Tom 0:00

William Goldman spent two decades as an Oscar winning screenwriter, only to write a novel claiming he was merely editing a one thousand page Florinese political satire written by a fictional guy named S. Morgenstern. Also, Rob Reiner could spend fourteen years convincing Hollywood that a movie with rat monsters, miracle men, and shrieking eels wasn't a box office death sentence. Because if there's one thing a medieval fairy tale needed, it was Carrie Elways getting knocked unconscious for real, Mandy Petinkin tearing a rib muscle from holding in his laughter at Billy Crystal.

Joe 0:55

And she was not having it. Um really? Yeah. Which daughter? Uh Fiona, my older one, my 13-year-old. Um she was starting to get interested a little bit. She liked the one character she liked the most was Vicini, and then he died, and she was she was out. She was out after that. She's like, Can I go? And we're like, no, let's sit and watch it.

Jen 1:18

Vicini.

Joe 1:19

Yeah. She's like, he's the only character that was like interesting. Okay.

Tom 1:24

All right.

Joe 1:25

And then she and then at the beginning of the movie, she thought that um Wes Wesley and Buttercup were brother and sister, or looked like brother and sister.

Jen 1:33

Oh, okay.

Joe 1:34

So then continued to refer to them as brother and sister throughout the movie.

Tom 1:38

That's that that would put a turn on the whole film. Yeah.

Joe 1:42

Yeah. Yeah. So that was an experience. Oh wow. Well, me and my wife were like, what are you talking about? This movie's great. Just watch it. And her being like, uh, do where can I go? Yeah. So I hope uh I don't know if either of you watched this with your kids, but not this time.

Tom 2:02

I watched it, I I watched it with my kids maybe like like six months ago. Maybe yeah, a little more, probably over the winter time uh we put it on. Um Thomas has liked it. He he really liked uh Teddy really liked uh Fred Savage.

Joe 2:16

Oh, really?

Tom 2:17

Yeah. Like he bought he he bought into the like that that's that's who he identified with as the kid, you know.

Joe 2:23

That makes sense. Yeah, that would make sense. The kid identifies with the kid. This is Shelf to Screen, the podcast, where we discuss sci-fi and fantasy literary adaptations to the big andor small screen. I'm Joe Rugan.

Jen 2:37

I'm Genisgro Montoya.

Tom 2:41

Oh, I forgot that we do this, bitch. I'm Tom Cocoza.

Joe 2:47

And in this episode, we're gonna be discussing the 1973 fantasy novel, The Princess Bride, S. Morganstore's classic tale of true love and high fantasy, and the iconic 1987 feature film directed by Rob Reiner. If you didn't already know by the title of this episode. Just wanted to get just wanted to clear that up for you.

Tom 3:06

Or the intro.

Joe 3:09

Uh all right, so let's start as we normally start. Uh, Tom, your first encounter with the material.

Tom 3:16

Oh, I saw this movie probably as soon as it went to video. I didn't see it in the theaters, but like 88, I would guess, somewhere around there. I grew up with it as like one of like the household's favorite films. And I read the book, I think for the first time, probably in high school, in which I I think I was kind of taken in the first time I read it, I believed the book. Oh, yes. You know what I mean? And we'll get into that more as we go forward. And then like I have found out after the fact, like uh the gimmick there. There it is.

Joe 3:49

Yeah. How about you, Jen?

Jen 3:51

Um, I don't remember the first time I saw it, but yeah, it's been a really long time. I must have been a kid when I first watched it. I definitely was a kid, and I have a story about why I know that. But uh yeah, I've seen the book a million tim seen the movie a million times, and uh had not read the book though until this past two weeks when I read it for this.

Joe 4:08

Well, wait, you said you had a sort of thing. So I knew uh You said you had a story and you're not gonna tell it.

Jen 4:13

I mean, I'll tell it, but it's regarding the very end like the last minute of the of the movie, which we always talk about at the beginning, so why not?

Joe 4:21

When the spoiling it for anybody's no, no, no.

Jen 4:25

Like the grandfather at the very end, he says, Will you come back and read it to me again tomorrow? And the grandfather says, as you wish, and kind of like winks or something. There's a Care Bears movie that I must have been watching around the same time, where which starts with a man, a cartoon man, obviously, reading a story to a bunch of kids in like an orphanage or something. And then at the end of the movie, you find out that that man is the kid in the care bear story that he was reading.

Joe 4:55

Oh, okay.

Jen 4:56

So I always, when I was a kid, uh kind of like equated these two things together and thought that by the grandfather saying as you wish, he was indicating to us that he is Wesley.

Joe 5:05

I, you know, watching it again, Jack.

Jen 5:08

I'm like, what it's like weird that he I kind of thought the same thing watching this movie again. And I'm like, I wonder if it's because those two movies were probably in my, you know, I was probably watching them around the same time, late 80s or something, and like I just was like, oh, well, this means that he's Wesley. But it doesn't make any sense when you think about it in two seconds.

Joe 5:26

It doesn't make any sense, but why wink when it's that why why say that and then wink Peter Fogg in the past?

Jen 5:32

I don't know if he actually winks or if he just like takes to the camera. I don't even remember, but he's just like I don't know, he's just using the line from the story. But to me, it was like, oh, he's Wesley.

Joe 5:41

Right, I don't think he does.

Jen 5:42

He grew up to be Wesley. Like what doesn't make any sense. Right.

Tom 5:45

I was just I agree first of all, a hundred percent you're not off base with thinking of that gen. No. Um but like I think if you think about if you think about your grandparents doing something like that, your grandparents are making a joke to you. They're not they're not indicating that they're secretly He's indicating okay, so it's more of a like as the audience, he's like, oh, yeah. I mean if if your grandmother or grandfather like read you a story or watched a movie with you, and then at the end of that, when you're sick, like, oh, can you watch tomorrow? And they quoted a line from that movie. They're not telling you they're secretly the character in the movie. They're just I they feel like they're just telling you, like, now we have an in joke.

Joe 6:25

Yeah, yeah.

Tom 6:26

Right. Yeah. Right. But I'm with you, Jen. Yeah. I'm with you too, Jen.

Joe 6:30

Because as I I when I watched it the other day, I thought exactly the same thing. I'm like, wait, is he trying to indicate that he's Wesley?

Tom 6:35

I think we can all agree that Carrie always in this film is going to grow into Peter Falk. I think that's the we probably have Carrie.

Jen 6:44

Carrie always now is probably close to the age that Peter Falk is in this.

Joe 6:48

And they're not the same. Peter Falk's aged up in this. He's he's not that old in this. Okay. I think they age him up a bit. I don't remember how old he is at the time of this movie, but I don't think he's as old as he looks. Tom's gonna look that up right now. Um, so my first encounter with this was the movie. I I don't even know if I knew this was a book until somewhat recently.

Tom 7:09

Yeah.

Joe 7:10

Um wow. But yeah, Jen, same as you. I think it was more of a TV, right? Like because this movie was in syndication, right? I mean, this movie, and we'll talk about it a little bit later, but this movie wasn't a huge box office success. It was a success, but not huge. It it really earned its uh keep in video rentals and sale, VHS sales and rentals and streaming and all of that, right? Because it's like cult classic that, you know, uh has continued to endure. But um yeah, I'm pretty sure this was on syndication or maybe it was on HBO a lot. I don't remember, but I remember watching this as a kid, you know, with my parents and my brother. And it's just got so many, as we go through it, you know, it's got so many quotable lines and memorable scenes in it.

Jen 7:54

I I forgot that Dan and I actually went to see this and he Carrie always was there. So we watched it and then he answered questions. Um and he had it was right when his book came out that he wrote about the making of this. I think the book's called As You Wish. But I forgot that was a couple of years ago we did that.

Joe 8:11

Oh, that's cool. That was fun. Yeah. Where did you go for where did where was that?

Jen 8:14

I think it was in Red Bank and the the Count Basie, I think.

Joe 8:17

Awesome.

Jen 8:18

Yeah, that was that sounds cool.

Joe 8:19

Oh, so do you do you have any?

Jen 8:21

Well, you if you have any No, I haven't I don't. I don't remember anything specific. Probably everything from his book is in our the research that we've done. Is Dan around? Is Dan?

Joe 8:31

Can Dan jump in and give us any insight?

Jen 8:33

I'll ask him. I'll ask him.

Tom 8:36

All right. Peter Falk was like I think around 58 when they filmed. He's 60 when the movie came out. Carry always is 63 now. So yeah, right around the same age.

Joe 8:45

Okay. But yeah, Peter Falk, he looks like he's in his 70s in this movie. He's supposed to be in his 70s. Yeah, they definitely age him up. Um, all right, so let's get into a little bit of background on this novel, right? So back in 1972, right? So William Goldman, he was already a massive Hollywood heavyweight, he won an Academy Award for Butch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Had no idea that he wrote that. Uh but one evening he asked his two young daughters, aged seven and four, what his next book should be about. One said a princess, the other one said a bride. So Goldman decided to combine those two requests into a single story, The Princess Bride. Uh he started world building with deliberate fairy tale absurdity, naming the rival kingdoms Florin and Gilder after real historical European gold coins from uh Florence and the Netherlands. But after writing a brilliant 20-page opening chapter introducing Buttercup, Goldman hit a wall. Uh he had a catastrophic catastrophic writer's block on chapter two, which was to be about Prince Humper Digg. So, how did he break his writer's block? So he devised an absolute master stroke, some might say, of literary satire. He invented a fictional author named S. Morgenstern. Um, when Goldman published the book in 1973, he didn't present it as an original novel. The title page read, as I said before, The Princess Bride, S. Morgenstern's classic tale of true love and high adventure, the good parts version, which really confused me when I was looking, trying to find an audiobook, because there is a good parts version with Rob Reiner that's only like two plus hours. And I'm like, there's no way an almost 400-page book can be read in two hours. So I was very confused about that. And I was like, this can't be right. So what's that about, right? In a sprawling, completely fabricated intro, Goldman claimed that Morgan Stern was a legendary 19th-century Florinese satirist who wrote a dry, 1,000-page historic epic. Goldman claimed that when he was 10 years old and sick with pneumonia, which is kind of brought into the movie, uh, his father, a European immigrant, read Morgan Stern's epic aloud to him. Decades later, Goldman said when he tracked down a copy for his son's birthday, only to discover the original text had 50 endless pages of royal court nonsense, uh, diplomatic land taxes, noblemen's packing luggage, luggage, all that royal court etiquette, all that joke. So the joke was that framing the device was uh that Goldman's father had secretly skipped all of the boring stuff only to read the good parts the fencing, the fighting, the giants, monsters, true love, all of that. Um, hence the good parts. So in the book, he has a son, right? Right, right. So I I think Tom I had asked, we we had discussed this a little bit just just because I asked the question, because it starts off with like William Goldman's writing about himself, and he's got he's talking about like he's in he's in LA and then he goes home and his wife and his son, and I'm like, there's no way this could be true because he's speaking so poorly of his family.

Jen 11:58

I was like, I I'm so glad that it's that that part isn't true because I actually hate that guy. Yeah, well, because he's thinking about the whole beginning, right? He's like hitting on a woman at the pool and his wife's horrible, his son's fat and gross and annoying. And I'm just like, what is this? Is this true? So he didn't is any of this true? Like, I hate this person.

Joe 12:22

He didn't have a cold psych uh psychiatrist wife named Helen. That never existed, right? He has daughters.

Jen 12:28

Why would he write that? Why would he make himself so terrible?

Tom 12:32

Because I think that's that's funny to him is that he's a Hollywood douchebag. Is like it's like a funny gimmick. I don't know. Gobin II had had written I think at this point, he had written at least one, if not two, like non-fiction books about like his experiences in Hollywood. And so like I think there's like a he had a little bit of a literary reputation as like a truth teller for like what Hollywood is really like. Okay. And I think setting this up in the tone of like everyone in Hollywood is a D-bag is is.

Jen 13:07

Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

Joe 13:08

Yeah. I and I think this is how he worked through his writer's block. This is this is what helped him to work through that that block. So he probably just went off on this, and it it kind of helped him break that. And so Goldman didn't have a son, right? He didn't have a wife that was a psychiatrist. The whole thing was an elaborate metafictional hoax designed to let Goldman skip through the high tempo adventure, to skip to the high tempo adventure while inserting his own commentary on how life is unfair. Uh and readers fell for it by the thousands when the book hit shelves in 1973. Uh Harcourt, Brace, and Goldman were flooded with letters from fans asking where they could order the full unabridged 1,000 Florinese manuscript. And so, which I think that's also brilliant because it's not a real country.

Tom 13:58

Like, how do people people don't know anything? People are dumb. And like they they had a gimmick going for a really long time about how S. Morgenstern was suing the publishing house. And so when people requested it, they would have a form letter back saying that the the rights to the original book were tied up in in leak in like lawsuits, yeah. They wouldn't give up that it was a fake.

Joe 14:22

They would just say, oh yeah, Morganstern was upset with this with like it, or this was this was published without his approval, so he was suing them. Yeah, there's a whole I mean it's it's it's a great idea, too. I mean, this is kind of like right, the the Blair Witch project, right? It's a similar thing where you, you know, the the the public isn't sure if this is real or not. Um and that's part of the gimmick that draws the attention to it. I feel like if I don't know if this could be done today because of social media, and you know, I don't know if it could, but I feel like if you kind of hit that point right when the internet was starting to get popular, something like this would have probably blown up like crazy because there would have been a lot more speculation because of social media, but not as I don't know, not as easily confirmable.

Tom 15:13

Yeah. Yeah. You could have you could have seeded web pages like about the original thing and like references to other stuff. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it would have been fun.

Jen 15:25

Dan has two stories that he remembers. He's gonna type them out. So once I've done them, I'll read, I'll read them to you later. I okay I vaguely remember like one of them, but yeah, he's gonna he'll send them to me and I'll read them before we finish the show.

Joe 15:37

Okay, awesome. All right, so getting this to uh to made into movie, right? So you have a best-selling fantasy novel written by an Oscar-winning screenwriter. You'd think this would be a no-brainer, Hollywood would fast track it to theaters. Nope. 14 years it took to get this made. Uh, 20th Century Fox bought the film rights right away in 1973, attaching director Richard Lester. But there was executive turnover over at Fox. Um, the head of production was fired, new regime shelved the project, and the rights got trapped in corporate limbo. I feel like we've heard the story before. Uh most authors would just sit back and cash their option checks, not William Goldman. He was so passionate about this project uh and protecting the integrity of the story that he spent $150,000 of his own money to buy the rights to the film back.

Tom 16:31

Oh, wow.

Joe 16:32

Yes.

Jen 16:33

Good.

Joe 16:34

Yeah.

Jen 16:34

Yes. Everything happens for a reason.

Joe 16:37

Yeah. That's wild. Uh over the next decade, Who's Who of Cinema tried to crack it. Directors like Norman Jewison, John Borman, and Francois Truffant expressed interest. Uh Robert Redford even circled playing Wesley at one point.

Jen 16:54

No.

Joe 16:54

I don't know about that. I don't know if he could get the comedy parts right.

Tom 17:01

I don't yeah, I I I love Robert Redford, and I think Robert Redford could be funny. Like I think, whatever. Not this kind of funny though. Not this kind of funny. I don't know if I I don't know if I could believe Robert Redford could sword fight. I don't know. I can't. You know what I mean? Yeah, I he doesn't seem like a swashbuckling kind of a guy to me.

Joe 17:21

Yeah, but nobody could figure out how to balance the book's dry satirical framing with its sincere romantic core, and no students studios wanted to risk a big budget on a fantasy comedy. That's fair.

Tom 17:34

That's fair.

Joe 17:34

Uh the breakthrough came in the mid-1980s with Rob Reiner. Reiner had been obsessed with the book since his 20s after proving he after proving he could handle ensemble satire with Spinal Tap, uh, and emotional nostalgia with Stand By Me. Reiner approached Goldman. I think there's a story where like Carl Reiner had bought this book for Rob Reiner and he became obsessed with it and really loved it. So Reiner approached Goldman. Goldman finally felt he found a director who understood the tone. There was one problem still, Legacy Studios still refused to green light it. Enter Norman Lear, who is a TV legend, who's he's the one who produced All in the Family. So he's got the connection there to Rob Reiner. Uh, he believed in Rob Rob Rob Reiner's vision so deeply that he personally financed the entire 16 million budget through his company, Act Three Communications, uh, keeping 20th Century Fox strictly as a distributor. And for the first time in 14 years, Goldman and Reiner had total creative freedom.

Tom 18:35

And the rest the budget for this movie, by the way, 16 million dollars.

Joe 18:39

Yeah.

Tom 18:40

Like that's ridiculously low. This movie looks a lot more expensive than that. Understandably, it's you know, close to 40 years ago, but still.

Joe 18:48

If you think about it, the the movie kind of feels small in scope, right? The only time you see a lot of people is the the scenes when they're introducing Buttercup as the princess and then Buttercup as the bride, right? Those are the only real scenes where there's a lot of people in it. That's true.

Jen 19:07

Most of the time there's only a f no more than like ten people on well, they have like the uh like the thieves quarter, that part, or the guys out like when they pull up and all the guys are standing outside the door, but it's still not that many.

Joe 19:20

Yeah. And every a lot of this is filmed on set, you can tell.

Tom 19:25

Yes. Yes.

Joe 19:26

Um there's not really any special effects.

Tom 19:31

Yeah, the Holocaust cloak, I guess.

Joe 19:33

I mean, well, I'm sorry. There's no there's no real like well, there really isn't CGI at this point, right?

Jen 19:38

Yeah.

Tom 19:38

Yeah, there's I it's it's it's it's not that it looks expensive, I would say. Like it's not like you know, uh like you said, there the scene that we have behind us, right, is is them on top. You can tell it's a set that they're on top of the cliff. They didn't go to a top of a real cliff and there's no like camera sh helicopter camera shots or whatever. Yeah. Um I think like it just it seems like uh a lot of other films would find a an easy way to waste that money. And this is just like every dollar of it, I think, is is recognized.

Joe 20:13

Yeah, and I mean the I mean, look at the cast, right? Nobody in this cast is like a superstar. I mean, Billy Crystal's probably the biggest name in this movie. Um Carrie Elwest is really nobody. Robin Wright is nobody.

Tom 20:28

Yeah.

Joe 20:28

I mean, Mandy Petenkin's been around for a bit, but he's not like Broadway.

Tom 20:32

He's good.

Joe 20:32

Yeah, he's not a Broadway star. He's not a movie star. Chris Sarandon, he's been in some movies, but yeah.

Jen 20:39

Uh Peter Falk again, but they're like Peter Falk is probably the second biggest yeah. And Fred Savage.

Joe 20:44

Well, this was it before Wonder Years? Was this during Wonder Years or it might have been during.

Tom 20:50

I think I I don't know if he had been in Wonder Years when he was filming this, but I think Wonder Years was out.

Joe 20:54

No, Wonder Years came out in '88 after this. So Wonder Years was right after this. He was in the boy who could fly was the was before this.

Tom 21:03

Um yeah, you have, I mean, you have people like you have like like I said, like Chris Randon and Christopher Guest and Carol Kane, like there's people who were names, Andre the Giant. Yeah, you know, but none of these people are demanding salaries, you know, big salaries. Yeah.

Joe 21:18

Yeah. So I guess so I'm sure like nobody had a yeah, nobody was getting paid millions and millions of dollars to be in this movie. So I'm sure most of this went to the set costuming.

Tom 21:28

Yeah. Uh Rauer in our Discord chat just goes, Andre was the biggest star. And that's true. He's the biggest everything. Yes.

Joe 21:37

He was the biggest star in this movie. He's great in this movie.

Tom 21:40

He is terrific in this film.

Joe 21:41

I love it.

Jen 21:41

You want to hear one of the stories? Because it's about Andre. Okay, go for it. When they were filming one scene, I think it was the scene where Wesley's knocked out, and an ego and Fezek are dragging him to the castle. They were talking about something in between takes. Andre lets out a huge, loud 30-second fart. There was no way. Everyone there. Didn't hear it. Rob Rider goes, You okay, Andre? And he goes, I am now, boss. I'll save the other one.

Joe 22:12

What does an Andre the Giant fart sound like?

Jen 22:15

30 seconds long? I would imagine like an earthquake tremor, like something like that. Oh my god. It is amazing.

Joe 22:25

Oh, that is amazing. Um, I love him in this movie. He's probably one of my favorite characters. He is in this, but um so alright. So let's get a little bit you want to get a little bit into the movie itself?

Jen 22:40

Sure. Sure.

Joe 22:41

Well, I want to talk about a couple of things before we get to the start. Sorry, before we get to the start of this movie. So, like some of the differences, because this this is a ri pretty faithful adaptation. Um, what's cut is stuff that you can easily see. Like after reading the book, I'm like, okay, I understand why they cut this. I understand why that I don't think there's anything in here that I'm like, oh, why did they cut that?

Tom 23:04

Right.

Joe 23:05

Um I there was only like one question I had, right? Because as to why they changed it. And I don't right. So when when they're on the ship, right after they've after they've kidnapped the princess, right? The three, the three guys, she jumps into the water and there's shrieking eels. Isn't it a sharks in the book?

Jen 23:26

Yeah, but they mentioned the shrieking eels at another point, so maybe they thought that was oh okay. Okay, I don't know, or something that they a way to get the shrieking eels mentioned.

Joe 23:35

Okay. Because I was like, why did they change that? I couldn't, I didn't know why they changed that. I thought that was weird. Um, but other than that, I was like, everything makes sense in this, this um in the changes they made. I do I was surprised at the background that they go into, like we get flashbacks with Inigo and uh Fezic, which I thought was really cool and gave you a lot more background on their characters, and you get a bunch of that, right? Because Inigo tell basically tells that story, right? Yeah, he cuts it down. Yeah, he tell yeah, he tells you the whole yeah, uh the abridged version. And then Fezic, you don't really get you don't get any of his background, which was that's kind of a little upset about. Like I feel like they kind of shortchanged Andre a little bit because you didn't get any of his background.

Tom 24:17

Yeah, uh they that the Vizini found him unemployed in Greenland. That's all you get.

Joe 24:22

Like, yeah, you don't get about his family and him being a wrestler or uh that he's Turk, that he's uh Turkish.

Jen 24:30

Turkish, yeah. Well, he's just using his regular accent, which is French, yeah.

Joe 24:35

He could have made him say he's French or whatever. He's coming from anywhere.

Tom 24:39

Yeah, like his voice is so it's so deep, yeah, it's almost distorted. Yeah. He mentions, he does mention in the fight with Wesley in the movie, like that he was wrestling for money, and that he used to be at the at like towards the end, he was wrestling a lot of people at the same time.

Joe 24:56

Yeah, yeah.

Tom 24:56

Yeah, so he's not used to fighting one guy.

Joe 24:58

Yeah, he does, he does.

Tom 25:01

But you get a little you get like little tiny snippets of it.

Joe 25:04

Yeah. And then, I mean, we're jumping ahead, but I'm just going into some of the differences that I can think of off the top of my head, those two backgrounds. The other one is they change the zoo of death to the pit of despair, and they don't go into the details of the zoo, and I guess maybe that's why they don't want to, they just don't have time for that. And then they cut out the cut out the whole thing. Of yeah, Anigo and Fezzick going through the different levels of the zoo to get to Wesley.

Tom 25:33

Yeah, it's I would say when they adapt it into the film, right, the movie is about Wesley and Buttercup only, right? And Fezick and and and so like all the characters on screen exist to tell Wesley and Buttercup's story. Right? So like I don't want to see too much of their side adventures unless their side adventure is about how to get them back into the main storyline. Yeah.

Joe 25:55

I agree with that, but I have a feeling that most people if you ask people like who their favorite characters are in this movie, of course, most of them are gonna say an ego, physic.

Jen 26:05

Not Humperdink.

Joe 26:07

Not Humperdink.

Jen 26:08

That's what the whole zoo of death is about how he's like likes to hunt and kill animals and things.

Joe 26:14

Yeah.

Jen 26:14

How he's the greatest levels and they're separated into, you know, categories of we don't really need any of that.

Joe 26:21

No, I agree. Like I said, I agree.

Jen 26:23

Um and they they they had the um he rides four separate white horses and he'll like switch in between each one. So they had those they brought those four white horses in at the end, but it wasn't like explained that those are like his four white horses that he rides.

Joe 26:38

Yeah, because he wasn't riding them in any other part of the movie. I noticed that. Yeah, I noticed that he didn't have the white horses then, but I do remember them at the end.

Jen 26:46

There's the one part where he jumps onto the horse. Like, isn't that painful? He jumps and just like lands on the horse and starts riding. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I would think that would be painful. Yeah, I don't know.

Tom 26:58

I don't know.

Jen 26:59

Maybe.

Joe 26:59

Uh yeah, he probably wears that. Or maybe he just has no dick.

Jen 27:03

Probably.

Joe 27:05

It's this man has no features. I was very intrigued though, because when at the very beginning of the book, they talk about the zoo of they mention the zoo of death, and I'm like, zoo of death. I was like, I don't remember a zoo of death in the movie. What's the zoo of death about? And it got me really intrigued about it.

Tom 27:25

Good tease. Good tease.

Joe 27:27

Yeah, he teases it in the beginning of the book. Um, I was like, oh, they definitely cut this from the movie. I'm pretty sure about that. Um so all right, let's get into the movie. I didn't take many notes because I was watching this with my family, so I kind of got wrapped up in that. But right, the it the movie opens with Fred Savage, right, and Peter Falk, the grandfather and grandson dynamic, and the little um I like this, I like this idea because it paralleled my own situation that I was going through at that time, except my daughter was older and was not having any of it, didn't get interested. Like I was I was hoping she would be the Fred Savage and become intrigued with the story and encapsulated by it, but she was not. But I like the idea of like a reluctant kid not wanting to hear the story and then becoming you know, really uh uh what's it called?

Tom 28:19

Infatuated. I don't know.

Joe 28:20

Infatuated, I guess, with it. Enthralled, enthralled, all those N-words. Um so I like that idea. It's a great idea because I think everyone can relate to that.

Tom 28:33

Yeah. Yeah, I can um I guess I Toy Story 5 came out, you know, uh this summer, and and my kids love that movie. I think we've seen it like six times. Um and that's a lot of that movie is about like as kids get interested in technology, they stop playing with toys and they stop using their imagination as much or whatever. And that's like in 1987, like it's starting out like that, where he's like playing a video game and he doesn't want to like you know, that's that's what the kids like to do nowadays. And then like he doesn't want to so I agree with you. I thought it was I thought it had a resonance that you wouldn't think a 1987 movie would have like modern kids.

Joe 29:14

Yeah. Are they playing Bases Loaded? Is that the game he's playing?

Tom 29:18

I don't remember. I usually actually know that just as like a trivia thing.

Joe 29:22

Yeah. Um so I like that dynamic because I think it's something. Hardball. Oh, hardball, that's the one. Yeah, hardball. Those all those uh Nintendo baseball games, uh RBI, bases loaded.

Tom 29:35

Big fan of uh RBI baseball if you're on the show.

Joe 29:40

Yeah, go for it, John. Uh great music.

Jen 29:51

We're gonna get it. We're gonna get it.

Joe 29:53

Speaking of music. Yeah. Speaking of music, y'all know who did the music for this.

Tom 30:03

Yeah, Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits, right?

Joe 30:06

Yes. And he has that amazing song at the end that he wrote for this.

Jen 30:11

Oh, yeah. Storybook story. Is it amazing?

Joe 30:15

No.

Jen 30:16

The words are terrible. The music's okay, music's fine. But I was reading the lyrics because I had the closed caption on. I'm like, what the hell is this song?

Joe 30:25

Do you have the lyrics in front of you?

Jen 30:27

I don't, but maybe I can find them. Hold on. Wait.

Joe 30:29

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Uh my wife was like, my wife's like, oh, is this to have that song by the Tom Waits song? And I was like, I don't think it's Tom Waits, I think it's Mark Moffat. She's like, Okay, she's like, oh yeah, wait till it comes up. The lyrics are great. Oh, you have them?

Jen 30:41

Come come, my love, I'll tell you a tale of a boy and girl and their love story, and how he loved her, oh so much, and all the charm she did possess. Now, this did happen once upon a time when things were not so complex. How he worshipped the ground she walked, and when he looked in her eyes, he became obsessed. It's very weird.

Tom 31:02

But yeah, that's I mean, did he rhyme complex and obsessed?

Jen 31:07

No, he wrote p r rhymes possess and maybe complex also. I don't know. My love is like a storybook story, but it's as real as the feelings I feel. Really, it's just dumb when you hear it being sung. Because it's so it's so dramatically performed, and the words are just like very simple. Yeah, I don't know. The music is good though. I like the music.

Joe 31:28

Yeah. It's it, yeah, it's not it seems like he put he wrote the lyrics in like 10 minutes. That's what it feels like. Sorry, Mark Knoffla, love you, but yeah, not a great song. Uh, but I guess he did the music for the whole movie.

Tom 31:42

Yes.

Jen 31:43

Yeah, the music's good.

Joe 31:44

Yeah. I didn't know.

Tom 31:45

He did the score, yeah.

Jen 31:46

Yeah.

Joe 31:47

Yeah. But that's like the main, that's like the uh buttercup and Wesley theme throughout the movie. But yeah, all right. Getting back to the beginning of this movie, right? So uh we get into the story, right? He starts talking about the grandfather gets in the story, right? This this movie's got interruptions that go from the story back to uh the grandfather telling his grandson the story, which I think are fun. They're good little interruptions. I think it helps to keep like uh Goldman's you know novel, you know, how he interrupts the novel to kind of make points about what Morgan Stern had here and how he's skipping parts and things like that. Um but I I did want to ask a question before we even go any further. Because we talked about this when we when we did Stardust.

Jen 32:37

Okay.

Joe 32:38

And the the the movie's clearly a family movie.

Jen 32:41

Yeah.

Joe 32:42

Yes. But the book is not really right. Who is the book for?

Tom 32:48

Well, okay. So the book uses we talked about this a little bit when we were talking about about as we were reading through it, right? The book has like some racial epithets and things of that nature. It wouldn't necessarily be a bright. I think I I hate to say it, but like the 1970s was a different time where like that was not like you could say that on a network television show, right? All in the family. We mentioned that before. Like RG Bunker would use those words and it would be like, oh, he's a funny racist. So I don't think like that's exclusive of being uh an all-ages uh story in 1973. So I do think it's like he's an adult writing for adults, but this is like supposed to be an all-ages book, I would say.

Joe 33:33

But all right, my one.

Jen 33:34

I don't think the the beginning is for all ages. Maybe the story is for all ages. Yeah. Like the Princess Bride's story that he's reading is for all ages.

Joe 33:43

Yeah, but the book I I agree, Jen, because in the beginning he's talking about potentially cheating on his wife.

Tom 33:49

Yeah, I don't think I think I don't think like if you're gonna if you're gonna, as an adult, read this book and go, I want to share this with my kids, you're not gonna read the the book, the opening, you're gonna read the story.

Jen 33:59

And you wouldn't read like the asides either. I guess you would only read the part that he's reading to his, you know, the part that he abridged. That's what you would read to your kids.

Joe 34:08

So is this so the target audience is for parents, and then they could read their version of it to the children.

Jen 34:16

Yes, don't hand the book to your kids. Just read from it.

Tom 34:22

I don't know.

Joe 34:23

I was thinking about that when I was reading the begin uh just right at the beginning. I'm like, this book isn't for children.

Tom 34:28

Yeah, I know.

Joe 34:29

It's not even really for teenagers, I would say. Like, well, I don't know why teenagers would want to read this book, but yeah, I I thought about that. The audience for this book, who is it? Um But I guess, yeah, it's for parents.

Jen 34:41

I mean, I guess any adult, but parents I I even think the book is uh the movie is good for kids, obviously, because we all watched it when we were kids, but there's definitely stuff that you pick up on as you get older that didn't affect you the same way, I think, when you were watching it as a kid. Like it was no big deal. And then there's certain scenes now that I'm like, oh, that's really good. Like I didn't get the emotional weight behind what was happening when I was like, oh, princess story, you know, whatever it is.

Joe 35:09

Yeah, I think I I always hearken back to uh the Ghostbusters in the scene where Dan Aykroyd's sleeping and he's Yes.

Jen 35:20

Harken back to it.

Joe 35:21

The ghost is floating over him and unzips his pants. And as a kid, you're just like, oh, that's silly. What's going on? And then when you get become older, you realize, oh, he just got a blowjob from a ghost.

Jen 35:32

Yeah. We were talking about that, I think last time we were hanging out at one of our friends' house, and our friend Vinny was like saying that happened. I'm like, but you don't see it. Like, I wouldn't not let a kid watch Ghostbusters because of that. And he's like, No, he gets a blowjob from a ghost. I'm like, he does, but like you don't know that unless you know. You're not like a kid watching it does, right? Like just what you said, doesn't have any idea what's going on there. It's not like there's no there's no like yeah.

Tom 35:59

There's no if you don't have context for what he's doing, there's no it doesn't give you context. Right.

Joe 36:04

Yeah.

Tom 36:04

Um yeah, I think there like I remember as you know, watching it as I got older, just a bunch of stuff in the movie that like as a kid you just gloss over, like you're in the story, and then you're like you pick up on more and more things. Um the rewatchability of it.

Joe 36:21

Yeah. Plus, I think that you would that movie would be on like regular TV, right? So they would cut. I don't remember if they cut that part, they might cut that part shorter.

Jen 36:29

You talk about Ghostbusters now? Oh, Ghostbusters. Yeah, we're talking Ghostbusters, yeah.

Joe 36:33

We're still talking Ghostbusters. I I think they might cut that part a little shorter.

Jen 36:36

Yeah, well, it's like a montage, so you could edit it out easier.

Joe 36:39

Yeah, yeah. So maybe you don't see it as much, but um, yeah, that's what I kind of always hearken back to. Like things when you were you saw when you were a kid that you're like when you were an adult, you're like, oh.

Jen 36:49

Yeah. I didn't know what that was back then, but now it's not even Yeah, that, but also like just I'll just bring it up now. Like the the scene where um Anigo's trying to get through the door to chase after Count Rugan and he can't get through, and he's calling for Fezick to like help him break the door down. Yeah. I just think his acting in that is so he's I don't know. I just love that moment when he's like screaming and trying to get through the door. And like I don't know, and even reading it in the book, it says like an ego yelled or whatever, but like you don't get it. This is like his last chance, his whole life is like this moment.

Joe 37:21

Yeah.

Jen 37:22

And it's just like so well done.

Joe 37:23

Yeah. Um, so back to the you want to say something, Tom?

Jen 37:28

No, no, no, no.

Joe 37:28

I'll wait till we get to the point. So where do we so we go from introduction to Princess Butter, well, to Buttercup and Wesley, the whole as you wish um scene. So this has changed.

Jen 37:42

Yeah.

Joe 37:43

In the sense of, right? And I get I get they cut out the whole part with like uh Count Count Rugen showing up and when he first meets her, and that that's how like, right, you don't necessarily need that part, but they dramatically changed the departure of Wesley in the movie from the story, right? Because in the movie, uh in the story, in the book, there's much more uh dramatic, right? So like he loves her, but she doesn't realize it, and then she does realize it. Um, and then she but she turns him away, and then he's like, I'm I'm leaving then, right?

Jen 38:21

It they kind of part on much on not good terms in the No, I thought she I thought she went to him, she said that she loved him, and then he didn't say anything, so she thought he didn't, and then he because he was just like shocked, I guess. And then he came to her and told her that he loved her, but now that they love each other, he has to go away to make some more money or something. I thought that's what it was. Do you think am I misremembering that?

Joe 38:46

Wha why do I think that in the book he there is like mis there is misunderstanding happening, and I thought that after at one point there they have a falling out and then he leaves. But it's like under it's it's under the premise of a misunderstanding.

Jen 39:01

I don't think so.

Joe 39:02

Am I misremembering this?

Jen 39:03

Because she's like a very upset the same way when he die when he dies and she gets rid of it and everything.

Tom 39:08

I think that's true, but you know, I do I don't think like in the movie it's like we love each other, I need to go make money so that we can live together. And I think he leaves. I agree with Joe. I my memory of reading the book is that he leaves because he thinks like we're not gonna be together, and I can't like live Oh, I don't remember. Like I just can't live with seeing you and not being with you. Yeah. And then she's she's she's distraught because the emotions are real.

Jen 39:31

Yeah, I don't I I don't really like her in the book. I don't know if like I don't know. I don't know if it's everything that they cut out that makes her like a better, nicer. I think she's I just don't really think she's a likable character in the book.

Joe 39:47

I I you're right.

Jen 39:49

And also I think that they make Wesley speak less in the movie so that maybe you would be tricked into really not knowing that. He really does he has like one line in the beginning. He says as you wish, and then he says like one other thing when they're saying goodbye to each other, and like that's really it. He doesn't really talk very much.

Tom 40:08

Yes.

Joe 40:09

No, he doesn't. Um But you're right about about Buttercup in the book. She's not a very like endearing character. I don't think you really connect anyone. She's not the character I think that most people would connect with. And I don't know if that's just a failing of Goldman's writing.

Jen 40:26

Yeah, I think it might be. Or he's just not But he also wrote the He wrote the script, but also you have like a woman there to bring life to the character, yeah, and make it like a little softer than some of the stuff she does and says in the in the book. I'm just like, what is wrong with you? I don't know. Like there's a the I'll there's a part I'm thinking of that I'm gonna be able to do it.

Joe 40:47

She's also portrayed as kind of dumb in the book.

Jen 40:50

Yeah, and everyone is like a little meaner to each other in the like Wesie's like a little meaner to her, even in in the second even when it comes back, like he actually slaps her.

Joe 41:01

Yes, he slaps her in the book in the movie. They're like, I don't think you should slap her. You should just threaten to slap her.

Jen 41:06

Yeah, like I there's a couple of po there's other parts where he's like yelling at her or says something to her, and are we supposed to just be like, oh well, she's a woman, so she'll just take it and I don't know.

Joe 41:16

It's just I I wonder if so there's my thought, right? There's two two ways you could go with this. One, Goldman was a bit misogynist, or two, it is a satire, and he's trying to make fun of like this is how like you said, Tom, right? Hollywood, it's kind of like this is how we we treat women, and he's trying trying to like make a point here.

Jen 41:38

I didn't pick up on that.

Tom 41:40

Yeah, I I don't I don't know enough about Goldman as a person to know whether that that's true or not. I think I think and everything I've read about like the critical analysis of of of the story is that the satire is very pointed, so I'd like to give him credit that he's he's mocking that convention. But he also thinks it's funny that his you know to to have the the to change his life so that like he's a jerk and his wife's a like I so I don't know.

Joe 42:10

Like it's like it's or is he saying Morgan Stern's the one who's misogynist?

Jen 42:14

Right. Well he's good. He's yeah.

Tom 42:17

Right.

Jen 42:17

I don't know.

Joe 42:18

Uh yeah, I don't know. I didn't I didn't think that deep about it, but we could probably go down a rabbit hole here.

Tom 42:23

Um I just I I was just looking while we were while we were talking about that. I think Jen has the right of it, Joe, and we're both wrong in that. Like it doesn't yeah, it doesn't look like that. What what happens is like after after he leaves, she starts like focusing on looking prettier and prettier. There's not a she's just more self-involved, I would say. And then she finds out that he's dead and she's sad, and then I guess her grief makes her even more beautiful.

Joe 42:50

Well, yeah, there's the whole there's the whole thing they go into detail about the the prettiest, right? Yeah, women alive or whatever, and like she's she starts out at like number twelve and then she slowly moves up the ladder during at the beginning of the story to like um yeah, they cut all that out, which is fine.

Jen 43:08

Um yeah, there's the whole scale of the I mean they're both very, very beautiful people. Like she's beautiful in this, she really is. Yes, she's like a normal person beautiful. Yes, I don't know, like like I don't know. I don't I'm I don't mean that as an insult. I mean she just like looks like a very pretty girl that you would know.

Tom 43:29

She doesn't look like like a Hollywood made up. But that's yeah he's ridiculously beautiful.

Jen 43:36

Yeah, he is. They both yeah, they look I mean they do look alike. She was right. They got they have the same look. The blonde hair. No?

Joe 43:42

My daughter was not didn't find him attractive. My wife was not happy about that.

Tom 43:47

Definitely a more uh more uh count humperding.

Joe 43:51

Pro probably probably a more of a Humperdink, Prince Humperdink.

Jen 43:56

Sorry, yeah, no.

Tom 43:58

Christian Brandon's a good looking

Jen 44:01

It's the hair. I have to see him without the hair.

Tom 44:03

Oh, yeah, yeah. I don't know. I think that's his hair. Every movie I remember him being in, he's got like shoulder length-ish curly hair.

Jen 44:13

He's also Jack Skellington, the voice of the non the non-singing voice of the thing.

Joe 44:20

Oh, they had two different voices?

Jen 44:22

Yeah, Danny Elfman sings.

Joe 44:23

It sounds exactly like him. It's crazy.

Jen 44:26

Like mostly singing, I feel like. It's like morality that he's gonna be.

Tom 44:31

Oh yeah, Danny Elfman was the um the lead singer of Oingo Boingo.

Jen 44:35

Was he?

Tom 44:36

Yeah, before he became a uh uh composer, yeah.

Joe 44:41

I didn't know that. All right, there's your fact for the day. Um so so Wesley's presumed dead, right? He's attacked, his ship's attacked by the dread pirate Roberts, and everybody knows the dread pirate Roberts doesn't take prisoners or leaves no survivors. Although, how do people know that? Because no well, I guess because nobody survives, right?

Jen 45:04

Nobody comes back.

Joe 45:05

Nobody comes back. Um but I guess then how do they know it was the dread pirate Roberts?

Jen 45:10

How many people has Wesley killed as the Dread Pirate Roberts before he comes back?

Tom 45:14

A lot of people.

Jen 45:16

We just walked right over that.

Joe 45:19

Well, pirates are good, you know. There's that, you know, like there's a lot of stories where pirates are good, right?

Jen 45:24

I know, but like there's a rumor that he le I mean, I they make it funny that's it.

Tom 45:28

He's been the dread pirate Roberts for years.

Jen 45:30

They they make it that like what's you know, the Dread Pirate Roberts really isn't mean, you know, when he switches to the next guy. But like when they're being the Dread Pirate Roberts, supposedly they're like taking all these ships and killing all these people.

Joe 45:43

Yes.

Jen 45:44

No big deal.

Joe 45:45

No. That's fine. You're still a good person. If you didn't personally slaughter those people, they were slaughtered under your uh in your command.

Jen 45:55

Yes.

Joe 45:56

So good.

Jen 45:57

Okay.

Joe 45:58

Yes, Wesley's a horrible person. He's a pirate who kills thousands of people and slaps a woman in the face. In the well, in the face.

Jen 46:08

In the book.

Joe 46:09

In the book, he slaps her.

Tom 46:10

In the movie, he implies kills thousands of people. Right.

Joe 46:14

Yeah.

Tom 46:15

Yeah.

Joe 46:15

But we'll just we don't need to talk about that because it's not important.

Jen 46:18

No, he's very handsome.

Joe 46:20

He's very handsome. And he's very clever.

Tom 46:22

True love, Joe, is the only thing.

Joe 46:24

Strong, very clever, very talented, very handsome. People will do for true love. Uh all in May and Ave. Lave. In the name of love. Just like just like Bono said.

Jen 46:37

Yes.

Joe 46:39

Um, all right. So she's she's distraught, so she decides, then they just jump to her, right? There's just a jump. Well, I I guess the grandfather tells like kind of kind of tell transitions us into the right. There's a lot of narration, narrational transition, which I love. When you when you narrate, I'm sorry, when you adapt books into movies or TV shows, narration can be a great, like voiceover narration can be a great tool to help with the adaptation. And I wish more stories would do that. I mean, it's uh not always, it doesn't always fit, but I think obviously in this instance it does fit because of the uh device of their that they're using of the grandfather telling the grandson a story.

Tom 47:22

Yeah, and you can tell at this point if you're watching him read the book, you can tell he's doing what Goldman's dad did to him and just skipping tons of pages as he's moving on to the next interesting bit.

Joe 47:36

Yeah.

Tom 47:36

So like that narration of like, oh, and then okay, this happens next. Like that's that's him kind of going, All right, when's like let me get to the next part I'm actually gonna read to you.

Joe 47:46

He does attempt to skip parts too, and the son, and right, his the grandson says, Stop, no, no, no, go back to I want to hear about it. Oh, that's with the kissing. With the kissing, yeah. He's like, I I don't mind it so much anymore. Um so so yeah, I think he kind of transitions us into she was so distraught that uh she decides to marry Prince Humperdick.

Jen 48:10

So in the in in the book, they both kind of are like he's like, I don't care. You don't have to love me, I don't love you. And then they're like, all right. And in the movie, I feel like it's more that like she doesn't love him and I don't think he loves her, but I think that he would tell her that he did. I don't think he would just come out and say, like, I don't love you. I think he's like pretending to love her.

Joe 48:34

Yeah, there's I'm trying to remember if there's really much indication of that he cares at all about her.

Tom 48:39

No, he marries her. No, he definitely doesn't. He marries her. Explicitly to start a war.

Joe 48:44

Yeah. Um But you're saying he pretends he loves her, too. He pre pretends with her that he loves her.

Jen 48:50

I think so. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we don't love each other.

Tom 48:55

Yeah, in the in the movie he's he's trying to play a game with her like, I know you don't love me, but hopefully if I if I treat you well enough, one day you'll grow to love me.

Jen 49:04

Right. Consider me as an alternative to suicide. I love that line.

Joe 49:09

That's a great line.

Jen 49:10

I don't think that's in the book, but I do love it.

Joe 49:13

So yeah, so then she's just agrees to marry Humpertink, right? She's being presented to the the Florinese public.

Jen 49:21

Right. They like make turn her into a princess somehow. They like find a place that they can make her the princess of. In the book, they say, like Yes. Because she has to be a princess.

Joe 49:31

Yeah, he can't marry a commoner.

Jen 49:32

Yeah.

Tom 49:33

Um and then in the movie, it's like she's one of you.

Jen 49:38

Right. She Yeah, well, he says she was she was one or yeah, right. I don't yeah, I don't know. I don't remember in the book if they tell people that she was a commoner that now is a princess, or that they just found a big thing.

Tom 49:48

It's explicitly like she's a princess because she's marrying me the prince, not like that.

Jen 49:53

Yeah, right. They don't go into the whole thing.

Joe 49:55

Yeah, there's you don't need they don't go into like, oh, she needs to be a noble for him to marry her. They don't go into it. It doesn't matter. It's not important.

Tom 50:03

Well, no, I feel like it's explicitly the opposite. Like it's she's a commoner, I've raised her up to to to be a princess because she's going to marry me, and like that's the thing that like she's one of you, you're gonna get upset when she's murdered by by by the guilding.

Joe 50:19

See, I love commoners. I'm marrying one. Yes, yeah, and then I think right it jumps from there right to her riding the horse. Yeah, right. She goes out and rides and gets kidnapped by uh Vicini, Fezzick, and Anigo. Uh, enter these three, and of course, this these are probably the best parts of the movie when when these three are together, or even just the first time you see them, and they're like steps, you know. I think my daughter asked, is that guy that short or is that guy tall? Really tall, she said. And I said, We said both. Both, yes. I don't think he's like seven feet. Yeah, he's seven four, I think.

Jen 51:00

How tall is Wallace Sean?

Joe 51:02

He's probably like five, six, five, five, maybe.

Tom 51:05

I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go down. I'm gonna say he's five two.

Jen 51:08

Five two.

Tom 51:10

He is five.

Jen 51:11

He's shorter than no, Danny DeVino is like five feet, I think.

Joe 51:15

Yeah, I don't even know if he's that tall.

Jen 51:17

Or my height, about so Wallace was five two. Wow.

Joe 51:19

There's over two feet difference, two foot difference between Andrew the Giant Wallace Sean. Yeah, yeah. But I love how you get it. Yes, I love how you get the the short, the middle, and tall.

Tom 51:30

Yeah, yeah.

Joe 51:32

It just works out so perfectly. And I have to say, the Wallace Sean I know is not Sicilian. He plays a damn good Sicilian.

Jen 51:39

Oh, he's so great.

Joe 51:40

I was trying to picture other like Italian, like put an Italian actor in there, and I was thinking of like, imagine Joe Pesci in this role, like short Italian actors. And I'm like, I I don't know how that would work.

Jen 51:53

Well, if it's not Sicilian What nationality is Wallace Sean?

Joe 51:57

Oh. Oh, in real life?

Jen 51:58

Yeah, because in the book he's not Sicilian. Isn't he like Hispanic in the book? Or no, he's a Sicilian. He's Sicilian, he does?

Joe 52:05

He mentions it many, many times.

Jen 52:07

Oh in the book, I couldn't remember.

Tom 52:09

More so in the book than he does in the um In the movie, he always says at the end, never go against the Death is on the line.

Jen 52:17

Maybe it's because they say he has dark skin.

Joe 52:19

Oh, yeah.

Jen 52:20

As a Sicilian, which makes kind of sense, I guess.

Joe 52:22

Yeah. But um also in the book.

Jen 52:25

Yeah. So they just made him short instead of making him.

Tom 52:28

I feel like if the movie was made five or six years later, or even like ten years later, Steve Buscemi would have played Vizzini.

Jen 52:37

Oh.

Joe 52:38

Steve Buscemi could have been a good Vassini.

Jen 52:41

I'm just really, really happy.

Joe 52:43

Well Sean sounds like he's Irish or Scottish or some, you know, some sort of that type of new art.

Jen 52:50

I'm really happy that it was made now because this cast is like perfect. And even though Mandy Potinkin is a Jewish man, playing a Spanish man, it's still amazing.

Tom 53:01

It's fine.

Jen 53:02

Just do it. Just go for it. Um like Pedro Pascal playing an ego montoya, probably if it was made today.

Tom 53:09

Oh yeah, well yeah. Uh while Sean is a Jewish guy also playing a uh while Sean is also a Jewish guy.

Jen 53:16

He's also Jewish, yeah.

Joe 53:17

But I mean, I don't know where his where his comes from now.

Tom 53:20

Polish, Russian, and Swedish, apparently. There you go.

Joe 53:22

Polish, Russian, and Swedish.

Tom 53:24

I will say this for when I was a child when I was a child. When I my kids were little and I would read to them like uh you know books before they could read it all. I would read the cat in the hat. Um and Wallacean was my voice for the cat in the hat. Like me doing my Vizzini impression.

Joe 53:42

Okay.

Tom 53:43

And he's very he's got a very distinct voice, and it's very good for uh kids literature.

Jen 53:48

Okay.

Tom 53:48

Yeah.

Jen 53:49

Well, you're in the in the Anigo Montoya voice is your ethnic accent in every theater project.

Tom 53:54

Yeah, and I always say like people who like make fun of me for having like a generic vo like I'm just doing Anigo Montoya, it's just his voice for that. Which is also like they're telling me it's Spanish, I guess it's Spanish.

Joe 54:08

Do you do you think back in these days they would work with like vocal, you know, coaches to do the the, you know, and dialect coaches to do the to do the accent.

Tom 54:17

Not for not for not for a movie like this, I think.

Jen 54:20

Just do a Spanish accent, Mandy. Doesn't matter.

Joe 54:28

Well, I mean, the other two, right? So Robin Wright's doing a British accent. Like they're do-they're doing light British accents, like Carrie Elwis is doing a light British accent. He's British. He's doing it. He's half British, but he doesn't speak with a British accent in real life. He does?

Tom 54:42

Yes, he does, yeah.

Joe 54:43

I thought he was like I thought he was half British and he only spoke. He was always confusing to me with that.

Jen 54:52

I thought he doesn't do a very good American accent, I think. Like he's on Seinfeld. I mean, maybe he's gotten better. I remember he's on the episode of Seinfeld where he keeps slipping into and out of it. Like Liar Liar, I guess he's he's in that. He's pretty good in that one with his accent, but he does have a British accent.

Joe 55:08

Okay. Um I mean Robert Wright, Christopher Andon, Christopher Guest, they're all doing British accents, like light, light British accents.

Jen 55:16

Christopher Andon's is like Christopher Guest, other people.

Tom 55:20

He doesn't, I don't think he speaks with a British accent normally, but he is British. He's a lord.

Joe 55:25

He's I for No, he's a U.S. born actor, Christopher Guest.

Tom 55:29

Maybe maybe I'm forgetting.

Joe 55:31

He's from New York City. Oh, wait, hold on a second.

Tom 55:34

Yes.

Joe 55:35

His father was a UN diplomat in the British House of Lords and was fourth baron of six. Okay. So his father well, but but he grew up in New York. But he grew up in New York, though.

Tom 55:46

He's a baron. I apologize. He's a baron, a British baron.

Joe 55:50

Yeah.

Tom 55:51

Yes, he is American born.

Joe 55:53

His mother's American.

Tom 55:54

Yeah. Okay. I was like, he's uh I knew he's a royal. I apologize for uh over.

Joe 56:01

So his his father was a UN diplomat. So I guess he must have worked in New York. He's probably worked in New York at the UN.

Jen 56:10

All right.

Joe 56:11

And his mother was American. So so he's there's he's got the he's got the family though with the British accent. So that helps, I'm sure. You know, impersonating your dad or your grandfather, your uncle, or something like that. Um, but yeah, you have a bunch of people in here doing British doing accents in here. Um there's a lot of accent work. The only people who aren't doing accents, I think, are Fred Savage and uh and uh Andre Peter voice only one voice. Yeah, I don't think they were gonna try to work with him on accents. You see, like I was watching uh I came home last night and I was watching uh part of The Hunt for Red October, and I was just like, oh, yep, Sean Connery will never ever do an accent. Ever. I can imagine people asking him to do it, and he's just like, fuck off.

Jen 56:55

Well, he's supposed to be American in that or something. A Russian I never saw it.

Joe 57:00

But he never does an accent. He just always, if any movie he's in, he never does another accent. Yeah. I'm pretty sure he refuses to.

Tom 57:09

What stands out for the Hunter for Red October is that the ship is full. He's on a Russian, he's the captain of a Russian submarine, and everybody else has a Russian accent. And it's like Sam Neal and Tim Curry, and they're all doing like their best both. And he's just like Sean Current.

Joe 57:25

I forgot I forgot Tim Curry's and he's the doctor, yeah. He's the doctor. Rest of the thing.

Tom 57:32

He's the guy who still believes in in uh he's the Soviet loyalist uh of the crew. Is he? He's the doctor at the end of the movie, like when they spoil alert for Hunt for October uh also almost 30 years old. Uh when they blow up the ship and fake the deaths of the people who are defecting, he's with the the people on the boat. Like he's the one who they want to like is gonna testify that they're all dead. He's with the survivors.

Joe 58:00

Oh, okay, yeah, yeah.

Tom 58:01

And he's like crying that they sacrificed themselves for for to save all the rest of the Russian soldiers.

Joe 58:06

Yeah. He's good at that. Yeah, he is good in that. Everybody's good in that movie. That's a good movie. Um anyway. Back to this movie. Back to back to this movie on our accent. None of those people that no, none of those people are in that movie. Uh, we were just talking about accents and went off on an accent tangent. Um anyway, where were we in this? All right, so oh they capture they kidnap the princess.

Jen 58:30

13 minutes into the movie.

Joe 58:31

13 minutes into the movie, they capture the princess. Um, we're introduced to these three characters who are the best part of the movie, probably. I forgot all of the stuff that happens on the ship. Like, there's a lot of ship time spent on the ship, right? They they take her onto the ship. Um, you kind of get a mop it.

Tom 58:48

One of my favorite bits in the movie when when Fezic and uh the rhyming. With the rhyming. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe 58:56

This is why I forgot about it because when I was reading the book, I was like, I don't remember them doing rhymes in the movie or making that a part of the character. Um, but then this scene is where they do it. And it maybe because when I watched this movie, a lot of times I catch it when it's already on and it's probably past the scene. So I don't remember that. I don't remember the boat scene as well as I do a lot of the other scenes.

Tom 59:17

I mean it.

Jen 59:18

Do they do it again later?

Joe 59:20

They do, but it's not as like it's not mentioned that the rhyme thing is a game, right? They only mention it here, but they there is rhyming later on.

Tom 59:30

I think he does it, does he do it when he like recovers uh in a go in the few forest to prove that it's really him? Yeah, yeah.

Joe 59:39

When he's dunking him in the water, I think he does a rhyme. There's a rhyme later on. I think there's a rhyme with the when the when Andre brings the four horses, too. I think he does a rhyme. There's like little rhymes interspersed throughout. Oh, yeah. But this is like when it's established. Yeah, this is when it's established that this is a game that they have. And it's I like this in the book a lot because it right, because it shows you one, it's it's very uh I guess it it's very demonstrative of the relationship between Anigo and Fezick.

Jen 1:00:08

Yeah.

Joe 1:00:08

And how like Anigo's such like a really good person because he knows that Fezak isn't a bright guy, and he plays this game with him because Fezick really likes it and he's good at it, and he wants to, it makes Fezick feel good about himself.

Jen 1:00:21

Yeah, and it helps him remember stuff too, sometimes. Like, well, he's supposed to remember like what to do if the job goes wrong and there's like a rhyme that he tore, and everybody's trying to remember the rhyme.

Joe 1:00:31

Yeah.

Tom 1:00:32

Yeah, it it and it establishes that like uh like if to the audience, like you can like these people, it's okay.

Jen 1:00:39

Yeah.

Tom 1:00:39

Before you know that they're they're they're yeah.

Jen 1:00:42

Um, yeah, he's yelling all the time.

Joe 1:00:46

Well, they do yeah, and and I think that's an interesting part because in the movie, Vicini says that we're gonna kill her, and Andre the Giants, like, right? Fezick's like, oh, I didn't know we were gonna kill her. I don't kill people, but in the book, he's like, they all know they're gonna kill her. Like, that's part of the plan that's up front, and they have no problem with it. Like, nobody has problems with killing people in the book, right? Just what you do, but I guess they're trying to make uh you know fezick a little bit more of a like let people know like Vicini's the bad guy. These two are just kind of along for the ride.

Tom 1:01:19

Yeah, right.

Joe 1:01:20

Like we we didn't know the full plan, and I'm not cool with killing her, and Vicini's like, Don't worry, I'm gonna kill her.

Tom 1:01:28

Um, do you want to do a uh break now? It's it's been like uh an hour plus short joke. I feel like that's a good end for part one.

Joe 1:01:37

All right, we'll pick it up uh quote uh quote unquote next time. I want to remind everyone to follow us on social media. You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, join us over on Discord to continue the conversation there. We also post our episodes on YouTube, so be sure to go to our YouTube page to like and subscribe. Rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts and check out our Patreon page to support us that way. Links to all the aforementioned information are included in the show notes for this episode. Thanks everyone for listening, and we'll hear us next time.