman. I'm
not even Batman. You know, as you meditate on that,
we'll be right back with more too much information after
these messa, which is well, while we're on the topic

(01:15:12):
of pen transition, we have to talk about the Machine,
the torture device that leaves Wesley mostly dead. It took
count Rugen half a lifetime to invent it, and for
those who don't remember, the machine sucks away a year
of life from the person based on the number of
levels that the machine is set to, like digital media.

(01:15:35):
Perstley has the machine question, Yes, so is he back
to his normal amount of life now that he's been
resurrected or he just got the resurrection, but now he's
still gonna die in like a year. That's a great
plot hole. How do you think that works? You know
what it's been so long since I've seen the whole movie.
Well up to fifty kills him, right, he leaves him

(01:15:58):
almost dead, mostly said mostly dead, So they mostly dead.
So yeah, so when he comes back to life, then
is is he back to full? Is he back to
full is he back to premachine strength? Or is he
just back to the brink of like being alive at
the threshold and now he has like, yeah, like two
years to live or something. Great questions. I don't know Goldman, Jamie,

(01:16:23):
can we get Bill Goldman on the phone? Jamie, you
have a Wigie board, give us a glass on a
Luigi board. I need an old priest and a young priest. No,
that's a that's a good that's a good plot hole. Huh, yeah,
tweeted us. So yeah, this machine that leaves Wesley mostly

(01:16:45):
dead was actually built for a whole other movie. He
was built for nineteen eighty threes Never Say Never Again,
a movie in which Sean Connery reprises his role as
James Bond. But now we're gonna have a little James
Bond quarter moment. Note how I didn't say that it
was a Bond film due to not particularly interesting legal particularities.

(01:17:07):
Never Say Never Again wasn't made by Eon Productions, which
is the company that produces the official Bond movies, So
I Never Say Never Again is a considered Bond cannon.
In fact, it's basically a remake of the nineteen sixty
six Sean Connery Bond movie Thunderball, but the two pay
that Sean Connery, whereas and Never Say Never Again was
rumored to be one of the most expensive hairpieces ever

(01:17:28):
made at the time. I'm having a six bucks running
that number down, but I definitely remember hearing that. And
I also realize until this very morning, that Sean Connery
wore a hairpiece in every Bond movie post Goldfinger. And
there's a I didn't know that. I did not know that.

(01:17:49):
There is a whole blog dedicated to the topic that
I discovered this morning called Sean Connery's hairpiece Page. So
what was it built for in that movie? Some kind
of Bond villain torture device? And they decided not to
use it. It was rejected for some reason I don't
know why, and it wound up getting reused. And the
Princess Bride, which is wild. I mean again, Princess Bride

(01:18:12):
was shot in Sheppard and Studios in England, which is
where a while the bond stuff was done, so it
kind of makes sense. The machine and the Princess Bride
was operated by the character known as the Albino, played
by British comedian Mel Smith, and he didn't have a
good time making this movie. Kind of nothing. I think
the only person who didn't have a good time making
this movie. The role required him to wear colored contact lenses,

(01:18:34):
and unfortunately he and the costume folks belatedly learned that
he was allergic to the lens solution for his contacts,
and as a result, he was in agony during the
production and reportedly never watched the finished movie ever because
he couldn't bear the memory he had poisoned poured into
his eyes. Yeah, I mean very clockwork orange. So that

(01:18:55):
is sad. Higel tell us fund of story. Take us
to a different corner. That's a different place, another corner
of TMI. The TMI world we're inaugurating called Andre the
giants farts, giant farts, my least favorite. John Coltrane deep
cuts giant farts. No, this bit is terrible. I can't

(01:19:25):
believe you got me to fart giant steps just now
that's the the I don't know if that's the highest
low brow joke. Can you play giant farts in all
twelve Keys? Did you go to Berkeley anyway? Yes, Uh,
we're gonna talk about for this fart corner, We're gonna

(01:19:48):
talk about the time Andre the Giant farted on the
set of Princess Bride, a moment's occasion once once lost
to the mist of history and thankfully resurfaced by the
good folks over at Vulture. It was his first day
of filming with Carrie Oz, and Elz described the incident,

(01:20:08):
which he titled a mighty wind that's good, which it's
very good, funny Andrea, I should start by saying he
was a gentle giant, the sweetest guy. And one day,
the first day, actually the first scene we had together,
Rob Ryner said, okay, roll camera's action, and I think
my first words were, I'll fight you both together, I'll
take you both apart. But as I was saying this,

(01:20:30):
an enormous monumental fart starts to omit from Andrea. It
literally lasted eighteen seconds, and he just sat there with
a grin on his face. And I don't know if
he was grinning out of relief or grinning at the
humor of it, knowing that this was going to take
a while. Literally everything shook and I just lost it.
I couldn't believe it as I started laughing, Andrea started laughing.

(01:20:53):
And at the end of the day I apologized to
Andrea for laughing at his fart, and he said it
was a good one. Carrie dedicated three pages of his
memoir to recounting this incident. He described the event as
a veritable symphony of gastric distress that roared for more
than several seconds and shook the very foundations of the
wooden plaster set where we were now grabbing onto out

(01:21:15):
of sheer fear. The sonic resonance was so intense I
even observed our sound man remove his headphones to protect
his ears, like the scene of Titanic when the ship
breaks in two, and everyone's just like hanging on to
Andrea had a good sense of humor about it, you know,
carry whenever. To apologize, and Andre replied, it's okay. My

(01:21:37):
farts always make people laugh. This concludes giant farts. I
could fart. John Coltrane's iconic solo The Giant Steps No

(01:21:58):
I can't do it. I just don't have the dexterity
A few people do. No, there's not a lot of
people know that. While we're on the top to Jordan
is rendered paralyzed by by giant farts. The road committed
to it so stronger. I couldn't get you to do
the nag on toya voice. But got that no no,

(01:22:20):
because you know what Jordans I I that's low hanging fruit.
And I read the listeners. They deserve more. We yeah,
we deserve. They deserve more than that. They get giant farts.
They don't get me rereading one of the most well
trodden movie lines of all time. But while we're on
the topic of unsavory yet funny things, we've got to
talk about the r o u Ss Rodents of unusual size.

(01:22:43):
They're giant rats, folks, They're just big, big, honking rats.
Rob Reiner did the vocal work for these characters, but
they were actually performers inside these costumes, um fifty pounds
of rubber, latex, fake fur, and crime. Much like Australia,

(01:23:05):
the Rouss were filled with criminals from their inception. Uh no,
I'm I'm exaggerating. Apologies for Australian listeners, there was apparently
police drama on the while The Princess Bribe was filming,
involving the rous actors. You said there's two versions and
you were unable to parse if these were separate incidences
or just different tellings. I think they're separate. I'm pretty

(01:23:26):
sure they're separate, which is wild. Right. Hey man, you
make you're living in a rat suit. You're living that's
life in the fast lane, baby, Uh, not being the
fast lane, Rob Ryner says on the day they were
shooting the scene in the fire swamp where Westley wrestles
the rats. That's a tongue twist. Wow. The main rat performer,

(01:23:46):
the one who was quote good with quick movements. Are
your main rat performer who's good with quick movements? On
the other the other guys, the other guy, I'm the
rat before bought with some Alec Baldwin. I'm the rat
performer who's good with movement. Yeah, he does his job.
You must be the other rat performer. I love that line. Southey,

(01:24:11):
you must be the other guys. He must be the
other rats Mary Mark. Oh that's Marky Mark. Yeah. Sorry, uh? Rob? Sorry,
So the main rat performer Rat Guy A will call him.
I mean they're probably cat they're probably named in the
credits they are not. Yeah, I think I have him
some did you protect their names? Change their names to

(01:24:32):
protect the innom honestly sort of? Yeah? Okay, Well, Rat
Guy A, the quick movement guy, was nowhere to be
found because he was in jail after getting into a
massive fight with his wife the night before and burning
down the kennel that they owned. No word on whether
or not it was occupied at the time. I'm I'm

(01:24:53):
guessing no, that's that's up. Yeah. So Rob found this
out and bailed the guy out of jail, and then
later on a different rat performer. How many rus as
were there? Where there's two? So there's two rat guys
or three rat guys? How many rat guys on this film?
How many rat guys you got? How many you need?
This is Carcharping executive comes he's the rat guy budget

(01:25:15):
on this movie is insane. Tell Ryan he gets two
rat guys. He gets one guy with quick movements and
he gets the other guy. The union, the rat guy
union is killing me. He's starting into Harvey fire scene.
I feel like I lost that. I lost the voice
that I had for him earlier. So a different rat
guy performer was pulled over for speeding and tried to

(01:25:38):
get out of his ticket by telling the cop that
he had a big job the next morning. He can't
pull me over because I gotta go play this giant
rat and the cop assumed that he was drunk and
speeding because he figured only a drunk guy would say
something like that, and booked him for drunk driving. So
this concludes your rat corner speaking of nothing. Some of

(01:26:02):
the film was shot at Shepperton Studios in England, but
much of the movie was filmed on location. The castle
used for the film was Hadden Hall, which is not
to be confused with the massive house that David Bowie
and his pals rented in the early seventies. This is
a different Hadden Hall. This one is a fortified country
house built by William the Conqueror in ten eighty six

(01:26:23):
for his illegitimate son, which is maybe the most English
sentence you've ever had me read on this show. It
has been owned by the same family since fifteen ninety
seven because it's England, and has been featured in three
versions of Jane Eyre Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth and the
film Lady Jane starring Carrie Elwes aka the role that
got on the Prince's Bride. They usually the exterior of

(01:26:46):
the castle by adding some fake turrets to make it
look a little more imposing, but they filmed most of
the interior shots inside among the original medieval furniture and tapestry,
which helped because you know, as you mentioned, not a
well funded product auction. The location stuff is recalled fondly
by the casting crew because they all stayed at the
same hotel, which made it kind of a summer camp.

(01:27:08):
Jamie Lee Curtis, who is married to Christopher Guest, had
a crock pot in their room and they so they
would cook meals for fellow cast members and eat together.
Imagine having a fish called Wanda era Jamie Lee Curtis
making you croc pot meals. Man, I would I could
just die right then and there. Chris Guests later told
Entertainment Weekly, there are a lot of times when you're
on a movie on location and you're kind of a

(01:27:30):
loaner and you stay in your room. This was an
uncommonly friendly gang of people. Rob The common through line
in this is how much. Everyone hates English cooking, which
I love English cooking. Well, yeah you're you, buddy. Yeah,
best desserts in the world. Yeah, dessert, Yeah, dessert. No,
I know, dessert. But these people put beans on toast

(01:27:53):
called breakfast. Rob Ryner hated the local food so much
he had a hibachi grill installed in his hotel room
so he could cook burgers and dogs for himself and
the crew, making that a popular place to hang out
as well. So between you got Jamie Lee Curtis, you
got Rob Ryner, and you got so that's your Continental,
your American homestyle. And then you got Andre the Giant
driving to France and back for his for French food.

(01:28:14):
Damn they ate like kings. It's a great set. The
movies showdown between Inigo Montoya and Count Rugen aka The
Six Fingered Man takes place at Haddon Hall, and I
just want to point out the fact that Christopher Guest
also plays Nigel Tough old spinal Tap and he's the
man whose aunt famously goes to eleven and now he's
playing the Six Fingered Man. I just think that's a

(01:28:37):
that's a funny coincidence, just because there's numbers involved. Numbers. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's great. You're right, Yeah, you're right, yeah yeah, thank you,
thank you. Christopher Guest kept the six finger glove, and
he was very proud that his son would show it
off to his friends whenever they came over, which I
think is cute. During the fight rehearsal for this climactic

(01:28:58):
fight scene, maybe Potencton got a little carried away. As
we talked about earlier, this scene had a very personal
meaning for him. He wasn't just fighting the fictional movie villain.
He was slaying his father's cancer, and so he was
really getting into it when he accidentally stabbed Christopher Guest
in the thigh, which maybe is Carmick payback for Christopher
Guest knocking out Carrie ill Was with the butt of

(01:29:18):
his sword. But yeah, Christopher Guest was pretty freaked out,
and he told the fencing master who'd been training them
all this time, I think, man, he's gonna try to
kill me when we do the take. So yeah, all
that stuff I learned, I'm basically just gonna throw that
out and just try to defend myself now. And my
favorite part about this fight scene is that Christopher Guest
found himself involuntarily doing the sword sounds with his mouth

(01:29:43):
as they fought, and mostly rob Ryner was like, all right,
cut cut. He goes over to him, Chris, it's okay,
we're gonna put the sounds in and post. You're so
I know, it's so good. When what's her name? Lard
dirhams and Star Wars, isn't they You can see her
on camera making pete pew noises when she's shooting her
laser gun. Laura turns and Star Wars, Yeah, the most

(01:30:06):
recent one, the god you have to say, the medium
ones and then the new ones. Uh, yeah, she's in
the new ones. But yeah, there's a scene where she
like bursts into a room and starts firing her pistol
and you can see her lips going pete pew. That's
the time glad they left that didn't didn't like shot. Yeah,

(01:30:30):
Wesley Snipe's eyes and that was that Blade three. Yeah,
he refused to open his eyes on the set, so
they cgi ghastly open eyes onto his eyelids. It's so scary.
If we all do stand by me for you, if
you'll do Blade for me, we'll put some time between
between rob Ryder movies. We should definitely do those both.

(01:30:53):
Hell yeah, we should do we gotta do somewhere maybe
maybe it's the same. I mean, we gotta do some
River Phoenix movie. I just think he's so interesting. Thing
to me, I think River Phoenix, Yeah, I think he's
interesting is the word I'm looking for. It's kind of psychic.
What's interesting about him? He's pretty? No, he well, he

(01:31:13):
grew up in that weird cult with the rest of them. Yeah,
and I thought, I still think he was an incredibly
talented actor. And he also didn't really seem to give
a day about acting that much. Like he really was
into more into music, which is interesting to me. And
I don't know, it's just any kind of unfulfilled potential
is interesting to me, Like lost albums that were never

(01:31:34):
finished and and things like that are always really interesting
to me. And I guess same with actors who James
Dean being probably the most obvious example, people that like
could have done so much and it's interesting. It's sad
too to think about what they could have done and
how they could have changed the medium. And yeah, but
like a dedicated actor, River Phoenix was just pretty I

(01:31:56):
was very talented my own propit Idaho. It's a great move.
He's got that annoying brother. Yeah, just doing the most.
They did have a big family, and that was part
of the reason. I mean yeah, I mean his backstory
is just so fascinating. How like he supported his entire
massive family with his acting gigs, and yeah, he had

(01:32:17):
a lot on his shoulders, and I feel like you
could see that in his performance. Yeah, No, I don't care.
I just didn't see it in those movies, so I
just like, I don't Explorers is great. You never saw
Explorers as a kid. Oh my god, it's incredible. It's
this movie where these three kids make a spaceship out
of a tiltal world that they find at a junkyard.

(01:32:41):
It's so cool. Yeah, the AD's right. They were in
the Children of God. Wasn't that the same cult that
the guy from Girls was in that I don't know, children,
but I thought got busted. Yeah, guy from the band Girl,
he was in Children of God. I did things I
won't talk about just to survive. That was poor quote.
But speaking of things that make me uncomfortable, Count Rugan's

(01:33:03):
death in this movie is actually a lot tamer than
it was in the book. Where an ego cuts out
the man's heart and then he dies of fright at
the sight of it, which is a little too much
for PG. But that's a hell of a parting line
though I want my father back, you, son of a bitch.
That's a hell of a line delivered from a man

(01:33:24):
who meant it. That's a very powerful scene. There's a
lost ending to the Princess Bride, which in all, honestly
it's probably for the best as it stands. The movie
ends with Peter Falk's grandfather character finishing the story, and
as he gets up to leave, his grandson, who you'll
recall didn't really give a damn about the story, initially
asks him to come back the next day and read

(01:33:45):
the book to him again, and the grandfather replies with,
as you wish, which in the world of the film
is code for I love you. It's a very simple,
touching ending, but originally Rob Ryner shot a scene where
Fred Savage goes to the window after his grandfather leaves
and he sees Anigo, Feesick, Wesley and Buttercup sitting outside
on horses, and they wave and smiled him before riding

(01:34:07):
off into the I think literal Sunset, but Rob Ryano
thought this was just a little too cute see and
dropped the idea, which again I think is probably good.
Before we finished talking about the production, we have one more.
Andre the Giant is giving Robert Williams a run for
his money. Is the nicest guy in the World's story.
On the last day of shooting, the cast stuck around
on the set for over five hours while every crew

(01:34:29):
member and their families in some cases came by and
waited in line like children at Disneyland, to stand with
Andre the Giant and have their photograph taken with him.
He had his picture taken with every single person that
asked on set that day, even though I'm sure on
some level he found it extremely humiliating and resented all
the attention. But he did it anyway because it made

(01:34:51):
people happy. He did it for us. Sweet sweet man.
You know he's not a sweet sweet man, Mark Offler
of Dire Straits, don't. I'm sure he's fine. Yeah, it's
it's I know nothing about him personally. I hate Dire Straits.
I think they are my least favorite band. There's something

(01:35:13):
so clinical and cold and soulless about it. I just
I don't like it. Um. I didn't realize this though.
The music for The Princess Bride was done by Mark
n Noffler. But you know, despite everything I just said,
Mark no Offler gets points with me because he, like
I'm sure all rock stars of a certain age, is
a big fan of spinal Tap, and apparently he semi
jokingly only agreed to take this job if Rob Ryner

(01:35:36):
agreed to put a reference to spinal Tap in The
Princess Bride, which he did. If you look closely at
the scenes shot in the Little Boy's bedroom, you can
see the USS r C o V four B baseball cap.
But Rob Ryner roar as Marty de Burgee and spinal Tap. Yeah. Man, sure, man, Okay, okay, man. Yeah.

(01:36:00):
I've seen some reports say that Rob couldn't find the
original hat and this one was a replica. But Mark
Noffler apparently appreciated all the effort and did the film.
I don't remember anything about the music, and this isn't
it all like it's kind of likes light Yeah. Yeah,
it's like loot Sting wasn't available. It's not the USS
Oral C by the way, it's the USS Choral C

(01:36:23):
mix that was a typo if you want to take
that again. That soundtrack was uh that soundtrack. Uh, this
song storybook love from it got a got an Academy
Award nom what's say yeah Best Original Song. Wow. I

(01:36:43):
have no memory of that song at all. Co written
with Mink Deville's Deville. Oh, he's like a very very
weird um. He was like a CBGB uh contemporary, but
he was like way more are inspired by like Doc
Pomus and Doctor John and Alan Tousson. So he was

(01:37:05):
like had all these like sort of seventies era like
punk bands, but he was he was always playing like
essentially like swamp pop and later on became like a
you know, more of a very uh traditional like roots
rock guy. But Doc Palmas said about him, mc deville

(01:37:26):
knows the truth of a city street and the courage
and a ghetto love song him a harsh reality in
his voice and phrasing is yesterday, today and tomorrow timeless,
in the same way that loneliness, no money, and troubles
find each other and never quit for a minute. Damn.
I live on the corner of Doc Pomus Memorial way
out in Brooklyn. I guess he lived on the round

(01:37:48):
the corner for more I live. Huh, yeah, I guess.
I guess mink Deville had stopped going by Mink He
was going by Willie Deville. Minkdeville was the name of
the band, and he recorded Now I'm Called Miracle in
London with Mark Knoppler producing, and Knopfler heard the song,
and this is an interview with him from nineteen ninety six.
He said, Knopfler heard Storybook Love and asked if I
knew about this movie he was doing. It was a

(01:38:09):
Rod Riner film about a princess and a prince strike one.
The song was about the same subject matter as the film,
so we submitted it to Rhiner and he loved it.
About six or seven months later, I was half asleep
and the phone rang. It was the Academy of Arts
and Sciences with the whole spiel. I hung up on them.
They called back and my wife answered the phone. She
came in to tell me that I was nominated for

(01:38:29):
Storybook Love. Before I knew it, I was performing on
the Award Show with Little Richard. It was the year
of Dirty Dancing and they won. So that's the story
of your personal enemy. Mark Knopfler and Willie Deville writing
an Academy Awardiname nominated or arranging recording an Academy Award
nominated song for Princess Pride Soundtrack. I can't believe you're

(01:38:51):
just gonna gloss over it that marketing. I know I've
set you up zero times in this episode. I'm sorry.
Though the cast and crew of The Princess Bribe are
well aware that they made something special, the studio was not.
They were confused about how to market the film. To start,

(01:39:11):
the title sounded like a romcom, making it a tough
sell for adult males and kids. As Reiner later said
to hitflix dot Com, it was hard to categorize, and
I think the title also scared people. It sounds like
a children's fairytale or something. When it came time to
assemble a poster, the marketing geniuses at Fox went with
the image of Peter Falk reading to Fred Savage in bed,

(01:39:32):
which is absolutely the worst possible decision you could make,
given that this film is jam packed with iconic characters
and beautiful people, and you have the Wonder Years Kid
and one eyed Willie Peter Falk. Apparently that phote that
poster art was inspired by the nineteen twenty two painting
Daybreak by Maxfield Parish, which later served as an influence

(01:39:55):
for Michael Jackson's video You Are Not Alone with then
wife Lisa Marie Presley. The trailer for Princess Bride was
apparently so bad it was yanked from theaters almost immediately.
Rob Bryner was on the phone constantly with the head
of Fox, Barry Diller, furious, saying this is terrible. We've
got a movie that everybody loves, but we can't get
anybody to come. He remembers screaming at him, Barry, I

(01:40:16):
don't want to have a Wizard of Oz because when
Wizard of Oz came out, it was a disaster. Nobody liked.
It didn't do well. And Barry said to him, Rob,
don't let anybody ever hear you say that you'd be
so happy to have a Wizard of Oz, by which
he meant it takes time for odd bawl movies to
develop an audience, and that was pretty much what happened.
Princess Bride was not a success. When a premiered in
eighty seven, of all the movies released that year, it

(01:40:36):
ranked forty first in domestic grosses, bringing in just thirty
point eight million. The number one film that year, Three
Men Out a Baby brought in one hundred and sixty
seven point seven million. Wow, Oh the eighties. That was
the power of Steve Gutenberg. Though right there was a
short circuit. No, oh, that's a great movie. Military Robot

(01:40:58):
gets struck by lightning and gained sentience. But does it
become whimsical or murderous? Where's it all pass? Yeah, as
is so often the case with movies of this h
ilk Willy Wonka, Hocus Pocus, Donnie Darko, Fight Club, etc.
It when Princess Bride went on to become a smash
in home release. The film has been embraced by several

(01:41:21):
generations as a beloved classic. Probably obvious to anyone who
whose ears perked up when we started going into this episode.
Some of the more unusual facts about this legacy. It
is apparently a favorite of the Mormons. Chris Surrandon, who
played Prince Humperdink and you know, gave Susan Surrandon her

(01:41:41):
stage name in the sixties, told the story of being
in Salt Lake City where he, somehow, for some reason,
met the Attorney General of Utah, who told Chris Surrandon,
do you know that in every home in Utah there's
a video, a DVD and a blu ray of the
Princess Bride. It's the most popular movie in the state
of Utah. Sure, man, Okay man. Chris Random believes the

(01:42:07):
Mormons love the film because it has good values to
it and it's a message about love. But the power
of the prison, the power of the Princess Bride transcends
Christian sex. It is also a favor of the Pope.
Friends of the Pod. Kerrie Always once had the opportunity
to meet Pope John Paul two, who greeted him by saying,
you were the actor, the one from The Princess and
the Bride. Very good film, very funny. Carrie also meant

(01:42:31):
that guy was Polish, right, we just do a Polish
joke in there. Yeah. Carrie met Bill Clinton, who claimed
to have seen the movie over a hundred times and
was just tickled. Probably don't use the word. Bill Clinton's
in the room when Carrie offered to send an autographed
script to Chelsea. And then there was the Iraq war

(01:42:54):
veteran who told Carry that his commanding officer would send
the men out on dangerous patrols with have unstorming the castle,
and the soldier added that did a lot for morale.
I am reading it as sarcasm, but it might not
have been. This is the best one, though. Once Rob
Ryner was approached by an extreme skier who told him

(01:43:16):
this movie saved my life. She had been trapped in
an avalanche and to keep herself help keep herself awake
until she was rescued. She recited the whole movie from memory.
But arguably Rhyner's most memorable encountered with a princess bride
fankurt outside of a New York restaurant, A limo pulled
up to the entrance, and a New York crime boss
and famous rat back to the rat corner, John Gotti

(01:43:40):
stepped out, flanked by half a dozen henchmen. Taking notice
of Rhiner, Gotti turned to him and said, you killed
my father. Prepared to die as you may expect. Hearing
one of the most infamous mobsters in the world saying
that to you was jarring, and Ryner didn't get the
reference to his own film until Gotti burst out laughing

(01:44:00):
and said, I love that movie. The Princess Bride now
I gotta go right on a bunch of people. I
love that John Mulaney bit where he talks about like
his mom went to college with Bill Clinton and they
like met at some event like decades later, and she
was like, oh, I'm not sure if you remember me,

(01:44:21):
Like she came up to Bill Clint afterwards, and Bill
Clinton goes, oh, hey, Eileen. Milady's punchline is because Bill
Clinton never forgets a bitch. I was gonna say, I
don't know how I would feel, but I wouldn't. I
wouldn't want Bill Clinton to remember my mom's name. No, yeah, okay,
I'm glad we're an agreement of that. Well anyway, all right,

(01:44:44):
we're are we all right, We're almost there. Well, as
with most good things, Hollywood has tried to ruin the
Princess Bride with a remake, but we were saved from
this fate by a fan revolt. Rumors of a possible
Princess Bride remake begins spread across the internet twenty ten,
and the backlash was so extreme that the remake rumblings
immediately ceased project right, yeah, yeah, that's that gives me

(01:45:10):
such hope. This project. It was never formally announced, So
there's a possibility that it was just purely a rumor.
But I kind of get the sense that the producer
was testing the waters and then got scared off when
he saw how hissed fans were about any discussion of remaking. Honestly,
I wish that would happen more often. Yeah, I don't
think it will. They can't forestall it forever. I mean,

(01:45:30):
in this age, it's probably inevitable that we're going to
get to it. I keep hearing that the Rock has
his big, meaty eyes set on big trouble Little China
the second you know. I'd say half a notch down
from unnecessary. Remake are mostly unnecessary Broadway musical adaptations, and
it looks like we're going to get one that we
didn't ask for. For The Princess Bride. In the spring

(01:45:51):
of twenty nineteen, Disney assigned Bob Martin and Rick Elsie
to adapt the book for a Broadway musical with a
proposed score by David Yasbeck, and these plans were obviously
delayed in the wake of the pandemic, but in May
twenty twenty, the president of Disney theatric Productions said in
a memo to his staff that they were still in
the midst of developing it. Weirdly, an abridged version of

(01:46:13):
The Princess Bride, a musical version had been performed by
the Royal Shakespeare Company in two thousand and one, but
at the moment, I've been unable to find an update
on that. Although the last time we said something like
that was for Mean Girls, Like a day or two
after we published the episode, they made a big announcement
about the Mean Girls musical, So google it, folks. Yeah,

(01:46:33):
they really just on that one, I know. And then
I think the woman that had been saying kind of
not nice things about Tina Fay because she felt like
Tina Fay didn't appropriately credit her, the woman who wrote
the book that me was based on, I think like
went big and possibly file an actual lawsuit against her.
I think, really, yeah, I think so damn Our timing

(01:46:56):
is off. I just googled this this morning. Mean Girls
there takes legal action against paramount slams to unfe Yeah,
all right. Studio allegedly told Wiseman that there have been
no net profits from the franchise. Oh it was all
it would accounting thing, despite spurring and Broadway musical upcoming
film remake. Oh yeah, they're doing a remake too. I

(01:47:16):
forgot about that terrible we can't have nice things, no,
So while there was no Princess Bride musical during the
darkest days of the pandemic, we retreated to something a
little different, a little more homemade. I'm referring to the
fan made recreation of The Princess Bride that was produced
and sort of directed by Jason Reitman, the guy who

(01:47:37):
did Juno and Up in the Air and Thank You
for Smoking. He listed the help of a truly insane
cast of celebrities to film scenes from the movie on
their phones while during lockdown, and then he assembled them
together into something that loosely approximated a film. But because
each of these actors only shot a few scenes, you
had multiple people playing the same character. Wesley is played

(01:47:59):
by stars and including Common, Chris Pine, and Jack Black.
Some buttercups include Tiffany Hatish, Jennifer Garner, and Joe Jonas,
who did a gender swapping thing with his wife Sophie Turner,
who played yet another Wesley. Josh Gadd plays the little
boy being reluctantly read the story in bed. Hugh Jackman
plays the villainous Prince Humperdink, wearing a dim Sum Steamer

(01:48:20):
as his crown, and due to the pandemic, screen kisses
were limited to real life couples lived together, which I
thought was cute. Crowd scenes were fleshed out with lego characters,
and one of the rodents of unusual size was played
by a pet Corgi Vansi the Sicilian. The corgy been
arrested the night before for arson for bed for burning

(01:48:44):
down its own kennel. Vezzini the Sicilian was played both
by Patton Oswalt, who I can imagine being very good
in that, and Rain Wilson. Pedro Pascal and Keegan Michael
Keane both take terns as in Nigo Montoya. Jason Segeld
was Andre the Giant, and there are also appearances by
Angie Circus, Elijah Wood, Beanie Feldstein, Teka Watiti, David Spade,

(01:49:08):
John Hamm, Stephen Merchant, Mackenzie Davis, Nicholas Braun, Don Johnson,
Ari Gayner, Thomas Lendon, Zoey Deutsch, and many, many, many more.
And this homemade Princess Bob was distributed on the short
form content platform Quibbi the brandchild of Enemy of the
Pod Jeffrey Katzenberg. I need to talk about Jeffrey Katzenberg

(01:49:30):
for a minute, so folks, I want to tell you
a story. This has just happened to me the other day.
It's freshened my mind. I was out of town for
a week or so, and unfortunately I was out of
town when my dear friend Alex Heigel was in New
York City, And even though I wasn't here to hang
out with him, I gave him the keys to my apartment.
And I returned back a few days ago and I
found two things on my kitchen counter. One Heige left

(01:49:53):
me the best gift I could possibly receive. It was
a framed eight by ten autographed glossy of my beloved
Michael Caine, which is now hanging on my front door.
Do you ever forget what film it was from? No?
I actually asked a friend who's a film archivist, and
see if he knows, Harry asking, if you're listening, please
let us know we're wondering. So that's one. And then

(01:50:15):
I go, there's a package also on my kitchen counter,
and I opened it and it is an autographed eight
by ten glossy of Jeffrey Katzenberg from dear friend of
the Pod, Phil. I don't want to. I won't give
his last day because I don't want to embarrass him.
But dear, dear, dear, the goodest friend of the Pod
with a note saying congratulations on one hundred episodes. So

(01:50:38):
I had in my hands a signed autograph picture of
Michael Caine and Jeffrey Katzenberg. I couldn't believe it. It was.
It was a great day for me. So now and
Yang of your personal Yes, So, Jeffrey Katzenberg, I gotta
find a good spot for that. I gotta like, I mean,
I really should just like put it on the other

(01:50:58):
side of my door to the term of visitors. Yeah, exactly. Anyway,
Jeffre Katzenberg still Enemy of the Pod despite my tremendous gift. Phil.
If you're listening, I know you're listening. You're you're one
of the biggest fans of this show. This is not over.
We will I will respond in kind soon. But yeah,

(01:51:21):
funding this Handmaid Princess Bride fan remaga is arguably the
coolest thing Jeffrey Katzenberg has ever done. He backed the
project pay for the rights to stream it on Queeby
in small chapter sized installments, and considering this is all
for charity, he made a million dollar donation to the
World Central Kitchen, which equals about one hundred thousand meals,
which is wonderful. Writer William Goldman unfortunately died in twenty eighteen,

(01:51:44):
but it had the full approval of his estate. Mark
Nooffler permitted the use of his music. Rob Reiner not
only approved of the project, he even stepped into play
the grandfather role, which is very sweet, and it also
features the final performance of Carl Reiner, Rob's dad, who
plays Rob's grandfather in this movie. It's in the very

(01:52:05):
last scene. It's the very last thing he ever shot,
just I think, days before he died, and the film
is dedicated to his memory. And you know what, I
think that's actually a beautiful note to end on this
display of fandom crossing all sorts of generational and cultural boundaries.
People coming together during an exceedingly dark time to celebrate
this jibulate movie and all that time and effort and passion.

(01:52:27):
I think that says more about the true legacy of
the Princess Bride than any pithy comment that I could
ever make. The love that people have for this movie
is truly inconceivable. Does that not work because that's actually
an appropriate we use of that word. No, I think
that's good. Okay, good, Yeah, I think he got it. Well, folks,
thank you for scaling the clips of insanity with us

(01:52:50):
of our own making. That's so much better than mine.
This has been too much information. I'm Alex Hegel and
I'm Jordan Runtag. We'll catch you next time. Too Much
Information was a production of iHeartRadio. The show's executive producers
are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtalk. The show's supervising producer

(01:53:11):
is Michael Alder June. The show was researched, written, and
hosted by Jordan Runtalg and Alex Heigel, with original music
by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you
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