30th
anniversary edition, 414 pages: Harcourt, INC
It took me a long
time to watch the movie, The Princess Bride. I was put off by the title,
which doesn’t sound like something most youngish men would be attracted to.
When I finally watched it with my wife, I loved it. I’m also not a big market
for humor but the humor of the movie was subtle and struck just the proper cord
with me (other than the Billy Crystal sequence, which I’m not a fan of).
In 2020, again
because of my wife, I read a book by Cary Elwes called “As You Wish,” about the
making of the movie. He emphasized the respect that director Carl Reiner had
for the original book and how almost all of the dialogue that I’d found funny
in the movie came directly from the book. So, I ordered the book myself, the 30th
anniversary edition, which contains a section of a potential sequel that was
never written called “Buttercup’s Baby.” Here is my report.
First and foremost,
I liked it. Indeed, all the best dialogue and scenes from the movie appeared in
the book first. The one scene in the movie that was most heavily altered was
the Billy Crystal/ Miracle Max scene, and that is the only one I don’t care for.
That being said, I have to admit I think the movie is better than the book. And
I almost never say that. The movie The Outlaw Josey Wales is better than
the book it came from. I consider the movie Jaws and the book Jaws
to be about even. Other than that, the book is better—always.
So why is The Princess
Bride an exception? Please don’t get me wrong, the book is quite good and
without it the movie wouldn’t exist. The book can stand on its own and needs
make no apologies for what it is. But, the movie is better because of an
interesting irony, which is not quite an irony when you look closely!
Throughout the
book, William Goldman, the author, maintains a fiction within a fiction that he
is not the original writer of the story, that he only abridged a much older
classic work by a fellow named S. Morgenstern. He states that what he did is
take out everything but the “good parts.” There’s a lengthy section at the
front of the book where Goldman sets this inside joke up, and he continues the fiction
throughout, with frequent asides (printed in italics) within the body of the
book to describe what he left out (supposedly).
Although this was
funny initially, it felt to me as if it went on too long, especially with the
inserts and asides within the book proper. To me, the joke eventually became a
little stale, while the material within the actual story kept moving forward
with fresh humor. The movie left most of this material out. Thus the irony. The
movie kept only the “good parts” of the book. However, since Goldman wrote the
screenplay, too, what we really have is a case of the writer revising his previously
work and realizing that certain original bits weren’t necessary.
Anyway, was it
worth a read? Absolutely. And if I’d read it before seeing the movie,
especially if I’d read it at a young age, I imagine it would have had a far
greater impact on me and I probably would have liked it even better!