I get so excited when I get the chance to tell people this (which, by coincidence, has happened twice in the last week): Yes, The Princess Bride was a (fantastic!) book before it was a (terrific) movie.
In this instance, I’m most certainly not one of those folks who sniff disdainfully at the film adaptations of favorite novels. (We’ll have to wait and see what Guillermo del Toro does with The Hobbit, but I’m cautiously optimistic.) So don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying, “You poor saps who liked the movie have no idea that you’re missing something much better.” It’s more like: “If you loved that story as much as I did, you’re in luck: there’s so much more waiting for you!”
I think the relationship between the movie and the book is, in this case, remarkably more solid than usually happens film adaptations of novels. Does the movie include everything wonderful about the book? Of course not. How could it? There’s just not time. But does it capture the sly, wry humor and hysterical population of wacky characters found in the book? Absolutely.
(Of course, it helps that the William Goldman -- the author of the book -- also wrote the film’s screenplay. In fact, as the screenwriter of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Sting,” he’s arguably a more well-known figure in the film world than the in the book world. In the introduction to The Princess Bride, he writes, “When I die, if the Times gives me an obit, it's going to be because of ‘Butch.’”)
My guess is that most lovers of the book really liked the film, and most folks who loved the movie will find that they adore the book. In fact, they’re probably likely to hear the film actors’ voices in their heads as they read the book’s dialogue, because the casting was so spot-on. I mean, Billy Crystal as Miracle Max? Perfect.
What the PB movie lover may not know is that the full title of the book is The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure. Anyone who’s seen the movie knows that the story unfolds to the audience as a book -- ostensibly, The Princess Bride, written by S. Morgenstern -- is being read aloud to a young boy by his grandfather.
Here’s the thing: Until I was well into high school, I fully believed that the original book was written by S. Morgenstern and abridged by William Goldman in exactly the way described in the book’s introduction. Maybe I just wasn’t a terribly post-modern thinker at a young age, but it didn't occur to me for years that Goldman was using the adaptation conceit as a storytelling device.
For that matter, I didn’t realize initially how satirical the book was, so I firmly believed -- and even repeated to other people! -- elements from the novel as fact, like the green speckled recluse being the most dangerous spider in the world, a tidbit Goldman includes in the Zoo of Death sequence. (For PB film lovers scratching their heads at that one, the book’s “Zoo of Death” became the film’s “Pit of Despair” -- but you’re going to loooooove the Zoo of Death!) Of course, there’s no such thing as a green speckled recluse -- except, evidently, in Florin.
Some of my confusion about the book is likely the result of encountering it at such a young age. You know how you see a movie when you’re really young, and then somehow, whenever you see it again, you’re transported back to the age when you first saw it? “Star Wars” is always my example for this. That film has some of the worst movie dialogue of all time. It’s just gawdawful, but I didn’t realize it -- or even stop to consider the possibility -- until I was in my twenties and read a collection of Pauline Kael’s film critiques. Why did I, a word person, completely space out on this? Because I more or less still experience “Star Wars” as if I’m a little kid. I saw it in the theater when I was five or six and, in some ways, I’ll always be a little kid when I see it.
It’s the same with The Princess Bride. It’s an incredibly clear memory for me. I’m six years old, it’s bedtime, and I’m laying in bed in my ridiculously pink room in the on-base “family housing” at Tripler. Mom walked in holding a book, sat down on the side of my bed and said, “Chapter One: The Bride. The year that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette.”
The next paragraphs were sketches of the miserable fates suffered by the women who were the most beautiful in the world at various points during Buttercup’s childhood, followed by a portrait of her parents’ bickering, then an overview of Buttercup’s obsessive relationship with “Horse” (her horse), and then … how can I explain everything that awaits you, the PB film fan, in the book?!? You get:
- Buttercup’s fit of jealousy when she meets the Countess, the most glamorous woman in Florin (although the story takes place “before glamour,” according to Goldman/Morgenstern);
- Humperdink’s loving and kind stepmother, whom he calls Evil Stepmother (“E.S.” for short) because the only other stepmothers he knows are from stories in which they are, of course, evil;
- The disastrous date between Prince Humperdink and Princess Noreena of Guilder, who harbors an ugly secret;
- Yeste, the master sword-maker of Madrid, who becomes Inigo’s trainer and surrogate father;
- Fezzik as an enormous but terrified youngster, sobbing while his father teaches him how to throw a punch;
- And of course, Goldman breaking into the story constantly to share his thoughts on heartbreak, publishing, his brilliant but chilly wife, and what “Morgenstern’s” book meant to him throughout his life.
There’s so much more -- you’ll just have to read it yourself!
