Why “The Princess Bride” should not work as a movie: Part 3

Last week marked the 25th anniversary of the premiere of The Princess Bride [released on September 25, 1987]. In a nice bit of synchronicity, last month in an online “Hero’s Journey” class I’m teaching with 15 really sharp middle-schoolers, we read William Goldman’s novel “The Princess Bride,” comparing it to the movie’s script. While I was at it, I watched the movie again. And after all that, I came to this inescapable conclusion:

The Princess Bride should not work as a movie… that is if you subscribe to the so-called “rules” of screenwriting.

For the last few days, I’ve spotlighted some narrative elements which should certainly mean that The Princess Bride fails as a movie.

Part 1: Too much of the action takes place off-screen.

Part 2: Important characters introduced late in the story.

Today: Script has a bunch of ‘unfilmable’ description.

The supposed ‘rule’ here is if you can’t see it, don’t write it. Screenplays are not novels, damn it! We can only write what actors can act and moviegoers can see.

In which case The Princess Bride is an epic fail, a script strewn with ‘unfilmables’. Just a few examples:

BUTTERCUP is in her late teens; doesn't care much about
clothes and she hates brushing her long hair, so she
isn't as attractive as she might be; but she's still
probably the most beautiful woman in the world.This is the first time we've gotten the real vertigo
feeling and it's a gasper.BUTTERCUP is almost out of her mind with fear....but neither gives that possibility much credence.
This is our two heroes meeting. They don't know it
yet; but that's what it is.And what we are starting now is one of the two
greatest swordfights in modern movies (the other one
happens later on) and right from the beginning it
looks different.INIGO'S FACE. And something terrible is written behind
his eyes: he has given his all, done everything man
can do, tried every style, made every maneuver, but it
wasn't enough, and on his face for all to see is the
realization that he, INIGO MONTOYA of Spain, is going
to lose.

And on and on and on. Clearly this guy Goldman doesn’t know squat about screenwriting to include so many ‘unfilmables’ in his script. You think he would have learned his lesson writing that spec script back in 1967 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as evidenced from the very first page:

A MANidly walking around the corner of a building. He is
BUTCH CASSIDY and hard to pin down. Thirty-five and bright,
he has brown hair, but most people, if asked to describe
him, would remember him blond. He speaks well and quickly,
and has been all his life a leader of men; but if you asked
him, he would be damned if he could tell you why.

You simply can not do that… which I guess is why Butch Cassidy sold for a reported $400K. Must have been that positive reinforcement that led him to include so many egregious ‘unfilmables’ in The Princess Bride, and why that movie fails so miserably. Just think, if he had cut all those ‘unfilmables,’ Bride might have ranked higher than #191 on the IMDB Top 250 Movies of all time list.

Indeed if Goldman had excised those cursed ‘unfilmables,’ introduced all the key characters in Act One, and shown all the action instead of having so much of it take place off-screen, The Princess Bride might have spawned a 25 year anniversary celebration, something like this:

Takeaway: There is conventional wisdom. And that exists for good reasons. But writers should never let supposed ‘rules’ squash our creative instincts if a story is telling us to go against the grain of what is expected.

All hail William Goldman. All hail The Princess Bride. All hail the spirit of writing original stories.

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