Well this is just absolutely unbelievable: Rob Reiner says that, at one point, he tried to get John Mayer to write a score for Princess Bride musical. YES, THAT JOHN MAYER. Obviously there is only one thing that can possibly be said about such an idea:
This comes from a recent Collider interview (h/t the Mary Sue). Asked which of his many movies deserved the film-to-stage conversion, Reiner immediately said The Princess Bride and added that he’d done his damnedest:
“I’ve talked to Mark Shaiman about it. He said, ‘I wouldn’t know what to do. I mean, it’s too good a movie. I can’t imagine.’ I talked to Randy Newman who also [couldn’t do it]. [There] was a moment where John Mayer who I thought had a sense of humor and could do some interesting lyrics and then he said he was gonna do it, then he backed out because he said, ‘It’s too much. I can’t do it.'”
John “Sexual Napalm” Mayer??? Heartthrob farm-boy pirate Westley would laugh in the face of any cheese-ball who dared cover your “Your Body Is a Wonderland” at the prom after-party. I hope Reiner is just straight-up lying through his teeth. And, also: Randy Newman??????
So if Disney ever gets its currently in-the-works stage production (in cahoots with original author William Goldman) off the ground, you can amuse yourself at intermission by imagining an alternate version penned by the warbling troubadour responsible for “Daughters.”
In the meantime, somebody make sure Rob Reiner isn’t trying to get a Katy Perry version of When Harry Met Sally off the ground.