The Princess Bride

Young’ns will hardly believe it, but 20 years ago Rob Reiner was once one of the most interesting and vital directors of commercial cinema in the US.

Check out this string of hits: This is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, A Few Good Men, each one unusual for its time, innovative in some unexpected way, smart, and unerringly commercial. Usually if a director has three hits in a row he would be considered a master; this run is impressive by any definition.

The Princess Bride sits smack in the middle of this run and simultaneously the most old-fashioned and post-modern of these movies. The script, by “Nobody Knows Anything” William Goldman, manages to be both a loving send-up of old-fashioned adventure tales and a straight-ahead telling of those conventions at the same time.

A grandfather reads to a sick boy a book his father once read to him. The book is called The Princess Bride and the boy isn’t sure if he’s interested — it sounds like it’s for girls. And in the audience we’re not sure if we want to hear the story either — it sounds quaint, old-fashioned and soft. And in 1987, in the time of The Terminator at the box office, it was hardly the kind of story designed to sell mass quantities of tickets.

The story gets started and, indeed, it seems like it’s a girl story, a gothic tale of princes and princesses, trusty stablehands, pirates, giants and so forth. There is an over-the-top “kidding” aspect to the story and performances (which are scary good, Robin Wright and Cary Elwes being particularly perfect playing the delicate balance of camp and straight). But then something happens. In spite of the kidding nature, in spite of how silly the story is, in spite of the plot machinations being laid bare and discussed, the narrative takes hold. What the writer and director do is tell you “I’m going to tell you a story, it’ll be great, here’s how it will work, this is what you’ll think of this guy, this is what you’ll think of that guy, here’s how you’ll feel by the end,” and the jaded, seen-it-all viewer lets one’s guard down because one thinks that one is, like the kid, above the material. Then, amazingly, it turns out one is not above the material, in fact one can barely keep track of the plot as it changes direction so quickly. And it’s all stuff you’ve seen before but somehow you’ve never seen it quite this way before and before long, like the kid in the movie, one finds oneself completely wrapped up in a story that simultaneously feels ridiculously absurd and vitally true.

It’s like a magician who comes out and says “I’m going to do a trick for you, but first I want to show you how the trick is built, and how it works, and how it fools the audience, and how it’s going to fool you too,” and then goes ahead and performs the trick and it does fool you, even though you know how it works.

It works because, as storytellers have known for millenia, there are a number of fundamental principles that apply to good stories no matter what the genre, the format or the age of the audience. Master those principles and you can tell a story and take it apart at the same time, you can even chide the audience for getting involved in the story, the audience will still feel the same thrills and emotions.

The characters in The Princess Bride know this, certainly, that’s why they all have stories at the ready with which to justify themselves and deceive others. Westley has a story to convince people he’s a fearsome pirate, Vizzini has a story he’s beentelling himself for years about how a brilliant arch-criminal he is, Fezzig had a story he used to get the job working for Vizzini, Inigo has a story he’s been telling himself for years about the death of his father. Story has a vital and central place in the lives of these adventure-tale characters, and the filmmakers show that it has a vital and central place in our own lives as well.

Try this exercise at home: read Robert McKee’s Story, then watch The Princess Bride.  For the young storyteller, few experiences will be more eye-opening and rewarding.