Which Lie Did I Tell? by William Goldman Read Free Book Online

movie was done, but I was terribly upset. I spoke to Rob, Andy,Billy Crystal, all the same. We told Andre stories, made ourselves feel better. We were shocked, you see, but not surprised. Andre, who was turning forty when the movie was made, knew it was coming soon. Here is what I wrote when I heard the news.
REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT
    PARIS. Jan 30 (AP) — The professional wrestler Andre Rene Roussimoff, a native of France who was known to fans as Andre the Giant, died this week, apparently of a heart attack. He was 46.
    He was handsome once. I remember a photo he showed me, taken at a beach with some friends. Dark, good-looking kid, maybe 17. Big, sure—he said he was around six foot eight then and weighed 275—but that was before the disorder really kicked in.Acromegaly. Something goes haywire with the growth hormones. He was working as a furniture mover during the day, taking wrestling lessons at night, sleeping when he could.
    At 25, he topped out, but I don’t think he ever actually knew his size. I met him in England when he was playing the rhyme-loving Fezzik in The Princess Bride. I had written the novel and now the screenplay. This was in the summer of ’86 and Andre’s publicity listed him at seven foot five, 550 pounds. Close enough. All he was sure of was that he’d had pneumonia a little while earlier and had lost 100 pounds in three weeks in the hospital.
    Gone now at 46, he was the most popular figure on any movie set I’ve even been on.
    He was very strong. I was talking to an actor who was shooting a movie in Mexico. What you had to know about Andre was that if he asked you to dinner, he paid, but when you asked him, he also paid. This actor, after several free meals, invited Andre to dinner and, late in the meal, snuck into the kitchen to give his credit card to the maitre d’. As he was about to do this, he felt himself being lifted up in the air. The actor, it so happens, was Arnold Schwarzenegger, who remembers, “When he had me up in the air, he turned me so I was facing him, and he said, ‘I pay.’ Then he carried me back to my table where he set me down in my chair like a little boy. Oh yes, Andre was very strong.”
    When Arnold Schwarzenegger tells me someone is very strong, I’ll go along with it.
    Andre once invited Schwarzenegger to a wrestling arena in Mexico where he was performing in front of 25,000 screaming fans, and, after he’d pinned his opponent, he gestured for Schwarzenegger to come into the ring.
    So through the noise, Schwarzenegger climbs up. Andre says, “Take off your shirt, they are all crazy for you to take off your shirt. I speak Spanish.” So Schwarzenegger, embarrassed, does what Andre tells him. Off comes his jacket, his shirt, his undershirt, and he begins striking poses. And then Andre goes to the locker room while Schwarzenegger goes back to his friends.
    And it had all been a practical joke. God knows what the crowdwas screaming, but it wasn’t for Schwarzenegger to strip and pose. “Nobody gave a shit if I took my shirt off or not, but I fell for it. Andre could do that to you.”
    Andre never knew what reaction he might cause in people. Sometimes children and grown-ups would see him and be terrified. Sometimes children would see him, shriek with glee, and begin clambering all over him as if the greatest toy imaginable had just been given them. And he would sit, immobile, as they roamed around him. Sometimes he’d put a hand out, palm up, and they’d sit there, for what they hoped would be forever.
    Andre would never come out and say that wrestling might not be legit. He fought 300 plus times a year for about 20 years, and all he ever admitted was that he didn’t like being in the ring with someone he thought might be on drugs. When he was in his prime, men who weighed 250 or 300 pounds would hurl themselves on him from the top rope and he would catch them and not budge.
    But even seven years ago his body was beginning to betray him. There is a scene