The Princess Bride with Jen Cownie

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0:33Hi everyone. Magical Garbage is a podcast mini-series about fantasy storytelling and the enchanted things that helped make us who we are. I'm doing this mini-series in celebration of my new novel, Skip Shock, which is out on June 5th and it's a story about love and time travel and parallel worlds and the moment in your life when you realise that you can't really be on the fence about things anymore. That you've got to love with your whole heart and fight with your whole heart and on one occasion violate the rules of a nude bathhouse with your whole heart. I'm so proud of this book. I think it's so fun and exciting and I would be so honoured and delighted if you could pre-order a skip shock from any brick and mortar bookseller of your choice.

1:12I'm sure you know this already but pre-orders are so important in the early stages of a book success so if you're going to buy the book anyway please think of a pre-order as a special favour to me, the girl who's been talking to you from this recording booth for seven years. Okay on with the show.

1:33Hello and welcome to Magical Garbage, the podcast where death cannot stop true love. It can only delay it a while. My name is Caroline O'Donoghue and I'm the shortage of perfect breasts in this world. And she's not the Dread Pirate Roberts. Actually, she's a man called Ryan. It's Jen County. Yay. I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts. I'm Ryan. I feel like so many of the quotes from this movie are so overused that like some of them just go sort of like skidded over and no one talks about. They become, it's one of those films where you watch it again after having not seen it in a long time and you're like, oh, that's where I get that weird phrase from.

2:10Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it just sort of, it becomes divorced from its original space. Exactly. As all great work. As all great work does. Yes, it becomes just a part of your brain chemistry. and I feel like The Princess Bride will become is a part of so many of the people listening Brain Chemistry I can't believe it's never come up before I guess because it's so beloved but now is the most perfect time to talk about it I think it really is I loved watching this with you last night I loved it too it felt so nice I just feel like I'm sure my history with this movie is very similar to other people's history with this movie which is that I saw it when I was a kid a lot on VHS and it was like a lovely jewel to sort of stumble upon I never owned it but people did yeah and then as a kind of like a post uni stoner adult it's sort of like the kind of the the irony of it and the funniness and the wittiness of it sort of unfolded yeah in my 20s and then it became like oh my personality is liking the princess bride and then you sort of feel slightly icked out by that and then you're like oh you have to distance yourself and just be like yeah and now finally it's like that bit where when you're a child and a young adult you enjoy reading young adult books and children's books and then you have to in your late teenage years not touch them and you feel a bit embarrassed by the fact that you ever once read a children's book you fucking loser um and then in your mid 20s you can just really re-embrace that again exactly but i also think that like like this movie is so so beloved and so universally as well like it's one of those strange things where it's like it could not have a more feminine title like like the princess bride and it's such a like in so many ways such a girly movie but it's like this anomaly where like boys love it and like we're going to talk about why we think that is throughout the podcast I think but like I also think and I want to say this with the greatest kindness because the kind of people I'm about to describe are people I have dated and loved for many years which is of course losers and there is like a kind of like I don't know you're on a bad date with someone who like on the I've never done a dating app we all know that but like on your mutual pages or whatever it seems like your mutual pages you just showed your ass so badly whatever I'm thinking of like when I used to meet people from Twitter or whatever okay got it yeah I never really had a dating app thing but like you you nominally seem to like the same movies and then suddenly you are opposite a man in a black hoodie who is screaming inconceivable at you.

4:46And you're like, I've gone badly wrong. I must abandon this fandom. I think the problem is that, is there anyone who doesn't like The Princess Bride? No. Have you met that person? If they don't, they're disliking it for edgelord reasons. Yeah, I think it's actually, it's more, it's not so much that it's a green flag that someone likes it. It's more just a way to just really whittle out anyone who's completely insane. And just, if you don't like The Princess Bride and you're on a date, why are we here? because as you say they're just trying to make a point right that is such a red flag somebody who's like ain't no lady I don't know they're still in that phase where there's too much self-hatred for their younger self and we can't be doing that we can be doing that we're too old for that now but like so when we put it on last night I was like oh I love this movie but like I am I didn't think the charms of it would work on me the exact same way again oh and they really did it's so fucking charming we were both just like We were sitting there, our armchairs, our little dog.

5:44And we were just gone. Right back in there. And I didn't grow up with a princess bride. I came to it late. Okay. Don't know why. I think my parents just weren't cool enough. You know, they just didn't show it to me. I've actually never asked you this before in all our many years of friendship. Did you grow up in much of a movie house? No. Okay. My dad really liked Star Wars and Apollo 13. And we watched those on repeat. So I know those films. What's your dad's job again? He was a fighter pilot. He flew fast things and anything that involved putting fast things into space. Yeah, checks out. Yeah, as long as it's like accurate to the physics, he gets very upset when it's not.

6:25Like he'll watch a film where there's people in space and if the spaceship is rotating in the wrong direction, he'll be like, I can't watch this. It's completely wrong. And I'm there like, what the fuck? Okay, so Princess Bride was not where we were. I think we had Dumb and Dumber on VHS. And then we had the whole Star Wars collection and Apollo 13. So when I did finally get to watch Princess Bride, it was a beautiful thing. But I'd read the book beforehand. I had the really odd experience of being a person who'd read the book before they watched the film, which is probably at this point, I'm really in the minority.

6:59Really in the minority? Because I think the book was not... Came out in the 70s. Yeah, it came out in the mid-70s. It wasn't a huge success. but then William Goldman adapted it into the film and then the film was massive so then retrospectively the book became a huge success which is of course the dream of every author. The dream of, I mean there's so much, I spent so much time today because for the listeners, for people who know us well, I'm conscious that this could be, because people love this movie and they're hearing about this movie so I think there could be many people who this is the first episode of Scent of Mental Garbage they've ever heard because they've searched it.

7:32What's going on? What's going on here? Who are they? My name is Caroline. and you've got a perfect breast shortage no you are the shortage yeah if i die there'd be there would be an extreme shortage but like um we are best friends and uh and sometimes we go through these incredibly codependent phases and this time last year we went traveling together and uh we did a very codependent movie club during that time and this is a month yeah this is a bit of a redux because we're living together again but for different reasons which is that my house is being renovated and me and gav and sylv are crashing in your very little but very lovely house it's it's really poly pocket sized it really is gandalf has come to bag end um poor gab i just see him kind of every time he turns like like looking slightly alarmed in case he breaks a thing because he's just turned too quickly and uh what he said to us in the second night he was like the thing about Gandalf when he comes to when he comes to Bilbo's house is he only stays for an evening he can't fit in there for three weeks just cursing every single dangly thing from the ceiling but it is wonderful because it means we've managed to somehow get back into the film club so this is almost like a mini series within a mini series because the rest of the series is recorded in a studio in like professional settings but we're just back here on my bed with our little travel mics with our Jack Russell terrier and it's really nice and it just it's very nostalgic for us yeah um but that's the the reason to kind of thread that thread back to what we were talking about we were talking about this is that uh in addition to your house being renovated at the moment yeah and taking way longer way way longer how long has it been six weeks they said it would be done by mid-may it is currently the 12th of june well look i've benefited from this because i've had pals um but you are also of course an author of books who's doing a TV adaptation yeah and so you're really living the William Goldman experience right now oh my god thank you for bringing this up because um I've really been thinking about this a lot because I was thinking especially doing this movie and I often have this superstition around movies that are so beloved and so talked around already that there's nothing left for me to say other than like quote the perfect script or like talk about the lovely moments and I've had this real experience with like with this real soul connection with William Goldman over the last couple of days, like reading about this, rereading the book, reading Carrie Elwes' memoir and thinking about like what it was like for William Goldman, who is like a novelist turned screenwriter, like myself.

10:15This was, I think, his second or third novel was really his only like fantasy story for children, which is also what I write. And like, but also run into that problem kind of early on of being like it's a fantasy story for children but it's sort of the humor and the sensibility is a bit older so who is it for really and him being like the answer is everyone and like me me being like the answer is everyone um because I also read fantasy and um that thing of like this was the his favorite thing he ever wrote he wrote it because he was on a uh long car journey with his two daughters and he said uh I I want to write a story for you guys uh what do you want it to be about and one of them said princesses and one of them said bride so is that why it's called the princess bride isn't that sweet i had i was genuine today just genuinely i was genuinely today just thinking like why is it called that the princess the princess bride and that's such a wonderful thing about this book and this film is the way that it is it's not just a story it's a story about the telling of stories and the role they have in our lives and in our our kind of growing up and um it's the thing that i you know like audiobooks you know what audiobooks are i'm assuming i know what they are i said that like does everyone here know what an audiobook is as we record a podcast which is the same medium and audiobooks i felt like a long time people didn't really get them yeah they were like why would i want to listen to an audiobook why would i why would i do that why would i have someone read a thing and i just was like that's how we all learn stories like yeah no one's first interaction with story is they sit down and read it like it is always told to you you always first experience the world of fiction through the stories that your parents or your carers your grandparents tell you and I think this is lovely because it's a book about that and a film about that yes framed within that yes yes so yeah as we all know like you know this movie opens on the young Fred Savage of the Wonder Years sick in bed the opening frame of the movie it's kind of as Carrie Elway says it's apart from the R.O.U.S.

12:20which is so patently a man in a fucking red costume I really want a moment for those later so funny the only moment where The Princess Bride shows that it's a movie made in the 80s is the opening shot yes which is this man this little boy playing a baseball game in bed on his sort of say good with one of those disgusting coughs that only children have the whole face cough oh my god when children that's the opening sound of the film which is and you're like I know exactly where I am and immediately there immediately in the fiction in the fiction oh you're so right when children just cough with their whole bodies they haven't learned to feel shame or to cover their mouths the little trumpet mouth like I know the tongue kind of curls I'm doing it now it's so disgusting you can all imagine it but you hear that and then there's a cotton wool santa on the back of a door there's a half eaten bag of Cheetos as wardrobes that we've all seen in our childhood.

13:16Oh, it's such the most... Because I remember movies of this time having... And I'm also thinking of sitcoms like Saved by the Bell and stuff. They would have these dreamy, perfect teen or pre-teen bedrooms. And this is such a rare example of a movie where you open on a child's bedroom and it looks like every fucking bedroom I entered or left in the 80s, in the 90s. Do you know what I mean? It's got that kind of thing where the white blinding wardrobes that if you hid in you could see slats through. They're like shutters. Like shutters? Shutters for your clothes. The exact wardrobes my brothers had in their bedroom was so weird.

13:52The thing of nightmares because then of course you could imagine something in there looking out at you. Why did every home for 30 years only have those white slatted shutters for wardrobes? For horror stories. So strange. And then like this bookcase where all the books are kind of falling over a bit. There's no structural integrity to anything else. And it's also like a great very subtle visual cue being like you're not dealing with a character who cares about books they just slopped around yeah he wants to play the game he doesn't care about the book yeah and then his um granddad comes in peter folk and just says you know my father used to read it to me and i'm gonna read it to you and he's like oh you know there's beautiful women feats of daring pirates poison betrayal and fred savage goes yeah it sounds okay i'll try not to fall asleep oh it's so good and it just i i don't know i hope grandparents still like read elaborate stories to their kids today i hope they do i hope they do my grandpa used to make up all kinds of weird tales yeah and it was so nice it's a very like like visceral core memory for me and i think just immediately seeing that 80s room and a granddad just being like oh patting himself down trying and I can't wear stuff in his pocket.

15:06It's so nice. And then just like gently charming this child into this tale. It's so perfect. And it's this beautiful thing. And the thing is, of the framing device, it's so perfect and so gorgeous. And actually, are you familiar with the movie Stand By Me at all? I am not familiar with that movie. I know the name, but I couldn't tell you what it's about. I imagined football. You could not be more wrong, but I love that you tried. I don't know. I'm thinking football. You know, sometimes when you like dip into the sort of the primordial super memory, for some reason the right answer comes up and sometimes it doesn't.

15:42So Stand By Me was Rob Reiner, who's the director of this movie. Cool. His movie before this. And what happened in Stand By Me? Stand By Me, it's a story, it's like an adventure story about four boys. It's based on Stephen King novella and about them sort of crossing, doing this huge journey together because they want to go, they know there's a dead body that's across the ravine. Fucking hell. they want to report it so that they can get the reward money and they like the boys learn to be men on the way but it's you're you hate this don't think i want to watch this but go on you know what it's a nice movie and um okay but uh it's the reason i bring it up is that i think it's interesting that it also takes place within a framework of like a older writer writing about this incident that happened to him in the mid-60s and it the kind of framing is like he's supposed to be spending time with his son but he can't stop thinking about his own childhood and there's like I don't to me it's like an interesting thing of like I think everything about this movie there's a reason it's a girly movie that men love which is it's so much about male relationships and how the kind of the breakdown between generations and it's it's sort of like this beautiful thing early on being like this this granddad and his grandson they don't have much in common they're not it's not that fond and it hasn't been up till now and like Fred Savage is like what if he pinches my cheek I hate that and that's just the thing of like trying to connect through story is like a very moving subject so moving so wonderful and just so much about this film is about well fairy tale I guess yeah and that's what it is it's the tradition of stories passed on through generations and changed and like tweaked to fit the new listener and the new reader and it's just yeah it's just really nice that someone made such a great film about it it's really nice and like the framing device is so important it's so important it really is and like so the framing device exists within the book as well I'm sure you probably remember it does in fact fun fact yeah uh the framing device got me a job one time no way we um i was a bookseller um i had just moved to australia i had no job i was very young i was very silly i was wandering around sydney being like who will give me a job i had just been accepted to be a charity mugger for greenpeace a thing i wanted to avoid very much nox i don't like greenpeace because i didn't want to get people on the street and be like hey how are you doing today blah blah blah so i was so desperate that i just walked into a random bookshop and was like, oh, I'm going to maybe ask this terrifying woman behind the desk if she'll give me a job.

18:21And I heard someone in the shop going up to her and going, hi, I'm looking for, I can't remember the name of the book in The Princess Bride, but the book by S. Morgenstern. And going through the whole rigmarole of her, like, trying to search it on, like, book scan. Sure, sure, sure. And being like, it's not coming up. And eventually I was like, just put your big cut pants on, Jen. And I went up and I had to be like, hi, sorry, I couldn't help but over here that you're looking for um this book by s morgan stone it doesn't actually exist and i had to explain the framing device in like a polite and non-condescending way to this poor person in a bookshop yeah um and then after they had agreed that it didn't exist but so convincing that you think it does i then was like hi please can i have a job um and oh my god she gave me she gave the cv my cv to the manager and i got a job and when i then worked there afterwards i realized that like 10 people a day try to get jobs in that bookshop but the princess bride got me a job in ariel i love that i really enjoyed that it was just one of those weird things where you're just like this framing device is so necessary to the story it's so necessary that it genuinely regularly convinces people that it is in fact a book that actually exists and it got me a job fucking hell jen seriously like the um having because i i sort of like down re-downloaded on kindle today and um he wrote an anniversary edition which is the edition you'll see in shops yes and that has a new forward which is like written in 2012 william goldman looking back on the enormous success but even though like he wrote the book in the mid-70s he's still upholding the fiction of the novel yeah like so in in the novel he's like um and like you know if you know if you do any research on his life you can tell this is this is auto fiction where he's like talking about his son Jason and we know he has two daughters and not a son and um and talking about how he was reading this to his son because when he had pneumonia when he was a kid his father who was a near illiterate sort of handyman from Florin which doesn't exist but like he's like oh you know it used to exist in the place between Switzerland and Sweden yeah yeah yeah or something and he's like yeah this is the book that was like the book of my father's nation and like whatever and I only realized when I was in my 30s and I gave it to my son that like my father had only been scanning this and reading the good bits and reading the adventurous bits and what he had skipped over was like these reams of satire and like you know whatever and so so it's like it's supposed to be formally like Golding being like um sorry is Golding and Goldman Goldman right Goldman yeah William Golding is the one who wrote Lord of the Flies that's why I'll next them up okay thank you they're shelved next to one another though so it's really easy to find in the bookshop yeah um and so and so goldman is like oh so i realized that this book i remembered as being wonderful is um actually a political satire written by somebody you know coming at it from a different angle so i have abridged it and then he has all these notes through the text being like yes at this point morgan stern talks about sort of like currency inflation but i cut it so here's right back to buttercup.

21:33I love his commitment. And I think, I feel like almost one of the things that will have changed now as a modern reader is it would take you about three seconds to Google it. Exactly. Whereas at the time that I first encountered and indeed when I got this job, like smartphones weren't invented yet. That's how old I am. There's no reason not to take him at his word. You were like, and I remember reading it and being like, this seems really legit. Totally legit. And then having to properly go in deep to be like, no, it's not legit. Do you know what? I was thinking about this the other day. I read Tom Lake quite recently.

22:01Love. love that book one of my favorite books of that year it's amazing by Ann Patchett um and within Tom Lake a huge plot point is um the main character performing in a play called Our Town called Our Town and I got to the end of that book and indeed probably several weeks afterwards before I realized that Our Town was not a play she'd invented and I think that again it's because because the Princess Bride is so successful it's so compelling I was like well I guess this is a play she's made up how impressive of her to have made up this play within a book i didn't even consider for a second that it might be a real play so i've gone too far the other way i'm like yeah it must be that's anytime i see a book within a book now thanks to william goldman yeah yeah i'm like yeah yeah and you know what i guess that's them what else it reminded me of as well was lemony snicket i've actually never read lemony snicket which i know is very very off-brand for me i think again it's one of those things where maybe just a couple years too old when it came out i was in the it's super lame to read kids books phase sure whereas i was like bang on 11 so yeah which made you like 14 15 yeah i know really embarrassed by my own childness don't think about it don't think about it but yeah i think that it just it's done so well and so perfectly and those yeah there's little notes to the reader yeah and like what's what's perfect about it as well is that like the reason the princess bride is such a perfect film that everyone loves is because it is just filled with like exciting bit after exciting bit just exactly it's like you're you're you're right out of the sort of like the cliffs of insanity and then you're right into the sword fight with an ego you're right into the fight with physics you're right into the battle of wits like the the hits start coming and they don't stop coming and it's so perfect that like what enables him with this framing device is to create it's like if he's explicitly being like this is all the exciting bits that my father's good to it gives him this amazing permission to create the most like exciting adventure story totally and to create a story where in any fiction you suspend disbelief you know you you sink yourself into a world beyond your knowledge but in this one you do an extra level where you're like and of course yeah this is meant to be an abridged version where there are bits missing so it doesn't really matter if i don't quite work out how these two bits doesn't matter it's all in there somewhere i didn't have to read that bit it's boring totally it works so well did you know that this movie was like on like like on on sort of like a list of unproducible screenplay I did actually I think I must have read the same article as you did earlier today yeah at one point was it Francois Truffaut was attached to it and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Fezik I can kind of see it because again I've not read the book in many years but my memory is that the book is less campy and less playful it is playful and fun but it's more sort of it's a bit more serious it has that kind of like slightly more ethereal fairy tale sense to it yeah whereas this is high camp 80s drama and I like the fact that Goldman adapted it himself and was like you know what we're going this way yeah yeah yeah but I can sort of see how you could have how you could have ended up with some like art house version of it right I mean it wouldn't be as good but I can see how someone would have been like this could be done as an art house yeah yeah kind of quite cerebral production about the nature of storytelling yeah you could have you could do it you could you could or you could just sort of like take out the framing device all together and then you'd end up with like a you'd end up a very entertaining story that would not have lasted generations no it would just it would have been gone yeah so interesting all the things you could change about this movie that would make it no longer this movie yeah and there are so many things that make it what it is talk to us about what more have we got to say about so let's like so I guess we're kind of working our way chronologically because we talked about the Fred Savage intro so let's talk about the um you know we just go right into Buttercup it's like it's chapter one The Bride it's like I don't think I'd realised uh when I first watched this how little she has to do in this film with anything she's just she's so beautiful and passive and I'm fine with that.

26:16Oh, totally. But I think there's that scene with, at this point, Dread Pirate Roberts and our favourite Sicilian, where there's the battle of wits and Buttercup is just blindfolded and just sitting completely silent for probably 10 minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not saying a word, not being like, wow, that voice is familiar. It sounds like my lost love, Wesley. She's just like, she's just dissociated. She is like me in the dentist's chair. You know, she's gone to her happy place. She's out of there. it's so funny the buttercup being because it's weird because I I do think this is a movie about men actually because I think all the most significant relationships or the most entertaining relationships are between men yeah I mean she's the only woman no there's also Miracle Max's wife that's true there are two women yeah and there are eels and there are eels ladies I guess there can be eels of every sex and gender I guess the rodents could have been a woman how do we know the road yeah but Buttercup is the only female character and I think and it's you know the we have this intro of her being like you know her she was a farm girl and her main she's a princess isn't she oh is she a farm girl no she's just she's just a really hot woman she's just a really hot girl who lives on a farm and then I think she I think in the book she is sort of like given a princess title in order to legitimise the marriage to Humperdinck and that's part of the bits that Goldman like plucks out because he's like not important um and uh yeah it's the whole farm boy like farm boy farm boy get that thing down for me yeah get it what she realized one day was that when wesley was saying as you wish what he was really saying was i love you oh very virginia wolf very to the lighthouse oh do you think well it's the whole thing like shall we go to the lighthouse today is the way of saying I love you except as you wish I've never read me Virginia Woolf I'm sorry it's okay I only did it because I was made to it's one of those things that's really good to have read not so fun to be reading there I can see you know what I'm saying um and the so it's so funny because in the book it's like they fall in love and it's such a formal it's like she realizes she's in love with him because she's jealous of somebody else and then she shows up and she's I'm in love with you and he goes cool I'm gonna I'm gonna leave for America to make my fortunes he'll can afford to be worthy of you kind of thing yeah whereas i think in the screenplay they're like war bells came and he had to go oh yeah a bit more noble he dies and then she says i will never love again and like in fairness to her she's quite committed to that she i think her main points of action are leaping off a ship into the eels into the eels the noted eels uh and then oh what are they called the singing eels the wailing eels they've got a name um and shrieking eels.

29:10I promise no harm will come to you. You will not get such a bargain from the eels. The eels. The eels. Do you think that this is the reason? Is there a generation of people afraid of eels? My ex-boyfriend was terrified of eels. Eels are fucking scary regardless of Buttercup's situation. They are, but they don't look like the eels in this film and I think that people, I think it's given eels a bad name. Okay. I mean, I'm like eel neutral. If I saw... Have you told your parents?

29:44Are you out? I am now. Is there a strip on the pride flag for you? For being eel neutral. She's eel neutral and proud.

30:00Gosh, I hope so. And if not, we'll have to address that. I just think I'm afraid of eels. and I think it's because in this film eels look a lot worse than they do in real life. Eels are fine. Just eels. Anyway, she jumps into some eels and then she tries to kill herself very briefly. That's what she does. And the thing about that is as I say, I am fine with it. Yes. Like again, if this film came out today, I'd be less fine because I'd be like, really? Come on. Yeah. Come on. Well, I think the reason I'm fine with it is because the reason I'm fine with the fact that Buttercup has very little dialogue and whenever she does have dialogue It's about proving her love or saying what her love is.

30:39She doesn't really have any jokes. Everybody else in the movie has jokes. She's not funny, is she? She's not funny. No. And I don't mind it because I think this is, you know, as we say, it's a story about storytelling, which also means that it's a story about archetypes. Totally. And I think particularly in the world of fairy tale, a lot of women are not having a great time. and that's probably representative of like historical fact as well yes um and i suppose we can't really be like wow why isn't she a woman with great agency and a real sense of what she wants from life this is a sort of issue it's with a tradition of storytelling where she doesn't do a lot yeah and also goldman wants to lean into that tradition you know that's why like the vengeful spaniard is the vengeful spaniard the giant you know it's like everyone is themselves to the max so much and she's just the the archetype of like she's kind of in this sort of Shakespearean tradition of like Desdemona you know like yes and it's that whole thing of of like well I suppose I could stop myself from being murdered by my husband but instead I'll just faint with a handkerchief yeah yeah like it's very that and I don't I don't feel like I don't feel when I watch this or when I read the book that William Goldman is saying like this is what women are like I think he's saying like this is what this archetype of yeah kind of feminine like this weird feminine ideal that exists and you're like why why is he in love with her what does she do apart from order him around and have long hair exactly is that the key is that what i should do should i put that on the act like i will i have long hair and i will order you around she kind of has that jemima kirk hair she does and and a joe alwyn face i know she does look like a mix between joe alwyn and jemima kirk yeah um but i think like not to and this is primarily talking about the movie but to go back to the book for a second I do think that he is very much satirizing that idea of like the female archetype whose whose job it is is to be beautiful and to be longed after yeah because it begins with um when when Buttercup was 16 years old she was ranked among the 11th most beautiful women in the world she was nowhere near the top 10 but what she was was raw potential and it like goes through this thing where it like goes about how all the other beautiful women in the world like you know got fat or died or whatever or got smallpox.

32:55And everybody's like, by the time she was 18, she was really crawling up the ranks. It was just like, tiny stupid details that are like, oh, she had a pudgy left wrist that slimmed down over a summer. Oh my God. It's like looking at like a historic FHM Hot 100 or something and being like, what happened to them? But it's so absurd that you know that he's taking the piss out of this idea. I'm not saying that he was the feminist of the year or something, but you can tell he's taking the piss out of this archetype of like her job is to be beautiful. And like she's also quite cold as well in it. I mean, I think every single character in this film is being taken the piss out of in some way.

33:30Yeah. Apart from the grandfather and the son. They're the only actual serious characters. That's where the actual emotional heart is. Every single other character is played for laughs and it makes it perfect. Which is why it's so important that that bedroom looks like it does. Yes. Because it's that thing of being like, these two people are rooted in our reality. They're you and me, but this is happening somewhere else but also the thing about the tone of this movie is that like it's it is funny and it does take the piss out of fairy tale but it also means it a hundred percent and I do think that is the virtue of Robin Wright in this role is that you can really feel her grounding the emotion of it if she was camping it up and being like it wouldn't be right and I think that the story of this the story of the Princess Bride is it takes the idea of love very seriously yeah and even if when you're watching the story within a story you're like well I mean how long do they really know each other but it's still talking about love in the wider framing device and making it feel very real yeah and there's these bits where like the only bits of the movie that are completely free from comedy are Buttercup's lines which is a bummer but also that they're like some of the most stirring moments in the book in the film as well because her being like when she's like yelling at humperdinck being like you know you can't yes you can't do this and i can't remember what she says but she's just like you cannot trap it and you cannot track it and it's like so moving and like it really stirs you and i think it like as much as she has very little agency and very little comedy she's pinning down the whole movie absolutely is she's like michael caine in a muppet christmas carol that's exactly who she is she's there and she's giving it like yeah creates the contrast that you need yeah she's not being silly she's taking it very seriously yeah which gives everyone else around her she's like the anchor point that they can they can fly from like little balloons exactly so I think she you know yeah we know what do you know go Robin Wright Penn yeah love her love her work introducing Robin Wright as she was in that film introducing Robin Wright Penn she was introducing was very exciting wow and then obviously we go right so it's like Like she...

35:41She gets kidnapped. She gets engaged to Prince Humperdinck. Then she gets kidnapped. You're right, she does. And I think I hadn't seen the film in a while and I saw Prince Humperdinck and I was like, oh look, it's Lord Farquaad. Shrek owes so much to this film. Shrek owes so much to this film. Such a great debt. And listeners, we were actually thinking because we were like, this being magical garbage and us being very interested in magical stuff, how maybe it would be fun to do a little trio about fairy tales as they've been represented in modern cinema. Starting with this, The Princess Bride, carrying on to Shrek, which is another post-ironic take on a fairy tale, and then finishing with a movie that not many people have seen but is fabulous called The Fall, which has the exact same structure as The Princess Bride in that it's somebody talking to an ill child about a fairy tale.

36:35Liz, I vote we do it. Me too. And we're definitely the loudest voices in this room. Because Sylve cannot speak. Sylve just having a snooze. I think that would be really good. But I just think, yeah, the debt owed by Shrek to this movie is huge. Yeah, I remember hearing Greta Gerwig say somewhere, when someone asked her what she wanted Barbie to achieve, she was like, I want it to be something that other female directors can point to and say, this person made it work. You know what I mean? Amazing. She wants a comp. and I think that like a profitable comp that people can be like, well, this made money, so let me do this thing.

37:11So you think that the people who made Trek looked at Princess Bride and went like, this made money, let's do this thing. To be fair, yes. Yeah. It is the spiritual successor. It is. And I think that's why it's going to be part of this trilogy. Yeah. I love it. Do you know what else I really love? And I mentioned this to you briefly earlier when we were like, what do we have to say about the Princess Bride before we just dive in raw and go for it. I really enjoy In the Princess Bride, and this I think is a product of its time and, I don't know, of the sensibilities of the age perhaps, that the stakes are like high, but they're like low high.

37:48Go on. Obviously, Buttercup faces being murdered, which is really bad, and so does Wesley. But the framing within the story is not like there's a dictator and he's here to murder everybody. And if this one special snowflake doesn't stop him, it'll all be over. It's literally a guy who just wants to start a war with a neighbouring kingdom for no other reason than that sort of what you do. I believe it's the long and prestigious tradition of starting a war. And that just is very true of politics and of actual sort of medieval times. It was just like, I'm bored. I'm going to start a war with France.

38:31type thing. Yeah, yeah. Gilder and Florence. I love that about it. I love the Gilder and Florence. Yeah, it's so right. Why do they hate each other? No one knows. It's because they're neighbours and they hate one another and that's what you did in those times. You're so right. And like that, again, there's always rumours about them trying to remake this movie and it never happens and it never will because no one wants it. And it's not owned by Disney, I don't think, so therefore they can't make it happen. But the... There's just, there's something that... In a modern fantasy, we would have to flesh out the whole why Gilda and Florin and like why it really matters that we can't start this war.

39:06None of the characters care whether or not this war happens. It's all about saving Buttercup and saving Wesley. The stakes are exactly where you can see them. Exactly that. And it's like in a modern version, there'd be some huge thing around like a great evil. A great evil is stirring in Florin or Gilda, whichever one we're not in. No one's really sure. And you'd have like things and there'd be legions of armies you know it would be a flash to the army sort of like sharpening their swords in the smith it would be like a little and it would be it would be lord of the rings but not as good and you'd be like oh no i don't really know what the motive is for them and i just i think i missed that about 80s fantasy that the stakes were just like geopolitical struggles again uh my great crusade for magical garbage is to get you to read song of the lioness and i will and you will and And again, that is a book in which the stakes are similar and it's like countries are fighting.

40:01Why? Because they're next door to one another and one's got a better river. Yeah, there's no great World War II metaphor at work here. It's just quite nice to have that. And obviously I really love, as you do, things like The Hunger Games, which is about kind of the rise of autocracy and the horrific abuses that humankind perpetrate against one another. But it's just quite nice sometimes to be like, Gilda and Florin are at war. Yeah, you're so right. As they have always been and as they shall always be. Yeah, that's really good. I haven't really appreciated that before, but it's really nice to just have this small set of characters and the events that unfold affect these small set of characters and not have to worry about the untold villages that are being tortured or burned to the ground.

40:44Just these six guys. Yeah, sometimes it's right. Sometimes it's right to situate it in that context and sometimes it's not. I fully believe with no backstory that Prince Humperdinck is the kind of guy who would murder his wife just to pin it on his enemies. Yeah. Makes total sense. Total sense. Don't need to question it any more than that. And that's fairy tale as well. You don't have to question it. Yeah. You're like, sure, I take it. You've studied fairy tale, haven't you? Fairy tales. I mean, in the sense that anyone can. Yeah, but didn't you do stuff from your degree on this? Yeah, I mean, as in I really enjoyed fairy tales, and so I ended up doing part of my degree, like a dissertation on fairy tale in modern literature me and thousands of other women who are now in their late 30s who read a lot of Angela Carter and it was great but yeah I think that's that for me I think it's probably that actually would have been why I did why I came across Princess Bride I think I would have been in my 20s when I did it it may have been around about the time wow yeah because I came to this probably via Angela Carter yeah who is obviously the so So you did your dissertation in like what, 2000?

41:53Oh, 2009? No. No, that would be when I was graduating. God, how old am I? 2007, maybe 2008? Around about then, yeah. Then, which is interesting because, as you said, there was a real, a bit of a trend for that kind of area of study, right? Yeah. And then about 10 years on, when the other girls who were doing their Angela Carter dissertation around you were all in publishing, it was like all the things they were commissioning were feminist takes on fairy tales do you remember yes i do and i also remember that there was a period where every single book that came out was like well if angela carter worked at the post office if angela carter was it was like that was how totally young female writers were described my blurb was if angela carter was at an ad agency and a fantastic blurb it was too sorry if people don't know who angela carter is um she was a writer who wrote a very famous collection called The Bloody Chamber which was a kind of gothic retelling with a feminist slant of fairy tales.

42:50Yes, of like terrible fairy tales. Oh yeah, that's very fair. Also wrote loads of other good things but do you know what I think is always good reading if you ever are curious about fairy tales and I did mean to re-read it today but I didn't get a chance. It's the introduction to her collection of fairy tales, not The Bloody Chamber but her like collection of actual fairy tales where she went around and collected stuff. yeah what a great thing to do and then she wrote this fantastic introduction about the nature of fairy tale and the importance of the oral tradition and the way that it's been carried on I feel like everything I ever say about fairy tales is basically just me having digested that introduction over and over again that's okay it also got me into tarot card reading so there we go there we go we owe a lot to fairy tale but yeah I don't know if I have anything like intelligent or specific to say other than that what I think is so great about fairy tale and folklore as a tradition is the fact that there is there is no like author to it there's no like set thing it has to be and that's one of the things I was always interested in is that it's a set of archetypes as you say and stories and patterns and tropes that get kind of passed on and then changed and and given new meaning and new life by new readers and new writers and to try and own a fairy tale is almost a sort of like kill it a little bit and like obviously like the Grimm brothers and Peralt kind of did codify and slightly defang a lot of fairy tales but the Princess Bride I think exists in that tradition particularly because of the framing device of like well there's this rollicking story that yeah that was that was from this book but then my grandfather changed it and I changed it too and it just all fits into that world of like every story is yours for taking and for the playfulness and for all that maybe that moment in publishing where all the girlies were writing fairy tale retellings was, it felt like trite after a while.

44:39But I think the spirit was right. And that's what all writing is. I agree, I agree. Because all trends feel trite after a while. Yeah, everything does. I was definitely in on that and I loved it and all that stuff. It's just interesting to look back and sort of look at what was happening because it was also a moment that sort of preceded the widespread Me Too feminism, right? It was like a place for anger to live within these fairy tale books. And I find it, I find the sort of tradition of fairy telling really interesting, particularly when you consider that, like, now that we've had 150 years of movie making, where movie making falls into that, right?

45:14Because, like, some of the earliest movies were fairy tales. They are the things that come back to you all the time. Walt Disney obviously in this in much the same way that the Brothers Grimm did codified the fairy tale and showed us what to expect and how it looks and like took took the storybooks he would have grown up with and then slapped them into this new form and then it's like the we're reading up on this like this phase of movie making that we're talking about so the Princess Bride, Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, this kind of 80s fantasy resurgence is sort of kind of widely believed to be like you know walt disney died in the 60s sort of nobody took up the mantle of like more fairy tales after that they just became out of fashion for a while and then when the people who grew up on those movies were old enough to make movies that was what they really wanted to make yeah stuff like this do you feel like we're due another another burst i don't know i'd be curious though because i think a bit like dragons it's like every time it comes back it comes back for a different reason.

46:11Yeah. You know? And I suppose it's like each new wave is a reaction to the previous one. Well, yeah, actually, I was speaking to a friend who, I mean, actually, I think we are due it because a friend of mine had a meeting at a big, you know, Hollywood production company who they want, you know, they're naturally speaking, they want their version of Wicked, right? You know, they want some version of a fairy tale but told from a new angle, you know? And so I think we probably will be seeing a lot more of that over the next few years. I'm ready for it. Yeah, and like, what will it mean? You know?

46:44And will it be this way that we, if like, before we were like talking about feminist narratives, now I think it's more about power narratives. I think that's like, Wicked isn't really a feminist story, it's a story about a Thor-Taurian power. Yeah. Anyway. I like it. I like it too. I'm ready for it. I'm ready for it It's just fun to talk about as well, right? Yeah, I just think, like, I love sad girl lit as much as everyone else but I like the Princess Bride more give me a give me a keeper, give me a jape but something I find, just to finish off on that quote that sort of thought about fairy tales being an oral tradition that then became a picture tradition like picture books and then became a movie tradition is like the movies, the way they look they're kind of the costume and how everything is dressed is based on this kind of ahistorical oh big buckles and big boots yes big pussing boots big boots big boots like everyone in the British is wearing a big buckle and a big boot we just were there we were like big old buckle big old boot tiny moustache tiny little bony tail just the visuals are phenomenal right and it's like Andre the Giant's huge boots huge buckle I think we could each get one of those boots and jump around and I would love to oh my god but like it's like It's like a visual style of filmmaking that is taken from storybooks.

48:13Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Woodcuts, but it's all very like... Yeah, woodcuts, exactly. Illustrations, right? Everything's exaggerated. Yeah. Everything's a bit too much. Nobody needs a belt that size. There's no historical period they're pulling that from. Right. They're making real people wear things that drawings wore, and I think that's cool. I think it's really cool. And also, it's like the thing you'd only see in like Vogue offices otherwise. Yeah. How much do Vogue, the people of Vogue owe to fairy tales? So Vodacop is kidnapped by a trio of bandits called... Called Vecini, Fezzik and Inigo.

48:49The sexiest man in this film. Oh my God, true age. That's how you know you're older when you look at it and you're like, yeah, Cary Elwes. The hardest name to say in cinema. I know. Cary Elwes. I think that's why he was never a superstar because Cary Elwes is really hard to say. Cary Elwes. You have to stop every time you say it. We had to look it up on the internet. Yeah. Carrie Elwes. It's obviously beautiful. Obviously a beautiful, beautiful man. But Mandy Patinkin is the fucking fitty of the movie. He's so hot. He's so hot. He's so hot. From the moment he appears, I was just like, no. How did I never see it before?

49:21Because we were young. He's beautiful. He's so fit. And so smouldering. I know everyone smoulders, but... Oh, but he smoulders in a way that is more authentic. Inigo is the true sexy gentleman of this film. yeah like you just would he's hot yeah so that's a thing he appears and they go up the cliffs in the best way possible I love the cliffs but the fact that just I was thinking about this so much lingering time is spent watching them scale the cliffs I know but they scale the cliffs like one of those little toys where it's just the little arms it's so weird looking their legs aren't involved they're just gliding up and down and it's almost as though whoever was filming it was like well you know we've got at great expense the permits to film in the cliffs of Moa and so we just really need to make the most of this time in Ireland right I guess if they could take a moment for the fact that yesterday when watching this film you went this has to be Ireland and I was like maybe and you were like County Clare and I was like okay and I googled it and you were correct go me you knew identifying parts of Ireland you knew your homeland but um yeah it just like why is it a solid 10 minutes of them climbing this cliff and having a chit chat yeah yeah it's so funny um i love it because as well watching them glide up those cliffs is like it is again it feels like a picture book where you're sliding a man oh yes they're like gliding up it's so unhuman yeah but for some reason totally works but i love the decision and the decision was made over and over again in this film to apart from the bedroom to completely make the sets be like yeah just obscure reality it's obviously a set yeah like there you can see the painted backdrops you can basically see the brush strokes and the beautiful clouds yeah and i think it would be the poorer for if it were filmed lord of the rings style and just fyi in case you're just tuning in for the first time i love lord of the rings i love it our lord of the rings episode very good but uh it did this didn't need that treatment it needed the kind of yeah the the faintness and the flimflammery and the big buckles and the big boots and the kind of mustaches and the painted backdrops and the scaling cliffs in a way that no human ever could totally it's it's so interesting to me i think i've said this in the podcast already but i won't say it again um because it's my podcast and i get to say things twice or perhaps three or four times but um it's so interesting to me as we kind of enter this um you know ai age or whatever and things that look too clean or too digital or too perfect are so repellent to me um but but like when i can see the human effort in something how much more appealing it is yeah like this phrase that i've brought before called um you're seeing the joins of something which used to be a frame yeah and that used to be like a kind of almost a theatrical critique of being like you can see the joins you can see the seams in whatever and like now I feel like it's the greatest compliment you can pay a piece of work you see the work that went into it yeah it's like we we are I think I entering into an age where like handmade has become like the the the commitment people are making to craft even though there are now more efficient and and quote-unquote simpler ways of doing things to be like no but I still want to know how to do this properly yeah we want to paint the scenery i want to paint the scenery and i wanted to find this for myself and i want to learn this and i want to make that i think it's really important i think this film is like an absolute triumph of artistry in that respect not in the sense that you look at it and go it looks magnificent or anything but just in the sense you like so much effort was put into creating these sets yeah yeah yeah and like and like also it makes it timeless so i think i'm something carrie elwis whose name carrie elwis can we give him some kind of nickname c e like a Midford sister the something he mentions is that like another reason why it doesn't date is because all the music is acoustic guitar by Mark Knopfler of The Darn Straits it's like not some 80s synth sound which like you watch something like Labyrinth which is a different kind of thing like and is charming for its own reasons but it feels like the 80s that movie in a way that's charming but still time stamped fuckery because for the soundtrack because of all these different bits of course yes and so it just feels like this beautiful timeless thing it is beautiful and timeless yeah I I love it I love it and then I just the first like I think really funny part of the movie for me happens when Wesley is climbing the cliffs and Inigo is waiting for him he's like I hate to wait and they have this really kind of like fun interchange Yeah.

54:12Where he's just like, look, I, you know, would not be sportsmanlike. It's so good. And Wesley's just like, listen, I'm a bit busy right now. I'm actually climbing a cliff. Would you mind? It's just, it's so perfect and so silly. And I just, I think it's very fun how these phrases become sort of aphorisms. like hello my name is Inigo Montoya you killed my father prepare to die it's going to echo down the generations it echoes down the generations and it is like one of these things that people put on t-shirts or whatever and I think by virtue of being a line of dialogue in a movie that's repeated several times therefore becomes a catchphrase but you do when you re-watch it you're like it is a fucking powerful thing because it's like we've had this character who we adore.

55:06We know he has a plan to track down a man and to say a thing and to kill that man. And then he gets to him and then he's immediately stabbed by Count Reuben. And then Count Reuben, who's a sadist, is like, have you waited your whole life to track me down only to fail now? I think that's the saddest thing I've ever heard. Marvellous. And the thing about Count Reuben is he's a dickhead. Yes. But I don't disagree with him. It is the saddest thing I've ever heard. And this is not to make this as a moment to comment on masculinity, but also to do that a little bit. But it's a thing that men sometimes do.

55:45Do what? Just like have a project that consumes them so entirely that they forget to do the rest of life. Do you know what I mean? Oh, my God. I've never met. Wow. You're really devil's advocate in Count Reuben. Sometimes I mean. You're like, you know what? It is sad to be in a lifelong quest for revenge. It is sad. And I think this again is like, this is a tradition within, not fairy tale, but certainly within literature. Like every Shakespearean tragedy is just like a dude who is so obsessed with something that he just missed out on everything else. Wow. Like that is the whole point. God, I didn't think that we'd be learning lessons from Count Rabin on this take, but you're right.

56:25I think that's the worst thing I've ever heard. And I don't like Count Rabin, but he's not wrong. Yeah. Inigo Montoya, a hot man, a fantastic swordsman. He could have been living a life. Yeah. And I get he's got this kind of noble idea of putting his father's soul to rest. Yeah. His father's soul? Like, what's it doing? What's it doing? It's very Hamlet, you know? Hamlet's like, oh, the ghost of his father appears and says, avenge me. I don't think Inigo Montoya has that. I think he's just decided that his father's ghost needs to be appeased. Well, yeah, and Inigo Montoya is canonically an alcoholic, right?

57:00That's his whole thing. He's a sot. And it's very clear in the book as well that he starts having wine with dinner and then wine before dinner and then wine when he wakes up and then he's an alcoholic. So yeah, the thing that you can say about Count Rubin is that he has a good social life and many interests that include pain and his best friend is Humperdinck and they are actually my favourite relationship of the whole movie. there are many bromances in this movie and I think Fezzik and Inigo are very very sweet but it is quite basic and it's just not like oh they do their little rhymes and they're like brothers and it's very sweet and they look after each other and that's really nice it's Reuben and Humperdinck but it's Reuben and Humperdinck who are just the bitchy little queens of this movie and I love them that bit where Reuben's like do you want to come to the pit to spare with me and Humperdinck what does he say he's like god I'm so busy It's like, Tyrone, you know.

58:00Tyrone. Tyrone, you know I love watching you work. I've got my wedding to plan, my wife to murder and gilder to frame from it. I'm swamped. It's so funny. It wouldn't be out of place in Sex and the City. I know, totally. It's phenomenal. Yeah, and something you pointed out several times as we were watching as well is a lot of this dialogue wouldn't be out of place in the Grand Budapest Hotel with Monsieur Gustave. Monsieur Gustave. It's like the moment where Wesley says when they're in the fire swamp and he's just like, oh, you know, it's quite lovely. Yeah. I wouldn't build a summer house here but these trees are...

58:38Quite lovely. I just could see Ralph Fiennes as Monsieur Gustave saying that. And I just kind of wonder if maybe he drew on this film because there's so much this dialogue has that slight arch, early 20th century tone and the sort of slightly nasal voice and the kind of like almost bored delivery. It's like, you know, I've completely forgotten the name. It's like Noel Coward or something. Yes, totally. It's got that sort of weird texture to it. I think that everyone is like, it's not like those things are drawing from each other. It's like they're drawing from the same pit of inspiration. And I think like so much of the Princess Bride's DNA comes from like, as you say, the swashbuckling movies of like the 30s and 40s, like Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn and all these people who are so unrecognisable to us now, but were like the matinee icons of their day.

59:27Like that's what Wesley is doing. It's just perfect. And it comes, as you say, to its highest point in Count Reuben and Prince Humperdinck's interactions with one another. I love them. Just the casual villainry of these two men. And they're so obviously bumming. They're so obviously in love. They are so in love. why like I don't understand why it isn't more of like a conversation people have about this movie that like there is a gay relationship in this and it's Count Ruben and Prince Humperdinck I wonder if this almost goes back to our original point of we don't need to know why Prince Humperdinck is going to frame Gilda for the murder of his wife in a modern retelling they would make the story of Humperdinck and Ruben's forbidden love much more explicit they'd make it explicit and they'd try and get you kind of on Humperdinck's side because you know he'd spent this whole childhood closeted and it turned him into this space where he felt the only way that he could exert power on the world is to murder women and it's like no we don't need that we know that they're in love we know that as watchers we don't have no said to us they're in love they're in love this is men loving men and i love to see it there's bromances there's romances yeah and also the bit that i can't believe is not like a meme all over instagram all the time, which is when Count Reuben puts Wesley in the sort of suction cup pain machine.

1:00:53He says, completely deadpan, I've just sucked a year of your life. And you notice how the suction cups are on his nipples? And his ears? How are gay men not posting that all over their feeds? I've just sucked a year of your life. He's tied to a bed. Instead of sucking water, I'm sucking life. I'm sucking life. Christopher Guest in this. Oh no. Fantastic. Yeah. So creepy. It's so weird that like... His little extra finger. What you could do with that.

1:01:33So good. I'm not the first person who thought it. It's so like... Everyone in this movie is so committed to this pastiche that they're doing. And I think it's really helped by the fact that so many people in this movie acting isn't their main thing. like Christopher Guest is mainly a director Wallace Shawn very much a playwright and writer who plays Bassini the Sicilian and like Andre the Giant a literal wrestler everyone is doing this kind of like they're not you know staring at a skull and doing method and like taking the sort of the thing of acting very very seriously apart from Robin Wright and Carrie Elwes who are grounding the movie they are the gavin and stacy grounding the action yeah there's just so many people having a nice yeah everyone is doing an impression of what they've seen actors do in movies when they were kids and that's what makes it so charming because it's so keenly felt so what and i get the sense again much like lord of the rings which i love which we love yeah and we talk about the lord of the rings the film exists but also lord of the rings the filming experience exists yes I get the sense very clearly that The Princess Bride, the filming experience, also exists, which we know a little of from Kerry Elwood's memoir, which, as far as I can tell, is just a love letter to Andre the Giant.

1:02:46Yes. And, like, everything he says is like, you have to have heard the way Andre farted. Extraordinary. Like, you have to have seen the way he drank and when he slept, wow, he slept. Like, it just, it's just, it's so earnest and sincere how much he loved being on this set and loved everyone he worked with. It's so funny. And how everyone loved everyone else. Yeah, and it's so funny how like every, at the time when they were making this movie, Andrew the Giant was the big get because he was one of the most famous wrestlers in the world. And now Andrew the Giant is like a figure people know from this film.

1:03:21Like no one is like, even if you're like a deep wrestling buff or whatever, like I would say Andrew the Giant counts as like an interesting curio in the world of wrestling now. But then he had a quite massive celebrity. Yeah. god yeah just trying to imagine wrestlers having celebrity but i like yeah and i like that his character gets to have it's such a great character to have as your legacy yeah because the only other equivalent i can think of is the really big icelandic man who plays the mountain in game of thrones yeah which is like obviously a good role except you're most of the demon with a helmet on yeah there's no cute little rhymes there's no thing of like i missed on purpose it didn't seem what was it sportsman like does he say or fair none of that or the charm that charm in the mountain he's fighting wesley and he's like wesley's like are you just are you just playing around on me and he's like i don't want you to feel like you're doing a bad job that's everyone playing with a toddler or a small dog ever yeah you know thank you when i'm wrestling with sylvie for a ball she really thinks she can take it she's the size of a piglet she's our piglet She's our piglet.

1:04:27So they get through the fire swamp. The rodents of unusual size. Did you want to talk about them? I just kind of do, actually. Do you know? I just do. I just... I think of them often. Go on. Do you want to talk about them? I love the fact that they are a man or woman in a suit. I love the fact that they were just like, the easiest way to do this, put someone in a rat suit. I love the energy. I love the noises they make. The fact that they're called the R-O-U-S-E. I love the whipping tail motion that they have. I love the way that they just are like, ah! I think we do. Again, there's like, they have the approximate proportions of Sylvie.

1:05:14Like the head to like, the bar ratio. Different tail. And obviously Sylvie, beautiful. But I just, I love that they're not really scary. it's just that they're big really big rats yeah and i also love the way they're timed comically where um wesley sees one over buttercup's shoulder as he's trying to reassure her because there's the exploding plants there's the um the lightning terrifying and she and any sensible person who is you know sucked under by lightning sand and then has to come back out and basically has drowned in sand for a minute she is deeply traumatized like what's the third one he's like Like, you know, the rodents of unusual size.

1:05:55And even though he's already seen them over her shoulder. Even though he's currently staring one in the eye. Rodents of unusual size? I don't think they exist. What? It's so funny. It's never not funny. I just think, again, why is that not more of a meme? Yeah. Why is there not a give? Yeah. There are so many memes of this movie, but there's no underrated line of this movie because everyone knows it off by heart. But, like, yeah, finding those little moments that are just not as documented as the others is very joyful. Like, Kerry Elwood's wrestling a man in a rat suit. That's an incredible scene.

1:06:31You wouldn't get that nowadays. Now they'd be like... It would be like... It'd be green screen rats. It would be tennis balls. Yeah, he'd be wrestling a big bag of tennis balls. Yeah. And then it'd be put back on. But who's the actor who isn't allowed... is contractually not allowed to, like, lose fights in films? Oh, I don't know. I believe there's some actor who's not allowed to lose a fight in a film. And I feel like a lot of, again, particularly male actors are like, no, if I'm going to be fighting, I must look masculine. I must look like hench. I must look as though like, oh, I am a gladiator.

1:07:05Yeah. Not here. Wesley being pinned to the ground by a rat costume. With a giant rat. And he's just like, oh, God. I just think. And then he only wins because he rolls him into fire. And then we watch the rat die. and it's like such a man sound it's like oh oh oh oh I just so good I think this film would be worse without the rodents of unusual size oh absolutely and I feel like um I feel like this is just a thing I've decided William Goldberg had to fight for those rats do you think I feel like the producers were like I really know like them we haven't really got the technology to make them really scary and he was like no isn't the lightning sound and the fire enough no we must have the giant and by the way this was not a low budget movie this was one of the highest budget independent movies of its day it made its money back but not a lot more but I bet those rats cost money to make yeah I think they were like a Jim Henson creature shot yeah and he doesn't come cheap Henson this year rat does not come cheap no that rat yeah I just I think I think the rodents of unusual size might be my like spirit animal of the summer you are a rodent of unusual size I am a rodent as a you as how we all we're all just big rats we're all just we're all just doing our best yeah just leaping around our swamps you know I don't know I just that's all I wanted to say about them I wish I had something intelligent or useful to say about the rodents of unusual size you had something very intelligent and useful to say about a later scene in this movie where so Buttercup leaves Wesley because she's afraid of losing him again so they have that face off at the end of the fire swamp where he's like, Humperdinck is like surrender!

1:08:59And Wesley's like, death first! And she goes, well you promised not to hurt him! And then of course Humperdinck goes back on his promise and takes him to the, what did he call it again? The pit of despair? Pit of despair, where Wesley is tended to by an albino help me or pelper. I've been spending this entire time being like, what intelligent thing did I say? And you said, if this role was cast today, Matt Lucas would play it. And I was like, that is the truest thing anyone's ever said. It is such a Matt Lucas coded character. It's actually offensive to me that it's not Matt Lucas. It's almost surprising that it isn't Matt Lucas already.

1:09:37You would have been too young probably to play this character. I've no idea who he is. No, yeah. But yeah, I was like, oh, is that Matt Lucas? But from a previous iteration, a previous incarnation of Matt Lucas. Totally. And if you were to make this film again, almost everything about it would be wrong, except for Matt Lucas playing the torturer. Yeah. That bit would be right. That would be right. That would be the one thing that you could improve upon the original with. Yeah, yeah. Although the current guy is great too. Yeah, he's great, obviously. And I've forgotten who he is, but he is a person who I recognised when I actually looked it up.

1:10:08Couldn't tell you now, because I'm bad at remembering Google. But I think, yeah, I fear, I don't know why I want to. I want to do this because I feel personally attacked every single time an old film is remade by Disney or whoever. Like, no one needed a live action How to Train Your Dragon. Or, I believe, a live action Lilo and Stitch. No one needed that. No one needed any of them. and I just kind of want to say this because I feel like if someone remade this film it would be shit yeah of course it would be and that's been almost the theme that we've gone through we've touched on this over and over again and it's like it becomes visceral fear that all the things we loved when we were kids will be ruined by modern studio executives who were like I could pump some more money out of this franchise yeah yeah yeah because they would make it serious and they would make it crap and Matt Lucas would be the only thing I liked about it thank you Matt Lucas thank you Matt Lucas for being the only good thing I like about the Princess Bride remake that doesn't exist and that you weren't cast in but in my head you were yeah he's just doing a great service for us all I really like Matt Lucas I really like him too I hope he's as nice as he seems um yeah I hope so too I think I once walked past him in the street and did that thing where I was like oh my god Matt Lucas and he was just like oh fuck Eggman yeah I did not say Eggman he's an eggy looking man anyway a little detour there a little detour so then we everything sort of speeds up now I mean it's a very efficiently told movie a very efficiently told story where they but no detail left unchecked yeah Wesley is is killed oh I just as you were saying that I thought about a detail that I particularly enjoy and it's when Prince Humperdinck is sitting in a chair and a person comes to him and he puts his arm yes he puts his hand on the arm of the chair and Humperdinck's like just looks down and then the man removes his arm Yeah, yeah, it's so good.

1:12:05It's these little moments. Humberdink is so good. I just think it's, this film is not really concerned with like the grand and the spectacle. It's concerned with the tiny details as all good stories are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Little power struggles and things. Little bits. Yeah, because I think it's like the head of his guard or whatever. Yeah, and it's just like, oh, excuse me. It feels so perfect. It's also, this movie is full of little moments like this. I think this movie gets credit for its writing all the time, its dialogue. And the dialogue is perfect. There's not a bum note in the whole thing and it's so funny and charming.

1:12:40But there are also these plenty of non-verbal moments that are, speaking as a screenwriter myself, fucking incredibly hard to script. Because there are things that, like, they're hard to communicate with words. It's hard to sort of... It's also, when you're writing a script, the first thing you always cut is a stage action because you kind of want to get as much story by dialogue as you can. And it's, you know, little body language things are easy to cut. but like there's that moment that you just said with the hand on the on the fucking on the arm of the armrest but then there's also this moment where when Wesley sort of wakes up after dying and he sort of does the whole to the pain monologue yeah and then he scares the shit out of Humberding Humberding sort of sits in a chair and he sort of gathers his skirt around him yes he picks up his little skirt like he's sort of going a woman going down the steps in an old film yeah exactly it's like tiny little things that maybe they were scripted maybe they weren't but they just like really they make these hills sing they really make these hills sing and i just think again we've talked about this kind of living in the fairy tale tradition which is in some way like in some ways it does but in some ways actually in terms of plot it doesn't really because it's not forests and it's not grandmothers and it's not kind of like there are there aren't other than a farm boy and a farm girl there aren't like the common folk it's very much a story that takes place in grand halls and like in big adventure spaces but it also i think borrows a lot from this is super lame of me to know this but there we go from kind of like medieval literature oh go on go on just like treat me to your thoughts oh no we're going earlier my friend have you heard of the mort d 'arthur not really it's thomas mallory it's massive it's a real fucking time of a book again something I was forced to study at one point and it's absolutely legendary and it's not what you'd think it would be like when you hear Arthurian legend and you think that's up to me you imagine it's all just Prince Caspian it's rousing monologues and it's hawks it's basically a lot of the Princess Bride it'll be just some lads in the castle and a dead woman will float in on a boat and one will be like, is that...

1:14:57What's that? And the other one will be like, oh, yeah, I did date her and she got a bit too intense. I think she seems to have killed herself. And they're just like, oof, it's a shame, isn't it? And that's, like, the end of it. There's no, like... It isn't done in that kind of really overwrought, like, high-octane way. It's not done like an action movie. It's done like The Prince's Bride. It's just slightly camp, like, low-level dialogue and like bits of weird body humour. Wow. And I just think maybe there's time for medieval literature to have a renaissance. The only good example is A Knight's Tale, which did it so well.

1:15:33I love A Knight's Tale. I love A Knight's Tale. And they say that medieval fashion is coming back in a big way. Okay, so time for... I mean, they said this in the sort of early spring, that this summer would be filled with medieval fashion. What's medieval fashion? I think they were sort of working off kind of the Joan of Arc-y references that are making their way into runways. That it would filter down and sort of a romantic, almost like... Chainmail becomes accessible to all. And also like a lot of, I'm seeing a lot of sweeping floor length lacy vibes. Those really tall pointy cone hats. Oh, let's hope.

1:16:10That would be nice. And like, I've seen, I actually have seen that sort of... Embroidery. uh 70s fashion that was inspired by sort of medieval fashion of that time okay um because like the 70s is a lot when like a lot of medieval type of literature and like ursula leguin and all that kind of like what kind of like pre-raphaelite yes sort of like it filtered through the lens of romanticism yes filtered through 1970s bohemianism so it's kind of a bit like fairy tales coming at multiple removes exactly we've gone like Medi-Eve we've gone pre-Raphaelite we've gone 1970s I think we are supposed to be seeing a lot of like white lacy long dresses with like maybe a little bit of velvet embroidery we're already seeing a lot of embroidery this summer already oh so I think okay listen I'm keen I'm keen for that and I think this can be a princess bride summer we can all get back into like fun slightly camp slightly like underplayed dialogue I don't want to I don't want to see a group of superheroes destroying a city ever again I want to see two men talking lightly about torture chambers all summer long i want that's what i want well i hope that might be like that again that might be the offshoot of wicked because wicked has this like a very fairytale sensibility and a very dry sense of humor and like that could be sort of yeah i want i want things a bit smaller i want lightness of touch you know when people do that really annoying thing where um someone gets cancelled and they say well i never liked their shit anyway and it's like not enjoying the work of a predator does not make you a good person it's one of my worst things people say i hate it however i did when neil gaiman was cancelled i did take a special interest and i did look at a lot because i always thought he was a fucking hack oh now it all comes out now it comes out he had this way especially his children's books like stardust and stuff yeah too much which is just so this kind of version of the modern fairy tale that i find so hokey and annoying that like now usually in a story you might find that perhaps the seventh born son wouldn't blah blah blah blah and it's all like this very um smarmy look how much i've read vibe that is so you could confuse it for the princess bride but it's leagues apart in terms of its tone and sensibility.

1:18:37Yes. And I really don't like that. Like, I've seen so many kind of hokey versions of that as well, of like, this is a fairy tale, but it's not quite what you're expecting. The little pig is an accountant. You know what I mean? It's like, I don't know why it's such a fine line to tread with those modern fairy tale stories of like, what makes me icked out versus what really charms me. Well, as I say, I think it's that. I think it's that, like, the good ones go for a delicacy of touch. the smallest things are not the least marvellous and they follow yeah and they follow in that sort of like old tradition of it's not big writing it's not epic it's not it's Arthur and Lancelot having a little chat about the dead woman who just floats into their castle and then watching as she goes by yeah I think there's like this thing as well of I guess good writing as well is having ordinary people and having fantastic things happen to them and like there isn't like that scene where Wesley is climbing up and he's bartering with an ego and like well if I get you know if you throw me the rope you could let it go because you're trying to kill me and they're trying to sort of like I know they're being very pragmatic about what is in a very heightened situation and I think that is where the you know that's where the comedy comes from that's where the magic comes from as well you know because that's like that is every fairy tale but they're not like winking at the camera and saying like we all know what happens in fairy Of course, we've all done this before.

1:19:59And it's also just like, not everyone does know what happens in fairy tales. Yeah. I mean, obviously as an adult you probably do, but like kids don't. And you kind of, you owe them the honesty of just like telling them straight what the story and like, and then decide for themselves. Like the thing that's too annoying, that is annoying, but that kind of like winking, knowing things, it's like, well, we're all very clever here, aren't we? And we all know the traditions with which we play. And it's like, oh, oh, oh, oh. no like just what if you just told a story kind of straight and let the silliness of it come out on its own naturally I feel like I'm not quite expressing this well but I feel but I feel it you know I can't say it but I feel that there's something about this that's very precious and very true because it finds the fun in these stories but it never takes the piss out of them yeah I agree and that's also I think I think we'll find when we talk about Shrek and the four which I've not seen but there's a sort of like a really honest loving kind of tender care is given to something that is that has silliness baked into it and it's by letting the silliness by not trying to over explain the silliness or yeah because that's you know you'll be in a fairy you read a fairy tale and it'll just be like this is an Anjocata thing or she quotes someone else she says a fairy tale is where one king goes to another king to ask for a cup of sugar and it's like I don't know if she's quoting or if that's her own thing I love it, a fairy tale it's a story where one king goes to another king to borrow a cup of sugar just something that's so like big and small at the same time and so unlikely and yet so true I love that that's so beautiful it is it is nice do you have anything else to say about me?

1:21:46I think the one thing that I would say that I was really hit by yesterday when we watched it again and I hadn't realised was that kind of final moment. Yeah. That when the grandfather says to young Fred Savage, or they're talking, you know, they finish the book, and then... In the history of Kisses, there have been three truly great, truly perfect, truly meaningful. This one left them all behind. It's lovely. I love how this is... It really is marked on your soul. It is. I've seen it a lot. I think my equivalent is Robin Hood, Men in Tights, which is less heartfelt. Which we'll get to at some point.

1:22:22I think it's great you know we're much to do and less time to do it in we can say that about our films and that is from I wouldn't have been in the place but no it's the bit where he says you know you come read to me tomorrow and his grandfather says as you wish yeah and it's just like yes the things that are unsaid are the most powerful so true and this film doesn't say things too much it says things just right yeah that's such a beautiful moment where the grandfather is getting up and patting his pockets and like they've had this extraordinary ordinary afternoon and like they can't really talk about it and then all his granddad can say is like this little piece of language they've created together which is as you wish which is i love you and it's like i mean there's a reason that men will talk about this is the only like movie that men will like love that's a kind of a romance fairy tale called the princess bride and i do think it is a movie about men being in love with each other in like many different ways like fathers and sons, grandfathers and grandsons and friends and lovers.

1:23:25Brothers and lovers. And like men finding the language for how much they love each other. The way that like Fezzik and Inigo, the way they tell each other they love each other is through rhymes. And the way that they recognize love in others. That moment when Inigo hears Wesley screaming and goes, ah, that is the sound of a man whose love is marrying another. Yeah. And you're like, it's not that men like this emotional literacy. It's that they don't let themselves tap into it. Yeah. This is a film that's all about that and all about the male capacity for love and for depth and for care and the fact that it isn't always shouted in the same way as it might be with the women.

1:24:02Does it make it any less important? The Princess Bride. Really good. What a great film. Do you know what we haven't talked about either? Oh, God, what haven't we talked about? Boo! Boo! Boo! Bow down to her, queen of film! Queen of Phil She had love in her hands in the fire swamp I love it Yeah Also Miracle Max Billy Crystal I mean they're all just great moments I mean yeah The reason we haven't mentioned them is because they are great and we all know they're great We all know they're great I love Billy Crystal and Carol Kane You were shocked that it was Carol Kane Yeah so that is the third woman We've got Buttercup We've got Billy Crystal's wife We've got The Hag The Hag I mean what film is complete with her hag We've got the Mother Maiden Crone sort of vibe Oh Yeah it's kind of more two crones though yeah two crones and a maiden yeah but I love that I love that I don't think there's anything else I mean like you know what there's lots I could say about this film but I do feel like we've kind of said it I think we've said it all I think I think I think we've done it justice as best as two two rats of unusual size can just a pair of women in rat suits just doing our absolute best oh yeah I love that and like just to sort of finish off the end of the book um which is completely faded into the memory for me so the end of the book is um they uh you know they they get the white horses they escape Humperdinck they um they go they go off and they fly and then the way you know quote unquote Morgenstern ends the book is um you know and then like a quarter mile east uh you know of Fezzik's horse through a shoe and Inigo led them the wrong way and they could defeat they could hear Humboldt and gaining on them and there's this kind of idea that um uh and that that Goldman that sorry yeah Goldman that Goldman then says is being like oh Morgenstern was satirist and so he was writing this story I didn't realize this when I was a child but he was writing this story because he wanted to like take the piss out of his country and the political system and the unfairnesses of life but as like um as the book as the story points out many times life isn't fair but it's a lot fairer than death and i just think it's a beautiful way to end a book isn't that great oh i love william goleman i love him i'm gonna read that book again yeah and i'm gonna read adventures in the screen trade again which is um william goleman's memoir about all the movies he's made.

1:26:43It's really good. Nora Ephron makes a weird starring, like, like, like, cameo role. I love everybody involved in this movie. I love them all. Yeah. Every single one of them, a blessing upon them. I love you too. A little kiss on the forehead. Bye, everybody. Bye.

1:27:13Thank you.