Just got back from the Prince of Persia movie press junket in London and Moscow. For readers curious about what that was like, I’ve posted these pages from my travel sketchbook.
The idea of a junket is to bring the talent — which in this case included Jerry Bruckheimer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Sir Ben Kingsley, Mike Newell, and me — to one destination so the press can come to us, instead of sending us on a tour from place to place. Having the global premiere of Prince of Persia in London rather than L.A. made it a short trip for European journalists, but a longer one for those from the U.S. and South America.
The junket took over several floors of the Dorchester hotel in London, where the interviews and press conference were held.
An inevitability of press junkets is that although the journalists come from different cities and countries, with a range of interviewing styles, you nonetheless tend to get asked the same questions, sometimes thirty or forty times in a single day.
The premiere was Sunday night at the London Westvue.
Not pictured: Gemma dancing barefoot in her princess gown at the afterparty.
Seeing the “Coming Soon” signs for Prince of Persia in the Odeon Leicester Square gave me tingles. That’s the theater where I first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in the summer of 1981, right out of high school, in a packed house. It set the bar for my summer moviegoing experiences to date, and was one of my major inspirations in creating Prince of Persia on the Apple II a few years later.
Next: On to Moscow.
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Read the comment about stylish-looking passengers, only then had a good look at the image.
Great blog entry as always. I miss you on the forum though, Jordan.
Actually, this is the reason I always hesitate to ask questions on an interview – all questions tend to repeat themselves and I hate asking people the same question again and again. I hope you were not that bored in Moscow.
Oleg, set your mind at rest — Moscow was a high point of the junket, with plenty of new questions I’d never asked been before and that I truly enjoyed answering. It was a pleasure speaking to journalists who were so well prepared and genuinely interested in the subject. I’m not just saying this and I can tell you that others on the junket had the same reaction.
I like your sketches, they are great. You don’t lose sight of the big picture and you sketch the essentials from what I see.