Next you’ll be telling me that S Morgenstern is not a real person and Florin is not a real country.
Actually, I’d say that the framing device in the book is very different than in the movie. The author in the book is more the boy in the movie than the grandfather.
I didn’t mind the framing device in the book nearly as much. The whole father-son thing doesn’t really work for me, but the commentary on S. Morgenstern as an author was really enjoyable.
I think my favorite part of the book that didn’t make it into the movie was the comments about the time setting. It was before ___ but after ___. It was after stew, because everything was after stew. Etc.
I knew a guy once who didn’t like the movie The Princess Bride.
But he had six fingers.
How does she feel about all the kissy stuff? 
When my wife and I watch old films, ones that you don’t expect the main characters to start kissing (ie, not a romantic film) and then they do, we always say “Is this a kissing film!?”
Yes, TPB has a quote for everything!
^^^^^* This! 
I always get leery about discussions about “endlessly quotable” movies. Generally that means I’m about to get hammered by a nonstop tidal wave of cliches. I don’t even like doing that, much less being on the receiving end.
I remember watching it once in grade school, maybe a couple times after that. I’d read (most of) the book before the second time, and the thing that really stuck out about the movie in comparison was how lightweight it was. The book was epic. Dozens of pages of background information before we even get to the kidnapping, and then the full backstories of Inigo and Fezzik, even more chaos happens in the Fire Swamp, the rescue of Wesley is much longer and more harrowing… just a way, way bigger world and story all around. (Pretty amazing given the increasingly ridiculous kayfabe act William Goldman apparently will take to his grave regarding this version being a heavily abridged version of the work of a completely different author.) The book read like part of an ongoing anthology that would provide tons of thrills but never truly be finished. The movie played out like a breezy self-contained fairy tale with an obligatory happy ending. I’m not saying this is BAD, but I’m not about to put something as relentlessly conventional as this this on a pedestal.
7/10, I’ve seen it enough times, Spaceballs is way funnier. 
That’s adaptation for you. If there’s one thing that William Goldman understood it was how to construct a movie that works. It’s his book, and his screenplay. He famously said “nobody knows anything” but he knew what needed to be done to make it work as a self-contained movie.
Past-tense. Goldman died in 2018.
Also, outside of the actual book itself, and maybe some jokes when talking about it in interviews, did Goldman ever put up a serious pretense that S. Morgenstern existed?
I mean, the book always contains a lot more than the movie. That’s just the nature of the two media.
Enjoyment of The Princess Bride requires that one have a sense of humour. I think we may have found the difficulty.
[Moderating]
I can’t see any way to read that except as a personal insult. This is an official Warning.
Hey, Peter Schickele made a good living that way…
GuanoLad - Oh, of course. And a fantasy adventure movie with an ambiguous ending would get (rightfully) blasted. I get that. Just didn’t give the movie staying power. I would’ve loved a book-faithful miniseries, especially if it managed to tie up everything after “Buttercup’s Baby”, but I’m not sure there’d be much demand for it.
Miller - In every one of his writings I’ve seen (including the expanded novel which included “Buttercup’s Baby”), he was absolutely adamant about not being the author. Yes, anyone with half a brain knew that there wasn’t anyone named “Simon Morgenstern” or any kingdom named “Florin”, but he never broke kayfabe even once. If there was a reason for it, I’m unaware of it; I suspect it’s in the same category as all the stuff about “Cecil Adams”.
If you have a link to any article, video, or post where he comes clean (or at least appears to), I’d be glad to give it a look.
I honestly completely forgot that he died. Must’ve been that other thread, which I will not be linking to. 
I laughed way too hard at the segment where “Morgenstern” starts complaining about his wife, and Goldman cuts in to clarify for the reader that this is completely unrelated to his own complaining about his wife.
Hey! I believed it when I first read the book (in high school). I did wise up on my own fairly shortly, but I did try to find the “original” to read at first.
Well, you’ve certainly sold me on it!
ETA: Free on Kindle Unlimited. Score!
Okay, I looked around a bit.
There’s this interview where, around the 1:10:00 mark, he talks about how the book was inspired from talking to his daughters about what stories they’d like to hear.
Also, this quote: “I [don’t] like my writing. I wrote a movie called Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and I wrote a novel called The Princess Bride and those are the only two things I’ve ever written, not that I’m proud of, but that I can look at without humiliation.”
From an interview with Ain’t it Cool News:
"I asked if [Buttercup’s Baby] was going to be the total of the sequel, a sort of gentle fib like the framework of the novel itself, or if he’d actually finish the book.
“‘I don’t know if I’m going to write it. I have that much written, and I feel pretty neat about it. That’s the only thing I’ve ever written, you have to understand, that I really liked. Of all the books that I’ve written, that’s the one that I care for.’”
Also, lots of quotes like, “I’ve gotten more responses on The Princess Bride than on everything else I’ve done put together — all kinds of strange outpouring letters. Something in The Princess Bride affects people.” where he could be referring to redacting Morgenstern’s book, or he could be talking about his own writing process, but it feels like a bit of a stretch for it to be the former.
Mostly, though, what I couldn’t find is any quotes of him actively engaging in the kayfabe. I’m sure he kept it up in anything that was actually published in the novel, since that’s part of the metafiction, but I couldn’t find anything outside of that where he claims that S. Morgenstern was real, or that anyone else was responsible for writing the novel.
So, I don’t think he really committed to the bit at all, outside of the novel itself, and a few related publicity stunts, like being able to write his publisher and ask for the “deleted” reunion scene between Wesley and Buttercup.
After having seen the movie, I wanted to read the book. I mentioned that to a friend and he suggested I find an old copy printed before the movie came out. The author’s asides within the text were red in those early printings, and italicized in later ones. So, next time I was at Powell’s I looked, found an early printing, and bought it.
After reading it, I discovered another difference. The address to get the reunion scene had changed. I sent a letter to the address in my copy, and it came back as undeliverable. And that was probably about 30 years ago.