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Cary Elwes may be best known as the dashing hero Westley in “The Princess Bride,” but now the actor has exchanged his sword for a pen as the author of the upcoming book “As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales From the Making of The Princess Bride.” As a guest of Dragon Con, recently held in Atlanta, Georgia, he signed autographs, met fans and answered some questions about the book.
When asked about any stories he could share with us:
“Let’s see, there’s so many stories. This is why I wrote the book . . . My first day of shooting was the fire swamp. With Robin [Wright, who played Buttercup]. . . I was a little nervous. I was twenty-three at the time. It was my first big big movie. A lot of big stars . . .” He was already familiar with director Rob Reiner and said that Bill Goldman, author of “The Princess Bride” novel, is one of his favorite writers of all time.
He called Rob the night before filming began and said, “So what can we expect tomorrow?” The reply? “It’s an easy day, you gotta rescue Robin from a big burst of flame and then you’re gonna jump into quicksand and then you’re gonna wrestle a couple of guys dressed as rats. It’s no big deal.” No big deal?
“So we get to the set and the first up is my rescuing Robin from the flame spurt in the fire swamp . . . Bill Goldman walks back into the middle of the take” and starts screaming that Robin is on fire. “You’re setting fire to the leading lady on the first day, are you nuts?” He completely forgot he wrote the scene that way and thought Robin was really on fire. “That was my first day, my first scene. It started with quite an epic moment.”
But the cast was disappointed when the movie didn’t do as well as they’d hoped.
“You never know when you make a movie whether or not it’s going to be successful . . . No one sets out to make a bad movie . . . And we knew we were making something fun. We had a great time doing it . . . Great cast, incredible talent. We had Bill Goldman, who was no slouch behind a typewriter.”
However, he realized what a cult hit the film had become about 10 years later: “I was in a restaurant, and a waitress asked me how I wanted my meat cooked, and I said medium rare.” She replied, “As you wish.” . . .
“So it came as a wonderful surprise that the film was mostly dead and suddenly brought back to life.”
Did you know that Elwes also does a Fat Albert impression? He grew up with an American stepfather who took them on vacation in the United States, where he became fascinated with American pop culture and television in particular—“All in the Family”, “The Jeffersons”, “Mork and Mindy”, “The Brady Bunch.” He said that though there’s no Fat Albert in the character of Westley, Rob Reiner chose him for the part based on the impression, thinking “this guy’s got a sense of humor.”
When I asked him which movie he would choose next, if he were to write about one of his other movies: “I don’t know . . . I’d definitely do a survey first and find out what people felt. This was a no-brainer . . . I remember getting the call from the publishers going, we’ve got the title . . . It’s pretty simple . . We think it’s the one. I would definitely listen to the fans and what the publisher had to say about it . . . I’d have to see how the book does.”
Elwes and his co-stars performed their own swordfighting scenes, with the exception of a stunt person who did an acrobatic loop. Elwes had two months to train for the scenes.,but co-star Mandy Patinkin (Inigo Montoya) “didn’t tell anyone, but he’d been training for two months before we started shooting. So when I showed up for the first rehearsal, with the trainers, he already knew how to fence left-handed . . . He was very proficient. So he had a head start on me. But thankfully, we had incredible trainers. We had Bob Anderson, who was an Olympic fencer for the British team in the fifties. We had Peter Diamond . . . sadly they both passed on, but in the book I pay tribute to them. They taught me so much.”
For Cary Elwes, Westley is his favorite character, and the role “is the gift that keeps on giving.”
“As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales From the Making of The Princess Bride” will be available on October 14 and can be pre-ordered on Amazon.
