What turns a movie into a work of worship? What makes it unique, enjoyable to the point that thousands of people are able to recite their memory dialogues? And, above all, how many times are we able to see it without getting tired? The promised princess meets all the requirements to enter a category like this, although the reasons for her canonization as a popular referent still have some unfathomable mystery. Is it the eighties nostalgia that invades everything, pure chance or a great script directed by a filmmaker who knew what was in hand?

To answer some of these questions, and incidentally celebrate the legacy of a film about which time does not seem to pass, Cary Elwes recalls the filming of The Princess Bride as you wish (Attic of the books). The actor who gave life to Westley, inspired by Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., by means of a mustache, was one of the privileged witnesses of how the stars aligned so that phrases like “Hello, my name is Íñigo Montoya, you killed my father, get ready to die » have been burned in the collective unconscious.

Norman Jewison, John Boorman, Robert Redford, François Truffaut ... all had failed in their attempt to bring to the big screen the book that William Goldman had written in 1973, the result of a conversation with his daughters. "I'm going to write a story, what do you want me to talk about?" He asked. One of them replied: "Princesses!", And the other said something about "being promised." And only with that, Goldman - who would later become one of the most sought-after scriptwriters in Hollywood thanks to titles such as All the President's Men or Two Men and a Fate - a memorable parody-tribute of the classics of adventures, with a mixture of genres worthy of the smoking stew of a witch.

The project passed from hand to hand until Rob Reiner , who came from directing two other tapes also of worship such as This is Spinal Tap and Count on me , managed to convince Goldman on the one hand, reluctant to any adaptation of his favorite book, and at producer Norman Lear for another, to put the 16 million dollars that would cost the production.

But, before shouting engine, camera and action, Reiner needed to gather a cast capable of bringing Westley, Buttercup, Montoya, Fezzik and Vizzini to life. Elwes, at that time a 23-year-old English actor with a fairly short curriculum, was in Berlin shooting Maschenka, a low-budget European film. There, a few days after the Chernobyl catastrophe, the interpreter was visited by the filmmaker and his assistant Andy Scheinman, who were looking for a handsome and funny guy , capable of "a very specialized performance: he had to be very authentic and serious but, at the same time, reflect a slight irony. And the handsome and funny guy, made a bunch of nerves and to his own surprise, he won the role after an imitation of Bill Cosby.

From there, the review of the adventures and misadventures of the unusual troupe that spent four months shooting in the England of 1987 has as many high points as the film itself: the first meeting and instant crush with Robin Wright («my discomfort was due to be obvious, because Rob gave me a light nudge in the ribs and gave me a little smile »), Wally Shawn's insecurities, convinced that he was going to be fired to replace him with Danny De Vito, Reiner's laughter that paralyzed the shooting every Once Billy Crystal improvised in his role as Max the Miraculous, or Elwes' own quad accident, in which a toe was broken and almost all production was paralyzed.

One of the anecdotes that best demonstrates the spirit of camaraderie that was experienced during filming took place in one of the hotels where the team stayed. The director, fed up with the bland and repetitive English food, installed a barbecue in his suite , where actors and technicians met every night to eat hamburgers and hot dogs. The only problem was the fire alarm, which jumped half a dozen times during the time they spent there.

Andre the Giant threw one of the most monumental farts that none of us had ever heard. It was epic, a true symphony of gastric affliction

Cary Elwes

If there is a particularly endearing character throughout the book, that is undoubtedly Andre the Giant , who won the whole world by calling them "boss" and with his good-natured smile. The enormous fighter of pressing catch , with his 2.34 of height and his 255 kilos of weight, carried out the favorite moment of Elwes. In the middle of filming a sequence of dialogues, «André threw himself one of the most monumental farts that none of us had ever heard [...]. It was epic, a true symphony of gastric affliction that roared for several seconds and shook the very foundations of the wooden and plaster stage to which we now clung to pure fear. After an awkward silence, the general laugh became an attack of contagious laughter that ruined take after take for more than an hour.

By email, Elwes offers his brief diagnosis on why it seems impossible for Hollywood to bet again on productions like that, familiar without being wretched. «I think the 80s was a simpler time. Then the last generation that did not grow with the Internet, social networks and immediate gratification was developed. People committed themselves to what was going on around them, instead of looking at their mobile phones all the time. We insist.

-Why a film like The Princess Bride, magical in its captivating naivety, has become a modern classic over time?

-What makes it timeless is that it is an essentially love story.

True love. Inconceivable!

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more