The Legend of The Princess Bride: 30th Anniversary

I'm going to tell you a fairy tale.

Once upon a time, a somewhat obscure little movie was released to very little fanfare. It did its stint in the theaters, garnering a modest - though by no means unrespectable - box office for fall of 1987, and then began its trek to video stores and cable. 

It was called The Princess Bride. 

This movie was ridiculous. Based on a book by William Goldman (who also wrote the screenplay), the premise followed a grandfather's reading of a fairy tale story to his sick grandson. The story itself contained pirates, sword-fights, giants, giant rodents, a pit of despair (because who doesn't need one of those), true love, and a near Python-esque humor. It was too self-aware, too meta decades too early. (80's movies, with few notable exceptions, weren't generally well-known for awareness and introspection.) This fairy tale was lacking in magic & magical creatures and had an overabundance of dry wit, self-deprecation, and zaniness.

It wasn't a surprise that this movie hadn't been popular. One look at the poster probably told people too little to know what they were getting into, and movie trailers were still transitioning from the structure of yesteryear to what we recognize today, making it likely that it might have turned people off, rather than persuading them. Worse yet, that summer had a hellish release schedule, with Adventures in Babysitting, Innerspace, Full Metal Jacket, RoboCop, La Bamba, The Living Daylights, The Lost Boys, and sequels for Jaws, Revenge of the Nerds, and Superman, all opening in July alone. This was followed the rest of the summer by Stakeout, Can't Buy Me Love, Dirty Dancing, The Big Easy, Fatal Attraction, Hellraiser, and The Pick-up Artist.

People were exhausted. A weird little meta-comedy about fairy tales may have been too much as folks settled back into their autumn [read: school] routines. And that should have been the end of it.

But instead of fading into obscurity, something else happened to this funny little movie. It turned out that this peculiar fairy tale had not come and gone without notice. People who had seen it in the theaters had contributed to its numbers by telling their friends, co-workers, random people on the street, that they needed to see this movie. And when it came out on video, people caught on. They started talking about it. They started quoting it...and they refused to stop. And then it hit cable...

This is where I come in....

I was only 10 years old when I first saw this movie...well, when I first saw part of it. I will never forget the day at my aunt and uncle's house I walked into their living room to the sights and sounds of... well, I didn't know what. We were visiting on vacation (I can't say which, it might have been Christmas), and while I can tell you that the movie was on HBO, I can't tell you what part I came in on.  In fact, because I had come into this movie part way through, I had no context for the random switches between fairy tale world and a child's modern bedroom. I don't remember anything except I didn't know what was happening. It wasn't like I was new to movies. I'd been watching them since I could remember. But somehow, this movie baffled me. 

I count this as a stroke of luck, because not having any idea what was going on meant that when I watched it again, I had no idea who The Man in Black was. I got to experience it totally fresh. And, really, that's not something you want spoiled. 

Things progressed rather quickly from there. The Princess Bride achieved cult classic status. It certainly became one of my favorite movies of all time, not least because of its quotability factor. Quoting this movie was a way to connect with others. I was uncool, so finding people who could quote this movie meant they were uncool, too, which somehow meant we were cool, where we were in a secret club where the password was a spot on Peter Cook impression. I still consider this to be the most quotable movie of all time. 

Before you comment, I require certain criteria for such a statement. For one, it can't be a musical. Musicals are, by their very nature, meant to be re-quoted, re-sung, in fact, and are therefore disqualified for the purposes of this process (sorry, Frankfurter fans). 

Second, "of all time" implies that the piece in question has withstood the test of time, but how much time are we talking? I personally like approximately 25 years to call something a classic, at least in modern terms. Why? I have a theory on this, but basically, it boils down to the length of time spaced between familial generations (which I estimate to be around 25 years), the trends of style, which I theorize are on a 25 year (give or take) cycle (hence the return of 50's & 60's style in the 80's, and disco music in the late 90's), and public attention span, which is about as focused as a swarm of gnats. As we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the movie's release today, we can see the first two criteria are met. 

Another requirement is less a steadfast rule and more of a feeling. In order to achieve "most quotable", one has to assume that other people will get it. That means there has to be some degree of popularity. That makes this particularly important, as we already established that this was a sleeper hit, not at all popular at its beginning. To bounce back and achieve renown so well adds bonus points in this category. Another movie I quote the crap out of, My Science Project, is one that virtually no one has ever heard of, and with fairly good reason. It's even more obscure and ridiculous than TPB, and therefore doesn't make the cut. 

Still, what about greats like Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Surely that's even more quotable? 

Which brings me to a final criterion for this situation. I love the Flying Circus and have been known to quote along with the best of them. Their work is some of the finest comedy ever to grace humanity, and Holy Grail is, to my mind, their funniest movie. 

Here's the thing, though. There's so much to their dialogue (entire sections that don't make sense unless you do the whole scene) that people get their quotes wrong all the time. And not a little wrong, but painfully wrong.

And so, the quotable sections must also be...accessible, shall we say? They must actually be "quote"-able, and not "paraphrase"-able. 

Of course, I made these criteria up out of thin air, so ...yeah. You will have your own, and that's just fine.

So, what is it about this movie? Surely it's not just the quotes. If that were all, we could watch Spaceballs (another highly quotable movie), and call it a day.

Perhaps it's the swashbuckling. The fight between Inigo and The Man in Black is not only good, it's epic. The fact that the actors trained and did the entire fight sequence (except for one flip) all themselves, learning to fight both right and left-handed, should not be dismissed. It is still considered by many to be the best sword-fight of all time. Even my college fencing club watched this movie on regular rotation.

No, for this to work, the movie had to have something really special. Because it was all of the elements above, the quotes ("Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."), the comedy, the swashbuckling, the death-defying feats, and yes, the ROUSs that make this movie special. 

The performances are brilliant; casting was perfect for this, and the banter during the great fencing scene is reminiscent of so many classic swashbuckling films like Captain Blood and Zorro. Douglas Fairbanks would have been proud.

One thing I noticed on viewing this for the anniversary a couple nights ago, was Inigo's early comment to The Man in Black that there was no money in revenge. As Wesley would later offer up Captain's position of his pirate ship Revenge, there obviously is money in revenge. The fact that I just noticed this - after 30 years and literally hundreds of viewings - proves that this movie still has the ability to surprise. 

Or maybe I'm just slow.

A big factor for me was the movie's inherent permission to be silly. When Fezzini, an irate Sicilian war instigator begins yelling at his crew to get the ship going, it is classic villain stuff...until he starts yelling "move that thing, and...that other thing!" I have since come to call the words "thing" or "thingy" and "stuff" the highest of technical terms. Thank you, Shawn Wallace.

But at the end of it all, there's this love. Inigo's love for his lost father. Wesley and Buttercup's true love. And the love of a grandfather reading to his sick grandson...something we should all be able to relate to. Even if it never happened in our real life, we watched along when we were sick, when we were happy, when we were sad. And we loved.

And that's worth 30 years.

---

Title: The Princess Bride

Based on: the book by William Goldman

Released: October 9th, 1987 (USA)
Genre: Fantasy / Adventure / Comedy

Director: Rob Reiner

Writer: William Goldman

Music: Mark Knopfler

Actors/Actresses: Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest, Wallace Shawn, Andre the Giant, Carol Kane, Billy Crystal, Peter Falk

Quote: 

Fezzini: Inconceivable!

Inigo: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.