MY MOVIE SHELF: The Princess Bride

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 168  Days to go: 164

Movie #215:  The Princess Bride

Back in the earlier days of IMDb, if you clicked on “Quotables” for The Princess Bride, it said “The whole script,” and it wasn’t wrong. Everyone I know knows every word in this movie. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the only way to watch it. So when the local AMC theater had those midnight showings of old school flicks maybe fifteen years ago (one of which was naturally The Princess Bride), I sat with a group of friends and we all quoted right along with it. Someone next to me was apparently irked by this behavior, but if you want to watch The Princess Bride in silence, watch it at home by yourself. I am not a crackpot.

“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

Princess Buttercup (Robin Wright) loves to toy with her farm boy Westley (Cary Elwes), until she realizes he loves her and she loves him back. (“Is this a kissing book?”) Separated when Westley goes to make his fortune and his ship is attacked by the Dread Pirate Roberts (“Murdered by pirates is good”), Buttercup falls into a deep depression but still Prince Humperdink (Chris Sarandon) chooses her for his bride. When Buttercup is kidnapped by a trio of “poor lost circus performers” — Vizzini (Wallace Shawn), Inigo (Mandy Patinkin) and Fezzik (Andre the Giant) — in order to start a war, a mysterious Man in Black follows them and steals her back from them. (“Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! A-HAHA HAHAHA HAHA! A-HAHA HA HAHA HAHA! A-HAHA HA –!”) The man’s “cruelty reveals everything,” however, and Buttercup knows he’s the Dread Pirate himself. He admits it “with pride.” But there’s so much more ahead, including murder, revenge, deception, miracles, torture, true love, and a lot of excellent lines. (“My brains, his steel and your strength against sixty men and you think a little head shake is supposed to make me happy, hmm?”)

The framing of the film is of a grandfather (Peter Falk) coming to visit his sick grandson (Fred Savage) and read the kid a book the grandfather’s father always used to read to him when he was sick. When I found out (by reading the credits, like I’d never heard of that before) — sometime in my mid-teens, after the movie had been out 3 or 4 years and I’d seen it probably a hundred times — that it was actually based on a book, I went out and borrowed it from the library immediately. And the book is framed in a similar way, that a father was always read this book by his father, but when he bought it for his son the son was unimpressed. The father went to read it himself and realized that his father had embellished it outrageously from the dry original text, so the father rewrote it to highlight those things that made his father’s telling of it so great, while removing the boring parts. This is all fiction, a complete fabrication, and yet I totally bought it. I believed every word, and really thought there was some sort of person named S. Morgenstern out there in the past who’d written a history of his beloved homeland of Florin and Guilder — places I’d never heard of before or since, but I was kind of gullible and also really desperate to believe magical things. The idea that there really was this father who made this story better to tell to his kids, and that his son rewrote it to make the reading of it as thrilling and great as the embellished telling, was such a sweet sentiment to me. It’s the kind of heartfelt gesture you always wish your parents to do for you, even though by definition you’d never know they did (at least not at the time).

After I read the book, I was really caught up in the idea that Peter Falk’s character was embellishing a boring book for his grandson in this same way — a fact I kind of clung to by virtue of the “evidence” of the sort of improvisational way the grandfather seemed to read it (which is either ridiculous on my part or a brilliant stealth move by the filmmakers). I wanted to share it with everyone, and as my stepfather is sort of the same way (always pushing food and movies and shows and books he likes on anyone who will sit still), we showed it to a lot of people who came over to the house. I still remember one particularly religious family getting all bunched up over Fred Savage exclaiming “Jesus, Grandpa, what’d you read me this thing for?!” I also still think that’s a ridiculous overreaction, but to each his own, I guess. (Personally, I still think in my head “Jesus, Grandpa, what’d you read me this thing for,” anytime I come across some pointless bit of crap I was forced to sit through. I also frequently tell people “Yes, you’re very smart. Shut up.” Because I can.)

In college, though, is where my love for this movie really got out of hand, because if you happened to say anything untrue in my presence during that time I absolutely would start yelling “Liar! Liaaarrrrrrr” at you (and maybe perform the whole scene, whatever), just like I was Valerie (Carol Kane) and you were Miracle Max (Billy Crystal). (Yes, I really did this. No, I’m not sorry.) But nowadays I’m much more likely to just tell you to “have fun storming the castle,” so I’ve clearly mellowed.

“There’s a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. ‘Twould be a pity to damage yours.”

Honestly, you can definitely endear yourself to me by quoting this movie, but mostly I just want someone to follow me around saying “As you wish.” I don’t think that makes me all that unusual. Unfortunately, most people just say “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

 

MY MOVIE SHELF: The Crush

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 296  Days to go: 286

Movie #77: The Crush

I bought The Crush on DVD approximately around the time DVDs were invented, as evidenced by the cardboard casing with the plastic flip closure. I’m not sure why I still have it, except for the fact (previously discussed) that I rarely get rid of my movies. I do, however, know exactly why I bought it in the first place, and that reason is Alicia Silverstone.

As far as feature film debuts go, Silverstone really knocked hers out of the park. Playing 14-year-old Adrian Forrester (IMDb says Adrienne, which is the correct spelling of the feminine form of the name, but the movie credits say Adrian, so that’s what I’m going with), she is riveting from her very first shot — haughty, sexy and entitled as she peers at Nick (Cary Elwes) from over the tops of her sunglasses. She is brilliant at appearing innocent, as manipulative as she is spoiled, and she’s a veritable loon. Her obsession with Nick becomes ever more forward, ever more ominous and ever more dangerous, yet it’s impossible to look away from her because she commands the screen so completely.

The rest of the film, unfortunately, is hugely problematic. It’s bad enough that it’s just ridiculously cheesy and melodramatic. The score is overpowering in its guitar-riff-and-synthesizer insistence that you feel on edge. The soundtrack is even worse, with a scene in which Adrian is sunning herself under Nick’s window (where else would she do it?) backed by a song crying out “You can taste it.” And the climactic confrontation between Nick, Adrian, Adrian’s friend Cheyenne (Amber Benson looking almost exactly how she will nine years later for Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and Adrian’s dad (Kurtwood Smith), employs the use of a stunt double for Silverstone that is at least four inches taller than she is and has a much darker complexion — even behind the Cousin Itt wig.

What makes the film truly terrible, though, is the message it sends. Here’s some upstanding guy, innocently going about his work, and this crazy girl starts making all sorts of accusations and ruins his life. Sure, he ogles her repeatedly through windows — not to mention from the vantage point of her own closet — and he makes inviting comments about what he would do if she were ten years older, and, okay, he totally kisses her back when she twisted his arm, forced him to take her to a make-out spot, took his head in her hands and slowly started to kiss him. But other than that, he didn’t do anything wrong! (Kidding, she totally didn’t twist his arm. He barely gave up any resistance to a late-night drive with a teenage girl, and Elwes frequently enhances his performance with the universal I’ve-got-an-uncomfortable-boner cough.)

Yes, the film makes it absolutely clear that Adrian is an obsessive sociopath and criminally insane, but it’s exactly these types of stories that make so many people discount actual victim accounts of assaults, harassment and rape. There is, almost always in the case of these types of accusations, a pervasive thread that questions the girl’s motives, assumes she is out to get something, or sometimes might just be a vengeful crazy bitch who wants to ruin a guy’s life. There were boys on video sexually assaulting an unconscious girl in Ohio, and the media still lamented the loss of their promising futures, as if that was the real tragedy here — as if those boys didn’t bring it on entirely by themselves. It’s disgusting, really.

I can’t stop these types of stories from being told, and I may not be able to change the conversation concerning assaults in our society, but I can do something. I can purge The Crush from my shelf and I can make an effort not to support that kind of storytelling in the future. I’ll feel much better just supporting Silverstone’s work in Clueless anyway.