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of his slow, rote memory readings. Mandy, as Inigo, tried to get Fezzik to go faster. And Andre gave back one of his slow, rote memory readings. They went back and tried it again and again, Mandy as Inigo asking Andre as Fezzik to go faster—Andre coming back at the same speed as before—
    —which was when Mandy went, “Faster, Fezzik”—and slapped him hard in the face.
    I can still see Andre’s eyes go wide. I don’t think he had been slapped outside a ring since he was little. He looked at Mandy and it was all so sudden and there was a brief pause …
    And Andre started speaking faster. He just rose to the occasion, gave it more pace and energy and you could almost see his mind going, “Oh, this is how you do it outside the ring, let’s give it a try.” In truth, it was the beginning of the happiest period of his life.
    It was my happiest movie experience, too. I am almost never around the set, mainly because it is so boring. Now, Andy Scheinman, the producer, and I would arrive late morning and stay through dailies. There were the standard tensions caused by weather, budget, and ego— all movie sets are plagued by weather, budget, and ego—but beyond that, the shoot went wonderfully well.Postproduction was difficult for the same reason the whole project was difficult, why so many bright and talented men had wanted to make it and ultimately failed— just what was the movie ? Was it a comedy? Fingers crossed, yes. Action flick? Fingers crossed again. Spoof? I don’t do spoofs, but a lot of people thought it was. Romance? Believe it.
    We were in dangerous terrain— because whenever you mix genres in a movie, that’s where you end up. I remember George Hill calling me in despair the day after the first Butch Cassidy sneak. Because the audience hadn’t liked it? The reverse. They had loved it—they just thought it was so funny. And George was convinced that the balance had to be right, because if it was too funny, the shootout at the end wouldn’t be moving. And if it was too dour, the whole beginning third—the fun and games part—would just lie there. So he set out the next morning going through the flick and taking out laughs until he got the balance right.
    Reiner fought the same battle and eventually, like Hill, won. When we started having sneaks, the audience loved us. The test scores were sensational, among the top results of that year. Fabulous. We were flying. And we should have been.
    I was talking once to a famous critic’s darling director and he said this: “People talk about movies in three parts: preparing, shooting, and postproduction. That’s wrong. There are really only two parts: the making of the movie and the selling of the movie.” I’m not sure he isn’t right.
    The studio did not know how to sell us. (No criticism intended here. Heartbreak sure, but everybody was behind the movie.) But what the hell was it? They never figured it out. Ourtrailer—one of the more crucial selling tools—was so confusing I was told it was pulled from theaters, something I had never heard of before. The ad campaign was changed and changed again. We had nothing to sell us, no stars. The book, successful, was a cult success, but no King, no Grisham.
    We came out and were a mild hit: $30 million, would have been $60 today. A double, to use their terminology. (A home run today is over $100 million in box-office gross—although your children will live to see the day when that’s a flop.) Audiences loved us once we got them in. They just didn’t see any reason to come. When we came out on cassette, word of mouth had caught up with us and we were the hit we should have been in theaters.
    It had been a difficult wait, a decade and a half. I had started writing something for my kids when the ’70s started. The movie hit the theaters in 1987. It’s the new millennium now and your kids can see it on tape. When you say that, smile.

    Andre died in early ’93. I hadn’t seen him but once since the