Moscow sketchbook
This is the plane that took us from London to Moscow for the Prince of Persia press junket. It was the nicest plane I’ve ever been on. I felt like Tony Stark for a few hours.
Every fun, relaxing hobby ought to contain an element of danger; for me, drawing people I know at close range is the halfpipe of sketching. When the result is a bad likeness, unflattering or both (which it often is), there’s nowhere to hide. In this case, several of the people on the plane with me were world-famous, so the stage was basically set for a spectacular wipe-out. But I had to try.
The ones of Jerry and Mike Newell (above) are at least more recognizable than some of the others.
None of the ones of Gemma really look like her. Girls are harder to draw than guys to begin with, and the more beautiful they are the harder it is. It often ends up either looking like a generic “pretty girl” or a different girl entirely.
Gemma got her revenge, as you can see from her rendition of me on the right-hand page above.
The press junket, premiere and afterparty were on Tuesday, so I didn’t get to do any sketching that day. Wednesday was our free day; Mike Newell and I began it with a three-hour tour of the Kremlin’s incredible armory.
This was my first visit to Russia, a country I’ve long wanted to visit. At three days, it was much too short.
Solomon’s Thieves released
I’m excited to announce that Solomon’s Thieves, my first/second, First Second graphic novel illustrated by the terrific LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland, is now on sale in bookstores and on Amazon. It’s just gotten its first review on Newsarama.
Based on the historical events of the fall of the Knights Templar, Solomon’s Thieves is a swashbuckling adventure about a bunch of outlawed knights who band together to attempt the greatest heist of the 14th century.
It’s the first book in a trilogy — and a career first for me, in that it’s not based on a video game. I hope Prince of Persia fans who like graphic novels and/or historical adventure fiction will check it out.
You can read more about it here.
London premiere sketchbook
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.
Pinewood set sketchbook
Being in London for the Prince of Persia movie press junket, I thought this would be an appropriate occasion to post these sketchbook pages from when we were shooting here 18 months ago.
As the caps and parkas suggest, it gets cold on the Pinewood sound stages in December. The sets are such accurate reproductions of the Morocco locations where we were filming a few months earlier, you’d never guess from the finished film that there’s an 80 degree Fahrenheit temperature difference between certain shots.
Above: That’s director Mike Newell at bottom right, presiding over the action via dual monitors. Going counter-clockwise from Mike, there’s Jake doing the scene, script supervisor Beverley Winston, and my hotel dining room. At bottom left, Sir Ben Kingsley waits between takes with his double.
On the left-hand page, Jake and Sir Ben rehearsing with Mike Newell while second A.D. Rich Goodwin looks on. At upper right, Mike and Beverley watching the take, with Mike half out of his director chair like a bowler using body English to help guide the ball down the lane. Bottom right, cinematographer John Seale.
The sandstorm begins
My second/first graphic novel, Prince of Persia: Before the Sandstorm, is now out in stores and on Amazon, in paperback and hardcover.
It’s a stand-alone, book-length prequel to the upcoming movie, written by me and illustrated by six terrific artists — Bernard Chang, Tommy Lee Edwards, Tom Fowler, Niko Henrichon, David Lopez, and Cameron Stewart, plus a cover by Todd McFarlane — and if you’re wondering why one story has six different illustrators, well, that was part of the challenge and fun of writing it.
Kotaku has a nice review (one that also includes the great news that the next volume in the Dungeon series, by two of my favorite French comics creators, Lewis Trondheim and Joann Sfar, is now available in English).
I’ll post more later about writing the book, and how it relates to the movie and the original 1989 side-scrolling video game. In the meantime, I hope Prince of Persia fans and graphic novel aficionados will check it out.
The next six weeks will also include the release of my first/second book Solomon’s Thieves (written first, published second, from First Second) on May 11, and my first movie, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, on May 28. So this really is the beginning of the sandstorm.
Reporters make good screenwriters
So glad that Jane Espenson has started up her very useful writer’s blog again! In today’s post she discusses why, when making the transition to screenwriting, journalists often fare better than novelists. Her advice to film/TV writers:
Think like a reporter — pare the story down, find the bones of it, and listen to your characters talk in the language of whatever street they come from — even if you let them ramble on a bit in the first draft, eventually try to find the succinct quote.
You get to make up the facts and the people, but the core truths that you’re uncovering should be just as real as if the story had happened. Be a reporter.
Pure gold.
