As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales From the Making of the Princess Bride by Cary Elwes & Joe Layden

Author:Cary Elwes & Joe Layden [Elwes, Cary & Layden, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Performing Arts, Film & Video, History & Criticism, Social Science, Popular Culture, General
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2014-10-14T05:00:00+00:00

“Don’t get too comfy,” he’d say with a twinkle in his eye.

The training never stopped. Even on my days off I would rehearse with Bob at the Hallam Tower Hotel in Sheffield, where we were staying. When we left for Derbyshire, the set where we would be filming our duel was still under construction at Shepperton. It was understood that by the time we returned, near the end of the production, Mandy and I would be at least competent fencers, if not quite the legendary sword masters described in the script, and the set would be ready for us to practice on.

Since nearly all the cast and crew were housed in the same hotel, for much of the next few months we lived more or less as a family. From the hotel we would bus to various locations, including Lathkill, where we shot the Battle of Wits scene with Wally Shawn.

It’s funny the way certain things fade from memory over the years, but other, seemingly inconsequential things remain embedded. Food, for example, was a source of endless discussion throughout the shoot. Being a New Yorker, Rob had been accustomed to working with American crews, but this was his first time working with an English one. I remember the look of disbelief on his face when he discovered that British crews were permitted two tea breaks each day: one in the morning and one in the afternoon; and while on location these included another sandwich break in the afternoon. Shooting would come to a complete halt while everyone had a cup of tea and a “sticky bun” or “chip buttie,” which consisted of French fries covered in melted butter on a bun—a real treat for your arteries.

The first time a tea break happened Rob was bewildered. Even though he might have been warned about it in prep, it had obviously slipped his mind.

“What the heck is going on?” Rob asked one of the crew.

“Tea break, guv’nor,” the crew member said. “Half an hour for tea.”

Clearly dumbfounded, Rob responded, “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, guv. Union rules.”

By the time the crew returned from their tea break, Rob was fretting—or as close to fretting as I saw him during the entire shoot, except for the days when the weather got the better of us. He turned to Andy.

“Two tea breaks and a sandwich break every day?” he said under his breath. “At this rate we’ll never get the movie done on time!”

David Barron, our unit production manager, who overheard this, let him know that this was not a negotiable issue. If the crew didn’t get their tea breaks, we might be looking at a potential strike.

“And then,” David said matter-of-factly, “we won’t have to worry about the schedule, as we won’t have a movie anymore.”

There were other issues with catering. On our first day on location, our lunch consisted primarily of tiny meat-filled pastries, which they called chapati (pronounced “japuti”), supplied by an Indian caterer. If you Wikipedia “chapati,” besides a video of how they

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