It's a Long Story

Like so many great movies, this one had some difficulty getting off the ground.

It's based on the book by William Goldman, which was already something of a modern classic, so it should have had an easy path to achieving filmdom. But not so. The rights were purchased by 20th Century Fox back in '73, but the project got shelved for a while when there was a sudden change of leadership at the head of the studio (i.e., the head of the studio got axed).

Goldman, who really wanted to see his work come to life, eventually got fed up and bought back the rights himself. The film finally landed in the hands of Rob Reiner (and in the hands of his co-producer, Andrew Sheinman) and was funded by Norman Lear. (Reiner knew Lear from a little show he'd done called All in the Family, a sweet, endearing comedy about a verbally abusive racist. Progress is a good thing.) 20th Century Fox handled distribution. Hey, they were just happy to be in there somewhere.

It wouldn't have worked to film everything on backlots and soundstages, so the production team took this show on the road. Much of the flick was shot in various locations in the UK and Ireland. Like the Cliffs of Moher, for example, which took on a slightly more dramatic name in their role as the "Cliffs of Insanity." It's all pretty gorgeous.

During the course of production, there was the occasional obstacle that needed to be overcome: getting Mandy Patinkin and Cary Elwes to look like superstar fencers, dealing with some of Andre the Giant's physical limitations (he was recovering from back surgery), and so on, but nothing unforeseen or project-delaying. All in all, everything went smoothly, the cast got along smashingly—as you can tell by watching the "Making of" featurette—and we had ourselves a classic in the making.