Hang out with the Dread Pirate Roberts

Sometimes the universe lines things up for you in a way that lets you imagine Twue Wuv really is possible, and that fighting to the pain will not be necessary after all. That’s how I feel moving into October as we’re putting together the final touches on one of the biggest events of our year – AS YOU WISH: An Inconceivable Celebration of THE PRINCESS BRIDE, starring Cary Elwes himself.

Some back story:

It was at the Drafthouse house at Sundance two years ago when Devin and Meredith and I started talking about building up some kind of fun merch we could develop for Badass Digest so we could help fund the site (and just make cool shit).

“Maybe we put Devin’s face on T-shirts and tell everyone to Keep Calm and Devin on?” is the kind of thing I would have said, to which Devin would have wisely said, “Fuck no, that’s a terrible idea.”

But then we started thinking about things that we just wanted to exist in the world, and thought about what we would want to really get passionate about creating. Pretty soon, we all arrived at the same conclusion – we want really great collectible products that we can use on a daily basis.

And that’s what led us to start reminiscing about those old soda glasses that Burger King and McDonald’s used to sell back in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Old school Burger King advertising

Those were amazing, and growing up I remember trying to collect the full STAR WARS set every time I went into an antique store with my parents. They kept that mission going after I graduated and went off to college, and now my mom proudly displays the full collection in her kitchen, which is awesome.

It was probably having just seen those glasses again when I was visiting for Christmas that had them fresh in my head, and in no time at all we knew that we wanted to try to make something that would tie in that nostalgia with pop culture and then also be the perfect item for Drafthouse fans. So, duh – we wanted to make a pint glass collection!

We got to work on figuring out the licenses we would need and finding an illustrator and a manufacturer who could get the screenprint process on the tapered glass done just right, and after around 18 months of work we were finally at a point where we had a set of four glasses we were super happy with.

Just as we were starting to put together the plan to release them into the world, Simon & Schuster called up my offices at the Drafthouse to say, “Hi, we’re working with Cary Elwes and releasing his new memoir, AS YOU WISH. It’s all about the behind-the-scenes stories of making THE PRINCESS BRIDE, and we thought it would be fun to do some sort of screening with him at an Alamo Drafthouse. Would you guys like to do something like that?”

WHHHHAAAAAATT? Inconceivable!

The good people at Simon & Schuster wanted our help in spreading the word about the book release, and they also agreed that we could release our first pint glass into the wild at this event, too. So I got together with the Action Pack team to start planning the biggest thing we could come up with, and now we’re finally able to announce that event and the new pint glass collection and everything!

We’ll have Cary Elwes joining us in the beautiful Dell Hall theater at the Long Center in Austin, TX on Monday, October 20 at 8p Central Time. He’ll come out and do a brief introduction to the film, giving us some choice back story pieces so we can pay extra close attention to the scene he filmed with a messed up ankle, then we’ll go into a Quote-Along™ screening of the film where audiences will be handed inflatable swords, bells and bubbles and will be encouraged to call out their favorite lines as the film plays.

After the film, Cary will join us on stage again for an extended conversation and Q&A, and on the way out of the theater everyone in the audience will receive an autographed copy of his book and the first of our new pint glasses!

But because we know not everyone can make it to Austin for the live event, we’ll also be hosting live stream screenings at Alamo Drathouse Cinemas across the country, and audiences at those screenings will also receive autographed copies of the book, and they'll be given their own hashtag to use to ask their questions via social media.

Once the glass has made its debut at this event, it will also be available for sale at the still-under-construction Action Pack store, and proceeds from all of those sales will go toward continuing to improve the events we produce and this website. We’ll be taking pre-orders for one month, from October 20 – November 20, and then once we go into production on that round of glasses they will never be reproduced again.

Check out actionpackentertainment.com for ticket links to all these events, and we’ll get more info here when we’re ready to pre-sale those glasses, too!