← Sentimental Garbage
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- [00:00]
A
Now at Verizon, we have some big news for your peace of mind for all our customers, existing and new, we're locking in low prices for three years guaranteed on MyPlan and my home. That's future you peace of mind. And everyone can save on a brand new phone on MyPlan. When you trade in any phone from one of our top brands, that's new phone peace of mind. Because at Verizon, whether you're already a customer or you're just joining us, we got you. Visit Verizon today. Price guarantee applies to then current base monthly rate. Additional terms and conditions apply for all offers. Hi everyone. Magical Garbage is a podcast miniseries about fantasy storytelling and the enchanted things that helped make us who we are. I'm doing this miniseries in celebration of my new novel, Skip Shock, which is out on June 5, and it's a story about love and time travel and parallel worlds and the moment in your life when you realize that you can't really be on the fence about things anymore that you've got to love with your whole heart and fight with your whole heart and on one occasion violate the rules of a nude bathhouse with your whole heart. I'm so proud of this book. I think it's so fun and exciting and I would be so honored and delighted if you could pre order Skipshock from any brick and mortar bookseller of your choice. I'm sure you know this already, but pre orders are so important in the early stages of a book success. So if you're going to buy the book anyway, please think of a pre order as a special favor to me, the girl who's been talking to you from this recording booth for seven years. Okay, on with the show. Hello and welcome to Magical Garbage, the podcast where death cannot stop true love. It can only delay it a while. My name is Carolyn o' Donoghue, and I'm the shortage of perfect breasts in this world. And she's not the Dread Pirate Roberts. Actually, she's a man called Ryan. It's Jen County. Yay. I am not the Dread Pirate Riot. I'm Ryan. I feel like so many of the quotes from this movie are so overused that, like, some of them just go sort of like skidded over and no one talks about they become that.
- [02:03]
B
It's one of those films where you watch it again after having not seen it in a long time and you're like, oh, that's where I get that weird phrase from.
- [02:10]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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B
And it just sort of. It becomes divorced from its original space Exactly. As will great work, as all great art does.
- [02:18]
A
Yes. It becomes just a part of your brain chemistry. And I feel like the Princess Bride will become, well, is a part of many of the people listening brain chemistry. I can't believe it's never come up before. I guess because it's so beloved, but, like, now is, like, the most perfect time to talk about it, I think.
- [02:33]
B
It really is.
- [02:34]
A
I loved watching this with you last night.
- [02:38]
B
It felt so nice.
- [02:39]
A
I just feel like I'm sure my history with this movie is very similar to other people's history with this movie, which is that I saw it when I was a kid a lot on vhs, and it was like a lovely jewel to sort of stumble upon. I never owned it, but people did.
- [02:54]
B
Yeah.
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A
And then as a kind of like a post uni stoner adult, it's sort of like the kind of the. The irony of it and the funniness and the wittiness of it sort of unfolded in my 20s, and then it became like, oh, my personality is liking the Princess Bride. And then you sort of feel slightly icked out by that. And then you're like, oh, you have.
- [03:15]
B
To distance yourself and just be like, yeah. And now, finally, it's like that bit where when you're a child and a young adult, you enjoy reading young adult books and children's books, and then you have to, in your late teenage years, not touch them, and you feel almost embarrassed by the fact that you ever once read a children's book, you fucking loser. And then in your mid-20s, you can just really re. Embrace that again.
- [03:37]
A
Exactly. But I also think that, like, this movie is so, so beloved and so universally as well, like, it's one of those strange things where it's like, it could not have a more feminine title like the Princess Bride. And it's such a. Like, in so many ways, such a girly movie. But it's like this anomaly where, like, boys love it. And we're gonna talk about why we think that is throughout the podcast, I think. But, like, I also think, and I want to say this with the greatest kindness because the kind of people I'm about to describe are people I have dated and loved for many years, which is, of course, losers. And there is like a kind of, like, I don't know, you're on a bad date with someone who, like, on the. I've never done a dating app. We all know that. But, like, on your mutual pages or whatever, it seems like you're mutual pages. I know, bro.
- [04:28]
B
You just showed your ass so badly.
- [04:31]
A
Whatever. I'm thinking of, like when I used to meet people from Twitter or whatever.
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B
Right.
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A
Okay. Back in the day.
- [04:35]
B
Okay, got it, Got it.
- [04:35]
A
Yeah, I never really had a dating app thing, but like, you nominally seem to like the same movies, and then suddenly you are opposite a man in a black hoodie who is screaming inconceivable at. And you're like, I've gone badly wrong. I must abandon this fandom.
- [04:50]
B
I think the problem is that. Is there anyone who doesn't like the Princess Bride?
- [04:54]
A
No.
- [04:54]
B
Have you met that person?
- [04:57]
A
If they don't, they're disliking it for edgelord reasons.
- [05:01]
B
Yeah. I think it's actually, it's not so much that it's a green flag that someone likes it. It's more just a way to just really whittle out anyone who's completely insane and just. If you don't like the Princess Bride and you're on a date, why are we here? Because, as you say, they're just trying to make a point.
- [05:15]
A
Right. That is such a red flag.
- [05:17]
B
Somebody who's like, they're still in that phase where they. Where there's too much self hatred for their younger self. And we can't be doing that.
- [05:24]
A
We can be doing that.
- [05:25]
B
We're too old for that now.
- [05:26]
A
But like. So when we put it on last night, I was like, oh, I love this movie. But like, I am. I didn't think the charms of it would work on me the exact same way again.
- [05:37]
B
Oh. And they really did.
- [05:39]
A
It's so we were both just like.
- [05:41]
B
Charming sitting there, our armchairs, our little dog, and we were just gone right back in there. And I. I didn't grow up with the Princess Bride. I came to it late.
- [05:50]
A
Okay.
- [05:51]
B
Don't know why. I think my parents just weren't cool enough. You know, they just didn't. They didn't. They didn't show it to me.
- [05:57]
A
But I've actually never asked you this before in all our many years of friendship. Did you grow up in, like a much of a movie house?
- [06:02]
B
No.
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A
Okay.
- [06:03]
B
My. My dad really liked Star wars and Apollo 13 and we watched those on repeat, so I know those films.
- [06:10]
A
What's your dad's job again?
- [06:12]
B
He was a fighter pilot. He flew fast things and anything that involved putting fast things into space.
- [06:20]
A
Yeah. Checks out.
- [06:21]
B
Yeah. As long as it's like, accurate to the physics. He gets very upset when it's not. Like he'll watch a film where there's people in space and if the spaceship is rotating in the Wrong direction. He'll be like, I can't watch this. It's completely wrong. And I'm there like, what the fuck?
- [06:36]
A
Okay.
- [06:37]
B
So, yeah, Princess Bride was not where we were. I think. I think we had Dumb and Dumber on vhs and then we had the whole Star wars collection and Apollo 13. So when I did finally get to watch the Princess Bride, it was a beautiful thing. But I'd read the book beforehand. I had the really odd experience of being a person who'd read the book before they watched the film, which is I probably, at this point, I'm really in the minority.
- [06:59]
A
Really in the minority.
- [07:00]
B
Because I think the book was.
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A
Came out in the 70s.
- [07:04]
B
Yeah, came out in the mid-70s, wasn't a huge success, but then William Goldman adapted it into the film and then the film was massive. So then retrospectively, the book became a huge success, which is, of course, the dream of every author.
- [07:17]
A
The dream of. I mean, there's so much. I spent so much time today because for the listeners, for people who know us well, I'm conscious that this could be. Because people love this movie and hearing about this movie, so. So I think there could be many people who, like, this is the first episode sentimental garbage they've ever heard because.
- [07:32]
B
They'Ve been like, what's going on? What's going on here? Who are they?
- [07:36]
A
My name is Caroline.
- [07:38]
B
And you've got the perfect breast shortage. No, you are the shortage of breasts.
- [07:43]
A
Yeah, if I die, there would be a dream shortage.
- [07:45]
B
There would be shortage.
- [07:47]
A
But, like, we are best friends. Best friends. And sometimes we go through these incredibly codependent phases. And this time last year we went traveling together and we did a very codependent movie club during that time for a month.
- [08:03]
B
Yeah.
- [08:03]
A
This is a bit of a redux because we're living together again, but for different reasons, which is that my house is being renovated and me and Gav and Silv are crashing in your very little but very lovely house.
- [08:14]
B
It's really Polly pocket sized. It really is. Gandalf has come to bag end. Poor Gav. I just see him kind of every time he turns, like, looking slightly alarmed in case he breaks a thing because he's just turned too quickly.
- [08:29]
A
And what he said to us in the second night, he was like, the thing about Gandalf when he comes to. When he comes to Bilbo's house is he only stays for an evening. He can't fit in there.
- [08:39]
B
He's not there for three weeks, four weeks, just cursing every single dangly thing from the ceiling but it is wonderful because it means we've managed to get somehow get back into the film club. So this is almost like a miniseries within a miniseries because the rest of the series is recorded in a studio in like professional settings. But we're just back here on my bed with our little travel mics with our Jack Russell terrier. And it's really nice and it just, it's very nostalgic for us. Yeah. But that's the reason to kind of thread that thread back to what we were talking about. We were talking about this is that in addition to your house being renovated at the moment and ticking way longer. Thank you.
- [09:18]
A
Way, way longer.
- [09:20]
B
How long has it been?
- [09:21]
A
Six weeks. They said it would be done by mid May. It is currently the 12th of June.
- [09:25]
B
Woo hoo. Well, look, I've benefited from this because I've had pals, but you are also, of course an author of books who's doing a TV adaptation.
- [09:34]
A
Yeah.
- [09:35]
B
And so you're really living the William Goldman experience right now.
- [09:38]
A
Oh my God. Thank you for bringing this up because I've really been thinking about this a lot because I was thinking, especially doing this movie and I often have this super superstition around movies that are so beloved and so talked around already that there's nothing left for me to say other than like, quote, the perfect script or like talk about the lovely moments. And I've had this real experience with like, with real soul connection with William Goldman over the last couple of days. Like reading about this, rereading the book, reading Cary Elwes memoir and thinking about like what it was like for William Goldman, who was like a novelist turned screenwriter like myself. This was, I think, his second or third novel was really his only like fantasy story for children, which is also what I write and like, but also run into that problem kind of early on of being like, it's a fantasy story for children, but it's sort of the humor and the sensibility is a bit older. So who is it for really? And him being like, the answer is everyone. And like me being like, the answer is everyone because I also write fantasy. And that thing of like, this was his favorite thing he ever wrote. He wrote it because he was on a long car journey with his two daughters and he said, I want to write a story for you guys. What do you want it to be about? And one of them said princesses and one of them said Bride.
- [11:01]
B
So is that why it's called the Princess Bride?
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A
Isn't that sweet?
- [11:05]
B
I was genuine to death, genuinely. I was genuinely today Just thinking like, why is it called that? The Princess.
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A
The Princess Bride.
- [11:13]
B
And that's such a wonderful thing about this book and this film is the way that it is. It's not just a story. It's a story about the telling of stories and the role they have in our lives and in our kind of growing up. And it's the thing that I, you know, like audiobooks. You know what audiobooks are?
- [11:29]
A
I'm assuming I know what they are.
- [11:31]
B
Said that like, does everyone here know what an audiobook is? As we record a podcast, which is the same medium and audiobooks, I felt like a long time people didn't really get them.
- [11:41]
A
Yeah.
- [11:41]
B
They were like, why would I want to listen to an audiobook? Why would I, Why would I do that? Why would I have someone read a thing? And I just was like, that's how we all learn stories. Like no one's first interaction with story is they sit down and read it. Like it is always told to you. You always first experience the world of fiction through the stories that your parents or your carers, your grandparents tell you. And I think this is lovely because it's a book about that and a film about that. Yes. Framed within that.
- [12:08]
A
Yes. Yes. So yeah. As we all like, you know, this movie opens on the young Fred Savage of the Wonder Years sick in bed. Like the opening frame of the movie. It's kind of as Carrie Elway says, it's apart from the rous's which is so patently a man in a fucking costume.
- [12:24]
B
I really want a moment for those later.
- [12:26]
A
So funny. The only moment where the Princess Bride shows that it's a movie made in the 80s is the opening shot.
- [12:33]
B
Yes.
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A
Which is this man, this little boy playing a baseball game in bed on his.
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B
With disgusting coughs that only children have. The whole face cough.
- [12:44]
A
Oh my God. When children.
- [12:45]
B
That's the opening sound of the film is just. And you're like, I know exactly where I am. And immediately there, immediately. In the fiction.
- [12:52]
A
In the fiction. Oh, but you're so right. When children just cough with their whole bodies, they haven't learned to feel shame or to cover their mouth.
- [12:58]
B
The little trumpet mouth.
- [13:00]
A
Like I know the tongue kind of curls.
- [13:03]
B
I'm doing it now.
- [13:04]
A
It's.
- [13:06]
B
You can all imagine it, but you hear that. And then there's a cotton wool Santa on the back of a door. There's a half eaten bag of Cheetos. There's wardrobes that we've all seen.
- [13:15]
A
Oh my God. Oh, it's such the most. Because I remember Movies of this time having. And I think I'm also thinking about sitcoms like, like Saved by the Bell and stuff. They would have these dreamy, perfect teen or preteen bedrooms. And this is extra rare example of a movie where you open on a child's bedroom and. And it looks like every fucking bedroom I entered or left in the 80s, in the 90s. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's so. It's like, it's got that kind of thing where the white blinded wardrobes that if you hid in, you could see slats through.
- [13:46]
B
They're like shutters, like shutters, shutters for your clothes.
- [13:50]
A
The exact wardrobes my brothers had in their bedroom was so weird, the thing of nightmares.
- [13:54]
B
Because then of course, you could imagine something in there looking out at you.
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A
Why do every home for 30 years only have those white slatted shutters?
- [14:02]
B
Horror stories.
- [14:03]
A
So strange. And then like this bookcase where all the books are kind of falling over a bit. They're not. There's no structural integrity to anything. It's also like a great, very subtle visual cue being like you're not dealing with a character who cares about books. They just slopped around.
- [14:17]
B
Yeah, he wants to play the game, he doesn't care about the book.
- [14:20]
A
Yeah. And then his granddad comes in, Peter Falk, and just says, you know, my father used to read it to me and I'm gonna read it to you. And he's like, oh, you know, there's beautiful women, feats of daring, pirates, poison, betrayal. And Fred Savage goes, yeah, it sounds okay. I'll try not to fall asleep.
- [14:41]
B
Oh, it's so good. And it just. I don't know. I hope grandparents still, like, read elaborate stories to their kids today. I hope they do.
- [14:52]
A
I hope they do.
- [14:52]
B
My grandpa used to make up all kinds of weird tales.
- [14:55]
A
Yeah.
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B
And it was so nice. It's very like. Like visceral core memory for me. And I think just immediately seeing that 80s room and a granddad just being like, oh, patting himself down, trying to work out where his stuff in his pockets are, and then just like gently charming this child into this tale.
- [15:12]
A
It's so perfect, beautiful thing. And the thing is of the framing device, it's so perfect and so gorgeous. And actually, are you familiar with the movie Stand By Me at all?
- [15:21]
B
I am not familiar with that movie. It is. I know the name, but I couldn't tell you what it's about. I imagine football.
- [15:29]
A
You could not be more wrong. But I love that you tried. I don't know. I'M thinking football.
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B
You know, sometimes when you, like, dip into the sort of the primordial super memory, for some reason, the right answer comes up, and sometimes it doesn't.
- [15:43]
A
So Stand By Me was Rob Reiner, who's the director of this movie, his.
- [15:47]
B
Movie before this, and what happened in Stand By Me.
- [15:50]
A
Stand By Me, it's like an adventure story about four boys. It's based on Stephen King novella and about them sort of crossing, doing this huge journey together because they want to go. They know there's a dead body that's across the ravine. King how they want to report it so that they can get the reward money. And they, like the boys, learn to be men on the way. But it's. You hate this.
- [16:12]
B
Don't think I want to watch this, but go on.
- [16:14]
A
Do you know what? It's a nice movie.
- [16:16]
B
Okay.
- [16:16]
A
But the reason I bring it up is that I think it's interesting that it also takes place within a framework of, like, a older writer writing about this incident that happened to him in the mid-60s. And the kind of framing is like, he's supposed to be spending time with his son, but he can't stop thinking about his own childhood. And there's like. I don't know. To me, it's like an interesting thing of, like. I think everything about this movie, there's a reason it's a girly movie that men love, which is. It's so much about male relationships and how the kind of the breakdown between generations. And it's. It's sort of like this beautiful thing early on being like this. This granddad and his grandson, they don't have much in common. They're not. It's not that fond. It hasn't been up until now. And like, Fred Savage is like, what if he pinches my cheek? I hate that. And that just that thing of, like, trying to connect through story is like a very moving subject matter.
- [17:10]
B
So moving, so wonderful. And just so much about this film is about, well, fairy tale, I guess.
- [17:16]
A
Yeah.
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B
And that's what it is. It's the tradition of stories passed on through generations and changed and, like, tweaked to fit the new listener and the new reader. And it's just. Yeah, it's just really nice that someone made such a great film about it.
- [17:31]
A
It's really nice.
- [17:34]
B
I think the framing device is so important.
- [17:36]
A
It's so important. It really is. And, like. So the framing device exists within the book as well. I'm sure you probably remember it.
- [17:45]
B
Fun fact. The framing device got me a job One time.
- [17:48]
A
No way.
- [17:48]
B
Oui, oui. I was a bookseller. I had just moved to Australia. I had no job. I was very young. I was very silly. I was wandering around Sydney being like, who will give me a job? I had just been accepted to be a charity mugger for Greenpeace, a thing I wanted to avoid very much. Not because I don't like Greenpeace, because you hate charity money. Didn't want to have got people on the street and be like, hey, how are you doing today? Blah, blah, blah. So I was so desperate that I just walked into a random bookshop and was like, oh, I'm gonna maybe ask this terrifying woman behind the desk if she'll give me a job. And I heard someone in the shop going up to her and going, hi, I'm looking for. I can't remember the name of the book in the Princess Bride, but the book by S. Morgenstern. And going through the whole rigmarole of her, like, trying to search it on like, Bookscan.
- [18:37]
A
Sure, sure, sure.
- [18:38]
B
And being like, it's not coming up. And eventually I was like, just put your big curl pants on, Jen. And I went up and had to be like, hi, sorry, I couldn't. Couldn't help but overhear that you're looking for this book by S. Morgenstern. It doesn't actually exist. And had to explain the framing device in like a polite and non condescending way to this poor person in a bookshop.
- [18:54]
A
Yeah.
- [18:55]
B
And then after they had agreed that it didn't exist. It's so convincing that you think it does. I then was like, hi, please can I have a job? And oh my God. Well, she didn't give me. She gave the cv, my CV to the manager and I got a job. And when I then worked there afterwards, I realized that like 10 people a day tried to get jobs in that book. But the Princess Bride got me a job in Arial and stuff.
- [19:18]
A
I love that.
- [19:19]
B
I really enjoyed that. It was just one of those weird things where you're just like, this framing device is so necessary to the story. It's so necessary that it genuinely regularly convinces people that it is in fact a book that actually exists. And it got me a job.
- [19:33]
A
Fucking hell, Jen. Seriously. Like the. Because I sort of redownloaded on Kindle today. And he wrote an anniversary edition, which is the edition you'll see in shops now, and that has a new forward, which is like, written in 2012. William Goldman, looking back on the enormous success. But even though, like, he wrote the book in the mid-70s, he's still upholding the fiction of the novel. So in the novel, he's like. And like, you know, if, you know, if you do any research on his life, you can tell this is. This is auto fiction where he's, like, talking about his son Jason, and we know he has two daughters and not a son, and talking about how he was reading this to his son because when he had pneumonia when he was a kid, his father, who was a near illiterate sort of handyman from Florin, which doesn't exist, but, like, he's like, oh, you know, it used to exist in the place between Switzerland and Sweden or something. And he's like, yeah, this is the book that was like the book of my father's nation. And, like, whatever. And I only realized when I was in my 30s and I gave it to my son that, like, my father had only been scanning this and reading the good bits and reading the adventurous bits, and what he had skipped over was, like, these reams of satire and, like, you know, whatever. And so. So it's like, it's supposed to be formally like Golding being like, there's Golding and Goldman. Goldmin, Right, Goldman, yeah.
- [21:00]
B
William Golding is the one who wrote Lord of the Flies.
- [21:02]
A
That's why I always mix them up. Okay, thank you.
- [21:05]
B
They're shelved next to one another, though, so it's really easy to find in a bookshelf.
- [21:08]
A
Yeah. And so. And so Goldman is like, oh. So I realized that this book I remembered as being wonderful is actually a political satire written by somebody, you know, coming at it from a different angle. So I have abridged it, and then he has all these notes through the text being like, yes, at this point, Morgan Stern talks about sort of like currency inflation, but I cut it. So here's right back to Buttercup.
- [21:34]
B
I love his commitment, and I think I feel like almost one of the things that will have changed now as a modern reader is it would take you about 3 seconds to Google it.
- [21:42]
A
Exactly.
- [21:43]
B
Whereas at the time that I first encountered it, and indeed when I got this job, like, smartphones weren't invented yet.
- [21:47]
A
That is how old I am. That is no reason not to take him at his words.
- [21:50]
B
You were like. And I remember reading it and being like, this seems really legit, totally legit. Having to properly go in deep to be like, no, it's not legit. Do you know what? I was thinking about this the other day. I read Tom Lake quite recently. Love, love that book.
- [22:03]
A
One of my favourite books of that year.
- [22:04]
B
It's amazing. By Ann Patchett. And within Tom Lake, a huge plot point is the main character performing in.
- [22:11]
A
A play called Our Town.
- [22:14]
B
Called Our Town to the end of that book, and indeed, probably several weeks afterwards before I realised that Our Town was not a play she'd invented. And I think that, again, it's because. Because the Princess Bride is so successful and so compelling, I was like, well, I guess this is a play she's made up. How impressive of her to have made up this play within a book. I didn't even consider for a second that it might be a real play. So I've gone too far the other way.
- [22:38]
A
That's a weird thing.
- [22:40]
B
Yeah, it must be. That's. Anytime I see a book within a book now, thanks to William Goldman and Princess Bright, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [22:46]
A
And you know what else?
- [22:46]
B
Guess that's them.
- [22:47]
A
What else it reminded me of as well was Lemony Snicket.
- [22:50]
B
I've actually never read Lemony Snicket, which I know is very, very off brand for me. I think, again, it's one of those things where maybe just a couple years too old when it came out, I was in the. It's super lame to read kids books phase.
- [23:01]
A
Sure. Whereas I was like, bang on 11. So. Yeah. Which made you like 14, 15.
- [23:06]
B
Yeah, I know. Really embarrassed by my own childness. Just embarrassed. Don't think about it. But, yeah, I think that it just. It's done so well and so perfectly. And those. Yeah. There's little notes to the reader.
- [23:18]
A
Yeah. And like, what's. What's perfect about it as well is that, like, the reason the Princess Bride is such a perfect film that everyone loves is because it is just filled with, like, exciting bit after exciting bit. Just.
- [23:31]
B
Exactly.
- [23:31]
A
It's like you're right out of the sort of, like the Cliffs of Insanity. And then you ride into the sword fight with an ego. You're right into the fight with Fesik. You're right into the battle of wits. Like, the hits start coming and they don't stop coming. And it's so perfect that, like, what enables him with this framing device is to create. If he's explicitly being like, this is all the exciting bits that my father sticks to. It gives him his amazing permission to create the most, like, exciting adventure story.
- [23:57]
B
Totally. And to create a story where in any fiction, you suspend disbelief. You know, you sink yourself into a world beyond your knowledge. But in this one, you do an extra level where you're like. And of course, this is meant to be an Abridged version where there are bits missing. So it doesn't really matter if I don't quite work out how these two bits. It doesn't matter. It's all in there somewhere. I didn't have to read that bit. It's boring.
- [24:20]
A
Totally.
- [24:21]
B
It works so well.
- [24:23]
A
Did you know that this movie was like, on, like, sort of like a list of unproducible screenplays?
- [24:30]
B
I did, actually. I think I must have read the same article as you did earlier today, where at one point. Was it Francois Truffaut was attached to it.
- [24:35]
A
Yes. And Arnold Schwarzenegger, as physic.
- [24:39]
B
I can kind of see it because, again, I've not read the book in many years, but my memory is that the book is less campy and less playful. It is playful and fun, but it's more sort of. It's a bit more serious. It has that kind of like slightly more ethereal fairy tale sense to it, whereas this is high camp, 80s drama. And I like the fact that Goldman adapted it himself and was like, you know what, we're going this way.
- [25:05]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [25:06]
B
But I can sort of see how you could have. How you could have ended up with some, like, art house version of it.
- [25:12]
A
Right.
- [25:12]
B
I mean, it wouldn't be as good, but I can see how someone would have been like, this could be done as an art house, kind of quite cerebral production about the nature of storytelling.
- [25:23]
A
Yeah, you could have.
- [25:23]
B
You could do it.
- [25:24]
A
You could.
- [25:25]
B
You could.
- [25:26]
A
Or you could just sort of like, take out the framing dies altogether and then you'd end up with like, a very entertaining story that would not have lasted generations.
- [25:34]
B
No, it would have. It would have been gone.
- [25:36]
A
Yeah. So interesting, all the things you could change about this movie that would make it no longer this movie.
- [25:42]
B
Yeah. And there are so many things that make it what it is. Talk to us about what? What more have we got to say about.
- [25:47]
A
So let's, like. So I guess we're kind of working our way through chronologically.
- [25:50]
B
Yeah.
- [25:50]
A
We kind of talked about the Fred Savage intro. So let's talk about the. You know, we just go right into Buttercup. It's like it's chapter one, the Bride. It's like.
- [26:00]
B
I don't think I'd realized when I first watched this how little she has to do in this film with anything. She's just. She's so beautiful and passive and I'm fine with that.
- [26:17]
A
Oh, totally.
- [26:18]
B
But I think there's that scene with the. At this point, Dread Pirate Roberts and our favorite Sicilian, where there's the battle of wits. And Buttercup is just blindfolded and just sitting there completely silent for probably 10 minutes, not saying a word. Not being like. That voice is familiar. It sounds like my lost love, Westley. She's just like, do, do, do. She's just disloded. She is like me in the dentist's.
- [26:41]
A
Chair, you know, she's just so creative.
- [26:43]
B
She's out of there.
- [26:45]
A
It's so funny, the Buttercup being. Because it's weird, because I. I do think this is a movie about men, actually, because I think all the most significant relationships are. The most entertaining relationships are between men.
- [26:57]
B
Yeah.
- [26:57]
A
I mean, they're the only woman.
- [26:58]
B
No. There's also Miracle, Max's wife.
- [27:00]
A
That's true.
- [27:01]
B
There are two women.
- [27:02]
A
Yeah.
- [27:04]
B
And they're eels.
- [27:05]
A
And they're Are eels, ladies.
- [27:08]
B
I guess they can be eels of every sex and gender.
- [27:12]
A
I guess. The rodents. It could have been a woman. How do we know?
- [27:15]
B
The rodent. Yeah.
- [27:16]
A
But Buttercup is the only female character. And I think. And it's, you know, the. We have this intro of her being like, you know her. She was a farm girl, and her main.
- [27:26]
B
She's a princess, isn't she? Was she a farm girl?
- [27:29]
A
No, she's.
- [27:30]
B
She's just a really hot woman who lives.
- [27:31]
A
She's just a really hot girl who lives on a farm. And then I think she. I think in the book, she is sort of like, given a princess title in order to legitimize the marriage to Humperdinck. And that's part of the bits that Goldman, like, plucks out because he's like, nah, important. And yeah, it's the whole farm boy, like, fanboy, fanboy.
- [27:53]
B
Get that thing down for me.
- [27:56]
A
What she realized one day was that when Wesley was saying as you wish, what he was really saying was, I love you.
- [28:04]
B
Very Virginia Woolf.
- [28:06]
A
Very.
- [28:06]
B
To the lighthouse.
- [28:07]
A
Oh. Do you think, well, it's the whole.
- [28:09]
B
Thing of, like, shall we go to the lighthouse today? Is the way of saying, I love you, except it's as you wish.
- [28:13]
A
I've never read any Virginia Woolf. I'm sorry.
- [28:15]
B
It's okay. I only did it because I was made to. It's one of those things that's really good to have read. Not so fun to be reading.
- [28:22]
A
I can see, you know what I said. And so it's so funny, because in the book, it's like they fall in love and it's such a formal. It's like she realizes she's in love with him because she's jealous of Somebody else. And then she shows up and she, I'm in love with you. And he goes, cool, I'm gonna leave for America to make my fortune so I can afford to be worthy of you kind of thing.
- [28:42]
B
Yeah.
- [28:42]
A
Whereas I think in the screenplay, they're like, war bells came and he had.
- [28:46]
B
To go, oh, yeah, a bit more.
- [28:47]
A
No more. Then he dies. And then she says, I never love again.
- [28:51]
B
And, like, in fairness to her, she's quite committed to that. I think her main points of action are leaping off a ship into the eels. Into the eels, the noted eels, and then what are they called? The singing eels. The wailing eels. I've got a name.
- [29:08]
A
Shrieking Eels. I promise no harm will come to you. You will not get such a bargain from the eels. The eels.
- [29:19]
B
Do you think that this is the reason? Is there a generation of people afraid of eels? My ex boyfriend was terrified of eels.
- [29:25]
A
Eels are fucking scary, regardless of Buttercup's.
- [29:28]
B
They are. But they don't look like the eels in this film. And I think that people. I think it's giving eels a bad name.
- [29:33]
A
Okay.
- [29:34]
B
I mean, I'm like, eel neutral.
- [29:38]
A
Have you told your parents? Are you out?
- [29:47]
B
I am now.
- [29:49]
A
Is there a strip on the Pride flag for you.
- [29:53]
B
For being eel?
- [29:55]
A
She's eel neutral and proud.
- [30:01]
B
Gosh, I hope so. And if not, we have to address that. I just think people are afraid of eels. And I think it's because in this film, eels look a lot worse than they do in real life. Eels are fine. Just eels. Anyway, she jumps into some eels and then she tries to kill herself, very briefly. That's. That's what she does. And the thing about that is, as I say, I am fine with it.
- [30:19]
A
Like, yes.
- [30:20]
B
Like, again, if this film came out today, I'd be less fine because I'd be like, oily. Come on. Yeah, come on.
- [30:28]
A
Well, I think the reason I'm fine with it is because the reason I'm fine with the fact that Buttercup has very little dialogue. And whenever she does have dialogue, it's about proving her love or saying what her love is. She doesn't really have any jokes. Everybody else in the movie has.
- [30:43]
B
She's not funny, is she?
- [30:44]
A
She's not funny. And I don't mind it because I think this is, you know, as we say, it's a story about storytelling, which also means that it's a story about archetypes.
- [30:55]
B
Totally. And I think, particularly in the world of fairy tale, a lot of women are not having a great time. And that's probably Representative of, like, historical fact as well.
- [31:06]
A
Yes.
- [31:07]
B
And I suppose we can't really be like, wow, why isn't she a woman with great agency and a real sense of what she wants from life? This is a sort of.
- [31:16]
A
It's with a tradition of storytelling where she doesn't do a lot. And also, Goldman wants to lean into that tradition, you know, that's why, like, the vengeful Spaniard is the vengeful Spaniard, the giant, you know, it's like everyone is themselves to the max so much.
- [31:32]
B
And she's just the archetype of, like. She's kind of in this Shakespearean tradition of, like, Desdemona, you know, like.
- [31:38]
A
Yes.
- [31:38]
B
And it's that whole thing of, like, well, I suppose I could stop myself from being murdered by my husband, but instead I'll just faint with a handkerchief.
- [31:45]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [31:46]
B
Like, it's very that. And I don't. I don't feel like. I don't feel when I watch this or when I read the book that William Goldman is saying, like, this is what women are like. I think he's saying, like, this is what this archetype of kind of feminine, like this weird feminine ideal that exists. And you're like, why? Why is he in love with her? What does she do apart from order him around and have long hair?
- [32:04]
A
Exactly.
- [32:05]
B
Is that the key? Is that what I should do? Should I put that on the act? She'll be like, I have long hair and I will order you around.
- [32:10]
A
She kind of has that Jemima Kirk hair.
- [32:12]
B
She does. And a Jo Alwyn face.
- [32:16]
A
She does look like a mix between Joe Alwyn and Jemima Kirk.
- [32:18]
B
Jemima Kirk, yeah.
- [32:20]
A
But I think, like, not to. And this is primarily talking about the movie, but to go back to the book for a second, I do think that he is very much satirizing that idea of, like, the female archetype whose job it is to be beautiful and to be longed after. Because it begins with when Buttercup was 16 years old, she was ranked among the 11th most beautiful women in the world. She was nowhere near the top 10. But what she was was raw potential. And it, like, goes through this thing where it goes about how all the other beautiful women in the world, like, you know, got fat or died or whatever, or that smallpox. I was like, by the time she was 18, she was really crawling up the ranks. It was like, like. And there's, like, tiny, stupid details that are like, oh, she had a pudgy left wrist that slimmed down over a summer.
- [33:06]
B
Oh, my God. It's like looking at, like, a historic FHM hot one like this or something and being like, what happened to them?
- [33:11]
A
But it's so absurd that, you know, that he's taking the piss out of this idea. I'm not saying that he was the feminist of the year or something, but you can tell he's taking the piss out of this archetype of, like, her job is to be beautiful. And, like, she's also quite cold as well in it.
- [33:25]
B
I mean, I think every single character in this film is being taken the piss out of in some way.
- [33:31]
A
Yeah.
- [33:31]
B
Apart from the grandfather and the son, they're the only actual serious characters. That's where the actual emotional heart is. Every single other character is played for laughs, and it's making it perfect, which.
- [33:42]
A
Is why it's so important that that bedroom looks like it does. Because it's that thing of being like, these two people are rooted in our reality. They're you and me. But this is happening somewhere else. But also, the thing about the tone of this movie is that, like, it's. It is funny, and it does take the piss out of Fairy Tale, but it also means it 100%. And I do think that is the virtue of Robin Rye in this role is that you can really feel her grounding the emotion of it.
- [34:07]
B
Yeah. If she was camping it up and, like, being, like, it wouldn't be right. And I think that the story of this, the story of the Princess Bride, is it takes the idea of love very seriously.
- [34:18]
A
Yeah.
- [34:19]
B
And even if when you're watching the story within a story, you're like, well, I mean, how long do they really know each other? But it's still talking about love in the wider framing device and making it feel very real.
- [34:30]
A
Yeah. And there's these bits where, like, the only bits of the movie that are completely free from comedy are Buttercup's lines, which is a bummer. But also that they're, like, some of the most stirring moments in the book in the film as well, because her being, like. When she's, like, yelling at Humperdinck, being like, you know, you can't. Yes.
- [34:47]
B
You can't do this. And I can't remember exactly what she.
- [34:49]
A
Says, but she's just like, you cannot trap it and you cannot track it and whatever. And it's, like, so moving and, like, it really stirs you. And I think it, like, as much as she has very little agency and very little comedy, she's pinning down the whole movie.
- [35:04]
B
She absolutely is. She's like Michael Caine in a muppet Christmas Carol.
- [35:07]
A
That's exactly who she is.
- [35:09]
B
She's there and she's giving it, like she creates the contrast that you need. She's not being silly. She's taking it very seriously.
- [35:17]
A
Yeah.
- [35:18]
B
Everyone else around her, she's like the anchor point that they can. They can fly from, like little balloons.
- [35:24]
A
Exactly. So I think she, you know.
- [35:26]
B
Yeah, we know.
- [35:27]
A
Go, Robin Wright, Pen.
- [35:28]
B
Yeah. Love her. Love her work. Introducing Robin Wright as she was in that film.
- [35:32]
A
Introducing Robin Wright.
- [35:33]
B
Not even Robin Wright, Pen. She was introducing was very exciting.
- [35:37]
A
Wow. And then obviously we go, right, so it's like she. She gets kidnapped, she gets engaged. She gets engaged to Prince Humperdinck, then she gets kidnapped.
- [35:47]
B
You're right, she does. And I think I hadn't, again, hadn't seen this film in a while and I saw Prince Humperdinck and I was like, oh, look, it's Lord Farquaad. Shrek. Shrek owes so much to this film.
- [35:58]
A
Shrek owes so much to this film.
- [35:59]
B
Such a great debt.
- [36:01]
A
And listeners, we were actually thinking, because we were. We were thinking this being magical garbage and us being very interested in magical stuff, how maybe it would be fun to do a little trio about fairy tales as they've been represented in, like, modern cinema. Starting with this, the Princess Bride. Carrying on to Shrek, which is another, like, post ironic, kind of like take on a fairy tale, and then finishing with a movie that not many people have seen but is fabulous, called the Fall, which has the exact same structure as A Princess Bride in that it's somebody talking to an ill child about a fairy tale.
- [36:35]
B
Listen, I vote we do it.
- [36:37]
A
Me too.
- [36:38]
B
And we're definitely the loudest voices in this room.
- [36:42]
A
Cannot speak.
- [36:43]
B
Silver. Just having a snooze, I think that would be really good. But I just think, yeah, the debt.
- [36:48]
A
Owed by Shrek to this movie is huge. Yeah. There is like, I think I remember hearing Greta Gerwig say somewhere when someone asked her what she wanted Barbie to achieve, she was like, I want it to be something that other female directors can point to and say, this person made it work. You know what I mean?
- [37:03]
B
Amazing.
- [37:03]
A
She wants a comp. And I think that like, like a, like a profitable comp, that people can be like, well, this made money, so make me. Let me do this thing.
- [37:11]
B
So you think that the people who made Shrek looked at Princess Bride and.
- [37:14]
A
Were like, this made money. Let's do this thing.
- [37:16]
B
To be fair. Yes.
- [37:18]
A
Yeah. Is the. It is the spiritual successor.
- [37:22]
B
It is. And I think that's why it's going to be part of this trilogy. Yeah, I love it. Do you know what else I really love, And I mentioned this to you briefly earlier when we were like, what do we have to say about the Princess Bride before we just dive in raw and go for it? I really enjoy in the Princess Bride. And this, I think, is a product of its time. And I don't know of the sensibilities of the age, perhaps, that the stakes are, like, high, but they're like, low.
- [37:47]
A
High.
- [37:50]
B
In the obviously, Buttercup faces being murdered, which is really bad, and so does Westley. But the kind of the framing within the story is not like there's a dictator and he's here to murder everybody. And if this one special snowflake doesn't stop him, it'll all be over. It's literally a guy who just wants to start a war with a neighboring kingdom for no other reason than that sort of what you do. I believe it's the long and prestigious tradition of starting a war. And that just is very true of politics and of actual sort of medieval times. It was just like, I'm bored. I'm the start of war with France type thing.
- [38:32]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [38:32]
B
Gilda and Floraen. I love that about it.
- [38:35]
A
I love the Gilda and Florin. Yeah, it's all right.
- [38:37]
B
Why do they hate each other?
- [38:38]
A
No one knows.
- [38:39]
B
It's because they're neighbors and they hate one another. And that's what you did in those times.
- [38:42]
A
You're so right. And like that. Again, there's always rumors about them trying to remake this movie. And it never happens and it never will because no one wants it. And it's not owned by Disney. I don't think so. Therefore they can't make it happen. But the.
- [38:57]
B
There's just.
- [38:58]
A
There's something that in a modern fantasy, we would have to flesh out the whole why Gilda and Florin and, like, why it really matters that we can't start this war. None of the characters care whether or not this war happens. It's all about saving Buttercup and saving Wesley. The stakes are exactly where you can see them.
- [39:15]
B
Exactly that. And it's like in a modern version, there'd be some huge thing around, like, a great evil. A great evil is stirring in Florin or Gilda. Whichever one we're not in, no one's really sure. Like, and, you know, and you'd have, like, things and there'd be legions of armies. You know, it would be a flash.
- [39:33]
A
To the army, sort of like sharpening their swords in the smith.
- [39:36]
B
It would Be like, a little. It would be. It would be Lord of the Rings, but not as good. And you'd be like, I don't really know what the motive is for them. And I just. I think I missed that about 80s fantasy, that the stakes were just, like, geopolitical struggles. Again, my great crusade for magical garbage is to get you to read Song of the Lioness. And I will, and you will. And again, that is a book in which the stakes are similar. And it's like, countries are fighting. Why? Because they're next door to one another and one's got a better rhythm.
- [40:05]
A
There's no Great World War II metaphor Ad space at work here.
- [40:08]
B
It's just quite nice to have that. Obviously. I do. I really love, as you do, you know, things like the Hunger Games, which is about kind of the rise of autocracy and, like, the horrific abuses that humankind perpetrate against one another. But it's just quite nice sometimes to be like, Gilda and Florin are at war.
- [40:24]
A
Yeah.
- [40:24]
B
As they have always been and as they shall always be.
- [40:29]
A
Yeah. That's really good. I hadn't really appreciated that before, but, like, it's really nice to just like, have this small set of characters and the events that unfold affect these small set of characters and not have to worry about the untold villages that are being tortured or burned to the ground. Just these six guys.
- [40:46]
B
Yeah. Sometimes it's right. Sometimes it's right to situate it in that context, and sometimes it's not. I fully believe, with no backstory, that Prince Humperdinck is the kind of guy who would murder his wife just to make. To pin it on his enemies.
- [40:59]
A
Yeah. Makes total sense.
- [41:01]
B
Total sense. Don't just question it any more than that. So then that's a fairy tale as well. You don't have to question it.
- [41:05]
A
Yeah, sure you have. Like, you've studied fairy tale, haven't you? Fairy tales?
- [41:10]
B
I mean, in the sense that anyone can.
- [41:13]
A
Yeah. But didn't you do, like, stuff for your degree on this?
- [41:16]
B
Yeah, I mean, as in, I really enjoyed fairy tales. And so I ended up doing part of my degree, like, a dissertation on fairy tale in modern literature. Me and thousands of other women who are now in their late 30s who read a lot of Angela Carter, and it was great. But, yeah, I think that's. That, for me, I think is probably that actually would have been why I came across Princess Bride. I think I would have been in my 20s when I did it. It may have been around about the time.
- [41:41]
A
Wow.
- [41:42]
B
Yeah. Because I came to this probably via Angela Carter.
- [41:44]
A
Yeah.
- [41:45]
B
Who is obviously the.
- [41:49]
A
So you did. You did your dissertation in, like, what, 2000?
- [41:52]
B
No, 2009.
- [41:55]
A
No, that would be when I was graduating.
- [41:57]
B
God, how old am I? 2007? Maybe 2008. Around about then.
- [42:01]
A
Yeah, then. Which is interesting because, as you said, there was a real. A bit of a trend for that kind of area of study. Right.
- [42:10]
B
Yeah.
- [42:10]
A
And then about 10 years on, when the other girls who were doing their Angela Carter dissertation around you were all in publishing, it was like all the things they were commissioning were feminist takes on fairy tales. Do you remember that?
- [42:23]
B
Yes, I do. And also remember that there was a period where every single book that came out was like, well, if Angela Carter worked at the post office, if Angela Carter was. It was like that was how young female writers were described.
- [42:35]
A
My blurb was if Angela Carter was at an ad agency.
- [42:38]
B
And a fantastic blurb it was, too.
- [42:39]
A
Sorry if people don't know who Angela Carter is. She was a writer who wrote a very famous collection called the Bloody Chamber, which was a kind of gothic retelling with a feminist slant of fairy tales.
- [42:50]
B
Yes.
- [42:51]
A
I just realized everyone knows that.
- [42:52]
B
Oh, yeah, that's very fair. Also writes other good things. But you know what I think is always good reading if you ever are curious about fairy tales. And I did mean to reread it today, but I didn't get a chance. It's the introduction to her collection of fairy tales. Not the Bloody Chamber, but her, like, collection of actual fairy tales where she went around and collected stuff.
- [43:10]
A
Yeah.
- [43:10]
B
What a great thing to do. And then she wrote this fantastic introduction about the nature of fairy tale and the importance of the oral tradition and the way that it's been carried on. I feel like everything I ever say about fairy tales is basically just me having digested that introduction over and over again.
- [43:25]
A
That's okay.
- [43:25]
B
It also got me into tarot card reading. So there we go.
- [43:27]
A
There we go.
- [43:28]
B
We owe a lot to fairy tale. But, yeah, I don't know if I have anything, like, intelligent or specific to say other than that. What I think is so great about fairy tale and folklore as a tradition is the fact that there is. There is no, like, author to it. There's no, like, set thing. It has to be. And that's one of the things I was always interested in, is that it's the set of archetypes, as you say, and stories and patterns and tropes that get kind of passed on and then changed and given new meaning and new life by new readers. And new writers. And to try and own a fairy tale is almost to sort of, like, kill it a little bit. And, like, obviously the Grimm Brothers and Feral kind of did codify and slightly defang a lot of fairy tales. But the Princess Bride, I think, exists in that tradition, particularly because of the framing device of, like, well, there's this rollicking story that was from this book, but then my grandfather changed it and I changed it too. And it just all fits into that world of, like, every story is yours for the taking and for the playfulness and for all that. Maybe that moment in publishing where all the girlies were writing fairy tale retellings was felt like trite after a while, but I think the spirit was right. And that's what all writing is.
- [44:43]
A
All trends feel trite after a while. And I think I was definitely in on that and I loved it and all that stuff. It's just interesting to look back and to look at what was happening, because it was also a moment that sort of preceded the widespread Me Too feminism. It was like a place for anger to live within these fairy tale books. And I find the sort of tradition of fairytelling really interesting, particularly when you consider that, like, now that we've had 150 years of moviemaking where movie making falls into that. Right. Because, like, some of the earliest movies were fairy tales. They are the things that come back to all the time. Walt Disney, obviously, in this, in much the same way the Brothers Grimm did, codified fairy tale and showed us what to expect and how it looks. And, like, took. Took the storybooks he would have grown up with and then slapped them into this new form. And then it's like the. We're reading up on this, like, this phase of moviemaking that we're talking about to the Princess Bride, Labyrinth, the Dark crystal, this kind of 80s fantasy resurgence is sort of, kind of widely believed to be like, you know, Walt Disney died in the 60s. Sort of. Nobody took up the mantle of, like, more fairy tales after that. They just became out of fashion for a while. And then when the people who grew up on those movies were old enough to make movies, that was what they really wanted to make.
- [46:00]
B
Yeah.
- [46:01]
A
Stuff like this.
- [46:02]
B
Do you feel like we're due another. Another burst?
- [46:05]
A
I don't know. I'd be curious, though, because I think a bit like dragons, it's like every time it comes back, it's comes back for a different reason.
- [46:12]
B
Yeah. You know, and I suppose it's like each new wave is a reaction to the previous one.
- [46:18]
A
Well, yeah. Actually, I was. I was speaking to a friend who. I mean, actually, I think we are due it because a friend of mine had a meeting at a big, you know, Hollywood production company who they want, you know, they're naturally speaking. They want their version of Wicked. Right. You know, they want some version of a fairy tale, but told from a new angle, you know? And so I think we probably will be seeing a lot more of that over the next few years.
- [46:41]
B
I'm ready for it.
- [46:42]
A
Yeah. And, like, what will it mean? You know? And will it be this way that we. If, like, before we were, like, talking about feminist narratives, now I think it's more about power narratives. I think that's, like, Wicked isn't really a feminist story. It's a story about authorian power.
- [46:58]
B
Yeah. Anyway, I like it.
- [47:03]
A
I like it, too.
- [47:04]
B
I'm ready for it. I'm just gonna go back there as well.
- [47:07]
A
Right.
- [47:07]
B
Yeah. I just think, like, I love Sad Girl lit as much as everyone else, but I like the Princess Bride more. Give me a. Give me a caper. Give me a jape.
- [47:18]
A
But something I find, just to finish off on that quote, that sort of thought about fairy tales being an oral tradition that then became a picture tradition, like picture books and then became a movie tradition is like the movies, the way they look. They're kind of. The costume and how everything is dressed is based on this kind of ahistorical.
- [47:40]
B
Oh, big buckles and big boots.
- [47:43]
A
Yes. Big puss in boots. Big boots. Big boots. Everyone is wearing a big buckle and a big boot.
- [47:50]
B
We just were there and we were like, big old buckle, big old boot, tiny moustache, tiny little ponytail. Just the visuals are phenomenal.
- [47:59]
A
Right.
- [47:59]
B
And it's like Andre the Giant's huge boots.
- [48:01]
A
Huge.
- [48:02]
B
I think we could each get one of those boots and jump around and.
- [48:05]
A
I would love to, but, like, it's like. It's like a visual style of filmmaking that is taken from storybooks.
- [48:14]
B
Yeah.
- [48:14]
A
Do you mean it's like woodcuts, but.
- [48:16]
B
It'S all very low.
- [48:17]
A
Yeah, woodcuts, exactly. Illustrations. Right.
- [48:20]
B
Everything's exaggerated and everything's a bit too much. Like, nobody needs a belt that size.
- [48:25]
A
There's no historical period they're pulling that from. They're making real people wear things that drawings wore. And I think that's cool.
- [48:32]
B
I think it's really cool. And also, it's like the thing you'd only see in, like, Vogue offices otherwise.
- [48:37]
A
Yeah.
- [48:38]
B
How much do Vogue do the people of Vogue owe to fairy tales?
- [48:42]
A
So Vodokup is kidnapped By a trio.
- [48:44]
B
Of bandits called Vasini and Inigo, the sexiest man in this film.
- [48:51]
A
Oh, my God. True age.
- [48:53]
B
That's how you know you're older when you look at it and you're like, yeah, Cary Elwes. The hardest name to say in cinema. I know Cary Elwes.
- [49:01]
A
I think that's why he was never a superstar, because Cary Elwes is really hard to say.
- [49:04]
B
Elwes.
- [49:05]
A
You have to stop every time you say it.
- [49:06]
B
We had to look it up on the Internet. Yeah, Cary Elwes. It's obviously beautiful. Obviously a beautiful.
- [49:12]
A
But Mandy Patinkin is the fucking fiddy of the movie.
- [49:15]
B
So hot.
- [49:15]
A
He's so hot.
- [49:17]
B
So hot. From the moment he appears, I was just like, no.
- [49:20]
A
How did I ever see it before?
- [49:21]
B
Because we were young.
- [49:23]
A
He's beautiful. He's so fit and so smoldering. I know everyone smoulders, but.
- [49:29]
B
Oh, but he smoulders in a way that is more authentic. Inigo is the true sexy gentleman of this film.
- [49:36]
A
Yeah.
- [49:37]
B
Like you just would.
- [49:38]
A
He's hot.
- [49:39]
B
Yeah. So that's a thing. He appears and they go up the cliffs in the best way possible.
- [49:44]
A
I love the cliffs, but the fact.
- [49:46]
B
That just I was thinking about this. So much lingering time is spent watching them scale the cliffs. I know, but they scale the cliffs like one of those little toys where it's just the little arms.
- [49:58]
A
It's so weird looking.
- [50:00]
B
Their legs aren't involved. They're just gliding up and down. And it's almost as though whoever was filming it was like, well, you know, we've got at great expense, the permits to film in the cliffs of Moher. And so we just really need to make the most of this time in Ireland. Right. I also like to take a moment for the fact that yesterday when watching this film, you went, this has to be Ireland. And I was like, maybe. And you were like, county Clare. And I was like, okay. And I googled it and you were correct.
- [50:25]
A
Go me. You knew identify parts of Ireland.
- [50:28]
B
You knew your homeland. But yeah, it just like, why is it a solid 10 minutes of them climbing this cliff and having a chit chat?
- [50:36]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so funny. I love it because as well, watching them glide up those cliffs is like. It is again, it feels like a picture book where you're sliding a man up. Yes. They're, like, gliding up. It's so unhuman, but for some reason totally works.
- [50:53]
B
But I love the decision, and the decision was made over and over again in this film to, apart from the bedroom, to Completely make the sets be like.
- [51:01]
A
Yeah, just obscure reality.
- [51:03]
B
It's obviously a set. Like, you can see the painted backdrops. You can basically see the brushstrokes and the beautiful clouds. And I think it would be the poorer if it were filmed Lord of the Rings style. And just FYI, in case you're just tuning in for the first time, I love Lord of the Rings. I love it.
- [51:20]
A
I. Lord of the Rings episode.
- [51:22]
B
Very good. But it did this. Didn't need that treatment. It needed the kind of. Yeah. The fakeness and the flim flammery and the big buckles and the big boots and the kind of moustaches and the painted backdrops and the scathing cliffs in a way that no human ever could.
- [51:36]
A
Totally. It's. It's. I think I've said this in the podcast already, but I want to say it again because it's my podcast and I get to say things twice or perhaps three or four times. But it's so interesting to me as we kind of enter this, you know, AI age or whatever, and things that look too clean or too digital or too perfect are so repellent to me. But. But, like, when I can see. See the human effort in something, how much more appealing it is. Like this phrase that I've brought up before called. You're seeing the joins of something, which used to be a phrase that used to be like, a kind of almost a theatrical critique of being like. You can see the joins. You can see the seams in whatever. And, like, now I feel like it's the greatest compliment you can pay a piece of work.
- [52:24]
B
You see the work that went into it.
- [52:25]
A
Yeah.
- [52:26]
B
It's like, we are, I think, entering into an age where, like, handmade is becoming, like, the commitment people are making to craft, even though there are now more efficient and quote, unquote, simpler ways of doing things. To be like, no, but I still want to know how to do this properly.
- [52:43]
A
Yeah. We want to paint the scenery.
- [52:45]
B
I want to paint the scenery, and I want to find this for myself, and I want to learn this, and I want to make that. I think that's really important. I think this film is, like, an absolute triumph of artistry in that respect. Not in the sense that you look.
- [52:56]
A
At it and go, it looks magnificent.
- [52:58]
B
But just in the sense you like. So much effort was put into creating these sets.
- [53:02]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like. And like, also, it makes it timeless. So I think I'm something. Cary Elwes, whose name, Cary Elwes.
- [53:09]
B
Could we give him some kind of nickname?
- [53:11]
A
C, E. Like a Midford sister. Something he mentions is that, like, another reason why it doesn't date is because all the music is acoustic guitar by Mark Knopfler of the Dire Straits. It's like, not some 80s synth sound, which, like, you watch something like Labyrinth, which is a different kind of thing, like, and is charming for its own reasons, but it feels like the 80s, that movie.
- [53:38]
B
Yeah.
- [53:39]
A
In a way that's charming, but still timestamped fuckery. Because. For the soundtrack. Because of all these different.
- [53:45]
B
Yes.
- [53:46]
A
And so it just feels like this beautiful, timeless thing.
- [53:50]
B
It is.
- [53:51]
A
Yeah.
- [53:52]
B
I love it.
- [53:54]
A
I love it. And then I just. The first, like, I think, really funny part of the movie for me happens when Wesley is climbing the cliffs and an ego is waiting for him. He's like, I hate to wait.
- [54:09]
B
And they have this really kind of, like, fun interchange where he's just like, look, I. You know, would not be sportsmanlike. It's so good. And Westley's just like, listen, I'm a bit busy right now. Yeah, I'm actually climbing a cliff. Would you mind? It's just. It's so perfect and so silly. And I just. I think it's really fun how these phrases become sort of aphorisms, like, hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. It's gonna echo down the generations.
- [54:44]
A
It echoes down the generations, and it is like one of these things that, like, people put on T shirts or whatever. And I think, by virtue of being a line of dialogue in a movie that's repeated several times, therefore becomes a catchphrase. But you do. When you rewatch it, you're like, it is a fucking powerful thing. Because it's like, we've had this character who we adore. We know he has a plan to track down a man and to say a thing and to kill that man. And then he gets to him, and then he's immediately stabbed by Count Ruben. And then Count Ruben, who's a sadist, is like, have you waited your whole life to track me down, only to fail now? I think that's the saddest thing I've ever heard. Marvelous.
- [55:29]
B
And the thing about Count Ruben is he's a dickhead.
- [55:32]
A
Yes.
- [55:32]
B
But I don't disagree with him.
- [55:35]
A
It is the saddest thing I've ever heard.
- [55:37]
B
And this is not to, like, make this as a moment to comment on masculinity, but also to do that a little bit. That is a thing that men sometimes do.
- [55:45]
A
Do what?
- [55:46]
B
Just, like, have a project that consumes them so entirely that they forget to do the rest of life. Do you know what I mean?
- [55:53]
A
Oh, my God. Wow. You're really devil's advocating Count Ruben. Sometimes I. You're like, you know what? It is sad to be in a lifelong question for revenge.
- [56:03]
B
It is sad. And I think this, again, is like, this is a tradition within, not fairy tale, but certainly within literature. Like, every Shakespearean tragedy is just like a dude who is so obsessed with something that he just missed out on everything else.
- [56:18]
A
Wow.
- [56:19]
B
Like, that is the whole point.
- [56:21]
A
God, I didn't think I would be learning lessons from Kent Ribbon on this take. But you're right. I think that's the worst thing I've ever heard.
- [56:28]
B
And I don't like Count Raven, but he's not wrong. Inigo Montoya, a hot man, a fantastic swordsman. He could have been living a life. And I get. He's got this kind of noble idea of putting his father's soul to rest. His father's soul. Like, what's it doing?
- [56:47]
A
What's it doing?
- [56:47]
B
It's very Hamlet. You know, Hamlet's like, oh, the ghost of his father appears and says, avenge me. I don't think Inigo Montoya has that. I think he just decided that his father's ghost needs to be appeased.
- [56:57]
A
Well, yeah. And Inigo Montoya is canonically an alcoholic, Right? That's his whole thing. He's a sot that like that. And it's very clear in the book as well that he, like, starts having sort of wine with dinner and then wine before dinner and then wine when he wakes up. And, like, then he's an alcoholic kind of thing. So, yeah, the thing that you can say about Count Rubin is that he has a good social life and many interests that include pain. And his best friend is Humperdinck. And they are actually my favorite relationship of the whole movie. Oh, my God. There are many bromances in this movie. And I think Fezzik and Inigo are very, very sweet, but it is quite basic. And it's just not like, oh, they do their little rhyme.
- [57:37]
B
They do a rhyme, and they're like.
- [57:39]
A
Brothers, and it's very sweet, and they look after each other, and that's really nice.
- [57:42]
B
It's Reuben and Humperdinck, but it's Ruben.
- [57:43]
A
And Humperdinck who are just the bitchy little queens of this movie. And I love them.
- [57:49]
B
That bit where Ruben's like, do you want to come to the Pip Despair with me? And I'm think, what does he say? He's just like. He's like, God, I'm so busy.
- [57:58]
A
It's like, Tyrone. You know.
- [58:00]
B
Tyrone.
- [58:01]
A
Tyrone. You know. I love watching you work like that. I've got my wife. I've got my wedding to plan, my wife to murder and Gilda to frame from it. I'm swamped. It's so funny.
- [58:12]
B
It wouldn't be out of place in Sex and the City. It wouldn't.
- [58:15]
A
I know, totally.
- [58:17]
B
It's phenomenal.
- [58:19]
A
Yeah. And something you pointed out several times as we were watching as well, is a lot of this dialogue wouldn't be out of place in the Grand Budapest Hotel with Monsieur Gustave.
- [58:28]
B
Monsieur Gustave? It's like the moment where Westley says when they're in the fire swamp, and he's just like, oh, you know, it's quite lovely. I wouldn't build a summer house here, but these trees are. And I was like, I just can see Ralph Fiennes as Misuko Stave saying that. And I just kind of wonder if maybe he drew on this film because there's so much. This dialogue has that slight, like, arch.
- [58:50]
A
Yes.
- [58:51]
B
Like, early 20th century tone and the sort of slightly, like, nasal voice and the kind of, like, almost bored delivery. It's like. It's like, you know, I've completely forgotten the name. It's like Noel Coward or something.
- [59:04]
A
Yes, totally.
- [59:05]
B
It's got that sort of weird texture to it.
- [59:07]
A
I think that everyone is like. It's not like those things are drawing from each other. It's like they're drawing from the same pit of inspiration. And I think, like, so much of the Princess Bride's DNA comes from, like, as you say, the swashbuckling movies of, like, the 30s and 40s, like, Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn and all these people who are so unrecognizable to us now, but we're, like the matinee icons of their day. That's what Wesley is doing.
- [59:30]
B
It's just perfect. And it comes, as you say, to its highest point in Count Raven and Prince Humperdinck's interactions with one another. I just love the casual villainry of these two men.
- [59:45]
A
And they're so obviously bumming. Obviously in love.
- [59:50]
B
I'm so in love.
- [59:53]
A
I don't understand why it isn't more of a conversation people have about this movie that there is a gay relationship in this, and it's Count Rupert and Prince Humperdinck.
- [60:01]
B
I wonder if this almost goes back to our original point of we don't need to know why Prince Humperdinck is going to frame Gilda for the murder of his wife. In a modern retelling, they would make the story of Humperdinck and Reuben's forbidden.
- [60:13]
A
Love much more explicit.
- [60:15]
B
They'd make it explicit and they'd try and get you kind of on Humperdinck's side because, you know, he'd spent his whole childhood closeted. And it had turned him into this space where he felt the only way that he could exert power on the world is to murder women. And it's like, no, we don't need that. We know that they're in love. We know that as watchers, we don't have it said to us.
- [60:35]
A
They're in love.
- [60:36]
B
They're in love. This is men loving men, and I love to see it. There's bromances, there's romances.
- [60:42]
A
Yeah. And also the bit that I cannot believe is not like a meme all over Instagram all the time, which is when Count Ruben puts Wesley in the sort of suction cup pain machine. He says, completely deadpan, I've just sucked a year of your life.
- [60:59]
B
And you notice how the suction cups are, like, on his nipples and his hands.
- [61:04]
A
How are, like, gay men not posting that all over their feeds? I've just sucked.
- [61:08]
B
How are they? He's tied to a bed instead of sucking water.
- [61:14]
A
I'm sucking life.
- [61:15]
B
I'm sucking life. Christopher Guest in this.
- [61:19]
A
Oh, no.
- [61:20]
B
Fantastic.
- [61:21]
A
Yeah.
- [61:22]
B
So creepy.
- [61:23]
A
It's phenomenal. That, like, his little extra finger, what.
- [61:28]
B
You could do with that.
- [61:34]
A
So good.
- [61:35]
B
I'm not the first person.
- [61:36]
A
It's so, like, everyone in this movie is so committed to this pastiche that they're doing. And I think it's really helped by the fact that so many people in this movie, acting isn't their main thing. Like, Christopher Guest is mainly a director. Wallace Shawn very much a playwright and writer who plays Vasini the Sicilian and like Andre the Giant. Giant, a wrestler. Everyone is doing this kind of like they're not, you know, staring at a skull and doing method and like, taking the sort of the thing of acting very, very seriously.
- [62:07]
B
Apart from Robin Wright, Marfan and Cary.
- [62:09]
A
Elways, who are grounding the movie. They are the Gavin and Stacy grounding the action.
- [62:12]
B
They are. Yeah. There's just so many people having a nice time.
- [62:17]
A
Everyone is doing an impression of what they've seen actors do in movies when they were kids. And that's what makes it so charming, because it's so keenly felt.
- [62:25]
B
It's so. And I get the sense again, much like Lord of The Rings, which I love. Which we love. And we talk about the fact that Lord of the Rings, the film exists, but also Lord of the Rings, the filming experience. Experience exists. I get the sense very clearly that the Princess Bride, the filming experience also exists, which we know a little of from Kerry Elwes's memoir, which, as far as I can tell, just a love letter to Andre the Giant.
- [62:47]
A
Yeah.
- [62:47]
B
And like, every. Everything he says is like, you have to have heard the way Andre farted. Extraordinary. Like, you have to have seen the way he drank and when he slept.
- [62:57]
A
Wow.
- [62:58]
B
He slept. Like, it just. It's just. It's so earnest and sincere, how much he loved being on this set and loved everyone he worked with.
- [63:05]
A
It's so funny.
- [63:05]
B
Everyone loved everyone else.
- [63:07]
A
Yeah. And it's so funny how, like, every. At the time when they were making this movie, Andre the Giant was the big get because he was one of the most famous wrestlers in the world. And now Andre the Giant is like, a figure people know from.
- [63:21]
B
From this film.
- [63:22]
A
Like, no one is. Like, even if you're like, a deep wrestling buff or whatever. Like, I would say Andrew the Giant counts as, like, an interesting curio in the world of wrestling now. But then he had, like, quite massive celebrity.
- [63:33]
B
Yeah.
- [63:36]
A
God, yeah.
- [63:38]
B
Just trying to imagine wrestlers having celebrity. But I like. Yeah. And I like that his character gets to have. It's such a great character to have as your legacy. Because the only other equivalent I can think of is the really big Icelandic man who plays the mountain in Game of Thrones.
- [63:53]
A
Yeah.
- [63:54]
B
Which is, like, obviously a good Rolex that you managed. A demon with a helmet on.
- [63:57]
A
Yeah.
- [63:58]
B
There's no cute little rhymes. There's no thing of, like, I missed on purpose. It didn't seem. Was it sportsmanlike? Does he say it was fair? There's none of that.
- [64:07]
A
He's fighting Wesley and he's like. Wesley's like, are you just. Are you just playing around on me? And he's like, I don't want you to feel like you're doing a bad job.
- [64:16]
B
That's everyone playing with a toddler or a small dog ever.
- [64:19]
A
Yeah.
- [64:19]
B
You know, but I'm wrestling with Sylvie for a ball. She really thinks she's can take it. She's the size of a piglet.
- [64:25]
A
She's our piglet.
- [64:27]
B
She's our piglet.
- [64:28]
A
So they get through the fire swamp. The rodents have unusual size. Did you want to talk about them?
- [64:32]
B
I just kind of do, actually.
- [64:35]
A
Do.
- [64:35]
B
You know, I just do. I just. I think of them often.
- [64:42]
A
Go on. Just want to Talk about them.
- [64:45]
B
I love the fact that they are a man or woman in a suit. I love the fact that they were just like, ah. The easiest way to do this, put someone in a rat suit. I love the energy. I love the noises they make.
- [65:00]
A
The fact that they're called the R O U S's.
- [65:02]
B
I love the whipping tail motion that they have. I love the way that they just are like. I think, again, there's, like, they have the approximate proportions of Sylvie, like the head to, like, different tail. And obviously Sylvie beautiful. But I just. I love that they're not really scary. It's just that they're big, really big rats.
- [65:27]
A
Yeah. And I also love them the way they're times comically, where Wesley sees one over Buttercup's shoulder as he's trying to reassure her because there's the exploding plants, there's the lightning, the lightning sand.
- [65:42]
B
Terrifying.
- [65:42]
A
And she. And any sensible person who is, you know, sucked under by lightning sand and then has to come back out and basically has drowned in sand for a minute. She is deeply traumatized.
- [65:53]
B
She's like, what's the third one?
- [65:54]
A
He's like, yeah, the rodents of unusual size. And even though he's already seen them.
- [65:57]
B
Over her shoulder, even though he's currently staring one in the eyes of unusual.
- [66:01]
A
Size, I don't think they exist. It's so funny. It's never not funny.
- [66:08]
B
I just think, again, why is that not more of a meme?
- [66:11]
A
Yeah.
- [66:12]
B
Why is that not a gift?
- [66:13]
A
Yeah. There are so many memes of this movie, but there's no underrated line of this movie because everyone knows it off by heart. But, like, yeah, finding those little moments that are just not as documented as the others is very joyful.
- [66:26]
B
Like Cary Elwes wrestling a man in a rat suit. That's an incredible scene. You wouldn't get that nowadays. Now. They'd be like.
- [66:34]
A
It would be like, who's green screen rats? It would be tennis balls.
- [66:38]
B
Yeah. He'd be wrestling a big bag of tennis balls and then it'd be put back on. But who's the actor who isn't allowed. Is contractually not allowed to, like, lose fights in films.
- [66:50]
A
Oh, I don't know.
- [66:51]
B
I believe there's some actor. He's not allowed to lose a fight in a film. And, like, I feel like a lot of. Again, particularly male actors are like, no, if I'm going to be fighting, I must look masculine. I must look like hench. I must look as though, like, ugh, I am a gladiator.
- [67:05]
A
Yeah.
- [67:06]
B
Not here.
- [67:06]
A
Wesley Being pinned to the ground.
- [67:08]
B
This is the man with a giant rat. And he's just like, oh, God. I just think.
- [67:15]
A
And then he only wins because he rolls him into fire. And then we watch the rat die. And it's like such a man sound like, oh.
- [67:25]
B
I just.
- [67:25]
A
So good.
- [67:26]
B
I think this film would be worse without the rodents of unusual size.
- [67:31]
A
Oh, absolutely.
- [67:31]
B
And I feel like. I feel like this is just a thing I've decided William Goldman had to fight for those rats.
- [67:41]
A
Do you think?
- [67:42]
B
I feel like the producers were like, eh, really? No. We haven't really got the technology to make them really scary. And he was like, no.
- [67:50]
A
Yeah. Isn't the lightning, sand and the fire enough? No, no. There must be rodents of.
- [67:55]
B
We must have the chat.
- [67:57]
A
And by the way, this was not a low budget movie. This was one of the highest budget independent movies of its day. It made its money back, but not a lot more.
- [68:05]
B
But I bet those rats cost money to make.
- [68:07]
A
Yeah. I think they were like a Jim Henson creature shop.
- [68:09]
B
Yeah. And he's.
- [68:10]
A
He doesn't come cheap, Henson. This era does not come cheap.
- [68:14]
B
No, that rat. Yeah. I just. I think. I think the rodent's unusual size might be my, like, spirit animal of the summer.
- [68:23]
A
You are a rodent of unusual size.
- [68:25]
B
I am a rodent. As are you. As are we all. We're all just big rats. Just. We're just doing our best.
- [68:33]
A
Yeah.
- [68:34]
B
Just leaping around our swamps. I don't know. That's all I wanted to say about them. I wish I had something intelligent or useful to say about the rodents to unusual size.
- [68:43]
A
You had something very intelligent and useful to say about a later scene in this movie where. So Buttercup leaves Westley because she's afraid of losing him again. So they have that face off at the end of the Fire Swamp where he's like. Humberdink is like, surrender. And Wesley's like, death first. And she goes, well, he promised not to hurt him. And then of course, Humberden goes back on his promise and takes him to the. What is he called again?
- [69:09]
B
The Pit of Despair.
- [69:10]
A
Pit of Despair, where Wesley is tended to by an albino helper.
- [69:18]
B
I've been spending this entire time being like, what intelligent thing did I say? And.
- [69:22]
A
And you said, if this role was cast today, Matt Lucas would play it. And I was like, that is the truest thing anyone's ever said. It is such a Matt Lucas coded character. It's actually offensive to me that it's not Matt Lucas.
- [69:35]
B
It's almost surprising that it isn't Matt Lucas already, he would have been too young, probably, to play this character. I have no idea how old he is.
- [69:41]
A
No. Yeah.
- [69:42]
B
But yeah, I was like, oh, is that Matt Lucas? But from a previous iteration, previous incarnation of Matt Lucas.
- [69:48]
A
Totally.
- [69:49]
B
And if we were to make this film again, almost everything about it would be wrong. Except for Matt Lucas playing the torturer. Yeah, that bit would be right.
- [69:56]
A
That would be right.
- [69:57]
B
That would be the one thing that you could improve upon the original with.
- [70:00]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Although the current guy is great too.
- [70:02]
B
Yeah. He's obviously. And I've forgotten who he is, but he is a person who I recognized when I actually looked it up. Couldn't tell you now because I'm bad at remembering Google, but I think, yeah, I fear. I don't know why I want to. I want to do this because I feel personally attacked every single time an old film is remade by Disney or whoever. Like, we don't. I don't know. We needed a live action how to Train youn Dragon or I believe, a.
- [70:31]
A
Live action Lilo and Stitch.
- [70:32]
B
No one needed that. No one needed this. No one needed any of them. And I just kind of want to say this because I feel like if someone remade this film, it would be shit.
- [70:43]
A
Yeah, of course it would be.
- [70:44]
B
And that's been almost a theme that we've gone through. We've touched on this over and over again. It's like, becomes visceral fear that all the things we loved when we were kids will be ruined by modern studio executives who were like, ah, I could pump some more money out of this franchise because they would make it serious and they would make it crap. And Matt Lucas would be the only thing I liked about it. Thank you, Matt Lucas.
- [71:05]
A
Thank you, Matt Lucas, for being the only good thing I like about the Princess Bride remake. That doesn't exist in that you weren't cast in, but in my head you were.
- [71:13]
B
Yeah, he's just doing a great service for us all.
- [71:17]
A
I really like Matt Lucas.
- [71:18]
B
I really like Mattress.
- [71:18]
A
I hope he's as nice as he seems.
- [71:21]
B
Yeah, I hope so, too. I think I once walked past him on the street and did that thing where I was like, oh, my God, Matt Lucas.
- [71:25]
A
And he was just like, oh, fuck Eggman.
- [71:27]
B
Yeah.
- [71:27]
A
I did not say eggy looking man. Anyway, a little detour there. So then we. Everything sort of speeds up now. I mean, it's a very efficiently told movie. A very efficiently told story where they.
- [71:44]
B
But no detail left unchecked.
- [71:46]
A
Yeah. Wesley is killed. Oh.
- [71:51]
B
As you were saying that I thought About a detail I particularly enjoy. And it's when Prince Humberdinck is sitting in a chair and a person comes to him and he puts his arm.
- [71:59]
A
Yes.
- [72:00]
B
He put his hand on the arm of the chair and Humperdinck just looks down and then the man removes his arm there. It's these little moments.
- [72:08]
A
Humperdinck is so good.
- [72:09]
B
I just. It's. This film is not really concerned with like the grand and the spectacle. It's concerned with the tiny details, as all good stories are.
- [72:20]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Little. Little power struggles and things.
- [72:23]
B
Little bits.
- [72:23]
A
Yeah. Because I think it's like the head of his guard or whatever. Yeah.
- [72:26]
B
And it's just like, oh, excuse me. It feels so perfect.
- [72:29]
A
It's also. This movie is full of little moments like this. I think this movie gets credit for its writing all the time. It's dialogue and the dialogue is perfect. There's not a bum note in the whole thing. And it's so funny and charming. But there are also these plenty of non verbal moments that are, speaking as a screenwriter myself, fucking incredibly hard to script. Because there are things that like, they're hard to communicate with words. It's hard to sort of. It's also, when you're writing a script, the first thing you always cut is a stage action. Because you kind of want to get as much story by dialogue as you can. And it's, you know, little body language. Things are easy to cut. But like there's that moment that you just said with the hand on the. On the fucking. On the arm of the arm of the armrest. But then there's also this moment where when Wesley sort of wakes up after dying and he sort of does the whole. To the pain monologue.
- [73:18]
B
Yeah.
- [73:19]
A
And then he scares the shit out of Humberding. Humberding sort of sits in a chair and he sort of gathers his skirt around him.
- [73:24]
B
Yes. He picks up his little skirt like he's sort of going. A woman going down the steps in an old film.
- [73:29]
A
Yeah, exactly. It's like tiny little things that maybe they were scripted, maybe they weren't, but they just like really. They make these hills sing.
- [73:37]
B
They really make these hills sing. And I just think, again, we've talked about this kind of living in the fairy tale tradition, which is in some way, like. In some ways it does. But in some ways, actually in terms of plot, it doesn't really, because it's not forests and it's not grandmothers and it's not kind of like there aren't. Other than a farm boy And a farm girl there aren't like the common folk. It is very much a story that takes place in grand halls and like, in big adventure spaces. But it also, I think, borrows a lot from. And this is super lame of me to know this, but there we go. Off we have trot from kind of like medieval literature.
- [74:11]
A
Oh, go on.
- [74:13]
B
Oh, just like, treat me to your thought.
- [74:15]
A
Someone's gonna bring up Edmund Spencer or something.
- [74:18]
B
Oh, no, we're going earlier, my friend. Have you heard of the Morte d' Arthur?
- [74:23]
A
Not really.
- [74:23]
B
It's Thomas Malory. It's massive. It's a real fucking totem of a book. Again, something I was. I was forced to study at one point. And it's absolutely legendary. And it's not what you'd think it would be like. When you hear, like Arthurian legend.
- [74:37]
A
Yeah.
- [74:37]
B
And you think, like, that's up to par. Do you imagine it's all just like Prince Caspian? You know, it's rousing monologues and it's. And it's Hawks. It's not. It's basically a lot of the Princess Bride. It will be just like some lads in the castle and a dead woman will float in on a boat and one will be like, is that. What's that? And the other one will be like, oh, yeah, I did date her. And she got a bit too intense, I think. She seems to have killed herself. And they're just like, oh, it's a shame, isn't it? And that's like the end of it. There's no, like, it isn't done in that kind of really overwrought, like, high octane way. It's not done like an action movie. It's done like the Princess Bride. It's just slightly camp, like, low level dialogue and like bits of weird body humor.
- [75:26]
A
Wow.
- [75:26]
B
And I just think maybe there's time for medieval literature to have a renaissance. Only good example is a Knight's tale, which did it so well.
- [75:33]
A
I love a knight's tale.
- [75:34]
B
I love a knight's tale.
- [75:36]
A
And they say that medieval fashion is coming back in a big way.
- [75:41]
B
Okay, so time for that.
- [75:42]
A
I mean, they said this in the sort of early spring, that this summer would be filled with medieval fashion.
- [75:47]
B
What's medieval fashion?
- [75:49]
A
I think they were sort of working off kind of the Joan of Archie references that are making their way into runways, that it would filter down and sort of a romantic, almost like chainmail.
- [76:00]
B
Becomes accessible to all.
- [76:02]
A
And also, like a lot of. I'm seeing a lot of sweeping floor length, lacy vibes those really tall pointy cone hats. Oh, let's hope. That would be nice. And like, I've seen. I actually have seen that sort of embroidery 70s fashion that was inspired by sort of medieval fashion of that time.
- [76:25]
B
Okay.
- [76:26]
A
Because, like, the seventies is a lot. When, like, a lot of medieval type of literature and like, Ursula Le Guin and all that kind of like.
- [76:33]
B
Well, kind of like pre Raphaelite.
- [76:34]
A
Yes.
- [76:35]
B
It's sort of like filtered through the lenses of Romanticism.
- [76:39]
A
Yes. Filtered through 1970s Bohemianism.
- [76:42]
B
So it's kind of a bit like fairy tales coming at multiple removes.
- [76:44]
A
Exactly.
- [76:45]
B
We've got, like, medieval. We've gone Pre Raphaelitely from 1970.
- [76:47]
A
We are supposed to be seeing a lot of, like, white, lacy long dresses, maybe a little bit of velvet embroidery. We're already seeing a lot of embroidery this summer already.
- [76:55]
B
Oh.
- [76:55]
A
So I think.
- [76:56]
B
Okay, listen, I'm keen. I'm keen for that. And I think it's gonna be a Princess Bride summer. We can all get back into, like, fun, slightly camp, slightly, like, underplayed dialogue. I don't want to. I don't want to see a group of superheroes destroying a city ever again. I want to see two men talking lightly about torture chambers all summer long. That's what I want.
- [77:17]
A
Well, I hope that again, that might be the offshoot of Wicked, because Wicked has this, like, a very fairy tale sensibility and a very dry sense of humor. And like, that could be sort of. Yeah, I want.
- [77:29]
B
I want things a bit smaller. I want lightness of touch.
- [77:32]
A
You know when people do that really annoying thing where someone gets cancelled and they say, well, I never liked their shit anyway. And it's like, not enjoying the work of a predator does not make you a good person. It's one of the worst things people do. I hate it. However, I did, when Neil Gaiman was cancelled, I did take a special interest and I did look at it a lot because I always thought he was a fucking hag.
- [78:01]
B
Oh, now it all comes out. Oh, now it comes out.
- [78:05]
A
He had this way, especially his children's books, like Stardust and stuff.
- [78:09]
B
Yeah. Too much.
- [78:10]
A
Which is just so. This kind of version of the modern fairy tale that I find so hokey and annoying that, like, now, usually in a story you might find that perhaps the seventh born son wouldn't blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's all like this very smarmy, look how much I've read vibe that is. So you could confuse it for the Princess Bride, but it's leagues apart in terms of its tone and Sensibility. And I really don't like that. Like, I've seen so many kind of hokey versions of that as well. Of like, this is a fairy tale, but it's not quite what you're expecting. The little pig is an accountant. I was like, you know what I mean? It's like, I don't know why it's such a fine line to tread with those modern fairy tale stories of, like, what makes me icked out versus what really charms me.
- [78:58]
B
Well, as I say, I think it's that. I think it's that, like, the good ones go for a delicacy of touch. The smallest things are not the least marvellous. And they follow. Yeah, and they follow in that sort of, like, old tradition of it's not big writing, it's not epic, it's not Heathcliff and Cathy, it's Arthur and Lancelot having a little chat about the dead woman just floated into the castle and then watching as she goes by.
- [79:22]
A
Yeah. I think there's like this thing as well, of, I guess good writing as well is having ordinary people and having fantastic things happen to them. And, like, there isn't like, that scene where Wesley is climbing up and he's bartering with an ego and like, well, if I get, you know, if you throw me the rope, you could let it go because you're trying to kill me. And they're trying to sort of like. I know they're being very pragmatic about what is in a very heightened situation. And I think that is where the, you know, that's where the comedy comes from. That's where the magic comes from as well.
- [79:51]
B
You know, that is every fairy tale.
- [79:54]
A
But they're not like, winking at the camera and saying, like, we all know what happens in fairy tales.
- [79:58]
B
Of course, we all have done this before. And it's also just like, not everyone does know what happens in fairy tales.
- [80:04]
A
Yeah.
- [80:05]
B
I mean, obviously, as an adult people we do, but, like, kids don't. And you owe them the honesty of just, like, telling them straight what the story and letting them decide for themselves that the thing that's too annoying. That is annoying. But that kind of like winking, knowing things. It's like, well, we're all very clever here, aren't we? We all know the traditions with which we play. No, like, just. What if you just told a story kind of straight and let the silliness of it come out on its own? Naturally? I feel like I'm not quite as well, but I feel. But I feel it, you know, I can't say it, but I feel that there's something about this that's very precious and very true because it finds the fun in these stories, but it never takes the piss out of them.
- [80:50]
A
Yeah, I agree.
- [80:52]
B
And that's also. I think. I think we'll find. When we talk about Shrek.
- [80:55]
A
Yes.
- [80:56]
B
And the Fall, which I've not seen. But there's a sort of like a really honest, loving, kind of tender care is given to something that is. That has silliness baked into it. And it's by letting the silliness. By not trying to over explain the silliness or.
- [81:11]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [81:12]
B
Because that's. You know, you'll be in a fairy. You read a fairy tale and it'll just be like, this is anjakarta thing. Or she quotes someone else. She says a fairy tale is where one king goes to another king to ask for a cup of sugar. And it's like. I don't know if she's quoting or that's her own thing.
- [81:27]
A
I love a fairy tale.
- [81:28]
B
It's a story where one king goes to another king to borrow a cup of sugar. Just something that's so, like big and small at the same time and so unlikely and yet so true.
- [81:38]
A
I love that. That's so beautiful.
- [81:40]
B
It is.
- [81:41]
A
That's so nice.
- [81:41]
B
It is nice.
- [81:43]
A
Do you have anything left to say about this movie?
- [81:46]
B
I think the one thing that I would say that I was really hit by yesterday we watched it again and I hadn't realized was that kind of final moment.
- [81:56]
A
Yeah.
- [81:57]
B
That when the grandfather says to young Fred Savage, or they're talking, you know, they finished the book. La la la, la la. And then in the history of Kisses.
- [82:07]
A
There have been three truly great, truly perfect, truly meaningful. This one left them all behind.
- [82:12]
B
Nice. Lovely. I love how this is. It really is marked on your soul.
- [82:15]
A
It is.
- [82:16]
B
I've seen it a lot, I think. I think my equivalent is Robin Hood Men in Tights, which is less heartfelt.
- [82:21]
A
Which we'll get to at some point.
- [82:22]
B
I. I think it's great, you know, much to do and less time to do it. And we can say that about our films. And that is from. But no, it's a bit where he says, you know, you can read to me tomorrow. And his grandfather says, as you wish.
- [82:34]
A
Yeah.
- [82:34]
B
And it's just like, yes, the things that are unsaid are the most powerful.
- [82:39]
A
So true.
- [82:40]
B
And this film doesn't say things too much. It says things just.
- [82:45]
A
Yeah. That's such a beautiful moment where the grandfather is getting up and patting his pockets. And, like, they've had this experience, extraordinary afternoon. And, like, they can't really talk about it. And then all his granddad can say is, like, this little piece of language they've created together, which is, as you wish.
- [83:02]
B
Wishes.
- [83:02]
A
I love you. And it's like. I mean, there's a reason that men will talk about. This is the only, like, movie that men will like love. That's a kind of a romance fairy tale called the Princess Bride. And I do think it is a movie about men being in love with each other in, like, many different ways. Like fathers and sons, grandfathers and grandsons and friends and brothers and lovers. And like, men finding the language for how much they love each other. The way that, like Fezik and Inigo, the way they tell each other they love each other is through rhymes.
- [83:36]
B
And the way that they recognize love in others. That moment when Inigo hears Wesley screaming and goes, ah. That is the sound of a man whose love is marrying another.
- [83:45]
A
Yeah.
- [83:45]
B
Like, it's not that men like this emotional literacy. They don't let themselves tap into it.
- [83:49]
A
Yeah.
- [83:51]
B
This is a film that's all about that and all about the male capacity for love and for depth and for care. And the fact that it isn't always shouted in the same way as it might be.
- [83:59]
A
Yeah.
- [84:00]
B
With the. With the women. Doesn't make it any less important. The Princess Bride.
- [84:07]
A
Really good.
- [84:08]
B
What a great. What a great film.
- [84:10]
A
Oh. Do you know what we haven't talked about either?
- [84:12]
B
Oh, God. What haven't we talked about?
- [84:13]
A
Boo, boo, boo Bow down to her Queen of Phil Queen of Phil she had love in her hands and the fire swamp. I love it.
- [84:26]
B
Yeah.
- [84:27]
A
Also, Miracle Max, Billy Crystal. I mean, they're all just great moments. I mean.
- [84:31]
B
Yeah.
- [84:31]
A
The reason we haven't mentioned them is because they are great. And we all know they're great.
- [84:34]
B
We all know they're great.
- [84:36]
A
I love Billy Crystal and Carol Kane.
- [84:37]
B
You were shocked that it was Carol Kane.
- [84:39]
A
Yeah.
- [84:39]
B
So that is a third woman. We've got Buttercup. We've got Billy Crystal's Wife.
- [84:42]
A
I'm going for the Hag, the Haggard.
- [84:44]
B
I mean, what. What film is completely different?
- [84:45]
A
We got the mother maiden crone sort of vibe.
- [84:48]
B
Oh, yeah. It's kind of more two crones, though.
- [84:51]
A
Yeah.
- [84:51]
B
Two crones and a maiden.
- [84:53]
A
Yeah.
- [84:54]
B
But I love that. I don't think there's anything else. I mean, like, you know what? There's lots I could say about this film, but I do feel like we've.
- [85:00]
A
Kind of said it.
- [85:01]
B
I Think we've said it all. I think, I think, I think we've done it justice. As best as two, two rats of unusual size can. Just a pair of women in rat suits. Just doing our absolute best.
- [85:16]
A
Oh, yeah, I love that. And like, just to sort of finish off the end of the book, which.
- [85:23]
B
Has completely faded into the mist of memory for me.
- [85:26]
A
So the end of the book is they, you know, the white horses, they escape Humperdinck, they go off and they fly. And then the way, you know, quote unquote, Morgenstern ends the book is, you know, and then like a quarter mile east, you know, physics horse threw a shoe and an ego led them the wrong way. And they could. They could hear Humberdink gaining on them. And there's this kind of idea that Goldman. Sorry, yeah, Goldman. That Goldman then says is being like, oh, Morgenstern was satirist and so he was writing this story. I didn't realize this when I was a child, but he was writing this story because he wanted to, like, take the piss out of his country and the political system and the unfairnesses of life. But as like, as the book, as the story points out, many times, life isn't fair, but it's a lot fairer than death. And I just think it's a beautiful way to end a book. Isn't that great? Oh, I love William Goldman.
- [86:35]
B
I love him. I'm gonna read that book again.
- [86:37]
A
Yeah, and I'm gonna read Adventures in the Screen Trade again, which is William Goldman's memoir about all the movies he's made. It's really good. Nora Ephron makes a weird starring cameo role. I love everybody involved in this movie.
- [86:51]
B
I love them all. Every single one of them. A blessing upon them. Little kiss on the forehead.
- [86:58]
A
Bye, everybody. Bye.
- [87:17]
B
Hey, this is Jonathan Fields, host of the Good Life Project podcast. Boost Mobile reminds me of what I love, when someone reimagines what's possible. They have invested billions in building America's newest 5G network, becoming the country's fourth major carrier. They are doing things differently, offering a $25 monthly unlimited plan that never increases in price and letting you try their service risk free for 30 days. With blazing fast 5G and plans for all the latest devices, they're changing the game. Visit your nearest Boost Mobile store or find them online@boost mobile.com. the Boost Mobile Network, together with their roaming partners, covers 99% of the US population. 5G speeds, not in all areas.