Rob Reiner (The Princess Bride) The Princess Bride (1987)

Rob Reiner (b. 1947) directed The Princess Bride in 1987 as the fourth feature in a six-film stretch that constitutes one of the most consistent directorial hot streaks of the decade. He had grown up in show business — his father is the comedian and director Carl Reiner — and had spent the 1970s as Mike "Meathead" Stivic on All in the Family, a role that left him both nationally famous and thoroughly typecast.¹

From sitcom star to director

Reiner directed his first feature, This Is Spinal Tap, in 1984 — a mockumentary co-written with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer that effectively created a genre. The Sure Thing (1985), a low-budget college road-trip romance, established him as someone who could direct young actors in a comic register without condescending to the material.² Stand by Me (1986), an adaptation of Stephen King's novella The Body, brought him his first wide critical success and his first Oscar nomination for screenplay (shared with Raynold Gideon and Bruce Evans).

Reiner has said he treated each early project as a deliberate genre exercise — a way of teaching himself the form by working through it once.³

"I wanted to do every kind of movie. Each one was a different genre. Spinal Tap was the mockumentary. The Sure Thing was the romantic comedy. Stand By Me was the coming-of-age. Princess Bride was the fairy tale. I was learning." — Rob Reiner, Vanity Fair (2012)

How Reiner got Goldman to part with the book

Reiner had read William Goldman's 1973 novel as a young actor and had wanted to film it for years. By the mid-1980s the book had been through a long graveyard of attempted adaptations — Norman Jewison, François Truffaut, Robert Redford, Richard Lester had each been attached at some point and let it go.⁴ Goldman was famously reluctant to part with rights again. Reiner and his producing partner Andrew Scheinman traveled to New York to make their case in person.

"I was so afraid of losing the book to bad people that I had been holding on too tight. Rob came up and made me believe he wouldn't ruin it. So I let go." — William Goldman, Which Lie Did I Tell? (2000) (book, not available online)

Reiner's pitch was that he intended to film the novel as written, frame device and all — not bigger, not smaller, not modernized. The frame in particular had been the sticking point on previous attempts; studios kept wanting it cut.⁵

Directing the cast

Reiner is described by nearly every cast member as a generous on-set presence who laughed audibly through takes. Mandy Patinkin has said that Reiner's most-repeated direction during the duel scene was simply "have fun"; the laughter problem during André the Giant's wrestling scene became a running set joke because Reiner himself could not stop.⁶

"Rob was the audience. If he laughed, we knew it was working. If he didn't, we'd do it again. He was completely transparent." — Cary Elwes, As You Wish (2014) (book, not available online)

The film was shot in long takes wherever possible — a deliberate choice for the fight choreography, but also a Reiner habit. He told the crew he wanted the camera to feel theatrical rather than televisual.⁷

After Princess Bride

Reiner followed The Princess Bride with When Harry Met Sally... (1989), Misery (1990), and A Few Good Men (1992) — completing the run that defined him as a director in the 1980s and early 1990s. None of those later films share The Princess Bride's tonal mix; what they share is the same instinct for actor-forward staging and clean comic rhythm. Reiner has said in interviews that The Princess Bride is the film of his he is asked about most often, by a wide margin.⁸

"It's the one. People stop me in airports about it. Their kids stop me. Their grandkids. It's the gift that keeps giving." — Rob Reiner, NPR Fresh Air (2014)