The Princess Bride is one of those movies that I watched as a child that stuck with me throughout my life. Even though the story is all about romance, the author of the original book as well as the director of the movie play it off as a comedic and action packed, as well as holding the love story it was centered on. The story has all of the things fairy tales hold, the damsel in distress, the hero, the villain, and love. While it is a fairy tale, the story also makes fun of all of the stereotypes that fairy tales have, but the author blends these two factors together to make one great story. The director and the production team wanted to keep the movie to as close as they could be with the original book, and they stuck with that throughout the making of the movie.

The book was written in 1973, and soon after 20th Century Fox bought the rights to make a movie. Soon after, the president of 20th Century was fired, and the future of the movie was unknown. Rob Reiner eventually picked it up from William Goldman and they began production almost 15 years later than anticipated. Casting was completely organic. Rob knew exactly who he wanted, but the only thing was he needed to find them. Andre the Giant was a no brainer to play Fezzik, and Fred Savage as the sick boy who gets told about true love by his grandfather. Some other actors were a bit harder to find. After about 400 candidates, Robin Wright was chosen to play Princess Buttercup, and Wallace Shawn turned up and blew away the casting crew with his audition for Vizzini.

Almost all of the scenes were shot on set in real Northern England (Sheffield). They found a castle that dated back to 1046 in which they filmed almost all of the castle scenes. There were original tapestries as well as furniture within the castle, so the cast and crew had to be particularly careful, especially the grips on set. The famous “Fire swamp” scene was created on a soundstage where they used people in rat costumes to portray the “rodents of unusual size”. On the day of shooting, one of the rat men got pulled over because he was late to the set and was put in jail. He had to be taken out of jail by the production team and was put in his rat suit so they could proceed with the minimal amount of time they had with their schedule. Rob Reiner explained it as “the magic of movie making”.

Everyone on the set and in the making of the movie was so proud to be apart of such a production. The fairy tale land they made was their childhood dreams and to make it happen into a movie made their childhood dreams come true. “I don’t think any of us realized at the time that we were going to be in the wizard of Oz of our generation” (Mandy Patinkin).