"You can't replace Jake"

Wired has a feature on the Prince of Persia main players, who were interviewed at WonderCon last weekend. Jordan Mechner, Jake Gyllenhaal, Mike Newell and Jerry Bruckheimer are all interviewed

Mechner talks about the wonder of seeing his creation turned into an epic movie:

Years later, Mechner arrived in Ouarzazate, in the deserts of Morocco, where the movie was being filmed. “I saw hundreds of extras and camels and horses out on a ridge, and realized that all these thousands of people had come to the desert in August because of this little Apple II game that I made 20 years ago,” he says.



Jake talks about playing the game in order to get to know his character:

But he also spent a good deal of time playing Sands of Time, focusing on the main character.

“What I liked about him is that he had this attitude in the game,” Gyllenhall says. “Not that he was a complainer, but he never really liked to fall. It was always a pain in the ass for him. If he got cut, he’d be like, ‘Argh, God!’ The fact that he put that spin on it: ‘Really? You just cut my fuckin’ arm off?’ I like that attitude. Eye-rolling when something doesn’t go your way, but not in an obnoxious way.”



“In the games, you have the prince fighting with the woman, and you have this natural sense of romance,” he says. “Both are always abrasive with each other, which is in the movie. That tit-for-tat, she’s-a-bad-ass-and-he-can’t-deal-with-it, that sexual tension is the same.”



Although Bruckheimer says that Gyllenhaal’s eagerness to perform daring feats made the editing process much easier, he was careful to not let him go too far. “I didn’t want him to get hurt,” Bruckheimer says. “You have an actor who is very physical and does a terrific job, but he’s still got to come back to work the next day. A stuntman, unfortunately, if he gets hurt, you can put another one in there. But you can’t replace Jake.”



No, you can't, Jerry, no you can't!

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AICN interviewed this month's GQ cover boy at WonderCon:

That’s how Jim [Sheridan] works. It was just like “This scene really can be whatever we want it to be.” He just wanted something real and alive and present and working with Mike, too… There’s this one scene we shot in the desert where something wasn’t working and I just said to him “Maybe I’m just going to say this one line to her” and I really gave it to Gemma [Arterton]. I really gave it to her and she responded and it came out of nowhere and Mike gets like a kid in a candy shop, it’s almost annoying. (laughs)

He’s like (shouting) “Oh, my dear boy!” and I’m like “Oh, my God! Okay, okay. It was good. It wasn’t great,” but it’s those moments. It’s what I do it for. That’s what we tried to capture, but I’m starting to lean more and more about how to do that and a lot of that is with a director who creates space… at least from my department, from the acting department, gives me that space to get closer to myself, even if I’m playing a character who is very different from myself, if that makes any sense.



It was like… You know, I’ve never been on something that big where there were three of me every day. Do you know what I mean? There would literally be three of me. There are three guys and then literally three of me. (laughs) ...

It required an intensity and a focus that I have actually then brought to this work I do now and I’ve developed techniques that have really helped me. Even if the movie is smaller… I just develop these really wonderful things. I see actors do funny things, but I have in the past who have had great experience in films and I’ve been like “What are they doing?”

It's a classic Jake interview - a little rambling and a lot entertaining. He also talks about Source Code. So check it out.

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If Disney releases a featurette a day, will it keep the audiences away? It feels like they are going to release the whole movie in three-minute shorts! Of course, we welcome each new video happily. Today's focus is the Hassansins, which I now can only hear the way Mike Newell uttered it and Jake mocked.



Video courtesy of Movie Web.

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If you want to hear Jake talk about getting a rash, take a listen!

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Some might haver missed this interview among all the replies yesterday. Jake talks about going back to 6th century Persia to live with Daniel Day Lewis.



And yet another video, this time from Destructoid. They interview Jake, Jordan Mechner, Mike Newell, Jon Turteltaub and Nicolas Cage, all intercut. It's funny and has some different questions, which is nice.



Wouldn't it be cool to see this banner in your hometown?




(Some photos courtesy of IHJ.)