As You Wish

Watch the Celebrity-Filled Fan-Film Version of The Princess Bride

A-list actors worked secretly in quarantine to create a rough-hewn, homemade version of the classic film and raise $1 million for charity. Vanity Fair has the exclusive look at three clips from the series, which will start showing this Monday on Quibi.
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Courtesy of Quibi.

“What is this…?”

In The Princess Bride, a little boy played by Fred Savage asks this question when his grandfather, portrayed by Peter Falk, starts reading him the offbeat fairy tale. It’s also what fans may wonder when they hear that there’s now a new version of that 1987 movie, created in a deliberately awkward but charming way.

While stuck in quarantine over the past few months, some of the most famous performers in the world worked in secret to shoot a homemade fan-film version of the classic on their phones—which will be shown on Quibi chapter by chapter, day by day, for two weeks starting this Monday.

Filmmaker Jason Reitman devised the idea back in March, seeing it as a way to stay busy during the lockdown while raising funds for the World Central Kitchen charity, which has been helping thousands of restaurants stay afloat during the quarantine by paying them to provide millions of meals to the needy.

“The week that the stay-at-home order came through in California, I just woke up one of the first mornings, I think like most people did, feeling as though, All right, I need to be able to do something of value,” Reitman told Vanity Fair. “I just thought, Can we remake an entire movie at home? And I had seen that a fan-made Star Wars had been done. I just started reaching out to actors I knew, saying, ‘Is this something you’d want to do?’ And the response was kind of immediate and fast. It was like, ‘Oh—that sounds like fun.’”

Jeffrey Katzenberg loved the concept and was moved by the charitable effort, so Quibi made a $1 million donation to World Central Kitchen, which equates to approximately 100,000 meals, in order to distribute the handmade project.

The creators hope the footage can also provide some laughter to viewers in a time of hardship. Their scrappy version of The Princess Bride leans into its continuity lapses, utilizes absurd household props and back-of-the-closet costumes, and deploys multiple castings of the same roles to show that in a true fantasy, anyone can play anything.

Before we go any further, just watch some. It’ll be easier to explain after that.

That’s Josh Gad playing the little boy with a cold who is reluctantly told the swashbuckling story by his grandfather. If you’re wondering what the director of the original movie, Rob Reiner, thinks of this riff on his work—that’s him playing the grandfather in this sequence.

“What’s nice about it is that I made a film that’s lasted so long. Now it’s over 33 years. And the biggest kick I get out of it is that kids who saw it when they were eight or nine years old have kids that age now, and they’re seeing it and liking it. It seems to have stood the test of time,” Reiner said.

“I wouldn’t think this is the best way to introduce someone to the film,” Reiner joked—but he isn’t worried about the handmade version overshadowing the original. “If you already know the movie, that’s what makes it fun. The audience already knows every line. I had no reservations. I was like, ‘Nah, let’s do it!’”

Reiner confessed that he said yes even though he wasn’t entirely sure what Reitman had in mind when he proposed the idea. “No!” Reiner said. “I had no idea what he was going to do!”

Reitman shot a proof of concept by performing the grandfather scene with his own daughter. He also had to get the blessing of three other stakeholders: producer Norman Lear, who controls the rights to The Princess Bride; the estate of William Goldman, who wrote the novel that inspired it along with the screenplay; and musician and composer Mark Knopfler, whose score is recreated in the new footage by other artists.

As the clip above transitions to the fantasy kingdom, we see Common playing the role of the heroic Westley (originated by Cary Elwes) while Tiffany Haddish portrays Princess Buttercup (first played by Robin Wright). Later we see Hugh Jackman as the villainous Humperdinck. (“He’s wearing a dim sum steamer as his crown,” Reitman noted.)

Jennifer Garner emerges as Buttercup when Humperdinck introduces her to the rabble, and she plays opposite herself as the old crone who boos the young princess mercilessly for turning her back on true love. “I asked if she was up for playing both characters, and she immediately loved it and started putting together the hair and makeup,” Reitman said. “That’s the most fun, when you get to go full tilt.”

Garner also assembled stuffed animals for the onlookers surrounding the old woman; at other points in the various clips, Reitman uses Lego figures to simulate crowds or stunts like dangerous climbing scenes.

Courtesy of Quibi.

While most of the actors shot their parts separately in quarantine, Reitman sought real-life couples living together for the romantic scenes, so they could appear in the same frame and provide some interaction and chemistry. “Sam Rockwell and Leslie Bibb did a scene, and when they do Westley and Buttercup rolling down the hill, they just filled trash bags, put their clothes on them, and threw them down a stairway,” Reitman said. “Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka, his husband, went as Westley and Inigo Montoya for Halloween one year, so they have an incredible Man in Black costume that they looked for in storage.” When the time came to shoot, Burtka decided to play Buttercup opposite Harris’s Westley instead.

Many performers also brought their pets into the action. “Chris Pine and Annabelle Wallis are the first Buttercup and Westley,” Reitman said. “And the opening line is about shining your horse’s saddle, and they use their dog for the horse.”

Newlyweds Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner gender-swapped their characters, with him sporting a gown and blonde wig as the princess and her wearing the mask as Westley’s disguised Man in Black as they struggle to escape the Fire Swamp and its infestation of ROUSes (Rodents of Unusual Size). The monstrous creature is portrayed by their corgi, plumped by a neck pillow.

That clip shows how one chapter leads to another, swapping the characters with new actors at the very end. In this case, Lucas Hedges steps in as Westley, while Jenna Ortega takes over the Buttercup role. David Oyelowo stampedes into the moment as Humperdinck, riding a golf cart as his “horse,” augmented by some audio hoofbeats.

Reitman encouraged his actors to think like kids, having them use ordinary items as props and join the audience in engaging their imaginations. “I remind them that it’s more fun if you make mistakes, make this homemade,” he said. “It’s better to have an umbrella than a sword.”

The director was in the midst of postproduction on his movie Ghostbusters: Afterlife when the quarantine hit; when the movie was pushed from July 10 to next March due to the shuttered theaters, that meant his team suddenly had more time for a side project. He recruited editor Nathan Orloff to stitch together the footage, and longtime collaborators Jason Blumenfeld and Erica Mills joined to produce. Like all the actors, the behind-the-scenes team decided to work strictly for charity.

“They’re all donating their time,” Reitman said. “They’ve been working tirelessly for the last two to three months to create an entire movie from scratch, just because. The money is for a good cause, and it’s fun to connect with a movie you love. In recreating it you get to feel a little bit of what it was like to make the original.”

Courtesy of Quibi.

Reitman never watched or actively directed the shoots, but occasionally answered last-minute questions by email. Beforehand, he’d send instructions to the actors and hope for the best. “I just do a very brief scene breakdown,” he explained. “I go through the original scene and get a frame of each still that they need to do, and I send them those to create a version of storyboards. I send them the sides from the original script, and I give them a small list of props and wardrobe and location.”

A lot of the playfulness comes from how obvious it is that the actors are not in the same room as one another, evident in the next clip—in which Jack Black’s Dread Pirate Roberts (aka the Man in Black, aka Westley) clings to a cliffside while Diego Luna’s Inigo Montoya (the swordsman originally played by Mandy Patinkin) tries to rescue him so they can fight to the death. Luna is in a wooded area with an actual ravine, while Black is in his backyard, using patio steps and a foreshortened camera angle to simulate the precipice. None of it really fits, but...that’s sort of what makes it work.

Even when they almost matched—they didn’t, really. “Diego Luna used a hose as the rope that he throws to the Man in Black, and then Jack Black happened to be using a hose. So they’re sharing this hose that’s slightly different because they’re in two different homes,” Reitman said.

Not only did the director rarely speak with the actors in the midst of the shoots—the actors didn’t communicate before or during either.

“Literally never,” Reitman said. Sometimes that led to errors that did have to be fixed in post, mainly to adjust perspectives so the audience could follow the action. “Sometimes if two people did their scene on the same side, we’ll have to [reverse] a shot,” he explained. Other times, as with big-budget productions, reshoots were necessary.

“I just had an actor deliver footage where he did everything into camera. And I was like, Ooh, I should have been more clear about this,” Reitman said. “The easiest misstep is we’ve had a couple of actors shoot it horizontally, and then they had to reshoot it. [Vertical] is the Quibi format, and it seems to be the natural way that people watch things on their phones.”

Courtesy of Quibi.

Reitman has most of the footage for the entire movie in hand already, but there are some sequences he’s still casting near the end. He has a few performers he wants to hold back as a surprise, among them an Oscar winner who will perform the famous battle sequence featuring the repeated line, “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

J.K. Simmons, who has appeared in nearly all of Reitman’s movies, will also play a role, along with the filmmaker’s sister Catherine Reitman, best known for the Netflix comedy Workin’ Moms. The rest of the cast is an IMDB-busting litany of who’s who: Andy Serkis, Elijah Wood, Beanie Feldstein, Dave Bautista, Dennis Haysbert, Taika Waititi, David Spade, Jon Hamm, Stephen Merchant, Mackenzie Davis, Nicholas Braun, Robert Wuhl, Don Johnson, Ari Graynor, Thomas Lennon, Brandon Routh, Courtney Ford, Zoey Deutch, and Zazie Beetz—among many others still under wraps and some TBD.

For the role of Vizzini the Sicilian, the mastermind kidnapper originated by Wallace Shawn, Patton Oswalt will perform the poisoned cup “Battle of Wits” scene alongside his daughter, Alice, as the captured Buttercup, while Rainn Wilson will portray Vizzini in another sequence, arguing with his conspirators Pedro Pascal as Montoya and Jason Segel, who brings his André the Giant imitation to the colossal muscleman Fezzik. Keegan Michael Key plays swordmaster Montoya in yet another sequence.

The series begins Monday with the opening of the movie—the little boy, wrapped in an oversized Bears football jersey, starting to listen to a story.

Retta plays the mom, who urges her son to tolerate grandpa’s ramblings. Another still-secret but extremely well-known comedic actor shambles in as the old man. And the part of the grandson, originated by Fred Savage at 10 years old, will be played by...Fred Savage at 43 years old.

If only there were a word to express how strange that is to comprehend...

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