Well, *I* think it's funny.

[truepenny]

The unholy temptation to subtitle my conclusion Buttercup Is Marry Humperdinck in Little Less Than Half an Hour is all but irresistible. I am restrained only by my knowledge that my committee would not get the joke.

Comments

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

**snicker** Academic fuddy-duddies.

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

I am restrained only by my knowledge that my committee would not get the joke.

I'm sorry to hear that. ;-)

[papersky.livejournal.com]

If only we had a wheelbarrow!

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Can I ask - because I am a proofreader, and I suffer from APES - if the joke is anything to do with it being a misquote?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I misquoted? Damn. What should it be, then?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Buttercup Is Marrying Humperdinck in Little Less Than Half an Hour

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

But Inigo doesn't pronounce the -ing. I suppose I should have put an apostrophe in, really.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Oh, you were quoting from the film. Well, I suppose the actor playing Inigo does tend to swallow his 'ings', but for me the film (however good an adaptation) is secondary to the book. And by the book (and the movie script, because I checked), I just assumed you'd misquoted. But that was my original question: is the joke inherent in your misquote? And I guess it is.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

That's one of the lines I "hear" very strongly, even though it's been years since I've seen the film. And although my recall is far from perfect, even I could not misquote "Let me tell you what's going on ... No ... There's too much, it would take too long, let me distill it for you: the wedding is at six, which leaves us probably now something over half an hour ..." into "Let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. Buttercup is marry Humperdinck in little less than half an hour."

I love both book and movie, but I really don't think of them as being related in any but the most casual way: third cousins twice removed on the mother's side, or something like that. And because I was introduced to the movie first, if I quote, it's almost always from that.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I guess it goes with being a compulsive proofreader (and also, quite probably, with having been introduced to the book some years before the movie was thought of): the line as you quote it just looks wrong, both to my proofreader's eye and to my Princess Bride fan eye.

Book and movie

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Moving on from the specifics of that line -

I love both book and movie, but I really don't think of them as being related in any but the most casual way: third cousins twice removed on the mother's side, or something like that.

There are plenty of films (and TV series) which are "based on" a book and where book and film bear that kind of relationship to each other - Mrs Doubtfire/Madam Doubtfire, for example, or - egregriously - The Little House on the Prairie.

But there is a small handful of books which got made into films where the film is clearly "the film of the book" - Gone With The Wind, for example. (Or, though in that case causality is reversed, Orson Scott Card's "book of the film" The Abyss.) And for me, The Princess Bride is one of those films. To argue that they are only "casually" related when there is barely a line in the film that isn't found in the novel, where the characters in film and in novel are effectively identical (well, all but the narrative framework, where we have the grandfather and the sick kid instead of William Goldman fictionally remembering his dad reading the novel to himself as a sick kid), and where you would have work hard to point out a situation in the film that is not taken directly from the book... well, with all that, arguing that there's only a "casual" relationship seems strange - "casual" is precisely what the relationship between the book TPB and the film TPB is not.

Re: Book and movie

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

YMMV.

For me, the book is doing something very different than the movie: the loving elaboration of every possible aspect of the narrative, the digressions, the allegedly excised chapters, the autobiographical asides. There's a lot of stuff packed in behind the story of Westley and Buttercup. The movie is a much simpler creature. My experience of and engagement with the two forms of the story is entirely different.

I have neiher watched nor read The Princess Bride in a really long time, so this is all based on recollection.

Re: Book and movie

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I haven't watched the film in a much longer while, but it's been a while for me for both book and film. I see where you're coming from, though, even though I disagree with the direction.

[marith.livejournal.com]

Actually, I hear it in my head as Buttercup is marry Humperdinck in little lessan halfanhour.

Poor committee. Perhaps you could do a celebratory viewing for them, after the dissertation is safely yours. :)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Two of the three still wouldn't get the joke.

And you're right about the pronunciation, but I figure that dropped -ing is enough of a clue for anyone who knows the movie. :)

[calanthe-b.livejournal.com]

~dies laughing~ I know the feeling. I wanted to start out each of my chapters with a pertinent entry from The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, but I know it's too much of a risk--I can't bank on getting two examiners who'll both get it... Fantasy scholars are notorious for their uneven senses of humour.

On the other hand, I have a friend who, while not even working in Lit. Studies, managed to incorporate the worlds 'Luggage' and 'Rincewind' into her thesis, and it did her no harm at all!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Maybe you could have secret epigraphs? Because using The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is such a brilliant idea that it seems a shame not to do it at all.

[calanthe-b.livejournal.com]

Maybe you could have secret epigraphs?

Hee. Secret peigraphs, now there's an idea...

[calanthe-b.livejournal.com]

And I am a dimwit who can't close italics tags properly. Sorry.

[renenet.livejournal.com]

You had me imitating Inigo in the elevator at work yesterday. (Yes, I was the only one in the elevator. Obviously.) This reference is clever and amusing. I am now thinking of the intro and all of the chapters of your diss. under the general heading of "Let me 'splain...."