Michael Sheen on TRON: Legacy

Welsh actor Michael Sheen has appeared in such films as Underworld, The Queen, Frost/Nixon, and The Twilight Saga: New Moon.  He also appeared in TRON: Legacy as Castor/Zuse.  Walt Disney provided this interview with Sheen:
AN INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL SHEEN FOR TRON: LEGACY

What was the initial inspiration for your character in TRON: Legacy?

SHEEN: When I first talked to the director – Joseph Kosinski – about my character, he showed me lots of art work to illustrate what they were looking for. They wanted a character that would be able to bring a completely different energy to the world of TRON. They wanted someone who was larger than life and a real showman. Castor is a guy who runs a nightclub, so he’s an entertainer and a host. He knows everything and he’s ambiguous in lots of ways. Joseph talked about characters like the MC from Cabaret, which got me thinking about Bob Fosse and All That Jazz. All of these things inspired Castor.

How did the character develop?

SHEEN: Slowly, I started to think about the idea that all these beings on the grid in the TRON world are computer programs, so I wondered what sort of program my character would be. He’s someone that would be able to adapt to anything that comes along. He’s a survivor, he’s a circus showman, he’s adaptable, and he’s a comedian. It made me think about people I knew in pop culture who are chameleon-like and take on different personalities at different times. David Bowie is exactly that person, so I came up with a Ziggy Stardust look and feel to Castor. I ended up regretting it when I found myself walking around in 6-inch heels for days on end. However, it was a great character to play.

Apart from the heels, was it fun to wear Castor’s costume?

SHEEN: The days of going to the bathroom were long gone in that costume. Once it was on, that was it. I couldn’t sit down, and I had to have a special bicycle contraption on poles to lean against when the cameras stopped rolling. It was tough and it took me hours to get into that costume, but there was a lot of enthusiasm on the set that kept the energy levels high. There was a great atmosphere on the set. We could’ve complained all day long about the uncomfortable nature of the outfits or we could get on with it, so we choose to get on with it. To be honest, I think this attitude trickles down from the top. Garrett Hedlund [who plays Sam Flynn in TRON: Legacy] had to wear an amazingly constrictive outfit, but he was so enthusiastic about everything and he was so eager to work that it rubbed off on us all. He loved meeting everyone involved in the project and he loved being a part of this monumental movie, so it made us all realize how grateful and excited we should be.

Did you ever get close to complaining about your 6-inch heels?

SHEEN: No, I was fine. I think it also helped that most of my scenes were with the actress, Beau Garrett. It helped a lot to have Beau standing near me in her crazy outfit for most of the day. An outfit like that can get you through anything.

What are your memories of the original TRON movie?

SHEEN: I watched the first film in Wales when I was 11 years old. A friend of mine took me to cinema and I remember it blowing my mind. I was the perfect audience member because I remember the movie having an effect on my life as soon as I left the cinema. I was taken into another world while watching the movie, but when I walked outside, the world looked completely different. You know what? It’s mind blowing to think that I’m starring in the sequel 28 years later. It’s crazy.

What attracted you to the sequel?

SHEEN: When I read the script, the first thing that came to my mind was, ‘This is really good.’ It’s such a classic story about a son who goes looking for his father. It’s a human story and I think that’s really important in the high-tech world of TRON. As a fan of the original movie, I knew it was going to be a futuristic adventure and I knew the amazing effects were going to blow everyone away, but I also knew that it had to have an emotional story. I think it delivers that and so much more.

What went through your mind the first time you saw footage from the finished film?

SHEEN: I loved it. I was blown away by the special effects and I would get excited about each new bit of design that I hadn’t seen before. However, the footage that had the biggest impact on me was the scene where Kevin Flynn meets Sam. I love watching Jeff Bridges act. He’s brilliant. But to see him there with Garrett really hit me in the heart. I really believed that this was a father and son meeting up again. It’s an amazing scene.

Did you enjoy working with the special effects in the movie?

SHEEN: I didn’t have to work with too many special effects, although I worked on a scene where Jeff Bridges portrays a younger version of himself. That was pretty amazing. I had to act against Jeff, who was wearing a helmet with cameras pointing at his face. They would then replace Jeff’s face with a younger version in post production. How incredible is that? It was like a dream come true to work on something like that. This film really pushes the envelope in terms of what you can do with technology. The motion-capture, the costumes, the special effects… It all blew me away.

Did you have any green screen scenes?

SHEEN: Not really. Most of my scenes were in the nightclub, which was a real set. Everyone else had spent weeks in front of green screens, but I went old school on a proper set with hundreds of extras. It helped my character a lot because he’s very energetic and dynamic, and walking onto a set is very similar to walking onto a stage. He’s a showman, so the stage is his home.

How do you think the new generation of children will react to the world of TRON?

SHEEN: I honestly believe that this film delivers everything you could possibly want to see as a kid. I don’t think I’d be sitting here talking to you now if I didn’t believe that. This movie takes you on a classic journey to a magical world and it delivers on so many levels. It has incredible special effects and it has a human, emotional tale. The minute Sam Flynn puts that coin into the arcade machine and heads through that door you think, ‘Wow!’ It opens up a whole new world to the audience; a whole new world everybody is going to love.

Tron: Legacy (Two-Disc BD Blu-ray/DVD Combo) is Available on Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, DVD and Movie Download April 5th!

Olivia Wilde Talks TRON: Legacy

Twenty-seven year-old Olivia Wilde was a supporting actor on the late television series, The O.C.  She has appeared in Alpha Dog and The Next Three Days.  She also appeared in TRON: Legacy in the role of program/warrior, Quorra.  In conjuction with the DVD and Blu-ray release of TRON: Legacy, Disney has provided this interview with the young actress:

AN INTERVIEW WITH OLIVIA WILDE FOR TRON: LEGACY

What training did you have to undertake for the role of Quorra in TRON: Legacy?

WILDE: Quorra is the most physical role I’ve ever tackled in my career. I spent months training and transforming my body for the role. I took up cross training to get to the peak of physical fitness and then I learned all types of mixed martial arts, including Capoeira. We had an amazing stunt team that was really helpful in making us look great for the movie. In the end, I looked like a real warrior.

Did you enjoy the physical aspect of the role?

WILDE: After all that training, it was great to feel strong and powerful. I’d never been so ripped, and I never will be again. I had huge muscles and I felt like I could really protect myself, which was cool. It wasn’t easy to build up that upper body strength, but I got there in the end. I had major guns!

How intensive was the training?

WILDE: The training took months, but it was all worth it. A lot of effort goes into creating a movie like this, so you have to give your all in everything you do. For example, the fight sequence in The End Of Line Club flies by in the movie, but it actually took us four months of training to be able to accomplish. It was four months well spent.

Did you enjoy the combat choreography?

WILDE: I grew up dancing. I was a ballerina for a long time, so I think that was really helpful when it came to learning the choreography on the set. To be honest, I had a blast with it all.

How would you describe Quorra’s costume in the movie?

WILDE: Quorra’s suit was totally revolutionary. We were wearing electro-luminescent lights woven through layers of neoprene and loads of other amazing materials. Costumes like this had never been made before, so it was a complete honor to be able to wear the suit. It was so beautiful that it felt like I was wearing a sculpture.

How long did it take to get into Quorra’s costume?

WILDE: In the very beginning, the prep time for wardrobe, hair and makeup was five or six hours every day. However, once we got the hang of it, we were jumping in and out of the suits in no time.

How did the extras react to the high-tech costumes?

WILDE: I think the light suits blew everybody away. In fact, we would all get really excited every time the suits were switched on. The whole room would light up with people in these amazing costumes. You’d look around and think, ‘Oh my gosh… This is really amazing! It’s going to look awesome in the finished film.’ There was a unique glow to the room that couldn’t be achieved by CGI, so I was really glad they did not add the lights in post production.

Did you enjoy wearing the black wig for the role?

WILDE: I loved the wig because it was an iconic look that I hope inspires people. I felt really lucky that [director] Joseph Kosinski was open to having a heroine in a movie not have flowing hair. When we first talked about the role, I said, “I think it would be really cool if Quorra had a Joan Of Arc vibe to her.” That’s something I researched a lot in the beginning and that’s how we came up with her androgynous look. It made Quorra more interesting.

In what way is Quorra similar to Joan Of Arc?

WILDE: Quorra is an unlikely warrior, just like Joan Of Arc. She is both a child and a warrior – and she’s also very strong. She’s extremely compassionate and she’s completely selfless, but she also seems to be in touch with some higher power.

What about the physical similarities between Quorra and Joan Of Arc?

WILDE: Quorra’s haircut is definitely inspired by Joan Of Arc. I also noted that Joan Of Arc wore a suit of white chain mail, so I said, “Quorra’s suit has got be white.” They didn’t think anybody would get that reference, but I knew it in my head, so it was really fun to have that as an inspiration.

What do you think of Quorra?

WILDE: I love Quorra. I think she is a wonderful character and she’s been a joy to play. It would have been easy to make her a sci-fi vixen, a temptress of the TRON world, but I’m very happy that we made her a real character. She’s someone people can empathize with. I like that.

What was the rehearsal process like for the movie?

WILDE: We spent a great deal of time talking about the script and working through scenes. The writers and producers welcomed everybody’s ideas, which was really nice. I really valued the extensive rehearsal process because I feel like I was there from the very conception. We tended to focus on the family story and the human story of the movie, and the rehearsals were really important because it’s where we all learned so much about our characters.

What do you think of the music of the movie?

WILDE: Daft Punk’s music was an integral part of the shooting process. They were on set for a couple of scenes, but we’d always be playing their music if they weren’t around. If I needed to find the tone of a scene, I would listen to a Daft Punk track and I’d understand where I was in the movie. I found that really helpful and really inspiring. We were lucky to have them on board.

Do you remember the first time you walked onto the set of TRON: Legacy?

WILDE: I’m so grateful that they took the trouble to build such huge, practical sets for TRON: Legacy because they informed me on how different this world was and how non-organic it was. The sets were beautiful. They allowed me to understand where my character was from, although there was certainly some green screen work involved during the filming process, too.

Did you enjoy the green screen work?

WILDE: I found it a lot like theater because you have to imagine different worlds in your head. In that sense, it was really fun. However, I enjoyed working on the practical sets much more. The director of TRON: Legacy, Joe Kosinski, was an architect before he became a filmmaker so he had some wonderful input into the sets. The ‘safe house’ set really blew me away. It was very Kubrickian and beautiful. There would be an audible gasp whenever people walked onto that sound stage. Hopefully, all that hard work translates to the screen.

TRON: LEGACY is Available on Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, DVD and Movie Download A

Garrett Hedlund Talks "TRON: Legacy"

Twenty-six year-old Garrett Hedlund has appeared in films such as Troy, Four Brothers, Country Strong (in which he sang), but his biggest hit to date is TRON: Legacy.  Disney provided this interview with Hedlund:

AN INTERVIEW WITH GARRETT HEDLUND FOR TRON: LEGACY


Hi Garrett! How does it feel to be the star of TRON: Legacy?

HEDLUND: It feels amazing, but it’s also really nerve-wracking. I’ve never done a movie where I’ve been in every single scene!

Did you have fun filming the movie?

HEDLUND: The film shoot was awesome. There were lots of stunts, shoulder rolls and crazy moves. It was quite a show for everyone watching the action from the side of the set.

Was it hard work?

HEDLUND: It was extremely intense, but I wouldn’t change a thing. I had battle scenes, disc game sequences and loads of scenes that involved a lot of imagination, agility and focus – but I’m really proud of the finished film. It’s been an awesome project to work on.

What was the scariest stunt you had to perform for the movie?

HEDLUND: I had to do a lot of wirework for the film. You get hoisted up into the air. It’s not the most comfortable experience in the world!

How long did you spend in the harness?

HEDLUND: I spent an eternity in the harness! It was intense.

What did you get up to between takes?

HEDLUND: Well, there were a lot of play fights on the set of TRON: Legacy! Whenever we were given our weapons from the movie and some spare time between set-ups, you’d find me battling it out with [co-star] Olivia Wilde.

What was it like to work with Olivia Wilde?

HEDLUND: Olivia is fantastic. We met about seven years before we started work on TRON: Legacy, so it was amazing that we got to experience this crazy film together. It was great working with her. I have a lot of respect for anybody who can do a high roundhouse kick in 4-inch heels!

What was it like to work with Jeff Bridges?

HEDLUND: I’ve always been a huge fan of Jeff Bridges, so I was really excited to (play) the role of Sam Flynn in TRON: Legacy. Jeff has such a wonderful charisma and he’s an amazing actor – and I knew I’d get along with him from the start. He’s been great to me.

Can you tell us about the light suit you get to wear in the movie?

HEDLUND: The light suits were amazing! I’m used to working in jeans and a T-shirt, so it was strange to put on a skin-tight suit that lights up by itself. You feel very special wearing something like that.

How hard is it to act in a light suit?

HEDLUND: It’s pretty difficult because it’s really tight and you can’t run around easily. The helmet also gets in the way sometimes. You have to learn to walk again wearing all this crazy get-up.

Can you tell us about the special effects in the movie?

HEDLUND: You’ll see a lot of light cycles in the movie, which are the most high-tech, amazing, futuristic motorbikes you’ve ever seen in your life. You’re going to be blown away when you see them in action. They are amazing.

Were they easy to ride?

HEDLUND: I had to learn how to ride a motorcycle for the role, but I was fine once I knew the basics. To be honest, I had to learn a lot of things for TRON: Legacy. I had to learn how to ride a motorbike, I had to learn fight choreography and I had to learn hand-to-hand combat. I really enjoyed the physical training. I got really fit by the end of it all!

How tough was all the training for the role?

HEDLUND: It was extremely tough, but it was also exciting. I started off my day with 90 minutes of motorcycle training before heading over to work on the fight training. After that, I’d have a break before another 90 minutes of exercise with the guy who trained the actors from the movie, 300.

How long did the training last?

HEDLUND: I did about two months of training. After that, I was ready for anything!

How would you describe your character in the movie?

HEDLUND: Sam Flynn is a guy whose father mysteriously disappeared 20 years ago. Sam is the biggest shareholder in a huge company called Encom, but he’s turned his back on money. He lives an independent, secluded life – but he’s about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime!

What happens to him?

HEDLUND: A friend of the family called Alan Bradley motivates Sam to go and seek his father. That’s when Sam starts to figure things out and he puts pieces of a puzzle together… He ends up entering a whole new world filled with light bikes, discs and a crazy game grid.

Does Sam like action and adventure?

HEDLUND: Of course he does! Sam is into all kinds of extreme things just because he can. He’s very interested in base jumping and motorcycles. There’s even a great chase scene with his bike at the beginning of the movie.

What was your toughest challenge during the film shoot?

HEDLUND: Everybody likes to talk about how difficult it is to work with green screen because you have to act with your imagination. Personally, I think we were lucky on TRON: Legacy because there were also a lot of sets for us to work on.

Did you enjoy working on the green screen scenes?

HEDLUND: Whenever we worked on green screen scenes, we had great direction from our director, Joseph Kosinski. He knew exactly what he wanted, which really helped, and he was always thinking ten steps ahead of us. He made the film shoot such an easy and enjoyable experience. He’s the best!

TRON: LEGACY is Available on Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, DVD and Movie Download April 5th!

Jeff Bridges' TRON: Legacy Interview Part 3

This is part of an interview series provided by Walt Disney:

AN INTERVIEW WITH JEFF BRIDGES FOR TRON: LEGACY

Hi Jeff! How would you describe the story of TRON: Legacy?

BRIDGES: TRON: Legacy is a father and son story set in a crazy computer world. It’s the sequel to a movie that was made 28 years ago!

How much fun did you have shooting TRON: Legacy?

BRIDGES: The movie was a lot of fun to film because every day was different. Some days, we’d be working on a sound stage with an amazing set. Other days, I’d be walking around a huge, empty warehouse wearing a leotard with little balls all over it.

That sounds a little crazy…

BRIDGES: It was very crazy and very bizarre, but it was a fun challenge because that’s how the special effects were shot. My face was covered with 100 tiny dots and I wore a helmet with two antennas sticking out of it. I am used to acting in costume, but this was very different. I soon learned to get used to it, though.

How has technology changed since you made the original movie?

BRIDGES: The first TRON movie was made nearly 30 years ago. Back then, there was no internet and there were no cell phones. There were no personal computers either. It was a completely different world.

How did you shoot the special effects for the original movie?

BRIDGES: It was all very basic back then. There was a lot of adhesive tape and tennis balls used on the set of the first film. TRON: Legacy benefits from advancements in technology since then. It’s a completely different world now.

When did you first hear about the sequel?

BRIDGES: There’s been a rumor of a TRON sequel going around Hollywood ever since the first movie was released. I kept waiting and waiting to get a script, but I never heard anything until a couple of years ago. I think Disney was very wise to wait for the right script and the right story, but it’s here now.

What went through your mind when you heard a script was on its way?

BRIDGES: I was overjoyed. To be honest, I was very excited when I heard about the original movie – and I had the same excitement when I found out that the sequel was going to be made. I couldn’t wait to read what was going to happen.

How was the original movie pitched to you?

BRIDGES: The original movie appealed to the kid in me. They said, “Do you want to play a guy who gets sucked inside a computer? We’ll be using lots of cutting edge technology to shoot the film and it’s going to be very different to anything else you’ve seen at the movies.” It was like being invited over to the house of the kid who’s got all the latest gadgets and games. I immediately said to them, “I’m in!”

How was the sequel pitched to you?

BRIDGES: The director told me it was going to be a father and son story, and he said we were going to be using cutting edge filming techniques again. It sounded great to me.

Did you hesitate before signing up for the sequel?

BRIDGES: Oh, sure. I hesitate before I sign up for anything, but I was extremely excited about the prospect of the sequel. I thought to myself, ‘I can’t wait to mess around with all that great, cutting edge technology. I can’t wait to see what the visual effects will be like now.’

What made you hesitate?

BRIDGES: I wanted to make sure the story of the sequel was strong. I knew there was going to be a lot of visual candy, but you need to care about the characters for a movie to work. As soon as I heard the story was going to be a father and son adventure, I knew it was going to work out.

Is it true that you kept your TRON helmet from the original movie?

BRIDGES: I kept the helmet and the leotard from the original film and I actually wore it for Halloween one year. I dressed up as my character, Kevin Flynn, and walked around! It got a lot of strange looks, but I didn’t care.

What science-fiction books and movies were you into when you were young?
BRIDGES: As a kid, I loved science fiction. When I was growing up, I read books by Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein – and I’ve always loved science fiction movies. I don’t think you can get a much better movie than 2001. However, I also like the movie Starman, which I appeared in. Science fiction is great.

Are you into video games?

BRIDGES: I was really into video games when we made the original TRON. The walls of the soundstage where we shot the original movie were lined with video games and they were all free. You didn’t have to put any money in them.

That sounds amazing…

BRIDGES: It was great! Everyone would be playing them all day long. The crew would come up to me and say, “Come on, Jeff… We need you on set.” And I’d reply, “I’m preparing, man. I’m getting into character.”

Do you play many video games now?

BRIDGES: I don’t play too many video games now. I feel like I’ve fallen away from technology. I have a love-hate relationship with the internet, although I have a website that I like to play around with.

We’ve heard a rumor that you’re interested in photography…

BRIDGES: I am! I usually take photos on the set of all my movies. In fact, you can see some of the shots on my website.

Did you take many pictures on the set of TRON: Legacy?

BRIDGES: I wanted to take lots of pictures, but the lighting was very dark on the set. I didn’t take as many pictures as I usually take, but there are a few out there.

What advice do you have for aspiring photographers?

BRIDGES: I don’t know if I have any advice! Just keep taking pictures of things you think are interesting. That’s how I started out.

And what advice would you give to aspiring actors?

BRIDGES: Train hard and practice your craft. Get involved in all aspects of drama, but keep on trying because it’s a tough industry to crack. Good luck!

TRON: LEGACY is Available on Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, DVD and Movie Download April 5th!

Jeff Bridges' TRON: Legacy Interview Part 2

AN INTERVIEW WITH JEFF BRIDGES FOR TRON: LEGACY

How did the film shoot for TRON: Legacy compare to the film shoot for the original movie?

BRIDGES: The first movie was shot in 70 mm, black and white. Our set was mostly made from a black material called Duvetyne that was hanging on the wall along with some white adhesive tape – and that was it. They sent the film overseas where people hand-tinted all of the glowing lines into each shot frame-by-frame. It was a mammoth undertaking and it was extremely cutting edge. However, the process for the second movie was completely different.

Can you take us through the filming process for the sequel?

BRIDGES: TRON: Legacy was the first movie that I’ve been involved in where many scenes were shot without cameras. We used a process called motion capture and we shot the movie in a space called The Volume. The Volume can be any size, but the walls are covered with optical sensors. They’re not cameras, but each sensor gives information to a computer. To begin each scene, we had to stand in the shape of the letter T. You stand with your hands out and the sensors grab you – and then you carry on. You’re wearing a suit with little sensors all over it, so all of the makeup, the costumes, the camera angles, the lighting… Everything is added in post production. It was very different to anything I’d worked on before.

Were there any similarities between the shooting of the two movies?

BRIDGES: The biggest similarity between the filming of the two movies was the way that you have to act a lot with your mind. We spent a lot of both film shoots in huge rooms with no sets, so you have to imagine where you are and you have to imagine what’s going on in the scene. It’s always a challenge, but it’s also a lot of fun.

What do you think of the new light cycles in TRON: Legacy?

BRIDGES: I think they’re great. They are much better, more sophisticated and more refined than the light cycles in the original movie. [Director] Joseph Kosinski was an architect, so he came at the project from a new angle and the film has a heightened design feel to it due to this. He hired a wonderful production designer called Darren Gilford who worked in car design, so that also added a different element to the project. I’m really impressed and happy with all of the vehicles in the movie. I think they all look great.

Did it take a lot of persuading to get you on board for the sequel?

BRIDGES: Not really. Joe Kosinski made a wonderful pitch to me about the story of the movie, so I knew where the film was heading and I was immediately intrigued. This is Joe’s first film and I have to give Disney credit for taking that risk in choosing him, but he pulled it off with ease. He has a background in commercials, so when he pitched the story to me, he showed me his commercial reel and I saw the technology that was available to use in the movie. I signed onto the original TRON because I was excited about using cutting edge technology, and that’s exactly the same reason why I signed on for the sequel.

What was it like to play two different characters in the movie: Kevin Flynn and Clu?

BRIDGES: It wasn’t too difficult. The director did his best to separate the days where I played Flynn and Clu, which made the work much easier. The makeup process was very different for each of the characters, so it was much better to separate the days and keep these two apart.

What was it like to see a younger version of yourself in Clu?

BRIDGES: It was a little bizarre, but it wasn’t too strange for me because I have movies that chart my different looks over the years. However, I was amazed that they could pull off this feat with such accuracy. What they did in TRON: Legacy was amazing. They modeled Clu on the period of my life when I worked on Against All Odds – and it all looks so real. The guys who worked on it are magicians.

Did you have any input into the look of Clu?

BRIDGES: I helped in any way I could, so I gave them a lot of family pictures to use as reference. The same guys who worked on Benjamin Button came in and worked on Clu. When they first arrived, they brought along Brad Pitt’s head in a glass box and they set it down on the table. It was uncanny. It wasn’t like a wax head that you might see in a museum. In fact, it looked like Brad Pitt’s head had been cut off and it was just sitting there. You were waiting for him to, “Hi.” It was so realistic.

What inspired your performance of Clu?

BRIDGES: My inspiration came from the script and the story. That’s always the place where I start my work on a character, but then I look at aspects of myself that might apply to each character. In this case, I’m playing a couple of guys, so I would magnify certain aspects of myself for one and maybe dampen those for the other.

Video games and arcade games are constantly featured in both TRON movies. Are you a gamer?

BRIDGES: I don’t play video games much now, although I remember playing one with my daughters. I believe it was called Myst. I hope they make a movie of that game because it was a wonderful world to visit. You weren’t killing anybody in the game, but it was very dramatic. That was the last video game I got into.

Were you interested in arcade games in your youth?

BRIDGES: I think I was a grown man when arcade games came into fashion. I can remember playing Pong, but that wasn’t in my youth. I played Pong on the movie set where I met my wife, which must have been 35 years ago. That would’ve been the 80s and I was working on a movie called Rancho Deluxe with Harry Dean Stanton. I distinctly remember playing Pong there.

Were there many arcade machines on the set of the first TRON movie?

BRIDGES: When we filmed the first movie, Steven Lisberger – the director – had video games all over the soundstage and I used to get locked into them. Have you heard of a game called Battle Zone? I used to love that. They had to tear me off of that thing to get to work.

We can’t let the interview end without mentioning your Academy Award win for Crazy Heart… Where do you keep your award?

BRIDGES: It’s sitting on the shelf by my kitchen.

How did it feel to win?

BRIDGES: It was truly wonderful. To get that acknowledgement from your peers is fantastic, but the really cool thing was that the movie was all about music and it’s caused my own music to bloom. I’m in my sixties and I’ve been working on music since I was a teenager, but I’ve had to put it in the back burner. However, I’ve now been able to go back into the studio and make an album. That’s amazing for me. I couldn’t be happier.

TRON: LEGACY is Available on Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, DVD and Movie Download April 5th!

Jeff Bridges' TRON: Legacy Interview, Part 1

Walt Disney provided this interview for the general press:

AN INTERVIEW WITH JEFF BRIDGES FOR TRON: LEGACY

What was your initial reaction when you heard that Disney was interested in making a sequel to TRON?

BRIDGES: There have been rumors of a TRON sequel circulating for many years. The first rumor probably started about 20 years ago, so I gave up on the idea because it never looked like it was going to happen. I guess Disney had the sequel on its back burners and they weren’t satisfied with any of the scripts that turned up over the years, so they waited and waited. I’m very happy they did because they held out to find the right guy to be at the helm: director Joseph Kosinski. I think they really found a terrific leader in Joe, and they also found a terrific script.

What makes Joseph Kosinski a great director?

BRIDGES: It’s always interesting to discover where a director comes from, whether he’s a writer, an actor or whatever. Joe was an architect and to have an architect at the helm of this movie was terrific. He was up to date with all of the modern techniques in special effects and he had a great visual style. He was also terrific with actors and he had great ideas. When this project was presented to me, I thought to myself, ‘This sounds like something I would love to do.’ The first movie tickled the kid in me – and the sequel did exactly the same. I get to play a guy who is sucked inside a computer and I get to play with all of the new toys that we have available to us with modern technology and filmmaking. To be involved with something so cutting edge was extremely exciting to me. I jumped at the chance to sign up.

What did you think of having Garrett Hedlund play Kevin Flynn’s son in the movie?

BRIDGES: Garrett is a great guy. I have three daughters and no sons, but when I look at Garrett, I can see that he could be my son. There’s something about him that reminds me of myself, which is why casting him as my son was perfect. He was a joy to work with and I think he did an amazing job in TRON: Legacy. He’s going to go far.

How does it feel to see people excited about the world of TRON again?

BRIDGES: It feels great. It’s very exciting. I have taken a number of trips to Comic-Con with TRON: Legacy over the last few years and you can really feel the energy of the fans at events like that. They have been really excited about the project. In fact, the fans have been an integral part in getting the TRON world back together. A few years ago, we went to Comic-Con to test a couple of minutes of film with audiences. The director, the production designer and our special effects supervisor joined forces to give audiences a two-minute taste of what the movie might be like if this project could fly and to see if people really wanted to see it. The audience really enjoyed that Disney felt they wanted to make this fantastic world come to life again. Comic-Con was very instrumental in getting this movie made.

What was the most challenging aspect of the film shoot?

BRIDGES: As an actor, I really enjoy costumes, sets and makeup. These elements inform your performance and you learn to count on them. However, a lot of TRON: Legacy was filmed without costumes, without makeup and without sets. When you don’t have these things around you, you’re thrown back to your childhood – to the time when you were a little kid playing in the garden. Back then, you didn’t have a castle and you didn’t have a sword. You had to use a stick as a sword and your castle was a box. It was all in your mind. That’s exactly what we had to do in this movie. We had to play ‘pretend’ because we didn’t have the costumes or the sets or the props. It was fascinating.

Do you ask a lot of questions when you work on a film set in an alternate universe with its own rules?

BRIDGES: Oh, sure. I ask a lot of questions with whatever film I’m working on – and the director is always the guy to go to.

What kind of questions did you ask about TRON: Legacy?

BRIDGES: Joe Kosinski was very inclusive because he allowed me into the writing process and the development of the story. I was interested in creating a modern myth, so I didn’t want the movie to just be about design and the battles. I wanted the movie to have something to say and I wanted the story to be enthralling and captivating.

What appealed to you the most in the movie’s script?

BRIDGES: One of the things that drew me to this movie was a chance to be part of creating a modern day myth. Myths are so important for us to help navigate the treacherous waters of being alive. Each age has its own challenges and I feel that technology is certainly one of ours.

Are you not happy with today’s technology?

BRIDGES: In some ways, technology is wonderful – but there is a darker side to it that we don’t examine as much as we should. We need to think about the ramifications of what we’re doing. We drink water from plastic bottles that we think are biodegradable, but then we discover that they last for hundreds of years. We bitch about oil spills, but every year we put 100 million tons of plastic into the ocean. That’s worse than the awful oil spill in 2010. I think it’s a matter of educating people and thinking about where we want to go with technology – and what we want to do with it. We could use it in beautiful ways, but I think it’s natural for us to want immediate gratification.

Are there any positive aspects to advances in technology?

BRIDGES: What are the good things about technology? Like most things in life, technology is a double-edged sword. When we made the first TRON movie, there was no internet. Now, it’s a huge part of our everyday lives. The internet gives us the chance to link up and be connected – and that’s a great thing.

Can you survive without the internet?

BRIDGES: Listen, I don’t Tweet. I don’t Facebook. I don’t do any of that stuff. It’s all too much. I have a website and I draw, but that’s about it. I went to the internet because I thought it would be a way to release an album that I created years ago. I can put it out there in the world and then I get messages from people in places like Russia saying, “I dig your thing, man.” That’s exciting. That’s a positive thing that technology can do. That’s a positive link. I’m very happy about that. Very happy indeed.


TRON: LEGACY is Available on Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, DVD and Movie Download April 5th!

Jake Gyllenhaal on Prince of Persia

Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays Prince Dastan, talks about PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME in this interview provided by Disney:

QUESTION: You and Gemma Arterton have great chemistry on screen in Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time. That must have helped in the scenes where your characters banter together?

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: Oh definitely! Those scenes I think were the best written and the most fun to play. They came so naturally and we shot them so fast. It was unfortunate that the ended so quickly. We might spend a month on an action scene and half a day on that scene (with Gemma). We would nail it and move on. She and I had a sort of tit for that thing. The first time we met she looked at me as though she was unimpressed and I looked at her like…’You should be! Why aren’t you?’…(joked). So that was it from the beginning, there was no acting required.

QUESTION: The weather in Morocco during filming was supposed to be so hot and sandy that it was almost like having sand in your mouth all the time?

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: It was not that bad. It was ok. It was hot but it was fun. The desert is really cleansing…the sand exfoliates your skin….and there is a nice warm dry sun and you are sweating.

QUESTION: You must have been conditioned by Jarhead?

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: I was. I make a lot of movies about turning back time and a lot of movies in the desert. It’s a very strange thing.

QUESTION: You have been Spider Man and Batman. Now in Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time you have become a sort of super hero?

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: No! I am a video game adaptation. (jokes)

QUESTION: So how does it feel to finally have your own action figure?

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: That is like fulfilling the dreams that I had when I was eight years old. When he is playing with an action figure what young boy doesn’t think that maybe one day…You personify anyway as the action figure character that you are playing with, so to be one is incredible. If you were to go back to the eight year old me and say that one day you will be playing in a movie that looks a little like Indiana Jones, or The Goonies and a couple of other things and it is the video game that you are actually playing called the Prince Of Persia…I think that my head would have exploded.

QUESTION: What was your inspiration for the movie?

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: My primary resource was the video game. There were also books and different paintings of that time that were real inspirations. After I read the script I had a meeting with Jerry Bruckheimer and asked him what the movie was going to look like. Was it going to look like a video game or how I might imagine a typical Disney film? For instance, I wondered if I was to be wearing the red outfit for the whole movie. Jerry handed me this book (The Orientalist) and said that was how he wanted it to look. But apart from that there was not a lot of research. There was some research into weaponry and things like that. But I looked on it more like it was based on a fantasy world that was based on reality.

QUESTION: What is it like to make a big expensive special effects film like Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time?

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: The thing about a movie like this that is interesting is that people tend to only associate it with commerce. For me it was always that it was so much fun. It is differentiating the actor with the businessman and the actor who says that he wants to be a kid again and have a good time. It was so exciting! Every day I would drive to work and it was like going to a sporting event when you are the captain of the team. There were thousands of cars lined up along the road for five miles and there was an army of film crew and then the sets were 100 feet high – all built with perfect detail. I don’t think you see that any more on a film set. So often it is green screen effects that are done later. But we could shoot anywhere because the details were extraordinary and there were thousands of extras. And some more were added in later – to make it even bigger! I would get in there and every day I did feel like a kid.

QUESTION: After working with you in this film, Sir Ben Kingsley says you have the ability to seemingly be doing very little in front of the camera and yet it’s just right?

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: With this movie I always looked at it like I was reading a children’s book to a child. It was that kind of style of acting. Because of his years of theatrical work and his history of Shakespeare, Sir Ben has an attitude that there is a sense of telling a story clearly and even theatrically. At on point I told him I felt as though I was speaking to a child and he said….exactly! I always feel that if a movie is good then an actor should have to do very little.

QUESTION: What would you say was the greatest challenge, the physicality of it or speaking in a British accent?

JAKLE GYLLENHAAL: No doubt speaking in a British accent, that was the hardest part for me. It’s daunting trying to do any service as an American to such a beautiful fluid speech pattern that you all have. For me, it did help being surrounded by a primarily British cast and somewhat British crew. So I would speak every day, I would get out of the car and I’d have the accent on all day. And I would sort of journey from region to region around England with each different person I would talk to, I would mimic them and sometimes I would sound like them in takes and Mike [Newell] would say [adopts posh British accent and shouts]… ‘Dear boy! You don’t sound right! Do it again! Smashing!’. That’s my favorite line. ‘CUT!’. That’s when you know he was excited about a take. So yeah, I would say the accent was much more daunting, particularly in front of the British press.

QUESTION: How dangerous is it working with ostriches?

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: The ostrich scene was where I was the most terrified in the entire shoot. They are terrifying animals. Even in their innocence, they can tear out your eyeballs and rip out your heart. They seem like they have eyes similar to mine but they really don’t. They can really do dangerous stuff to you.

QUESTION: How much of the stunt work did you do and were you in the best shape of your life for this movie?

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: It depends what you mean by ‘best shape’. I cycle and I run long distances…10 or 12 miles. But I am not able to do that when I am the shape I was for the movie. I remember seeing lance Armstrong on the cover of a magazine and he was saying ‘I’m ripped!’ He was skinny and really gaunt but that was him ready for the tour. So that is being in shape in another way. But I was fit for doing almost any sport. I could avoid serious injury because I was strong and flexible enough. I am pretty athletic so I always feel pretty good and healthy.

QUESTION: What sort of injuries did you get?

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: My shoulders got pretty big so I couldn’t always grab on to something and sometimes there was a little pulling and tearing of tendons. There were some little muscle things and bruises and cuts…but no big deal. I accepted that aches and pains are part of the job. I want to go after the things that I want to do or I am inspired by

QUESTION: Did you feel you were chosen for Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time, not just for how you look but because you can handle deeper stuff?

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: I hope so. I hope that is why people choose actors. Obviously I know they don’t always do that. But I believe that you earn your stripes. I don’t believe that there is necessarily an order and that doing a bigger movie means you have to do a smaller movie. But I do feel that when you are cast in a movie you should have earned that thing – whether it is from an audition or other work you’ve done, or whether you have behaved well in a certain way or that you also do good work. Those things are important. Jerry [Bruckheimer] said he thought I was a good actor and [director] Mike Newell too. Mike had worked with my sister and had seen and respected my work. He didn’t just pick me out of the blue. I worked to gain their confidence and I feel that is how it should be.

QUESTION: As a child was it always the case that you would become an actor?

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: There is a very early entry in my diary, from when I was six years old. It says…Soccer is my life! I played AYSO soccer – school soccer. It became my obsession. Which position did I play? I played all sorts of positions. When you are playing soccer at five years old there isn’t really a position. You run after the ball, basically.

QUESTION: There are several Prince Of Persia stories. So how prepared are you to do another film as Dastan?

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: With a movie of this size that is something that becomes contractual even before you start it. There have been many movies in which I have been involved when there has been the potential for something else and it hasn’t happened. Or it has happened actually. But the thing is, I am totally game. I love the character and his world. I think it is super fun.

QUESTION: You must be pleased with your English accent in Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time because it is spot on.

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: Thank you very much. I worked really hard on it. It was planned from the very beginning to use an English accent. Jerry Bruckheimer said that he thought an English accent seemed to legitimize any time period. Particularly if it is in the past but even if it is in the future. It’s sort of strange but there is something about the accent. I don’t know what it is. There is an ancient quality and the Shakespearean theatrical thing that people can unconsciously relate to. Also since Mike Newell was shooting it in Britain, he wanted primarily to cast British. So the actor who was to play the part of Dastan would have to fit in.

QUESTION: How have you coped with fame? Have you become more comfortable as you have got older?

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: Up until now I have had an interesting perspective because I haven’t been so clear about all the things that I want to do or who I was. Now I think I feel much more comfortable with it because I am more comfortable with what I want to do and who I am and what I care about. A lot of this stuff is great fun, I have a good sense of humor and I enjoy laughing. I want to make movies that are like that and spend time with good people. This is our day so you should have a good time doing it. That is my perspective on it now.

PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME is now vailable on DVD and Blu-ray.

Mike Newell on Prince of Persia

Mike Newell, director of PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME talks about the film in this interview provided by Disney:

QUESTION: Did you reference old films like Korda’s The Thief Of Bagdad as you were making Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time?

MIKE NEWELL: I thought about movies that I had seen as a child, though The Thief Of Bagdad wasn’t one of them. But I did think about big cowboy movies that I had seen and obviously the movies of David Lean. With a film like this you know you are doing a genre which is called Bruckheimer and that takes a big canvas to produce and I was very aware of that.

QUESTION: Why did you film in Morocco at a time of the year that everyone advised against going there?

MIKE NEWELL: I’m afraid that is simply how the movies work. If you are going to do a film about the South Pole, the chances are that you will film it in Hawaii! Whatever is most difficult, you will get to do. That is just when everything happened. It was very hot! Some days it was 135 degrees! But it is very dry and so, you lose a lot of weight, which is good. Wet heat is what is exhausting and so I was fine. Also, it must be said, sometimes up in the mountains, we had absolutely torrential rain. Really serious rain, where we had to watch out for water courses getting washed away.

QUESTION: You never used rain in the movie. So did you stop when the weather got bad?

MIKE NEWELL: Yes, we stopped. And we stopped in vast confusion and disorganization – because nobody said it was going to rain! We simply weren’t prepared for it.

QUESTION: How hard was it to adapt the movie from a video game?

MIKE NEWELL: Jordan Mechner [creator of the video game and film scriptwriter] got on very well indeed. The reason was that he was the man who wrote the game and did the first graphic novel, and he is a research freak. He absolutely loves the ancient world and he loves doing his research. So there would be stuff in the story, which would be absolutely authentic – and I enjoyed that very much. It meant that I did not feel overwhelmed by the video game. Jerry Bruckheimer and I talked a lot about what our attitude to the game should be. Were we making the game or were we making a drama? Very clearly we said that we were making a drama. Then what happened was that during the making of the film, we became aware of at least one other new version of the game, which was much more visually sophisticated. I looked at that and I took some moves from that. The other big thing that we decided was that he had to be an action hero. But what were the seeds of what the character in the game does? What we discovered was that what it was about was this thing called parkour. Parkour was developed by the kids in the French housing estates. They would run up walls! So we watched tapes of this very dramatic stuff. In certain moves they do appear to be able to defy gravity…in just the way that the character in the game does. So the parkour people advised us in all sorts of ways. Like for the big sequence where Jake attacks the gate. They choreographed some of that for us, which was very useful. So there was a kind of overlap between parkour, the game and the making of a great big romantic widescreen experience. That was how it came together.

QUESTION: One of the film’s strengths is the comic banter, which seems like The Princess Bride?

MIKE NEWELL: The Princess Bride was one of the films we watched and were aware of. One of the reasons I wanted to make this film is that it is this new genre and Jerry [Bruckheimer] is a genre now. He does what he does. He is Pirates Of The Caribbean and The Rock and Bruce Willis going to defend the world from a crashing meteor. It is always a rich, high coloured mixture. I liked that a lot about the script. I liked that it was funny. I very much enjoy doing that stuff. Fred (Alfred Molina) and I had worked together before and I knew he would be wonderful. Then you do have that uneasy Beatrice and Benedict relationship between the boy and the girl where they absolutely loathe one another and then little by little they fall in love. So what you are doing is to make this great big collage of all sorts of things. It is no one movie. It is an entertainment.

QUESTION: The casting of Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton was crucial?

MIKE NEWELL: Yes. Jerry was very generous about that. He asked who I wanted and I told him very clearly that I had always thought about Jake. I wanted him to be American because this was a huge budget movie and the Americans deserve to see their own. At the same time I was encouraged to cast English. I was thinking about going to Bollywood for the girl. I saw a lot of Bollywood actresses. I saw a couple of sensational Iranian actress, an Israeli actress or two. I wanted a kind of exotic look. Then up pops Gemma Arterton from Gravesend, England and she was the one I settled on. I felt very strongly about both leads. Jerry saw them and agreed.

QUESTION: Ben Kingsley is a great villain. Had your paths crossed early in your careers when you both worked on the Uk TV soap, Coronation Street?

MIKE NEWELL: Apparently they did. Neither of us can really remember. But it was about the time that we were both working on the Street. I thought of him for this film because of films like Sexy Beast. I wanted somebody who would be believable as a good guy and would turn out to have this appalling second existence as the bad guy. So it was Gandhi on the one hand and Sexy Beast on the other. He was terrific. He puts out his hand and pulls the kid on to the horse and everything is going to be fine from that moment on. You trust him. Then you discover you must not trust him. I said to him that there were always going to be two movies. The movie that we were making and then the movie that his character was making, which was going to be different. And the one movie would twine round the other.

QUESTION: How did you work the balance between actual filming and the CGI effects?

MIKE NEWELL: This is the second time I have done one of these great big live action versus CG movies. We were in Morocco at the wrong time of the year and people were terrified that we would start to get sick, they were terrified that the level of competence that we would find out there was not as great as we needed. It was in fact superlatively more than we needed. They are really good at what they do out there. They were also afraid that we would get behind, that Morocco would turn into a swamp out of which we could clamber. It did not do that, by virtue of us removing certain sequences out of Morocco and putting them into stages in England. The biggest of those was the attack on the Eastern Gate. Originally we were going to build that part of the city in Morocco and we would then, with CG, have grafted the rest of the city all around it. I can see the magnificent location in my head right now. But we were very worried about the wind. In summer the wind out there gets very boisterous. We were afraid that the whole thing would get blown over and then we would be in Apocalypse Now land. So we decided to shift that out of actual production into CG production. That was a tremendous shift. We made the decision quite late not to shoot for real and so it was something that we were constantly running to catch up with. We always knew that there would be huge SFGX things with the dagger. That was quite clear. But several times what we did was to come out squeaky clean from the physical production by loading on to the CG side of the production. So we were constantly sprinting to catch up.

QUESTION: What is it like making a big film like Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time?

MIKE NEWELL: Making a movie like this is like being the Chief Executive of the Ford Motor Corporation. They bring you stuff and say these are our plans for next summer’s SUV. You say can we have it in blue? They reply of course, whatever color you like. And so on. You can see the analogy. These films are so huge that there are two other directors – the second unit director and the visual effects supervisor. The whole thing about what happens when you press the button on the dagger came from one of the visual effects houses in London. They showed us tests and we thought it was terrific.

PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME Available on DVD and Blu-ray 9/14/10

Jerry Bruckheimer on Prince of Persia and Producing

Super producer Jerry Bruckheimer talks about PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME in this interview provided by Disney:

QUESTION: You must get loads of film ideas pitched to you. What was the appeal of doing Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time?

JERRY BRUCKHEIMER: Ithink it’s a throwback to old movies, to Lawrence of Arabia. I love the old David Lean films and this is a fantasy version of it. Jordan [Mechner] did such a wonderful job, the game is so successful, and they gave us such a wonderful pitch that we fell in love with it.

QUESTION: Did you all play the game yourself? And will there be sequels?

JERRY BRUCKHEIMER: I had played the game prior to Jordan [Mechner] coming in, but not the one that he talked about when he first created it. It was a much more recent version of it.

QUESTION: How do you see your role on a movie, when you’re referred to as the most powerful man in Hollywood?

JERRY BRUCKHEIMER: That’s fiction by the media, it’s not really true. We just try to have a set that runs smoothly, where people can have a good time even though they’re working very hard. I think that’s because Mike and our actors handled the set so well. Everybody had a good time, and that’s what it’s about.

QUESTION: Was there ever a desire to make Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time in 3D? And how do you feel about the 3D revolution?

JERRY BRUCKHEIMER: I think we talked about it briefly, but Avatar hadn’t come out, so we couldn’t see the impact 3D would have. Plus Avatar was done all on a soundstage, pretty much, in a hangar and this picture was done in Morocco, the majority of it. So it was much more difficult, with the two cameras and the sand and the heat. But 3D is here to stay, it’s taking over cinema.

QUESTION: How do you feel looking back over your career – does it give you a sense of pride to think that you’re the man who made Top Gun?

JERRY BRUCKHEIMER: No, I always worry about the next one. It’s never the past. You learn from the past but I worry about this one and Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which is coming up next, and the next Pirates Of The Caribbean is about to start. So I’m always looking way beyond. I don’t look back too much. Maybe someday when I’m in a retirement home somewhere I’ll think ‘Oh wow, I did all these things?’. But not now.

QUESTION: It is said that you have 17 films in various stages of production, plus all your TV work. How do you manage to do all that you do and maintain the standard?

JERRY BRUCKHEIMER: It comes down to working with really talented people, this is a great example of the talent that we create. We create the same kind of talent behind the cameras, so we have a lot of people in our company who are enormously talented. And then the show owners in television run their business along with our executives. So it’s just finding great people to work with.

PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME Available on DVD and Blu-ray 9/14/10

Jordan Mechner Talks History of "Prince of Persia"

Jordan Mechner is the creator of the video game, Prince of Persia, and one of the writers of the film, PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME.  Walt Disney, through its press representatives, provided this interview with Mechner:

QUESTION: What were your feelings when you finally saw the film?

JORDAN MECHNER: Firstly the original Prince Of Persia was a character 40 pixels high on the Apple II screen, running and jumping. The technology at the time was quite primitive, I think in my mind I imagined a much grander spectacle, and to see Jake [Gyllenhaal] in the best shape of his life running around the rooftops of Morocco and doing parkour and all this stuff was more than I could imagine.

QUESTION: What initially drew you to the setting of Ancient Persia? And how does that culture and mythology inspire you?

Mechner: “I was inspired 25 years ago to make the game really by the tales of the Arabian Nights, and by old Persian legends like the Shahnameh, the Persian Book of Kings. And also those great old Hollywood swashbuckling movies like the 1940 Thief of Baghdad, by Alexander Korda. As a kid I must have heard those stories, the storybook versions are in all of our cultural DNA. We know of that world without really knowing exactly where or when we first heard it.

QUESTION: How did you start the world of Prince Of Persia?

JORDANMECHNER: You go back to 1985 when I was right out of college and I took my brother down to the parking lot across the street from the high school. He was in a pair of baggy trousers and I had him run and jump and climb and fall down and I video-taped him doing these moves. Then I set about the three year process of bringing these animations into the computer and that was the first Prince Of Persia.

QUESTION: How successful was the game and how come it has taken so long for the movie to be made?

JORDAN MECHNER: It was successful. This was in those days when the industry was one tenth of the size that it is now. It was very much a fringe thing. My friends and I who liked to play games were geeks. We were not in the cultural mainstream. What has happened since then is that video games have evolved technologically and culturally. So we finally came to the point, years later, where a producer and director of the stature of Jerry Bruckheimer and Mike Newell would look at a video game as something worth considering.

QUESTION: Since it started as a video game Prince Of Persia has grown, hasn’t it?

JORDAN MECHNER: Prince Of Persia from its first game has become a franchise. So there are now at least seven or eight versions of the game since then. The one that the movie is based on is also called Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time. That is the first modern console game. It reinvented the old Prince Of Persia game for a new generation of gamers. That was in 2003 and at that point I brought Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney the pitch for the movie along with a two minute trailer that I cut together on my Mac. The screenplay that I wrote is loosely based on The Sands Of Time but the movie production drew on all of those games that came out since then – like Warrior Within. And not just for story…also costumes, weapons, physical action and production design. The whole movie making team was influenced by the games at many levels.

QUESTION: Are you a fan of ancient history?

JORDAN MECHNER: I love research, that’s one of the great perks of this great line of work. You get the chance to go back and try and figure out what things were like in a different time and place. You also get to read the great mythological sources of legends like the Persian Book Of Kings. So you take all that and try to bring it to life.

QUESTION: Why until now have attempts to turn games into movies floundered?

JORDAN MECHNER: It is hard to make a good movie…period! And to make a movie based on a video game is particularly tricky. Novels and stage plays and other things that you might adapt into a movie, really begin with a story and characters. Video games really begin with the game play, that is with the player’s experience – controlling the character and facing the challenges of the game. And that is the one aspect of the game that doesn’t translate to film. No matter how you do it, you are never going to have that attractive element and things that are fun to play are not necessarily fun to watch an actor doing on screen. Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time is the first time that a video game creator actually adapted their own game as a screen play. Even though I have just spent a year adapting the game version of The Sands Of Time, I had to set that aside and put on a different hat and take a different approach to that story, because I was writing a story that was going to be watched by an audience. As opposed to be played.

QUESTION: Was it hard to write a film after doing games?

JORDAN MECHNER: I wouldn’t say that a games story needs to be less complex than a movie story. I am very proud of The Sands Of Time game. It has an interesting relationship between the main characters. There is a romance and a banter and there is a voice over narration. So not only are you playing the game but you are also hearing it narrated. There is a counterpoint between what you are hearing and what you are seeing which is very interesting. It is almost like a literary kind of effect. So it is not that one is more complex than the other, it’s just that they are different. It goes back to the fact that games are played and movies are watched. Even in this case where it is the same world, the same characters and the same type of genre and the same emotional themes – in both the game and the movie – the specifics of how the story is translated into scenes has to be different. The difference in translating a game into a movie is even greater than if you were turning a stage play into a movie. You have to take that extra step of figuring what is it about the material that is going to make a good story; that the viewers are going to connect with emotionally.

QUESTION: Did you have in mind the fact that the characters in the movie are playing games with each other?

JORDAN MECHNER: Of course, we set out to make a movie for audiences that didn’t play games but at the same time, for gamers the movie is full of things that they can enjoy on another level.

QUESTION: What did you think of the cast?

JORDAN MECHNER: Mike Newell put together a fantastic cast. Jake Gyllenhaal makes a terrific prince. He is a very good actor but he also has the right spirit – besides being a warrior and in the best shape of his life, he has got a humanity that is really important.

QUESTION: Are you a fan of DVD?

JORDAN MECHNER: I have a pretty substantial DVD collection which now needs to be a Blu-ray collection. I love all kinds of movies. My favorites include Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, David Lean’s Dr Zhivago and Lawrence Of Arabia…Raiders Of The Lost Ark and then all the old films that influenced Raiders, like Alexander Korda’s Thief of Bagdad. And Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai is one of my all-time favourites.

QUESTION: Are you a Disney fan?

JORDAN MECHNER: Since I was a kid, growing up in New York, I had a map of Disneyland on my wall. I had never been there but I knew where all the rides were. Now that Prince Of Persia is a Disney movie that is really wonderful. If Prince Of Persia was one day to become a Disney ride that would be a dream come true.

QUESTION: How emotional was it for you when you saw Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time for the first time?

JORDAN MECHNER: Oh my gosh there have been so many moments along the way – from the last six years, going from script to screen. Setting foot on the set in Morocco was one of them. And seeing the movie and getting an idea of how it would be experienced by an audience was a huge thrill.

QUESTION: You could never have dreamed of anything like this when you filmed your brother in baggy pants for the first game all those years ago?

JORDAN MECHNER: No, I was just worried about finishing the game while there was still a computer games market! I was afraid I would be too late. It is pretty mind boggling to me that we are still talking about Prince Of Persia 25 years later.


PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME Available on DVD and Blu-ray 9/14/10

David Boyd Talks AMC's "The Walking Dead"

Some people who observe and write about television say that we are in a new golden age of TV.  Really, you need to have access to cable television to experience the best of TV, like AMC's critically lauded series, "Breaking Bad" and "Mad Men."  AMC once again brings us something different this fall with "The Walking Dead," a horror series based upon the long-running, black and white comic book series from writer Robert Kirkman that is published by Image Comics.

The AMC blog recently posted an interview with "The Walking Dead" cinematographer, David Boyd, which you can read here or here:

The cinematographer for Friday Night Lights and Firefly explains how you make daylight terrifying, compares The Walking Dead with Westerns and describes how Walkers are more dangerous than Reavers.


Q: How did you get involved with The Walking Dead?

A: Gosh, I don't even know. I've never worked with Frank Darabont before; I think they just looked at a bunch of reels and resumes and called me up. That was it.

Q: Had you ever had a desire to shoot a zombie series?

A: No, but you know I came up through the camera department in horror movies -- I crewed on Re-Animator, From Beyond, all those Empire Pictures movies. So I'm used to things like that.

Q: Horror movies usually take place at night. This series takes place mostly during the day. What are the challenges to that?

A: I think the challenges are to just get the idea that there's something to be afraid of around every corner. Because it's daylight you're not normally scared -- we're scared at night. But the levels of this are brilliantly laid out by Frank: The rooftop is a little safer than street level, street level is really terrifying, and below street level gets safer. So the scary places start to be the safe places, and the safe places start to be the scary places.

Q: What kind of visual tricks do you use to enhance this feeling of danger?

A: Just to play it as normal as possible, and prey on the fact that everyone knows that it's scary [Laughs]. We do tricks like we make it a little cooler -- like the warmth has disappeared from the world. And we use film so that the blues come out a little stronger, but I'm trying hard to keep it purely on a psychological level. Also, it's normal policy to make a camera perfectly level with the horizon, but not here. We don't do the obvious tilt left or right, but all things are a little bit off. My aim is to make it off-kilter enough to where there's just something subconsciously wrong with every image -- it starts to become a world where nothing's right.

Q: You're responsible for the show's lighting and color, but your source material is a black and white comic. What inspiration can you draw from it?

A: Oh all kinds. Everything comes from the comic book. And then Frank's taken it to its own place where it needs to be for us. Photographically all I've done is take most of the color out -- I've desaturated things and I'll bleed the color out. It's still a color image, it's still acceptable for television (because you can't put a black and white show on television any more) --

Q: You'd like to try, I take it?

A: I would love to try. I think we should just do it! Any convention out there I think we should put our foot through it. That said, we have to do it with color, so we'll just take the color out a bit, and bring it back within the realm of what was originally intended by Kirkman.

Q: Is that a situation where the decision to shoot on 16mm film is useful?

A: 16mm is the perfect choice. Regardless if we did it in HD or 35mm film, we'd add grain in the end to make it have this look. It calls up the language of what we're used to seeing in a horror film. George Romero's stuff was all grainy. It's like looking at a documentary, and you instantly get into the 16mm documentary world. And if you take those same cameras and put them into The Walking Dead, it begins to be a believable, real experience. We were looking at a day exterior the other day, and it actually becomes scary -- the moment when you realize it's possible to do something this frightful in broad daylight.

Q: You're used to shooting Westerns, having shot a few episodes of Deadwood and all of Firefly. Do you see any Western themes in The Walking Dead?

A: [Laughs] Yeah, I think that's encapsulated in Rick Grimes, right? I actually find myself thinking about Firefly from time to time on set. In both we made the choice not to embellish an image -- in my lexicon it would be not adding backlight, which is a product of working on a soundstage. In a practical location like where we are, we choose not to make it pretty, and to instead have it be a bunch of people on the edge of life.

Q: Speaking of Firefly, which is scarier: Reavers or Walkers?

A: You know those Reavers were awful scary, but these Walkers don't have a purpose other than to eat things. So they're slower, but they're more inexorable. They're just not going to stop, no matter what, so I'd go for the Walkers. The Walkers occupy my thoughts at night a lot more than the Reavers. The Reavers I could kind of laugh off. [Laughs]


"The Walking Dead" premieres this October.

Tim Burton Talks "Alice in Wonderland"

The following is a general Tim Burton interview provided by Walt Disney to the media to promote the DVD release of Burton's recent film, Alice in Wonderland:

TIM BURTON is the DIRECTOR of ALICE IN WONDERLAND


QUESTION: The film almost suggests that you were Lewis Carroll in a former life?

TIM BURTON: I’m like a lot of people, I just responded to what he did. There have been so many movie versions and I hope that somewhere there is a version that might have pleased him.

QUESTION: The film is as though you put a camera into our dreams and recorded them. Was that dream-like quality what you wanted to create?

TIM BURTON: Yeah, that’s why we didn’t follow the literal stories. That seemed to be the problem with the other versions. What I liked about this was that it explored the characters and what I feel that Carroll’s work did for me and other people in exploring your dream state, and using fantasy in your dream state to deal with real issues and problems in your life. People like to separate those things but the fact is that they are things that are intertwined. That is what Carroll did so beautifully and he was so cryptic with what he wrote. You can analyze it to death but it still remains a mystical, kind of unidentifiable thing and yet it is so powerful.

QUESTION: And Lewis Carroll was so ahead of his time?

TIM BURTON: If the books were written today it would be…Woah, what’s this!…That shows you the power of it.

QUESTION: What has happened to your aversion to CGI?

TIM BURTON: In this case it was that we were using so many techniques that it felt like this was the way to go. It is like I am in love with it but at the same time it is just a tool. Whether it is stop motion or cell or CGI, it is still animation; you still deal with animators and do the same thing. You still have fun and the same goal to make the animation work.

QUESTION: Was it always going to be a 3D film?

TIM BURTON: Absolutely! That’s the only reason I did it. Three years ago when they talked to me about it I thought it seemed like the perfect material and mix. I don’t think that a few years ago that I would have been interested. But I just felt that the trippiness of Wonderland and 3D seemed like something I was interested in. Now 3D is no longer a fad but I don’t get all crazy about it and say that everything has got to be in 3D. It is a nice tool, like color or sound or whatever. I was quite intrigued and I learned, 3D opened up a lot of questions about how to use it. I think it is great. It’s like if a movie needs to be in black and white then that’s how I will shoot it. I see color as just another character or black and white as a character.

QUESTION: When Alice gets in a jam she says it’s her dream and she can do what she wants. Would that describe your approach to film making?

TIM BURTON: It is an aspiration. No matter what you go through with the business side or the Hollywood side at the end of it all, when you are there on the set, it is your thing. So it is your own private world and that’s great. That’s where you have that bubble to create something in.

QUESTION: But when a film gets as big as this is it still possible to control it?

TIM BURTON: The time issue meant it was like a backwards process of making a movie. Normally you shot a shot and see it the next day but here you did not see a shot till near the end.

QUESTION: Everyone has their own idea of Alice. Was that extra pressure for you?

TIM BURTON: Just for that reason, I did not feel there was a definitive version, one shining version that everybody loves. If there was then maybe you have trouble. But when there are 20 versions – and all the music and illustrations – the imagery comes up in so many different forms that it is in the culture. So I did not feel that pressure.

QUESTION: How tough was it to drop characters like The Walrus And The Carpenter?

TIM BURTON: There is a picture of the walrus on a wall though. Linda, the writer, and I discussed that. I felt other versions suffered in trying to be literal to the stories. We did not want to try to pack it all in. So we weaved in according to the structure of what Linda had written. Everyone probably has a favorite character but we fed in the ones that felt appropriate.

QUESTION: You made the Mad Hatter a much more focal point?

TIM BURTON: With all of the characters we felt they suffered in other versions because they were just depicted as crazy. Rather than him bouncing around being crazy we tried to layer the characters with some depth. There was a lot of research into them being called Mad Hatters because of the mercury poisoning in hat making. So all the characters in Alice In Wonderland are mad but we tried to make sure that they each have their own particular kind of madness.

QUESTION: Having made so many films with Johnny Depp do you now see him as your avatar as you go into these strange dream worlds?

TIM BURTON: To some degree, we have pretty similar tastes that way. That’s the energy, that’s what keeps it going.

QUESTION: The 3D butterfly at the end of the film is very touching. What was the reason for the last shot?

TIM BURTON: It was the Caterpillar turning into the butterfly…That was what I liked so much about the script. It’s not so much about being literal to the story, it’s about that feeling that you have been here before and you know these characters through exploring your childhood. People like to be literal about everything and that is what is so beautiful about what Carroll did. It’s not literal. It’s absurdist and yet it has cryptic meaning so that everyone will see the meaning in a different way. That’s the power of those stories.

QUESTION: Is Tim Burton now becoming more of the mainstream?

TIM BURTON: One of the things that keeps me semi-sane is not analyzing that stuff. You never want to become a thing, you want to remain a human being. People go…you have worked with Johnny seven times…and I go…really? I’ve not been counting. I try not to go there. I try to remember I like doing this and don’t think about all the trappings.

QUESTION: What about the green screen?

TIM BURTON: Johnny was acting to a tennis ball, which he loved. He was the only one who really liked that. Everyone else hated it.

QUESTION: Was finding Alice a difficult process?

TIM BURTON: We had a big search but Mia was pretty clear pretty soon. There was something about her and I liked the idea that we hadn’t seen much of her. She was a young person with an old person’s soul. That was something I felt no previous Alice had. They came across like bratty, precocious children. In most other versions she was obnoxious. Our key was not to be obnoxious. The studio was supportive in going for an unknown Alice, and at the end of the day they are happy about it.

QUESTION: Is Helena always going to be in your films?

TIM BURTON: No it’s the same way with Johnny. It is not automatic. It is important that it is the right part. If Helena is right for a part then ok. But it’s not because we are together, that would be a real mistake that would only end in tragedy.

TIM BURTON’S ALICE IN WONDERLAND is now available on Blu-ray & DVD.

"Iron Man 2" Cast Meets the World Press, Part 2

IRON MAN 2 WORLDWIDE PRESS CONFERENCE - Transcript - Part 2

April 23, 2010

Press Member: My question is for Robert and for Gwyneth: first question is you have played heroes lately, so what do you think the definition of hero is? And Gwyneth, you have given us some lifestyle advice lately through your website, would you like to give us some advice? Because I am having a hard time losing weight.

Robert Downey, Jr.: I think a hero is someone who if they’re abroad or traveling, they go to the Goop website to find out what restaurants to go to, what clothing shops they might enjoy, what sites they should see. And they do that, not fearlessly, but they do that in spite of their fear.

Gwyneth Paltrow: Actually not this coming week, but next week, the Goop Newsletter will be about my IRON MAN training regiment and how I lost weight and got in shape to play this part, so you can check it out.

Press Member: Actually, this question is for the two of you as well. There’s a real moonlighting thing going on between the two of you in the movie. The banter between the two of you is great. But the kiss, of course, was very highly anticipated. How was it shooting that scene and finally getting that over with?

Robert Downey, Jr.: I couldn’t get her off of me. It was embarrassing.

Gwyneth Paltrow: It was great because both my husband and his wife were right there.

Robert Downey, Jr.: She said to me that I didn’t know what I was doing. Like it didn’t feel good. And I’m like, you know what? First of all, we’re all friends, so what would be creepy is if I was coming off all sexy to you while we’re, by the way, I’ve done that in movies and it creeps them out. So why am I going to creep you out? What am I, I felt like I was going to swallow this mike cover for a moment. Despite what she said on set, she still thinks about it.

Press Member: Question for Robert and question for Jon. Jon: I notice that your glorified extra role from the first movie definitely got much more flushed out. I was wondering why you decided to move in on the action yourself. And Robert, I notice that your wife’s name was in the credits as a producer and she was not last time and I was wondering what that was like for you.

Robert Downey, Jr.: Do you wanna swap questions?

Jon Favreau: Ah do you mind if we swap? We swap answers? Can he talk about Happy Hogan and I will talk about Susan Downey?

Press Member: By all means.

Jon Favreau: That’d be great. We just get asked these questions a lot. Susan, ah, Susan is a great producer, who has, it’s not like she came on board and became a producer to, because, we’re making IRON MAN. Quite the contrary. We were funneling towards a start date and we had a lot of ideas spread out and we had bulletin boards and Justin was there and Robert was there and Kevin and myself and Jeremy Latcham, with index cards trying to figure out how to make the work flow through. And she has tremendous organization ability and she understands Robert’s creative process and she understands the first movie and lived through it with us. And so Susan, who has a very strong background in development and physical production, was able to come in and just help. It’s like one of those shows where they just organize all of your closets for you and make you throw out all of the clothes that you don’t need anymore. But is takes somebody who says, you’re never going to wear that again. They’re never going to fit in that. And they throw it away. Or give it away, or figure our where…

Robert Downey, Jr.: On a certain level, they might have thought that she was going to come in and tame me or put me in check or whatever, but I was completely out of my mind. Let’s talk about Happy Hogan. There’s three Happy Hogan’s in the movie. The Jon Favreau that was in excellent shape, he was boxing every day pre-production and made it into the ring for the scene where he gets his ass handed to him by Scarlett. It was originally a longer scene and maybe he was just too emasculated to let it be in the movie, but I think you laid the boots to him quite severely.

Gwyneth Paltrow: Is that not in the movie?

Jon Favreau: No that’s in there.

Gwyneth Paltrow: Oh.

Jon Favreau: He’s on a run, let him…it’s in the movie.

Robert Downey, Jr.: And then about midway, he’s struggling with a mega fast, occasionally bingeing with pizza, but I gotta get back in…

Jon Favreau: Can I have my question back?

Robert Downey, Jr.: By the time we were doing reshoots, they were framing him out of shots. Umm here’s the thing though. He’s, this is one of the things that I love about you.

Jon Favreau: Here we go. Now kiss me on my cheek and after you’re done with me.

Robert Downey, Jr.: Yeah, and so, that’s how we do it.

Jon Favreau: Give me a dollar and a towel. And cab fare and walk me to the lobby.

Robert Downey, Jr.: You know I don’t have the upbeat part. I forgot it. Pressing on…

Press Member: I saw the move last night. Everybody was fantastic, great performances. Really impressive. Loved it. Umm, you kind of side-stepped the Sam Rockwell question. And in the lead up to the movie, there’s been hundreds of stills, posters, Sam’s in none of it, and he’s noticeably absent today, is there a falling out? Was he…

Jon Favreau: Yes…

Press Member: Were you guys not happy with him?

Jon Favreau: You hit the mother load. No I love Sam. Sam’s doing a play. Umm, I hope to be working with him again.

Robert Downey, Jr.: I had that same question though. I was wondering. He must be doing a play or something.

Jon Favreau: Yeah, he’s on Broadway doing a play right now. He’s awesome. He’s going to be at the premiere. You can ask him your self then, he uh, ever since our first collaboration, when he was the gender unspecific concierge in ‘Made,’ I knew that he was an inspiring, inspired dude. I wish that he could be here selfishly, because he is a fun, funny guy and he was really always a fountain head of ideas and stuff and I wish he could have been here but he can’t. There’s no, unfortunately, there’s no fire where that smoke is.

Press Member: And you considered him for Tony Stark as well you said?

Jon Favreau: Well there was, we were putting lists together, long before Robert, I even met with Robert, and it was talked about.

Robert Downey, Jr.: Enough. This is embarrassing. You’re embarrassing yourself. Shut up.

Press Member: I don’t mind being embarrassed.

Jon Favreau: I thought he could be an, a sort of, untraditional interesting other way to go as we were listing a lot of younger actors that didn’t have a lot of experience. That were a little more, traditionally, what you’d think for a super hero role. Then when I met Robert, we pretty much clicked, and I knew that that was, that was the guy. But, as Justin Hammer, I think you see like a cool goofy image of what he…Justin Hammer wishes he was Tony Stark and he really embraced that aspect of the character. And I think it’s really fun, in a really fun way.

Press Member: Thank you, and finally Scarlett was fantastic as Black Widow. There was talk at one point of a spin-off movie for her. I think that anyone who sees the movie would love to see that. Is that still a possibility?

Kevin Feige: Hell yes.

Scarlett Johansson: Kevin?

Kevin Feige: Absolutely.

Press Member: My question is for Jon. We heard about a few of the scenes that might end up on the DVD. What other cool extras do you have planned for the DVD and Blue Ray release?

Jon Favreau: Well we have, there are a lot of featurettes. We were running cameras behind the scenes all the time. We don’t like to really like to show too much of it before the movie comes out to keep some surprises, but everything was very well documented. And as you can see, we have a very interesting group of people. And so, between the interviews, you get s really good sense, we’re fans of these movies. Kevin and I are always swapping back and forth books and things about the movies that we grew up loving. And so we documented very well so there is going to be pretty extensive featurettes and then commentary this time around and also deleted scenes that we thought would be interesting for people to see. So it’s more a movie fan set of extras, people who really want to immerse themselves.

Press Member: This question is for Gwyneth and Scarlett. If you could just tell us a little more about your specific roles and how in this movie you are strong intelligent women, you are not in the movie just as a sex symbol per se. Could you tell us a little more about that?

Scarlett Johansson: Well you know, I don’t think I have never really seen a film of this genre, where the female characters were, that they’re kind of this, that they’re sex appeal was sort of came second. I mean of course they’re sexy characters and they’re, when you have a sexy secretary, or a girl you know swinging around by her ankles in a cat suit, you know that’s innately sexy, but the fact is that these characters are intelligent. They’re ambitious. They’re motivated and calculated to some degree, and so it leaves…I probably would have, to be just a pawn in a story of a whole bunch of men kind of fighting it out and rolling around and getting down and dirty, there you are to sort of be like the vision in the tight cat suit is sort of a boring thing to me. And I think that Jon really made that very clear in the beginning, that he felt that as far as Black Widow was concerned or that Natalie was concerned, was that she was mysterious and nuanced and something to kind of peel back the layers to. That there was something there. That he wanted to do that and you know I think that is why this film is much more dynamic for me as an audience member. I have never really been a fan of this genre really and I think because it is really one note and kind of explosive, I think because Gwyneth and I can sort of be the brains behind the operation in some aspect, there’s kind of a happy medium there. I think it adds to the charm and the charisma of the film and the finished product.

Gwyneth Paltrow: I agree with Scarlett. Umm I think that it’s a very smart decision actually to have women that are capable and intelligent because it appeals to women. You know so it’s not only a film for fifteen year old boys. It’s a film that can relate to a lot of people on a lot of levels. And you know a lot of my girlfriends like it because of the romance or like Scarlett is in the trailer and it is appealing. Ooh who is she and you know it doesn’t look like you know, it doesn’t look gratuitous, it looks like there are interesting women in the movie and you know certainly from the first one too my character is quick and she’s articulate and she’s you know, I think it makes it, it makes it so that you know that when you take your kid when you’re a mom it’s really fun to watch as well. So it’s nice to see women who are kind of inspirational and smart, sexy, all at the same time.

Don Cheadle: I think fifteen year old boys are going to like it too.

Scarlett Johansson: It’s awfully kind of old fashioned actually, in the best sense of the word. There’s sort of that, these characters are sort of like these fabulous femme fatales of the golden age of Hollywood that Betty Davis more than the Jane Mansfield, you know, which I think is so much more dynamic to watch.

Press Member: My questions are for Ms. Paltrow again and for Mr. Downey, Jr. For Ms. Paltrow, I am wondering, sort of ripping off of that last question, if you had some kind of interior monologue or ideas about Pepper kind of beyond what we get through dialogue and she is quite plaintive and supportive but that’s mostly from what we see. And for Mr. Downey, Jr. I am wondering about the physical challenges, and perhaps emotional and intellectual as well for this whole and what the boundaries of that were for you.

Robert Downey, Jr.: Yeah they probably want to hear me first. Physically, I feel like Don and Scarlett and Mickey, actually, had a heavier load this time as far as just…

Gwyneth Paltrow: He made them do it all in CGI. He’s like CGI. CGI it! I am walking off.

Don Cheadle: Draw me.

Robert Downey, Jr.: But again, I think we all just labored really hard to say like ok we’re audience members who made the first IRON MAN successful and we’re smart which is kind of why we were drawn to it so what do we expect? We kept putting ourselves in audience seats and to me the mental and emotional aspects and development of Tony, were to me, a lot more, it’s strange to say personal, cause it’s not necessarily relating to my life, so to speak, but just the mythology of saying your something and being that thing or something is entirely different. And also, this whole idea of Howard Stark and the legacy and the shadow of that legacy that we always were talking about, Mickey and I, about being kind of two sides of the same coin. One who was able to ah escape that captivity and one who saw his father die in the ruins of improper recognition and having to reckon with that. And so really all of the characters you know, I mean Black Widow, Natalie in certain places, bringing me back to an extended family that I’ve always had. And Mickey as Anton is telling me that all is not well and people have vendettas for reasons that I might not understand but that I need to understand. And Rhodey is there saying, “Hey you’ve always had me kind of on your wing so why won’t you really let me help you?” And obviously the Pepper thing.

Jon Favreau: Alright thank you every body.