Interviews

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
Read JA’s review here.