I can vividly remember the first time I saw The Princess Bride.
Still in primary school — which, as a child in the U.K., you attend between the ages of four and 11 — we had a free lesson, and had been moved into the music room. This often happened toward the end of term, once tests and exams had wrapped up, or we were winding down before a holiday, particularly Christmas.
The teacher, one that I still remember fondly to this day, wanted to share with us his favorite movie. And, though the rest of the class was restless, with the prospect of having an hour or two to do nothing much, he pressed on, wheeling out the TV on a stand and putting a well-loved copy of The Princess Bride on.
It was hard to hear all the dialogue over the chatter in the room, as not everyone was as transfixed by it as I was, but as a child who devoured fantasy stories of all sorts, I could hardly look away.
As it unfolded, I realized that The Princess Bride had everything I wanted in a story: “Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Revenge. Giants. Monsters. Chases. Escapes. True love. Miracles.” Nothing was quite as straightforward as that list, of course, but it had a broad enough appeal for everyone’s interests.
Unfortunately, we never finished the movie during that free lesson. Right before the scene where Westley is placed on the torture machine, the teacher chose to switch it off, the room having become too unruly to continue on. But I couldn’t let it be. I had to know how it ended.
There was a weekend tradition in my family that, when the weekend rolled around, we would alternate between myself and my younger brother to rent a movie from the store in the village, and watch it together. Choosing The Princess Bride was my next obvious choice and sharing the movie with my family, finally making it through the ending, was more than I could have asked for. It was, perhaps, one of my fondest movie-watching weekends, outside of Star Wars, Star Trek, and other Star-related franchises.
(And, having watched The Princess Bride several times since childhood, know now that its broad appeal stretched across ages, as well as genre interests.)
What I did not know then was what a staple it would become in my life. Much in the way it has seeped into every corner of popular culture, so too did it settle neatly into my day-to-day vernacular. Quoting the movie, from “As you wish” to “Inconceivable!”, came as easily as anything and — as I moved through higher education — signaled to others that we had a similar interest in media.
In fact, I owe to The Princess Bride as much as I do to classic ’80s animation (like Masters of the Universe, Thundercats, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and DuckTales), Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter and Marvel comics when it comes to being the catalyst to so many of my friendships.
But, more than that, it was so hugely formative in how I approached my own writing, and the ways in which I crafted my stories.
What William Goldman did, across all of his screenplays and stories, but most especially with The Princess Bride, was lay out a blueprint for how to tell a compelling narrative. That much was even more evident after I picked up The Princess Bride novelization in my later teens, which expanded even further on the story, as well as his other books — like his memoir, Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and the Screenwriting. Goldman was, to a fault, unendingly honest about the creative process, and Hollywood, which was a balm to the glitz-and-glamour romanticizations of the industry.
“Nobody knows anything,” Goldman famously wrote in his memoir. “Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.”
The Princess Bride may have been a fluke — one that Goldman had to battle to get to the screen, and see flourish as a cult hit, though it did not fare so well on its initial release — but it is one that played a part in the way I write, and approach my writing, to this day.
Goldman’s death hit me harder than I expected. He’ll be revered for so many of his movies, not least for the Academy Award-winning Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men, and rightly so. He shaped so much of the filmmaking landscape and deserves every bit of praise for his influences.
But it is The Princess Bride, and everything surrounding its conception, that I will continue to hold dear to my heart. Every day. And for that, I will remain eternally thankful to Goldman, and to the teacher, all those years ago, who wanted to share a small piece of a story that had shaped him into the person that he was, as much as it did for me.
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.