Interview: Prince of Persia Producer Jerry Bruckheimer And Creator Jordan Mechner

One thing I didn't see in the trailer is where he jumps off a ledge, grabs on and has to pull himself back up. Is that going to be in the movie?

Mechner: You didn't see that? You'll have to see the movie.

How was that '80's original a starting point for the Parkour type moves?

Mechner: I think you said it exactly right. It was a starting point and I did the best that I could on the side scrolling Apple II, to kind of capture that kind of excitement with the running and jumping and really the first ten minutes of 'Raider's of the Lost Ark' in 1981 was the immediate inspiration for the first 'Prince of Persia' game. But I think the movie, as you've seen, goes very far beyond that. It's pretty extreme.

It looks like you've incorporated a lot of the game play style into the film, with the action and narrative. Was that something that was important to you?

Mechner: Yeah. The movie is mostly based on 'The Sands of Time' which is the 2003 game that UBI Soft Montreal. Rather than try to do a literal retelling of the game, what I pitched to Jerry and Disney in 2004 and I think what movie very much is, is characters and elements, some of the coolest elements from the game sort of reconfigured into a story that makes a good movie. That's pretty much what we set out to do from the beginning.

Bruckheimer: Jordan wrote the first two drafts of the script, was heavily involved in. The fact that he's here means that he likes the movie.

Mechner: I do.

Bruckheimer: So that always helps. You won't be reading him online saying, 'Don't go see it.' So that's good.

So if you played the game you're going to recognize a lot of the characters in the film?

Mechner: Yeah. Although if you've played the game you're not going to know what happens in the movie. It's a different story but yet you'll recognize the characters, situations in a different form. I think it's very true to the spirit of the game.

In adapting this were there any other iterations of 'The Prince of Persia' that you borrowed or thought would be useful and included as a wink or nod to the fans?

Mechner: At the time that I wrote the first draft of the script those other games hadn't come out yet. So the screenplay is based on 'The Sands of Time' but as you've probably seen in the trailer the production, the production design took a lot of inspiration from the later games as well. Jake's [Gyllenhaal] costume certainly.

As far as we've seen there aren't any of the creatures from 'Sands of Time' that we've known –

Bruckheimer: That's right.

Did you decide not to have a creature storyline?

Mechner: That's a really good specific example of what we were talking about before. There are no sand monsters in the movie. For the game, turning everyone in the world except for the two main characters into sand monsters was really useful because it created an inexhaustible supply of enemies for you as a player to fight. But that's a story that's meant to be played a controller in your hand and the movie is an experience that's meant to be a sort of ride to go on, shared by an audience. So we didn't want to make a movie about fighting monsters.

Since the story in the film differs from the game where did you come up with the concept for the film?

Mechner: I don't want to tell the story of the movie. You'll have to see the movie.

Bruckheimer: It's more of a biblical tale of a young street urchin who gets picked up by the King and made a prince. It's all the family dynamics that happen with his two brothers who are not really his brothers, not by birth. That's the start of the drama, and an uncle who is jealous of all of it.

Mechner: And this really cool dagger that can turn back time which is this great power and also this great temptation. It's what the villain…you got that part thought.

Judging from the trailer, they have to take back the dagger to a secret temple to get rid of it?

Bruckheimer: It's sort of part of the story, yeah, to safeguard the dagger from all the people who are trying to get their hands on it.

What had to be developed to get those FX with the sands of time and the collapsing temple?

Bruckheimer: What you do is start with storyboards. First it starts from Jordan's mind and the writers and then we give it to our production designer and he takes it to another step and then we give it to artists and they start drawing things and then what we draw we create animatics from, visual representations like Jordan does, how he does his games, starts his games. Then we start embellishing. We start doing tests and embellishing on the things that we see and like and we create layers. Like the first time that we did the actual pushing the dagger and the sand coming out there was nothing going through his body. He just lifted the thing and it stayed there. Then we started using the sand and then the electricity going through his body. So you keep layering it and so when you see the movie in theaters there will be more layers than what you saw just now because we just didn't have time get it all in there.

Can you talk about casting Jake for this, what made him right for the project?

Bruckheimer: I always thought and still think that he's a huge movie star. I always thought that he was one of those guys who could be a huge hero, romantic hero. He's handsome. He's a wonderful actor. We got very lucky that he, A, liked the material, and B, was available to do it. There was no other choice. He was the actor right away.

Can you talk about some of the physical training that he had to go through?

Bruckheimer: A lot. He really worked hard, worked for months and months before the movie started. He trained every single day. He rode bikes. He lifted weights. He had a very specific diet. He couldn't eat any fats, really a lot of protein and all during filming he was working in a hundred and twenty degree heat. Jordan said he'd see him after a long day or around seven at night taking a jog, running. So he kept it up the whole time and he had a trainer with him both here and in Morocco and filming in London to make sure that he kept his physical appearance the way that he wanted it to be.

What do you have to do to modern day Morocco to make it look like ancient Persia?

Bruckheimer: It's just sand. There's plenty over there. No. What we did is that we had a fantastic production designer who created these amazing sets and we actually built a lot of what you saw. The only thing was that we added some set extensions which are in the top of the frame, but a lot of the things that you see in there are actually things that we built or took structures in Morocco and added our own construction to those actual old structures. We found a part of the city that was one of the most ancient parts of the city that we were able to use. The city allowed us to shoot there and the government allowed us to work with the residents, to actually be in the Souks with them.

Mechner: That was actually my first week on set. Seeing the Kasbah, literally I couldn't tell where the real city ended and the set began. You had people walking through the streets and I couldn't tell if they were extras or people who lived there.

Bruckheimer: Yeah, I mean it stopped in time. Some of the sets were in the Atlas Mountains and as you're driving up there there's no electricity. The women are the ones who do all the work. They're carrying these huge bundles of wood on their backs. They're carrying stuff on their head. They're carrying their children. It's just unbelievable. It's like you're back in the 6^th Century.

What city in Morocco were you shooting in?

Bruckheimer: We were in different ones. Marrakech, Ouarzazate, Erfoud.

Mechner: That's actually one of the things that for me was so cool and such a surprise coming from the videogame world where I was kind of used to various ways of trying to make this look real on the screen, to actually be in the desert where it's a hundred and twenty five degrees and there are real sandstorms. How many movies have you seen where there's a scene in a desert oasis and it's a set, this was a real desert oasis. I think the fact that, besides all the action and the adventure story aspects of it, this is an epic movie that's shot on location on a scale that really hasn't been done. It's never been seen on the screen in this way ever. I think that moves the production up a whole other level because it's not what you expect from a videogame movie.

How much Parkour training was there and were there any experts you brought in that were notable?

Bruckheimer: We did. We brought in the key experts out of France who worked with us. In the opening of the movie there's a young man who portrays Jake as a young boy and he was a Parkour expert. He was ten years old and he was amazing, absolutely amazing. They sent us online, like Facebook things of this kid and this was extraordinary.

How much was practical on the set, like climbing the arrows and how much was created with CGI?

Bruckheimer: There were so many sets in that trailer. When he's jumping across the rooftops, that's all real. That's all real. A lot of the stuff that's falling on him was all CGI but all the rooftops were real.

And the arrows he climbs up?

Bruckheimer: That is a set. That was a set.

But he's doing it on the set?

Bruckheimer: Yes. He's doing it on the set.

Can you talk about the specific challenges in taking a videogame story and wrapping your mind around the specifics of a film narrative?

Mechner: Well, I loved movies growing up as a kid before I loved games, actually before videogames had been invented. This is a game that was inspired by movies. So I think really in writing the first draft of the screenplay I just kind of set out to write a movie in that genre, the kind of that I love that had inspired me to create the game in the first place.

Not a lot of videogames translate well to the screen. So what was it about this one that made it a go for you?

Bruckheimer: I think the fact that it was so different from anything in the marketplace. If you look at all the 'Spider-Mans' and all the stuff that's coming out, 'Iron Man' and all these 'Transformers' this is just so unique and so fresh and different. I just love the character that Jordan had created. So it takes you back to a whole ancient period, and the movie, when you see it, it's like an old fashioned, romantic adventure film. That's really what it is. It's like a 'Lawrence of Arabia' with this kind of supernatural element added to it. But it's really a wonderful, biblical story about jealousy and goes back to all the primal fears and conflicts that we have through history. So it embellishes a lot of interesting things. What we found when we tested the movie a few weeks ago, and it tested extraordinarily high which surprised me because I always think these things are going to fail but this one turned out great; the women were a surprise because I thought we made a terrific movie for the boys because the girl is beautiful but the women flipped over this film. I've never had a score where the parents, there is violence, too, because it's PG-13, but the parents rated the film a hundred percent with an excellent or very good which has never happened before. So it's one of these movies that we know they'll take their children to go see it which is a huge advantage for a film, that parents can say, 'Hey, it's cool. My kid can see it.'

Not even 'Pirates' tested like that?

Bruckheimer: We were right up there with 'Pirates', and in fact the number was a little higher. It's not 'Pirates' but 'Pirates' wasn't 'Pirates' either when we tested it. So you never know what you have. You don't know. I've had films test and then nobody showed up. We did a movie called 'Glory Road' which we had an enormous testing on and we couldn't get people to go see it. It was a tricky film. Nobody showed up and that happens.

How often is the dagger used throughout the film and is it used because Jake is doing something that he's screwing up or is he trying to fix events around him that he can reverse?

Bruckheimer: Both. And by accident initially and then he uses it to try to fix something that's going terribly bad.

So the dagger can fix outside events that he's not involved with?

Bruckheimer: It turns back time.

Mechner: Are you familiar with the way that the dagger works?

No. So, in the game, if you die in the game can you use the dagger to go back to a certain part of the game and play it again?

Mechner: Basically in the game, if you make a mistake or you're dying, falling to your death you can actually push the switch on the dagger's handle and it brings you back to the moment before you made the mistake. So you can actually use it to avoid mistakes and people around you aren't going to be aware that you did that.

So there might be scenes in the movie where Jake is falling to his death and he can use the dagger to get out of it?

Bruckheimer: If he has it.

Mechner: This gets to the difference between the game and the movie. In the game the dagger has so many powers and you're using it all the time. If we'd done that in the movie the hero would've omnipotent and it wouldn't have been very interesting but in the movie there's a lot of constraints. He's got to be very careful when he can use the dagger.

Bruckheimer: It's very limited. It only has a little bit of sand in it.

So that's how it works, it has just that bit of sand and when that's gone it becomes just a dagger?

Bruckheimer: Right.

Was that Alfred Molina in there?

Bruckheimer: It is, it is.

So he's in everything with you now?

Bruckheimer: Well, yeah, he's our go to guy. He's fantastic. He really is.

You have 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' this summer also. How did you imagine a 'Fantasia' short could be one of your big summer action movies?

Bruckheimer: We didn't but someone else did. Nic Cage and some other people decided that it would be kind of cool to do and they came to us. We developed a screenplay with them and took this little moment from 'Fantasia' and created an entire story.

You make very specific types of films. Disney is going through a paradigm shift at the moment. How do you operate now with the kinds of films you make, do you stay that road at all costs?

Bruckheimer: No. We take direction from whoever our financer is and in this case it's we had a deal with Disney. I think that Disney decided a few years ago that they wanted to make more family oriented pictures and we made 'Pirates of the Caribbean' and so we made 'National Treasure'. So we adjust to the people who are paying for the movies want to make. We develop stories that we feel will benefit them, not only in a financial way but in a way that crosses all their different platforms. 'Pirates' was a great example. Michael [?] who works with us was at Disneyland this weekend and there was an hour wait to get into the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' ride. So you can just see how a movie can affect [things] and how they changed the ride itself and some of the characters from the film; so it benefits everybody when you make movies that fit the entire company.

There's a little worry about Johnny Depp's commitment to 'Pirates 4'. Are you going to be able to make him comfortable with the new people?

Bruckheimer: I think that he was very close with Dick [Cook], loved him. A lot of our success was due to Dick which is fantastic, but things change and we've been through a ton of management here at Disney, a lot of different bosses in the many years that I've been here and somehow you adjust. The gentleman that they brought in is very smart, a very smart executive and has had an enormous amount of success in the area he's been in and I know he's going to be a good partner to us, too, to make other films. That doesn't mean that we won't be working with Dick somewhere else down the line. In this business that happens.

Can you talk about your connection to the game 'Shattered Union'? Is that a PC game?

Bruckheimer: It's something that we're developing so it takes years. When did you start this? '04?

Mechner: '04.

Bruckheimer: There you go. So it took us five years to get this one going.

What's your attraction to the videogame world?

Bruckheimer: It's two reasons. Content and characters, theme and pre-sale title. If you go online and read his blogs and people who blog about 'Prince of Persia', it's unbelievable the fan base that he has for this game and how many people you've got, just gamers, gamer press before you came in and they're so excited to see this. Skeptical quite honestly. Some are skeptical coming in there, that we picked Jake and was he right for the character, but when they saw this they got very excited and all applauded at the end. They felt that it was true to what Jordan had originally created. They go back to his first game. They were asking questions about a game you created in '89. So they were talking about a game from '89 that they had all played, asking whether that character was in this. So they were really into this.

Do you stay on top of what's going on in videogames and what's happening in that world?

Bruckheimer: This is my genius here that keeps me current. As I get older I lean more and more on younger people to bring me stuff that I might not be aware of but they make me aware of it and then when I see it I'm like, 'Hey, I get this. I would've played this if I was in my teens or my twenties.'

Are you thinking that if this movie is successful it could feed back into the games, maybe visuals or story elements that can come into play in a future game?

Mechner: Your basically asking me to turn the sands of time forward. I will say that UBI Soft Montreal which is the team that I worked with to make 'Sands of Time' which is the game that the movie is based on are working on something new, but I can't tell you what it is.

Bruckheimer: It all feeds on one another. We'll expose this to an audience that's maybe never played the game, and trust me, they'll go out and buy the game to see how close it is to the movie and especially gamers. Vice versa we'll get people who are gamers who maybe like to sit in front of a computer and like to watch stuff on television and don't go to movies. So I think it helps everyone when a movie comes out if it's good. It's got to be good.

With the 'Pirates' series are you constantly looking for material out there that you might be able to use later?

Bruckheimer: We're always looking for stuff to create or embellish what we already have. Elliot Rossio came to us and said that we should buy this novel for the fourth 'Pirates'. They're the ones that found it. Not us.

'The Lone Ranger'. What's your take on making that current for today's audiences?

Bruckheimer: Elliot Rossio worked on that also with some other writers and with Johnny [Depp] and so they're creating something that's true to the western but adding additional elements like we did with 'Pirates' so that it won't be just a straight ahead western.

We know that Johnny wants to play Tonto. Do you know who the Ranger would be?

Bruckheimer: Not yet. We're still creating a pretty wide net to figure that out. It comes down to who's available and wants to make it. I mean, you have a wish list but we were lucky on this one that our wish list came through.

The 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' trailer was great. How crazy is Nic going to be in that movie?

Bruckheimer: I think that he's a wonderful mystical character in it. He's really a character. It's certainly a Nic Cage that you want to watch onscreen. You're never quite sure what he's going to do and how he's going to react.