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Billy Crystal broke into "2 hours of medieval Yiddish stand-up" while filming the Miracle Max scene in The Princess Bride - and no one could stop laughing
Both Cary Elwes and Rob Reiner had to be removed from the set because they kept ruining every shot of the Miracle Max scene in The Princess Bride by laughing

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You could spend all day arguing about which is the funniest scene in The Princess Bride. The moment the priest says “Wuv. True wuv,” is always a highlight, but few scenes pack as many laughs per second as watching Billy Crystal as Miracle Max. As it turns out, neither the rest of the cast nor the director could stop laughing at Crystal’s performance in The Princess Bride.
During a panel at Awesome Con, Cary Elwes was praised for keeping a straight face while Billy Crystal ran around the room as Miracle Max, but he quickly had to come clean to the fan. “I didn’t! I didn’t! They replaced me with my rubber dummy for the very reason that I did ruin every take.” However, it wasn’t just Elwes who kept disrupting filming by laughing. “They even had to move Rob [Reiner] off the set because he was laughing too loudly.”
Elwes refused to go into exactly what Billy Crystal said that set everyone off with the giggles. “No, there are kids here. I’m not going to mention what Billy was doing, but he launched into basically two hours of medieval Yiddish stand-up. A lot of it was very blue, and like I said, there are kids here, but for you adults, it involved Vikings and sheep. You get the idea.”
The idea of Billy Crystal launching into such a rude standup routine while in full Miracle Max make-up is hilarious enough that, yeah, we can see how he might have disrupted filming on The Princess Bride by being a bit too funny.
Get your wide-shoulder blouses and your Members-Only jackets, and go back in time with Popverse's Made in 87. Highlights include:
- Marvel Comics killed the X-Men in 1987 to reset the franchise - but it didn’t stick
- The Full House cast addresses some of the series’ biggest continuity errors
- How Spider-Man’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon was saved by a fired Marvel boss — and Ronald McDonald
- How NBC panicked after Diane left Cheers — and why Kirstie Alley’s casting sparked a quiet battle inside the hit show
- How Bart Simpson was quietly toned down from being "so mean" before The Simpsons' first episode, as revealed by his long-time voice actor Nancy Cartwright
- The 1987 Justice League reboot that made superheroes weird, hilarious, and unexpectedly human
- How The Golden Girls became a staple at gay bars in the 80s
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