Making the leap - Prince of Persia and Jake Gyllenhaal - 'No look alikes, no dummies'

According to Wikipedia, and fans who know this kind of thing, David Belle is the founder of Parkour - that most balletic and energetic mode of getting from A to B via anything in the way, whether animate or inanimate. It is, therefore, extremely good news to hear, via IMDb, that the 'Parkour coordinator' for Prince of Persia is David Belle himself. If anyone can teach Jake Gyllenhaal to move and leap as Prince Dastan should, then surely that man is David Belle. It is also possible that Belle will be a stuntman for Jake and that will mean that the Parkour will be of the highest possible standard. Belle is a man who lives for Parkour, as can be seen from his blog.



As an Indie actor, Jake has rarely starred in the kind of movie where stunts are a necessity, and yet he does seem to have enjoyed the moments when he has been able to use that physicality of his to shine. Despire the faults of Proof, I will always enjoy (and rewind) its running scenes, especially that scene where Jake throws the notebook threw the car window after chasing it at speed. And running down the college steps...


But clearly, despite the desperate moments on the bucking bronco for Brokeback Mountain and the rifle fisticuffs during Jarhead, Jake's most conventional stunt moments have been in The Day After Tomorrow. As Jake said: 'I did all of my own stunts: no look-alikes, no dummies.' Although it seems that not all of Jake's action moments made the big screen. In 2004, Jake told the press (The Northern Echo) 'of the moment he had to fall from the side of the [Russian] ship and grab on to the side with one hand. He did that stunt himself, but unfortunately the scene didn't make the finished film.'


Jake's co-star (one of) in The Day After Tomorrow, Arjay Smith (Brian) recalls: 'Jake had to do a couple of stunts. They had to put him on a wire because he’s walking across a boat – a ship, actually – and so he was about 20’ high. He had to just get wired up, just for safety reasons.'


In Bubble Boy, Jake was able to do many of his own stunts but he was protected by his bubble: 'I'm falling over waterfalls, flying in an airplane, and being tossed off motorcycles... I did a lot of the stunts because the bubble makes it safer to hit the ground.'


But things (and stunts) have reached a whole new level and, in May 2010, we'll be able to see by just how much.


Meanwhile one visitor to Pinewood today reports: 'We even caught a glimpse of one of the Prince of Persia sets. Looks exactly like the game. I couldn’t take a picture of that, no matter how much I wanted to. Damn iPhone camera... grumble, grumble. Plus, they’d probably have run me through with a prop sword or something. Though we saw a few sound stages, we mostly saw the outside of buildings.' Tantalising...


Includes pictures from IHJ.