HELGELAND:
"We decided early on
that the production design was going to be the straight man as far as the movie
goes - it's very historically accurate. The costume design was more creative.
The designer said to me, 'These guys should look like the Rolling Stones in
1970.' I thought, 'Yeah, that's great.' If you think of the Stones back then,
they looked kind of medieval. We wanted to create a world where you could make
your own rules."
LEDGER:
"Brian is wonderful to work
for. He wanted to share his vision, and you wanted to make him proud and tell
his story. He's really a smart man. He got us to Prague about three weeks
before to rehearse, and we just drank for three weeks. And that's all we
needed, because he cast a group of people that he knew was going to click
together as friends. Our rehearsal was to become friends, and our job was to
translate that friendship onto the screen. When I watch the movie I get a sense
of the friendship and affection that we feel for each other."
SEWELL on the hardest thing about portraying a villain:
"Bad guys conduct more
heat because they wear black! They had to find a way of pouring water into the
joints of the armor because it would get so hot that your flesh would burn -
literally. So they poured Evian down these little holes - I was wet inside all
the time."
BETTANY on his character's job of announcing William at the
tournaments:
"We wanted it to have the
sensation of when John Lennon said at the Royal Command Performance, 'The
people in the cheap seats clap your hands, and the rest of you rattle your
jewelry.'"
ADDY on working with the jousting horse:
"They couldn't use the usual
term, 'Roll camera,' because the horse we were using was pretty intelligent,
and after a couple of passes it knew that when they were shouting that, it was
getting ready to go. So the First Assistant, instead of shouting 'Roll camera,'
would say, 'Ready darling?' But as soon as they clapped the board, the horse
knew, 'Okay, I'm on!'"
"The way Brian works he
encourages you to improvise and there were certain scenes where he'd say, 'I'm
having trouble finding a way of making this work. Any ideas?' Sometimes we'd
get some really good and very funny stuff."
LEDGER:
"(William) goes for the
gold, the nobility and fame, but ultimately discovers that the friends who
surround and support him are the real stars in his life. The real nobility is
finding your head and your heart."
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