22The Princess Bride (1987)
Screenplay by William Goldman, Based on Goldman's Novel of the Same Name
“I don’t like my writing,” William Goldman said in an interview with the Writers Guild Foundation. “I’ve only liked two things I’ve ever written – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Princess Bride.” Goldman adapted his own book to the screen, having written the novel under the name S. Morgenstern. The pseudonym was not incidental “I was going to California, my kids were little,” Goldman recalled. “I said, ‘I’m gonna be gone, I’ll write you a story, what do you want it to be about? One of them said, ‘Princesses,’ one of them said, ‘Brides.’ I said, ‘That’ll be the title.’” Back in New York, Goldman found himself with scenes but unable to see the novel as a whole. Then he hit upon the “notion that I didn’t write it, it was written by this other figure named Morgenstern.” From there, Goldman said, the story “opened up for me.”
READ ALSO: How William Goldman became the most influential screenwriter in film history