Once upon a time, there was a young girl (5 years old) named Sophia.
Sophia and her mom were watching the movie The Princess Bride.
In this one scene: Our hero Westley – and his beloved Princess Buttercup – flee through an icky landscape with many icky things chasing and snatching and and … Buttercup is mostly kinda shrieking and fluttering and doing all those icky things attributed to “girls” – that real girls (#LikeAGirl) actually don’t do so much.
Over and over, Westley rescues Buttercup from dasdardly evildoers and gruesome monsters.
Sophia is squealing and cheering as the story progresses. But…
Sophia finally jumps up and actually yells at Princess Buttercup. “Stop waiting for Westley to help you. Quit screaming and fight!”
After the story ends – of course, happily – Sophia invents a new game to play with her mom. But Sophia makes a slight variation.
“Mommy, you play Westley and I’m Buttercup. And don’t rescue me. I can rescue myself!”
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That’s my kind of girl, woman, female…person.
Read this delightful book. Watch this cool movie. Cult status.
Check out William Goldman: American novelist, playwright, screenwriter. (Died 11-16-18.) Some of his other work: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Marathon Man. A Bridge Too Far. All the President’s Men (Adaptation of the Bernstein/Woodward book). And so much more.
And for the writers out there, here’s what Goldman said…. “Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it. Putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before. And although you are physically by yourself, the haunting Demon never leaves you, that Demon being the knowledge of your own terrible limitations, your hopeless inadequacy, the impossibility of ever getting it right. No matter how diamond-bright your ideas are dancing in your brain, on paper they are earthbound.” [William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade.]
