Cary Elwes Talks About The Real Injury He Suffered on the Set of THE PRINCESS BRIDE
The Princess Bride is arguably one of the best movies of all time. It has danger, adventure, romance, sword fights, poison, pits of despair, and ROUS’s. It includes a sweet grandfather/grandson relationship, and the greatest kiss of all time. What more could you possibly hope for?
The cast of the film continues to talk about what a great experience it was to make the movie, but the shoot wasn’t without its mishaps. In star Cary Elwes' 2014 book, As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales From the Making of The Princess Bride, he revealed that he actually got injured quite a few times on set, and one of those injuries ended up in the final cut of the film.
According to Elwes, when Count Rugen (Christopher Guest), the evil six-fingered man, knocks Westley out in order to capture him and return Buttercup (Robin Wright) to Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon), Elwes ended up getting knocked out for real. As he recalls in As You Wish, the take wasn't really working because Guest, who was holding a real metal sword, was being too gentle so as not to hurt Elwes, which was preventing him from reacting and ruining the timing.
After a while, Elwes made a simple suggestion — why didn't Guest just tap Elwes on the head with the sword for real so that he could react?
Elwes explained:
"Chris [Guest] swung the heavy sword down toward my head. However, as fate would have it, it landed just a touch harder than either of us anticipated. And that, folks, was the last thing I remember from that day's shoot. In the script Bill's [Goldman, who also wrote the original novel] stage directions from the end of this scene state: The screen goes black. In the darkness, frightening sounds. Which is precisely what happened."
Elwes reveals that, unfortunately, Guest really put him in the hospital:
"I woke up in the emergency room, still in costume, to the frightening sound of stitches being sewn into my skull ... and of course Chris felt absolutely terrible about the whole thing, even though I kept telling him it wasn't his fault. It was my dumb idea. But you know what? That particular take was the one that ended up in the film. So when you see Westley fall to the ground and pass out, that's not acting. That's an overzealous actor actually losing consciousness."
At this point, Elwes had gained a bit of a reputation for being accident prone, as this was his second on-set injury after he severely broke one of his toes while goofing around on an ATV that Andre the Giant used to get around the set. In fact, the doctor who stitched up his skull had also treated his toe, and according to Elwes, the doctor ribbed him when he regained consciousness, saying, "Well, Zorro! You seem to be a little accident prone, don't you?"
That’s hilarious, only because Elwes wasn’t too seriously injured and everything turned out okay. I love The Princess Bride, and I’m going to keep an eye out for this scene the next time I watch.
via: Looper