I don't like to be wrong, but I do like this correction!
In yesterday's sermon, I mentioned that The Princess Bride was a film about a fictional book by the same title. I read somewhere that the book didn't exist until preadolescent girls who saw the film started asking where they could get the book referenced in the film. Turns out I had bad info. Paul Waldo wrote me this correction yesterday:
A minor correction to your sermon this morning: You said the book was written after the movie. In fact, the novel was published in 1973, written by William Goldman, one of my favorite writers (Novels: Marathon Man, Magic, and others. Screenplays: Butch Cassidy, Papillon, All the President’s Men, The Right Stuff, and others.)
By the time the The Princess Bride came out in 1987, I had read it myself, and I had read it to Erin and Amy. I later read it to my son David. Erin and I went to the sneak preview when the movie came to Austin in 1987, and we were surrounded by people who had read the book. We were all nervous about whether the movie was going to accurately recount the best parts of the book. We all agreed later that it had done an admirable job – probably because Goldman also wrote the screenplay.
I recommend the book. It takes some of the things in the movie to considerably more depth. And I love the writing style of Goldman – he is a master storyteller. But there are some aspects of the book that the movie improves. The best example: The grandfather/grandson scenes replace an irritating set of side notes in the book, where Goldman pretends he is abridging boring parts out of the full-length version of a book written by S. Morganstern – keeping only the good parts. The movie does that better.
Anyway… not important, but just for the record… the book came first.
That was a needed correction. Thanks, Paul!
No comments:
Post a Comment