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The Princess Bride by William Goldman Book Club
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In this episode of the Book Club Podcast, Carly, Margaret, and David delve into The Princess Bride by William Goldman. The discussion ranges from character connections, gender dynamics, and the significance of storytelling within stories, to the cultural impact and enduring nostalgia of the film. They also share their perspectives on the possibility of remaking the beloved movie and reflect on the broader genre themes present in both the book and film.
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Timestamps of conversation topics:
00:00 Quote from The Princess Bride
00:52 Personal Histories with The Princess Bride
02:19 Summary of The Princess Bride
07:12 Opening Question on Storytelling
15:28 The Love Story and Ripple Effects
25:42 Buttercup Redemption
28:55 Max and Valerie: A Model Couple
32:53 Bill's Midlife Crisis and Reflections
36:01 Wesley Didn’t Age Well
37:20 The Miracle Pill and Screenwriting Influence
39:19 Millennials and DVD Extras
42:41 Exploring Genuine Connections
45:25 Female Characters in The Princess Bride
50:07 Adventure and Genre Themes
54:25 Never Remake The Princess Bride
57:25 Final Thoughts and Millennial Nostalgia
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Transcript
Inigo's Quest for a Worthy Opponent
00:00:31
Speaker
Please, Inigo thought, it has been so long since I have been tested. Let this man test me. Let him be a glorious swordsman. Let him be both quick and fast, smart and strong. Give him a matchless mind for tactics, a background that he could apply. Please, please, it's been so long. Let him be master.
Introduction to the Book Club Podcast
00:00:52
Speaker
Welcome to the Book Club Podcast. I'm Carly, and I'm an Elder Millennial. Today, my guests are Margaret and David, and we are discussing The Princess Bride by William Bopen. Welcome, Margaret and David. Tell me, what is your history with this book? Hi, I'm Margaret. I am also an Elder Millennial. I first became acquainted with The Princess Bride on VHS at a slumber party at some point during the early 90s. I didn't read the novel until I was an adult.
00:01:17
Speaker
I'm David, another elder millennial. My parents introduced me to the Princess Bride on VHS when I was quite young, mostly because I was obsessed with sword fighting, and it does have a good one. The story is arguably the reason I exist. It was one of my parents' first dates, so I sort of owe William Goldman the mixed blessings of existence, I suppose.
00:01:39
Speaker
um I read the book when I was a kid because I loved the movie in the Valentine edition with the dubious caption, a hot fairy tale on the cover. That's awesome. I loved the movie. My whole family did and found the book in like a Walden's bookstore in the mall.
00:01:59
Speaker
He wants the nostalgia just like tucked away. And I was like, oh, there's a book. And then I was watching the movie this week and I was like, it says based on the book by William Bolden, but apparently I didn't pay attention to the that. but So I've loved the book. I've read it many times growing up and I'm so glad I found other people who enjoyed the book too and wanted to talk about
Beginning of 'The Princess Bride'
00:02:19
Speaker
it. So as always, we will be spoiling the book. We will be spoiling the movie and we start with a summary.
00:02:25
Speaker
Bill, a stand-in for the author who shares many autobiographical details with the real author William Goldman, starts the story with his memory of getting the flu when he was 10 years old and all he could do was lay in bed. His father, a Florinese immigrant, comes to sit with him and reads The Princess Bride by S. Morgan Stern, a great Florinese writer. And then years later, for his own son's 10th birthday, Bill decides to give his son the book, expecting his son to love it as much as he did. Instead, Bill's son Jason can't get past the first chapter, and Bill realizes that his father had read to him an abridged version.
00:03:02
Speaker
and he decides to polish the abridged version as his father read it to him. Editing remarks are sprinkled throughout the story. In the story, we're introduced to Buttercup, who is very beautiful but
Buttercup and Wesley's Relationship
00:03:13
Speaker
hates bathing. Rumors of her beauty reach the Count who brings his wife, the Countess, to the farm, where Buttercup lives with her parents and the farm boy, Wesley. The Countess pays a lot of attention to Wesley, and that ignites Buttercup's jealousy. She realizes that she's in love with Wesley.
00:03:30
Speaker
She confesses her love and Wesley decides to seek his fortune in America. A few months later, Buttercup receives news that Wesley's ship was captured by the dread pirate Roberts who never leaves survivors. Buttercup bows to never love again. Prince Humperdinck of Florin decides he must marry to fulfill his duty and produce an heir. He says he wants the most beautiful woman as his wife and he doesn't care if she's a commoner. Count introduces him to Buttercup.
00:03:58
Speaker
Buttercup says that she will never love him, and he says he doesn't care. Three years later, Buttercup has learned how to be a princess. She is kidnapped by a gang of three men, Visseni the Sicilian, Inigo a Spaniard, and Fezzik a Turk.
00:04:13
Speaker
They take her across Florin channel to the rival country of Gilder, where they will kill her and make it look like the country of Gilder did it to start a war with Florin. They realize they are being followed by a man in black. Sini tells Inigo to wait and kill the man in black when he reaches the top cliffs of insanity. We learn Inigo's history. His father was a master swordsman who created the sword for a six-fingered nobleman. The nobleman was unhappy with the sword.
00:04:36
Speaker
and killed Inigo's father in front of him. Inigo swore to kill the six fingered man and became the greatest swordsman in the world in his quest. Still, the man in black defeats Inigo in a duel but doesn't kill him. Then Miss Inigo tells Fezzik to kill the man in black and we learn Fezzik's history as the greatest wrestler in the world and that he loves rhyming words in his head. The man in black manages to defeat him too. The man in black defeats Vasini in a battle of wits and he runs with Buttercup for hours because he knows that Prince Hoppernic is probably following them. Buttercup gets angry and pushes him down into a steep ravine. He reveals that he is Wesley and she runs down the ravine after him.
00:05:15
Speaker
The ravine leads them to the fire swamp. They face pups of fire, snow sand, which is worse than quicksand, and R.U.S. is. Wesley tells Buttercup how he came to be the Dread Pirate Roberts. Prince Humberdink hunts them down, meeting them after they emerge from the fire swamp. Buttercup agrees to go with Humberdink as long as he lets Westin go. Humberdink tells the Count to take Wesley to his zoo of death, bringing his animals for hunting and killing.
00:05:40
Speaker
In the meantime, Buttercup has dreams that make her change her mind about leaving Wesley. She asks Prince Humperdink to help her find Wesley, and he agrees that if Wesley comes back to her, he will let her go. Meanwhile, he reveals that he hired Visini to kidnap Buttercup in the first place, so that he would have an excuse to go to war with Gilder.
00:06:01
Speaker
The Count tortures Wesley for research on pain, about which he is writing a book. He has developed the machine, the ultimate torture device, and he starts using it on Wesley a few days before the wedding.
00:06:14
Speaker
fe finds an ego drunk in the thieves quarter He tells Inigo that the Count is the six-fingered nobleman that killed Inigo's father. Inigo decides they need someone to plan an attack on the castle and they look for Wesley. Buttercup's loyalty to Wesley enrages Humperdinck. He runs to the Zoo of Death where he pushes the machine to its highest level. Wesley's scream is heard throughout the city. Inigo recognizes his voice and they track it to the Zoo of Death. They go through the main entrance, which is a trap. They have to fight a giant snake and bats and get to the level where they find Wesley dead.
00:06:44
Speaker
They take him to Miracle Max, who makes a resurrection pill. The pill brings Wesley back to life, although he is very weak and can't walk. He thinks of a plan to storm the castle, and Wesley finds Buttercup. If you go finds and kills the count, they manage to
Narrative and Character Connections
00:06:59
Speaker
escape on Hubbarding's prize horses. Billy's father ended the story with, and they let happily enter after. Adult Bill reveals that the ending is more ambiguous. So Margaret, you have our opening question today. I do, and thank you so much for letting me ask this.
00:07:14
Speaker
It's really important, it seems, that The Princess Bride, both the novel and the film, exists in a universe where someone else is telling Buttercup and Wesley's story to a younger relative. The grandson in the case of the film, and a young Bill himself in the case of the novel. And so in the intro to the 30th anniversary edition of the novel, which is what I've got, Goldman describes reading about Morgenstern considering changing Floriny's history. Goldman remarks,
00:07:42
Speaker
I remember I hated Kelly Bush and Sundance, but I had to. I couldn't change history just for the happy ending, referring to his 1969 film, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And so I'm thinking about Goldman setting out to create a history where the good guys win, where people find true love and they write off into the sunset together, which, as we know, doesn't always happen in real life. Neither to Butch nor to Goldman, I think.
00:08:07
Speaker
And so I want to know why it's so important for this story of the Princess Bride to be encased within another story, specifically that those aspects of it about building a connection between a father figure and then building a similar connection with his son as an adult. And do we feel like the film conveys this idea within a story?
00:08:28
Speaker
Is this feeling as important in the film as it is in the novel? And is it important that Goldman himself is that bridge between the world that we live in now and the world of Florin? That's a big question. So thank y'all for letting me ask it. I love that you use the word connection because that's whatever big genre things are talking about with every book this season.
00:08:49
Speaker
And I think that's the main part of this, or at least that's what felt the most important to me in this reading of the book, that adult Bill says that he summons his father by remembering him reading this book.
00:09:06
Speaker
and he wants to share that ah connection with his son. He also says that it led him to love all kinds of writing and led to his career as a writer eventually because he didn't care about books beforehand and now he does care about books and he devoured every adventure book.
00:09:23
Speaker
he could get his hands on after the princess bride. So it seems like he's connecting one with his father but more importantly with his own emotional self. There are several points in the book, I guess maybe just two points in the book where he interrupts and talks about as a kid he was he cried so hard and he got so upset And at one point he says he never cried like that in his life ever again. And so connecting to his authentic emotions as a child, it seems like that's what adult Bill is trying to do with this whole story. I think it is genuinely about the experience of reading and of sharing books.
00:10:06
Speaker
touches on the the tensions that can arise, trying to share
Metafictional Aspects of Storytelling
00:10:11
Speaker
a book that you love with someone who doesn't love it. I also think that there was something in the air in the early 70s around people coming back to stories, older stories or false document facsimiles of older stories.
00:10:27
Speaker
I actually wonder if The Lord of the Rings may have been an element of this. The Lord of the Rings is presented, of course, as a translation of the Red Book of the Westmarch. So Tolkien is almost setting himself up as a bridge to Middle-earth in that book. And I wonder if when that book became huge in the 60s, if it touched something off in Goldman's head, I think it touched something off in a lot of people's heads. Well, I have a more cynical perspective on this, too, that The device gives full an excuse to enjoy fantasy or adventure story. I'm thinking of in the movie, Fred Savage saying, is this a kissing book? It's a very sappy romantic moment at the beginning of the movie. And I mean, the same thing happens in the book too, but it's like, well, don't worry, we're not gonna make you feel this or get into this sentimentality. We're gonna take you out of it and let you
00:11:26
Speaker
last at how silly we all get with romantic stories, right? I think that's an excellent point. and there There was a review about 10 years ago, a retrospective review by the novelist Jo Walton, where she talks about how she thinks that in some ways the book was intended for people who read mainstream fiction, a dedicated reader of John Updike. And I believe she makes basically that argument that some of the the interludes are there to get you over some of the the the hiccups that you might encounter and just let you engage with the flow of it.
00:12:00
Speaker
Having it take place in, for Goldman as he's writing, contemporary New York. You can't get yourself used to being in Middle Earth or Earthsea or any of these other high fantasy lands. We can get you to New York and from New York we can take you to Florin. It's going to take, according to Goldman, it's going to take several connecting flights.
00:12:22
Speaker
But we will get there. So the other interruption that really strikes me is before Wesley dies and he kind of spoils it in my opinion, like it would be spoiling in my opinion. And I think about that, that idea of spoiling, like your main protagonist dies and you chop the legs out from under.
00:12:41
Speaker
the anticipation of that moment in what I consider the main story. But it doesn't feel like it disrupts the flow of the overall novel, right? Like it feels all of a piece. So I'm just kind of curious, what does that do?
00:12:53
Speaker
This may be me reading Goldman too much as a screenwriter. I know he thinks of himself as a novelist who happens to write movies. But of course, building suspense is like the most basic note that a hack executive would give you. So maybe it's just the reflex of, oh, I have to set up so that people will go, wait, Wesley dies? Oh, my God. And B.
00:13:17
Speaker
that then that much more more glued to the book, which I guess is kind of just the opening monologue of a tragedy saying there never was more woe or whatever. It's Goldman who sets that up, not Morgenstern, right? Because that's one of the things that I've been really thinking about is how Morgenstern will describe a character in such a way. And you have to separate that Goldman has created Morgenstern creating this character in such a way from Goldman himself and what he thinks about things.
00:13:48
Speaker
Well, okay, wait, let's be clear. So I've been using, Bill is the author guy in the framing price. That's how I'm thinking of it. That's Bill. And as a child, he's Billy, but then Goldman is the author of the whole thing. So what, I just want to make sure we're at Mayor Margaret, where you.
00:14:04
Speaker
typing involvement to answer or bill the framing device? And that's a really good question. I think that it's the framing device that's the, I'm just, and I'm confirming because I'm trying to remember the framing device is what explicitly tells you in advance of it happening that Wesley's going to die, right?
00:14:20
Speaker
And if that's the case, that's really interesting because it does harken back to what you were talking about, David, with needing to make this feel more screenplay-like. Because the the thing I was thinking about a few minutes ago was the way that Goldman sets up, Goldman, Bill, whomever it may be, sets up this big, long, epic, sweeping story that covers all of this time.
00:14:45
Speaker
and goes on diversions about trees and hats and all kinds of other really potentially interesting things, but not if you're 12 and have pneumonia. And so I wonder if that's part of that structure. If I was going to write like the Warren piece of Florin, I probably um would not say early on, this guy's going to die in a little bit. Wait for that.
00:15:10
Speaker
But if I were trying to keep a ah a child who is sick and who needs to be brought back to health engaged in something, yeah, I'd probably be like, just wait until the death happens. And then the kid would be like, oh, this isn't just kissing in hats and trees.
00:15:27
Speaker
So on my rewatch of the film, it did occur to me that the first couple of meta-fictional interruptions are almost needle scratch moments where Fred Savage's character is interjecting specifically on the kissing. So in that context, I think that the at least the function of it is to get boys through this audience surrogate figure over sweeping romantic moments that might make a 10-year-old go ew. Even just kids in general, because I think I remember I was telling y'all in the prep call, I feel like I was the stand-in for Fred Savage. My friend was like, oh no, you're gonna like this one after, you know, the last slumber parties I'd had. Pretty Woman and Dirty Dancing and movies like that. And I'm just like, really? Do I have to watch another movie where it's all about romance?
00:16:20
Speaker
And yeah, I think in general, it's a way of making it palatable for children, which is really interesting because the book does not feel like a children's book. It feels like a book that has been put together and reconfigured to make it palatable for children.
00:16:40
Speaker
So, and you even have Goldman on the outside talking about wanting to cheat on his wife with the woman he meets at the pool and getting in a fight with his wife about how much potatoes their son is eating. And just all of these things are in the book that are really emphatically something a kid would be like, I do not care about this pool. I am not swimming in it. I do not care about these potatoes. It it feels as though it was made for children.
00:17:06
Speaker
but it is nestled in this exterior story that is really not. I keep thinking it's an adventure book and I really, it's really just enjoyable adventure. And so I don't know enough about just pop culture
Themes of Connection and Friendship
00:17:20
Speaker
trends. I do think that there's, I mean, in the 1930s, I hear that reference is like a golden age of adventure stories.
00:17:28
Speaker
books and And it feels like there's some nostalgia there calling back that enjoyment. Did art, did movies too serious in the sifties and sixties? And now Goldman's like, no, it's okay to actually just like delight in a story again. Cause there's so much in there that's just delightful. I think of the zoo of death and how fun it is. If the stakes are high, you know, they're going to come out that like, you know, the,
00:17:56
Speaker
they're not going to die. But like Inigo using rhymes to get Fezzik to cure about fighting the snake if he does it without even thinking about it because he wants to hear the rhymes. I think that all of the Steven Spielberg movies of the 70s and 80s that were so huge and just like a fun, exciting rhyme.
00:18:14
Speaker
That's what this book is very much. So starting with the true love, David, your point is well taken that look kids, we got to tell you about the true love. It's the foundation of the story, but don't worry. There's more to it than that. We'll get to the good stuff, but you have to know how much these two love each other.
00:18:32
Speaker
In the book, it's not a very romantic story. The movie goes super sappy with the music and the sunset. And it's kind of a relief when Fred Savage interrupts. But in the book, they realize they love each other and immediately Wesley leaves. But it's this connection between them is really interesting. It's a connection that they need in each other's absence. So I wonder if we could talk a little bit about connection while we think about that and compare it to the other forms of love that we see in this story. They're falling for each other can be seen as a little rote, right? They're just kind of there. Of course they're going to fall for each other. Of course that's well observed that when people are in the same space they they absolutely do develop feelings and they do develop out of teasing and things of that nature.
00:19:23
Speaker
But I suppose it's fair because it is so much just the inciting incident of the whole thing. You have to have one plot thing that is just dropped on your characters. These two love each other from everything else flows from that. I appreciate that idea that it's almost, I mean, I'm not going to even say almost, I'm going to say that it is. It is the central conceit of the book is that these two people love each other and they love each other so much that they upset a whole kingdom and they upset a whole criminal enterprise and it lasts through the ages until this Morgenstern guy decides to write about it and then
00:20:05
Speaker
they love each other so much that they wind up in this book and this book becomes like the iconic book of this country and this father throws his hands in the air has nothing to do to console his sick child except read him this book and that child goes on to write all of these other things.
00:20:21
Speaker
And so it's really interesting, I like to that that positioning it the opposite. Instead of it being a story within a story, it is these ripple effects of these two people who live on this farm and think the other one is cute. And what that has done to history both on the grander scale of the country that they live in, and then what it does to just the personal histories of people like Bill.
00:20:50
Speaker
We're also given other relationship models, Count and Countess, Buttercup's parents, I suppose later on Max and Valerie, in a kind of book ending effect, other models of what heterosexual couples can be in this universe. And I definitely think that in some of Wesleyan Buttercup's arguments we can see, and I do think it's Goldman and not Morgan Stern, to hint that the seeds of of what will come later is in their fated relationship.
00:21:19
Speaker
So the connection between Wesley and Buttercup begins. Wesley is poor and doesn't have a lot of accomplishments. He just works hard at the farm. And Buttercup, I love that she just hates bathing and just wants to ride a horse. That's my favorite thing about her. Buttercup's parents, as a teenager reading this book, I loved the little keeping score thing that they argued that they're keeping score. And then there's just like a throwaway mention of when Buttercup's father passes away, her mother follows quickly after because it was the lack of opposition. ah ti Like that idea that you can need different things from a partner was really interesting. And then I also love the connection between Inigo and Cezak. And i I don't know why, I don't have any words to put to it yet. I just enjoy it so much. You know, his revenge
00:22:12
Speaker
His need for revenge, that's the reason that they bring Wesley back to life, right? So Wesley and Buttercup could not have their story without an ego. And then I love that we get their backstory in the book, which makes sense. We don't get it in the movie. And I love knowing more about them and how they grew up as kids. And it's just these little vignettes, right? Every single one of these characters gets these little vignettes throughout the book. You get such a clear idea of who these characters are from just these.
00:22:39
Speaker
short little pieces about their history or their lives. I think that's just part of what makes the story delightful is that you just get a picture of this person and you move on to the next part of the plot. It feels very rich and it feels like a much longer book. Like this book is very small in my hand, but it feels like there's so much more to it.
00:22:58
Speaker
I can think of a couple of ways that I could go based on all the things you've said. And I think I'm going to settle on really just wanting to keep talking about Inigo and Fezzik because I agree with you. This set where we list all of these couples and we list all of these heterosexual couples, some of them work really well, like Buttercup and Wesley and Max and Valerie, some of them who do not work well, like Bill and Helen, like Buttercup's parents who are all in opposition to each other.
00:23:24
Speaker
Like the countess who we see for five minutes and then she runs off to go do hats and gilder instead. I think that they give us this great juxtaposition of what it means so to love someone, to care for someone, but it not be like a romance thing. Like these people are best friends and it's just so joyous. And I love being able to watch them be friends and watch them know what the other person needs and use that to to pull through into being successful in what they're looking for. I'm thinking about the the scene with the snake and getting Fezzik to just keep rhyming, and and in the process, he's gonna just muscle this snake away from them. I just, I love them, and I'm so glad that they are in the story.
00:24:12
Speaker
I think it's a really good observation that it is Inigo's burning desire for vengeance that ends up saving the seemingly more benign love of Wesleyan Buttercup. He wants to go and stab a guy to death. And to that end, he has to help these star-crossed lovers. And it is, of course, it feels like Goldman attempting to account for other facets of love. In this case,
00:24:40
Speaker
the violent hatred of love denied.
Character Motivations and Emotional Connections
00:24:43
Speaker
And he go wants his father back. And I believe if his final revenge is described as it was glorious, if you liked that sort of thing. I think it's interesting that when Humperdink uses the machine to kill Wesley,
00:24:56
Speaker
and the guards heard it and they were scared and Buttercup heard it and she didn't know what it was but she was scared and so is Art. They heard it and they were scared. Inigo hears it and knows like exactly what he says. That is the sound of ultimate suffering. I know that sound. That was the sound in the heart when Count Rogan slaughtered my father and I saw him fall. The man in black makes it now.
00:25:17
Speaker
it's that it's his connection going to connection inigo has a connection with wesley because their lung has been taken in this violent way and he recognizes that immediately kind of a plot hole because how does he know that buttercup is the man in black true love how is that known but he recognizes it and then that drives them to bring Wesley to miracle. So that tells us a bit about love is when love is taken away and what that drives in us. Right. And Buttercup's love for Wesley. I didn't get it until this read through because Buttercup is not very smart. She doesn't read books. Right.
00:25:59
Speaker
There's several times where it's pointed out that Buttercup is not the brightest, which I always hated, but I always was confused why Humperdink gets so upset when Buttercup says, oh, Wesley will come for me anyway, because she's just a dumb girl, then that doesn't mean anything. Why would he be so upset by her having this belief that Wesley will cover her? And so it kind of validates that, no, there's more in a buttercup. And Humberding sees it in her, that her connection to Wesley is so strong and it's a powerful thing. And that drives him into a rage to go kill Wesley right away.
00:26:36
Speaker
I didn't understand how powerful that was before. The water cubs sitting behind thinking Wesley will come for me. He'll forgive me for leaving him in the fire swamp. Her action there, I always consider it an action, but there's actually action there maintaining that connection to Wesley as he's maintaining connection to her, you know, her while he's being tortured. So that was a new thing. It's always fun to discover something new in a book that you've read a million times, a million years ago. Yeah.
00:27:02
Speaker
Yeah, I always wonder. They say Buttercup is dumb, but I don't know that I necessarily observe her do anything dumb. yeah I think that that's just something that they say, and Buttercup keeps being described in all these ways, like Morgenstern.
00:27:21
Speaker
ki keeps ranking her as how beautiful she is. Oh, well, she's only 20th now, but wait till she cleans up that kind of thing. um When Buttercup was 10, the most beautiful woman in the world lived in Sussex or whatever it was, you know? And so I think that we don't, and part of it I think is because we start the novel with Young Buttercup and Leslie.
00:27:43
Speaker
But we don't get that same interior, well, what's Buttercup want to do in the same way that we might for like an inigo or a pheasant where we have a flashback and we talk about like how they grew up and how that affects the people that they are today.
00:27:58
Speaker
And so I don't really trust the narrator when he says that Buttercup's dumb because I don't necessarily see her do anything dumb. She's young and in love. And those are the things that we know about her. She's gone to princess school instead of medical school. So it's not like she's out there hearing cancer. There's a scene where she needs to clear a bunch of people out. And she just remembers, oh, wait, I learned how to do this in princess school. And she says, I am your queen.
00:28:27
Speaker
and they just all back off. She's learning from what she's been presented, but I also think of her as someone who maybe it doesn't have a lot of opportunity to be smart, and part of that is being a woman in pretty much any part of history, and part of that is that people don't necessarily expect her to be smart because they expect her to be beautiful. It's worth unpacking. that It's not that Buttercup is dumb, it's that Buttercup is described as dumb, and who is describing her as such.
00:28:55
Speaker
I would love at some point to talk more about Max and Valerie. Is this a good sign? Yes. I love them so much. I've been saying that a lot this recording. They're such a wonderful couple. And I think that part of what makes them such a wonderful couple is that you see them in partnership with one another in a way that you don't with a lot of the other couples.
00:29:16
Speaker
You see the way that Max is feeling down because he has been through this process of being fired as the miracle man and Valerie having to help him work through being confident enough to do his work again and then putting the finishing touches on the pill with the chocolate and knowing that the chocolate is what's important to it. I appreciated being able, even if it's just for a few pages here and there,
00:29:41
Speaker
to see this couple that were not working against each other, as Mr. and Mrs. Buttercup's parents were, or as Bill and Helen are, or not dashing off like the Countess, although the Count doesn't seem like a guy you'd want to stick around anyway. I would go with the hats as well. Or the parents, where the mom is just directing things as best she can, because the dad's not all there yet, Humberding's parents. and so Oh yes, that happens twice with the king and the queen. And who's the other one where the wife is interpreting what he says? Oh, it was Fezzik's parents. Fezzik's father had to get his jaw wired. That's so funny that Queen Bella, she just interprets what she wants him to say. She's the only one who bothers to listen to him and interpret what he's saying and she always just says what she
00:30:33
Speaker
but what he saying but withbesics parents physics mom interpret correctly and say exactly what the flaer want to say so i thought i was of funny hearing It's a bummer to me that Buttercup and Wesley don't get to meet Max and Valerie.
00:30:50
Speaker
Buttercup never meets them at all. And Wesley only sees them when he's mostly dead, so he's probably not perceiving them. And I'm just like, there's your role model. If you guys are really in true love and you're going to stick it out until death do its part, that's what you're going to be in 15 years if you do it right, you know? Because when they do reunite one of the few scenes where we have Wesley and Buttercup actually together, first of all,
00:31:14
Speaker
The whole avoidance of writing a reunion scene. I don't want to talk more about that, but we kind of do a get a reunion scene and what we get is not that charming as they start figuring right away. But her kind of, I'm sure she has the example of her own parents. And so she's a thickering person. I had to have it, but yeah, it would be nice if she had seen Max and Valerie been able to get to know them and learn. This is what a partnership looks like.
00:31:39
Speaker
I think that there's a sense, and I'm not sure if I should credit this to Bill or to Goldman, that those kinds of tensions, especially within couples, can be productive. And that's partially just him thinking of, like, screwball comedies from his youth and the funny arguments there. But it occurs to me that we also have tension and trickery and a kind of productive dialectic in Hugo and Fezzik, and I'm thinking especially of the rhyme trick with the giant snake, where Fezzik is put out, but it does save them, and he does eventually decide it wasn't a lie, it was a trick. There is just a sly sense that bickering is part of life, tension is normal, arguing can be productive. What do we make of what we learn of Billy as a character?
00:32:28
Speaker
Arguably someone who's failing to make connections in his life. Is the whole book just his midlife crisis?
00:32:39
Speaker
I want to know what happens. Does he give this abridged version to his son and then does he have something to bond over with his son?
00:32:50
Speaker
I feel like that story is incomplete. I have the 30th anniversary edition of the novel, and it does include the Buttercup's Baby chapter. And in the Buttercup's Baby chapter, Bill is just Billing along, um but he does have a much better relationship with his son.
00:33:09
Speaker
One of the things that I think is really interesting about his decision to go in and then insert a first chapter of a sequel is that the Princess Bride, both the original version of the novel prior to the Buttercup's Baby Addendum and the film and on them just kissing and riding off into the sunset. It paints a couple of different ways of looking at what it is to be in love. And so I was just thinking about Wesley and Buttercup don't get to spend time with Max and Valerie, and so they don't get to see a productive couple who love each other after many decades of being together. But also, I don't feel like that's what the movie and the book are about. I think it's about
00:33:53
Speaker
getting to happy ever after and then not having to dissect what happy ever after looks like. Because Bill is failing to figure out what happy ever after looks like because he's flirting with women at the pool and referring to his wife
Generational Bridges and Midlife Crisis
00:34:08
Speaker
as Smart. The only other person he calls smart in the book is Vizzini.
00:34:11
Speaker
arguing about his kid and potatoes and sending his kid the book to read rather than reading it to him. Bill has not figured out what happens after you kiss that person you like and write off into the sunset together. You know either bicker a lot or you wind up like Max and Valerie, who's still bicker. When I'm being sassy with my own spouse, I do my best Carol Kane impersonation and tell him, I'm not a witch, I'm your wife.
00:34:36
Speaker
But they don't not argue, but they do productive stuff together and they obviously care about one another. It's interesting that Goldman then chooses to amend that and say, oh wait, something has to happen later. He does start to write a something to happen later for Buttercup and Wesley, but he also writes a something to happen later for Bill and Jason. The crux of the 30th anniversary is now Jason has a son and he's going to do this better. And doing this better not only involves reading the abridged version with the grandson, but like taking the grandson to floor and getting in fights with Stephen King over who's going to abridge the sequel and things like that. So there is an after, happily ever after for everybody. And I'm not sure how I feel about that.
00:35:24
Speaker
But it it was funny to watch him take his grandson to Florin and pick apart the archives. Sometimes Bill
Realism vs. Fairy Tale Elements
00:35:31
Speaker
returns in his interjections to a preoccupation with a feeling that life is not fair. It's just fairer than death. Not sure I agree with that, by the way. I think death is also pretty fair, but it is interesting. That is a thing that this narrator is telling us very directly in a book that is a fairy tale, a swatchbuckling adventure story, not typically genres that are focusing in on the the unfairness of life.
00:36:01
Speaker
That strikes me as, well, I'm annoyed by it. Like, just like, enjoy a fairy tale. Enjoy a happy ending. Why do you have to insert this life is not beer message in here? Anyone who says otherwise is selling something. Oh wait, that was life is pain. But who's Will? Wesley gets to see an outline in the movie.
00:36:22
Speaker
But it's in that scene in the book, he actually slaps buttercup. And I only give him a little bit of grace because he's deeply heartbroken that his true love was going to marry. So it's not a lot of grace.
00:36:37
Speaker
No, they did not teach that in pirate school. One would hope. It is shocking how this book came out in early 70s, right? One has to suspect that the second wave of feminism would have reached a certain critical mass. And even if this book had been published even five years later, probably would have played that differently. I hope.
00:36:58
Speaker
In the movie, it's different. He doesn't slap her. He threatens to slap her. But he does laugh at her from the promise of a woman. Again, I think he's just feeling like her promise to him has broken. So just enjoy the story. like what Throw in all this other junk. It's a really fun, enjoyable story. So the ending is, whether read it as they lived happily ever after. But Morgenstern's ending is before Wesley relapsed in Thundercup's horse through a shoe, and he goes, wound opened up, and they're ah running away, and that's the end of Morgan Stern's story. Also, like the whole Wesley relapsing thing, like the miracle pill is not, it's not, it's more magical in the movie. It's not like a magical thing in the book. So I wonder, do you want to talk about that? Taking clock of the miracle pill,
00:37:51
Speaker
The thing that stood out to me about that was that he, again, it seems to me to really represent screenwriting instincts. I think in Save the Cat, they talk about you should have a ticking clock in your third act. Here, he sets up a ticking clock. um He gives us minute by minute what is happening, where the pill is going to fail, its effects will expire.
00:38:14
Speaker
before Wesley is expecting it to. And that is, that would be probably too hard to explain in the film. And so it's cut out, but it just struck me as a little funny that the screenwriter ah applies one of these sort of almost this trope in prose and then excises it in the movie when it seems to be up for the movie.
00:38:37
Speaker
Yeah. Is it necessary in the book or the movie? There's so much going on. I don't know. Does it add to the pacing of the book? Similarly, announcing Wesley's death before it happens. I don't know that it builds the tension for me in the way that it's intended.
00:38:53
Speaker
I do think that I might be the part of the audience that would like it if someone would discover Simon Morgenstern's original unexpurgated manuscript. I want to hear about the hats. Anytime there's something extra in in the book that pleases me. Those tend to be the parts that stand out to me the most, frankly. The Zoo of Death. I know we've talked about it already, but That's so fun. If you just made me think of as millennials, it seems like we're the generation of DVD and the DVD extras, right? Like I watched all the DVD extras. And I wonder if that's going to be unique to our generation to have. I guess you can find it all online anyway, but there's something about you get your DVD and it's yours and you watch it a million times and then you watch all the extras.
00:39:42
Speaker
That was my experience. Yeah. Watching all the extras. And so I went down a rabbit hole with this. In addition to reading the book and watching the movie, I read the book that Carrie Elwes wrote about making the movie. And it was so delightful and it very much felt like.
00:40:00
Speaker
This little book of DVD extras in the palm of my hand and all of these stories about Carrie was breaking his foot trying to pilot Andre the Giant's ATB that he was using to get around the Peak District and the guy who is playing the main ROUS getting arrested the day before he was supposed to shoot and things like that. It was very much a millennial experience to dive through book, film,
00:40:25
Speaker
book about film. Well, I'll give you one better. The last time I watched this movie was in the theater when that book came out, because Kerry always came to Austin on his book tour. And so they did a screening of the movie and I had a copy of his book. here me not be site like It came with this commemorative glass. Then that's awesome. Of them falling down the door.
00:40:49
Speaker
ah i I know that people talk about the sort of video store era of film. That's something that I associate with the love of extras and the kind of feeling of, oh, there's more of this. And of course, it really was the the long 1980s when films changed from things that you would have to catch to things that you could have in the way that you can have a book.
00:41:18
Speaker
yes I guess I suspect people will continue to like behind the scenes materials and and things like that. I have not run this by any Gen Zers, so I can't say. That's a good question. I'm thinking of the Office Ladies podcast, which I loved. I wonder if the rewatch podcast is replacing the DVD extra.
00:41:36
Speaker
Oh, I wonder. So I pulled, because because Carly, we were talking about that tweet about how this Gen Z person was talking about how the Princess Bride is just Gen X feeling sorry for itself. I don't remember her exact words and it's not really that good. And so I pulled my audience of one, the Gen Z person in my life who I knew might respond to a text within the time between we last talked and now. And this person actually said, no, I love the Princess Bride.
00:42:05
Speaker
But this person was not aware that there was a book. And so that's what they're getting for Christmas this year. Oh, nice. Susan, if you're listening, you didn't hear. She even designed like a one-off RPG. She very much into RPGs and designed a one-off RPG around Florin and Gilder. Are we ready to move on to genre themes or are there other points you want to make? Let's talk genre. Yeah, let's do it. All right. Well, we've talked a little bit about genuine connection. Anything more to say about the connection between Bill and his father, the true love between Wesley and Buttercup, or the connection between Inigo and Cezic, or the connection between the Prince and the Celts. They're bad guys, but they're friends. They're pretty good friends.
00:42:50
Speaker
They like get each other. This book really hits that idea of connection because it's all about the jealousy we feel when folks who aren't us have good connection and the happiness we feel when we've got a good connection. And you see a lot of different examples.
00:43:06
Speaker
a really good connections. You've got teenage love, Buttercup and Wesley. You have best friends, Inigo and Fezzik. You have um sustained over decades love of Max and Valerie. You've got people who are doing their best, like the bickering parents and the queen who's just making up stuff for her husband as she goes along.
00:43:25
Speaker
and so I appreciate the way that this book throws all of these genuine connections at us, but it also gives us those juxtaposed connections of Bill and everyone in his life. The reason this has been in my mind so much is in our first episode with Christy, she talked about real connection and not connection.
00:43:47
Speaker
I don't see a lot of examples of not real connection in this book. It's really powerful how many connected characters we see. And I think that's really beautiful and valuable for us to have these examples of connection because as was explained in One and a Millennial, there's so much parasocial connection now with this social media and there seems to be consensus that there's a lack of genuine connection among people and that we're really missing it. Longevity studies show that having a good community, having friendships is what helps us live longer and be healthier. And so, are millennials having had a childhood free of the internet? Is it on us to remind our younger friends in Bailey that this is an important thing to have in your life?
00:44:34
Speaker
I genuinely don't give too much credence to these like the young ones are troubles. I think they'll figure it out just fine. But maybe there is something that we can preserve here. yeah I think they if you have an opportunity to chase your true love across the high seas and climb a cliff and have a duel, you should take it.
00:44:53
Speaker
So Bill is hella disconnected, but he's disconnected in the 70s. He didn't need the internet and parents' social relationships to have poor connections with everybody from his teacher to his wife to his son. It's important to go outside and make friends. And I know that's something I'm working on personally myself these days, but I wouldn't say the times in which we find ourselves do must to not be able to do that because people have been bad at that forever. Agreen. Sure. Yeah, that's a good point. The next genre theme is how female characters are treated. We mentioned Wesley Slaps, Buttercup, and Buttercup being described as down. What more can we say about female characters? We get quite a few. It's pretty good, actually, to have quite a few female characters to think about in this book.
00:45:43
Speaker
I don't think it's Bechtel compliant. I was just thinking that. I don't think it passes the Bechdel test. I was just talking about how Buttercup and Valerie never meet. And that's so weird to me. Maybe Mormund is staring at it and then they'll cut it out. yeah It's entirely possible that there's whole scenes of the Countess and the Princess of Gilder talking about their hats, which I want to read. In the film, she doesn't even talk to the Queen. There's the scene where she's being walked to her chamber by the Queen and King and the King's got her arm and she's telling him about how she's going to kill herself. And he's like,
00:46:16
Speaker
She kissed me! Yeah, it makes me want something that has some of the same kind of straight ahead adventure fun stuff that I like in it also some of the metafictional nonsense that I also like but that handles female characters just a little bit better and maybe doesn't make snide remarks about them making your brief solacisms syllable for syllable stuff like that.
00:46:46
Speaker
Yeah, it needs improvement on the female characters. I would say. Does this story reflect the claim from one in a millennial that we were raised for a world that no longer exists? This is hard. Most of the books that we read this season, there was a real shift in the way you view the world from the beginning of the book to the end of the book. yeah I don't really see that here. It's more like Wesleyan Buttercup started somewhere and then they got off course and then they were corrected that.
00:47:13
Speaker
It ties into that kind of happy ever after idea. If we leave with our couple having found each other and ridden off into the sunset, then what space does that give us for growth unless they've grown on the way? And maybe they have grown on the way. Wesley does this massive amount of growth off screen when he is becoming the Dread Pirate Roberts.
00:47:39
Speaker
He leaves as a farm boy who's just going to go seek his fortune and comes back able to sword fight and able to wrestle a person much bigger than he is successfully and with ah immunity to Iocane powder. And his he's done all of these things, but he hasn't done them in a way where we can see them. And there's probably a whole very interesting book about becoming the Dread Pirate Roberts.
00:48:04
Speaker
where we would be able to talk about, did we learn things? Did this character become prepared for a world that he is in? And Wesley does okay with what he has learned, but- But he's a pirate, and he could be a pirate in verbal way, that won't work. Unless Buttercup becomes a pirate. He couldn't remain the Dread Pirate Roberts, right? It wouldn't work within how the Dread Pirate Roberts is, you know? Like it wouldn't- Buttercup wouldn't insist on leaving survivors.
00:48:33
Speaker
Can you imagine her not calling it Wesley and talking about their past together? Like just can't imagine that preserve his role as Dread Pirate Roberts. It's not like that prepared him for life with Buttercup, it prepared him. It prepared him to rescue Buttercup. Yeah. But being prepared to rescue a person does not mean being prepared to live with that person. Yeah. Or like have a living with them. I'm assuming they'll go back to the farm. Yeah.
00:48:59
Speaker
How much gold has he been saving up, right putting it in his Roth IRA? What do you think, Dana? Did you say something about that? Financial planning for pirates. No, about the world being being raised for a world that no longer exists. Another way to see the question is, having grown up fans of this book and this movie didn't prepare us at a certain world that we face as adults. This is stretching, movement but specifically having 9-11 happened and then the financial crisis as we were looking for our first jobs and dealing with student loan debt. I don't really see a lot of lessons for the kind of adult life that we've had to deal with. I think that the salutary effects of reading and books are in a certain sense overstated because it's not usually an especially direct one-to-one, oh, I learned this thing from this book. I work for the public library. I think it's good to read books and to like books.
00:49:56
Speaker
Maybe that's self-serving, but I do think that that can be valuable. There are messages about developing yourself and studying the blade and it's good stuff in here.
Adventure, Fantasy, and Audience Engagement
00:50:08
Speaker
Most of the books you read this season have been fantasy. And it's funny when we first started, I was like, the princess bride is fantasy. But then as I started learning more about fantasy tropes, I was like, they really have a lot of fantasy in it. It just kind of looks.
00:50:22
Speaker
It's really an adventure story. There's some magic there. There are RUSs, so creatures that don't exist. When it grabs me from out of the corner. I think at least fantasy has certainly adopted the Princess Bride.
00:50:39
Speaker
didn't do amazingly great when it was first published. I know the dual scene was reprinted in an anthology and the editor said something to the effect of, this might be a little off the beaten track for the kind of science fiction fantasy readers, but I really think you'll like this.
00:50:57
Speaker
ah And it's certainly such a foundational thing now that I think it kind of worked. Kind of goes back to the idea that it's a fictional history of a fictional European country. Florin feels very much like what you imagine as an American if if you think of Europe in general, but don't really get granular and start thinking about, is this Sussex? Is this the south of France? Is this Poland somewhere? Is this Copenhagen? Is this Florence and Italy? It's just kind of Europe, as we imagine it, having not as much experience with Europe as people who may have actually grown up there, for instance.
00:51:38
Speaker
fair as It really is. It really is. In that sense, it's fantasy because it is how we imagine a fictional olden days to be, but it does miss some of those fantasy tropes that you think about. We don't have elves or orcs or dragons or anything like that, although maybe in the Zoo of Death they've got a dragon and they just haven't shown us yet. It's not a hero's journey. There's not someone who's called and to become a hero.
00:52:05
Speaker
and alter the course of history. There's not a wise old mentor to guide the hero, but there's Max who's old, right? I would say that they do. It's not necessarily a hero's journey. Wesley's just called to be in love with Buttercup. In doing that, he does a lot of hero's journey things. He upsets the whole country.
00:52:27
Speaker
I had a little experience thinking about what is adventure. I don't see a lot of what you would call character development. There's satisfaction in how the characters work to get what they hope for. Like I spent a big amigo, right? It's a really lovely film story, but there's also a lot of comedy in it. Every piece of it has a lot of comedy in these little jokes bits, which I just adore. What more can we say about adventure and genre?
00:52:57
Speaker
I find it interesting that this book does specifically the act of skipping the device of the fictional abridgement. Here it's skipping things that presumably an ordinary reader, whatever that means, would not be interested in. It's a device that gets used in some other books that I like a lot. I know the Aubrey Mascheron Sea Stories by Patrick O'Brien a couple of moments that where it's almost perverse ah what the author chooses to skip. It'll be a battle or something. It's almost the opposite of this. He's skipping the good parts so that you can live with these characters. I believe that series started roughly around in this around the same time. And I find that particularly interesting within the context of adventure. With adventure, I think of the presentation as something for more self-consciously art, literature,
00:53:53
Speaker
film where you're looking at this beautiful construction that the author has made. Whereas here I think he is you're rubbing your nose in his construction to the end of heightening a certain adventure or or fun, good parts, elements of it. I'm gonna be thinking about that. That's really interesting.
00:54:13
Speaker
the way that you construct a story and that he's, as you said, he's so in your face about, I constructed this by cutting out a bunch of stuff. So there's been quite a bit of chatter about this movie online. Margaret mentioned that tweet I found recently about someone from Gen Z who did not enjoy the movie.
00:54:32
Speaker
The pain was loudly corrected for that view. But there's also been this conversation on social media about how there are certain movies that you can never remake. There can never be a remake of The Princess Bride. And I think Terry Elwes posted at some point that there's a shortage of perfect movies in this world. and It could be a pity to damage this one. Completely agree. But it makes me think a lot about the nostalgia part of our millennial nostalgia theme. There's something about this movie in particular, and I did rewatch it. Preparing for this podcast, I was like, I don't even need to rewatch it. I've seen it so many times as I read the book, the lines that come from the book that are in the movie I hear it and the actors of voice. I don't need to watch the movie, but I did. The experience of watching the movie still after all these years and after seeing it still
00:55:18
Speaker
Still was an enjoyable experience. Well, it's the memory of it. It's that we've quoted the lines at each other throughout the years. So I want to dig into that idea. Someone would try to remake the Princess Bride movie. Why is that so insulting and offensive?
00:55:33
Speaker
people Have either of you seen Home Movie, The Princess Bride? I've seen snippets.
Nostalgia and Cultural Impact
00:55:40
Speaker
And one of the things I think that is most interesting about that is the famous celebrity couple playing the roles of Wesley and Buttercup. And they've since split very dramatically. And I think that's really funny. Why do you bring that up? Just because it kind of is a remake of a sort, of course.
00:55:58
Speaker
The conceit of it is that it's as low budget as could possibly be effective, but it does go through the plot of the movie and it is other actors playing these parts and doing these scenes. And Carrie L. was is in it. Oh, no. It's sort of a remake. Yeah. It's very much like 2020 spring backyard homage, where one person will shoot five minutes and then punt it to a friend who will shoot the next five minutes on their phone in their backyard, essentially. See, homage doesn't feel offensive. It's not quite a remake, right? If there was a tradition of every year in the park, someone did a free play version of my princess.
00:56:40
Speaker
with giving it a new theater. Yeah, that that wouldn't affect me so much, but the idea of a remake, it's just so complete in itself that I don't know what you would need to add to it. What else would you say about the movie? like The duel is legendary, right? One thing, ive I saw the movie many times before I found the book, and I didn't know what they were talking about. The dialogue didn't make any sense to me until I read the book and could read the names of the sword masters that they were talking about a greek body i didn't know that they were saying before that so the point helps me understand the movie better absolutely i think some of those sword masters are real or almost real fencing manuals i had forgotten how much i enjoyed this book i had a very fun experience reading it but when i checked it out from the library
00:57:36
Speaker
as a kid and then again a few years ago. But ah yeah, I really enjoyed it. It's a really wonderful choice for anything on millennial nostalgia. I realized that the book itself was published several years before millennials started being around and that the film was made when we were very young. But I think that because it was on such a delay where it didn't really get picked up until VHS, it's really a product of that kind of late 80s, early 90s space in ways that I don't think Goldman would have expected it to be when he was writing the novel and then hoping it would get picked up as a screenplay for a decade prior to that. So I think that in so many ways, it is the perfect thing to talk about when you were talking about the millennial experience. And I'm really glad that I got to come talk about it with y'all today. It remains a favorite book of mine. I think I'm going to have to find a new version so I can read.
00:58:34
Speaker
about Buttercup's baby and the continuing story, because now I'm curious about that. It was important for Morgan to remember Buttercup and Wesley's story. And then it was important for Bill's dad to remember Morgan's story. And then it was important for Bill to remember his dad's story. And then Bill kind of botches his sons remembering of his story. But then you get into Buttercup's baby and he gets that chance again to share it again with yet a new generation.
00:59:01
Speaker
I really like that we got a story about how important it is to keep sharing stories. Let's hear what do you think about Princess Bride and what do you think about our es theme, Millennial Nostalgia. Let me know by recording a voice memo and emailing opening question at gmail dot.com. You can also comment on the sub stack at bookclubpod.com.
Closing Remarks and Next Episode Tease
00:59:22
Speaker
You can contact me on Twitter at book underscore club underscore pod and on threads at C Rose Jack.
00:59:30
Speaker
and I'll leave links to my social media in the show notes. Also, please leave a review on Pocket Cast, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify to help new listeners find the show. And we had a bonus episode this season. We're covering Jurassic Park with the hosts of the Rewind Rewatch Podcasts, Andrew and Joelle. Their podcast is about watching movies from the 90s and seeing how they hold up. I will link to their Jurassic Park movie episode in the show notes, and then we will have our Jurassic Park book episode
01:00:04
Speaker
Book Club podcast is mixed by me, Curly Jackson, music and audio production