Rob yells 'Cut,' turns to me and in a voice I can still hear, he says with all the patience he can muster, 'Bill, it's supposed to catch on fire.' at which point there is a flame spurt and her dress catches on fire.Īt which point (so humiliating) I start to shout, 'Her dress is on fire, her dress is on fire,' totally destroying the shot. OK, I am standing there on the set of the Fire Swamp and Rob Reiner goes 'action, Cary' and here they come into view, those two wonderful actors, and I am watching from a corner of the set, and he leads her forward, one step, another step. Why am I so smart? Because Morgenstern wrote it, I adapted it for the novel, and used it in every draft of the screenplay, of which, believe me, there were many. Now I know what is going to happen-there is a flame spurt and her dress catches on fire. And there is a moment in the movie where Cary Elwes (Westley) starts to lead Robin Wright (Buttercup) through it. I hide on the sets out of the way when the camera rolls, but I cannot tell you how often the director, just as he is about to start, sees where I am and asks me to please move, because I am standing in the exact spot where the shot will end.Ī few days before the day I am about to tell you about, we were shooting the Fire Swamp. I make the actors nervous, but more than that, and if I have written this before, skip this part, I have an amazing ability to screw up shots. You won't believe that, I know), and (2) if you are the writer, essentially, your work is done. They are tedious and horrible for several reasons: (1) they are tedious and horrible (but I once wrote that the best day of your life is your first day on a set and the worst days are all the ones that follow. I ordinarily do not not not like being on movie sets. I had written the screenplay for it first over a decade before-but it had never been 'picked up,' as they say Out There, till then. It was such a happy time for me, at last Morgenstern coming to life on film.

L ET ME TELL you how I first heard of the existence of the Morgenstern Museum.īack we go to 1986, Sheffield, England, and we are shooting the movie of The Princess Bride.

The princess bride s morgenstern