PoP Art and Mike Newell on Jake Gyllenhaal: 'a really wonderful, subtle, sensitive actor with terrific emotional range'

I don't know why it is, but everytime I hear the word ShoWest I feel the need to add an exclamation mark while listening to a certain Village People song. However... today Prince of Persia screens before the critics at Bally's and Paris in Las Vegas (around 4pm their time). After the screening, Jerry Bruckheimer will receive his lifetime achievement award.


As threatened yesterday, this gives me the perfect excuse to post a couple of pictures from my trips to Las Vegas. Fortunately, I am sparing you my detailed photographic catalogue of the Star Trek Experience, although I was quite tempted by the picture of the blue barmaid with stalky things on her head serving in Quark's bar.



This billboard was spotted (quite possibly from a very great distance) at Westwood, LA, reminding me of those giant LA Zodiac billboards back in the day. Jake Gyllenhaal - BIG!


IHJ has wonderfully posted gorgeous pictures from the Visual Guide to PoP. I realise that not only do I have this book on order, I also have sticker books coming, 3D poster books, various behind the scenes books (aimed at every age possible), jigsaws, figurines - everything but the Prince himself. We're gonna need a bigger house.

Obviously one thing about these new pictures caught my attention straight away.


The second thing that caught my attention - apart from the gobsmacking beauty and virility of Jake Gyllenhaal in these pictures (promising such wonders for the film - think IMAX) is the extraordinary headgear that we will see in Prince of Persia. Therefore, that is the focus this evening. The words around the pictures come from an interview with Mike Newell.


'I was very anxious to give it a kind of modern-epic edge, so I knew I had to reference all of those George Lucas and Steven Spielberg films, particularly the Indiana Jones series. But I also hoped to take the audience further than that, further into an ancient world, and to try and make them believe what the people in that ancient world believed. The movie's story depends on that trick. It's all about myth made reality, which is so fascinating in a tale like this. And audiences these days are cynical; they know you can do almost anything with CGI. So you have to make them forget about all that and believe absolutely in the world and the characters that they're seeing onscreen. One of the things Jerry and I always agreed upon was that we wanted to take the audience somewhere they've never been before.'


'FJI: Did the videogame serve as a point of reference as well? Newell: It did. I'm not a gamer, but I played the game and I made sure that I understood the game. I was hopeless at it, of course. [laughs] I got to be very close with the guy who created the videogame, Jordan Mechner. He would explain where certain things in the game came from and I would say, "I think we need to make the weaponry look more savage and dangerous than it does in the game." But we never said, "We can't do that because the game doesn't" or "We must do that because the game does." We wanted to use it as a point of reference but not be slavish to it. Then again, we knew that the gamers are a very important part of the audience and we tried to keep the spirit of the game. That was our primary goal—finding the spirit of the game and respecting it.'


'FJI: How did you come to cast Jake Gyllenhaal as the titular prince and Gemma Arterton as his love interest, Tamina? Newell: I know Jake's parents, so I've known him since he was a small child and I've watched him grow up to become a really wonderful, subtle, sensitive actor with terrific emotional range. That's what I wanted for this character, but at the same time I had to have an action hero. So I took a bet! Jake's a strong guy and he's immensely hard-working, so I knew that one of the things that would set him on his mettle was actually performing these stunts. A lot of the fighting in the movie is Jake and a fight routine has to be learned to the inch or people get hurt. What you have is this tremendously energetic and youthful man of action who also has a wonderful sensitive side under the surface.'


'I saw a lot of girls for the female lead; I looked at Iranian actresses, Israeli actresses and was about to go to India to look at Bollywood actresses. But Jerry kept pushing me towards English actresses because he had had such luck with Keira Knightley in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. As soon as Gemma walked in, I fell for her. She's very energetic and very feisty and very intelligent and she's wonderful at being the tough girl who can stand up to Jake's character.'


'FJI: Most of the exteriors were shot on location in Morocco. Did you enjoy your time there? Newell: When you're making a modest film, you scout lots of streets and lots of houses. The wonderful thing about making a film like this is that you get to scout lots of different countries. We looked at a number of places, including Jordan and Spain, but I kept coming back to Morocco, because it has a wonderful, epic look to it that isn't like anywhere else. It has deserts with huge sand dunes, it has rocky deserts, it has the Atlas Mountains and it has wonderful, ancient cities. There's such variety there. One of the things that all the guidebooks say is "Don't go anywhere near Morocco during the months of July and August." And, of course, that's exactly when we shot the film! So there were difficulties that came with that. But when it was done, we all felt like we had done our time in the desert—that we had fought our own battle and won.'


'FJI: Speaking of battles, Prince of Persia marks your first experience directing large-scale battle sequences. Was that one of the more challenging aspects of this assignment? Newell: Well, yes, because before this film, nobody had ever given me 400 cavalry and 100 camels and said, "Now stage a battle." Fortunately I had a brilliant first assistant director and a marvelous second unit director. I had a very clear idea of how I wanted the sequences to look and they helped me achieve it. I'm eternally grateful to them for that.' Read more here.

Some great news today - my Brothers DVD arrived! Thank you PlayUSA...


Includes pictures from IHJ and WDW.