386 - The Princess Bride (Encore)
Scriptnotes Podcast
John August
4.8 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 7 November 2023
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John and Craig host an in-depth look at the 1987 classic, The Princess Bride, recorded live at the WGA Theatre in 2019.
They discuss how the “abridged” structure brings us only the best parts of the story and what this means for the characters and world. From the frame story to the myth of the Dread Pirate Roberts, The Princess Bride shaped decades of screenwriters but would be inconceivable to produce today.
In our bonus segment for premium members, John and Craig discuss William Goldman’s famous (and often misapplied) quote abut Hollywood: “Nobody knows anything.”
Links:
- Episode 386 – The Princess Bride
- Episode 221 – Nobody Knows Anything (including what this quote means)
- The Princess Bride
- The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure by William Goldman
- Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman
- The Dread Pirate Roberts
- The Bechdel Test
- Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
- Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
- Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
- Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
- John August on Threads, Instagram and Twitter
- John on Mastodon
- Outro by Cole Parzenn (send us yours!)
- This episode was originally produced by Megan McDonnell. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.
Email us at [email protected]
You can download the episode here.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey, this is John. Today's episode is an encore. It is a deep dive into the |
| 0:06.5 | 1987 film The Princess Bride, written by William Goldman and based on his book. |
| 0:11.6 | Now Craig and I did this as a live show back in February 2019. |
| 0:15.8 | This was about six weeks after William Goldman had died. |
| 0:19.0 | So we screened the movie at the WJ Theater |
| 0:21.3 | and had this discussion including questions from the audience. |
| 0:24.7 | I think it's fair to say that the Princess Bride shaped decades of how screenwriters thought |
| 0:28.8 | about telling fantasy stories and it certainly had an impact on movies like Big Fish. |
| 0:32.8 | It made it possible to think about making that kind of movie. |
| 0:36.1 | Not easy, but possible to get it made. |
| 0:39.4 | Now we're going to have this whole discussion and then in our bonus segment for |
| 0:42.0 | premium members, we will travel back to |
| 0:43.7 | episode 221 to dig into the true meeting of William Goldman's famous and I think often |
| 0:48.7 | misapplied quote about Hollywood that nobody knows anything. |
| 0:53.0 | So enjoy this trip back to the fire swamp and the pit of despair, |
| 0:57.0 | and we will see you next week. |
| 0:59.0 | Enjoy. We didn't make this movie, you know that right? We didn't make this movie, you know that, right? |
| 1:07.0 | We didn't make this movie, you know that, right? |
| 1:12.0 | We'll start this officially. |
| 1:14.0 | Hello and welcome, my name is John August. |
| 1:15.8 | My name is Craig Mason. |
| 1:17.0 | And we are here for a special discussion after watching The Princess Pride. |
... |
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