Disney have got a very big year in films in 2010 with Alice In Wonderland, Toy Story 3, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Tron Legacy and this. I’m slowly warming to this the more that I see from it, I’ve always liked Jake Gylanhaal, it’s good to see him do something more action packed, from the trailer he looks like he spends much of the movie jumping around like coked up Kangaroo(nothing wrong with that!). I’m also looking forward to it for Toby Kebbell and Gemma Arterton two of the UK’s best young talents. They should have cast a few more Persians though it looks like a bunch of English people wearing eye liner and dyed black hair, its the 21^st century now I should think films can be a bit more realistic. Look’s like a lot of fun though.

From the team that brought the “Pirates of the Caribbean” trilogy to the big screen, Walt Disney Pictures and Jerry Bruckheimer Films present PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME, an epic action-adventure set in the mystical lands of Persia.  A rogue prince (JAKE GYLLENHAAL) reluctantly joins forces with a mysterious princess (GEMMA ARTERTON) and together, they race against dark forces to safeguard an ancient dagger capable of releasing the Sands of Time—a gift from the gods that can reverse time and allow its possessor to rule the world.

Lee Daniels is a critically acclaimed Director and Producer, he has produced the Academy Award Winning Monsters Ball, The Woodsman and Tennessee. Daniels made his directorial debut with 2006’s Shadowboxer, starring Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire is his second directorial outing…

Set in 1987, it is the story of Claireece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), a sixteen-year-old girl born into a life no one would want. She’s pregnant for the second time by her absent father; at home, she must wait hand and foot on her mother (Mo’Nique), a poisonously angry woman who abuses her emotionally and physically. School is a place of chaos, and Precious has reached the ninth grade with good marks and an awful secret: she can neither read nor write. Precious is offered the chance to transfer to an alternative school, Each One/Teach One. In the literacy workshop taught by the patient yet firm Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), Precious begins a journey that will lead her from darkness, pain and powerlessness to light, love and self-determination.

Initially, the author, Sapphire, was against a film adaptation. Yet you won her over.

Lee Daniels: Love her. Love her for that. It took me nine, probably ten, years to stalk her. I have stalked her for ten years. Sapphire is a scholar. She is a genius. She is a poet. She is an intellect beyond belief. She doesn’t give a fuck about Hollywood. She don’t care about it, just doesn’t. It is about literature and I think that Lady Luck must have been on my side because she finally embraced the idea. I think that even if I did a bad movie, it would not affect her brilliant masterpiece and I think that she saw the difference in both. She finally realised it and I was there the right time stalking her.

Do you know why she changed her mind? Did she see one of your other films maybe?

Lee Daniels: I think it was a combination of things, but I think she saw Shadowboxer and she really thought I could bring something to the world that she created and she is very excited that I am doing it.

Did she come to the film set?

Lee Daniels: She came down once or twice. I think she had to watch some of what I was doing because I am dealing with her very profound book. She laughed at something that only Mo’Nique and I thought was funny and she was laughing with us because she got it. She understood that there is humour and that she was still the creator. There was a moment when Mo’Nique was laughing at something and I was laughing at something and Sapphire was laughing at something and we realised that nobody else was laughing but us and that we were on another plane. It was a surreal moment.

What was the moment?

Lee Daniels: It was the scene when the mother tells Precious about the HIV. Precious says, ‘Do you have it?’ And the mother says ‘No.’ And Precious says, ‘How do you know?’ And the mother says, ‘Because we didn’t do it up in the ass!’ No one else thought that was funny. I don’t think it was funny but it was this brilliant delivery of it. I think we were laughing at the execution. It was exactly how Sapphire wrote it in the book so there was this triangle of understanding between Mo’Nique, Sapphire and myself.

It is a tough film but also a very tough book. You have had to soften the delivery a little bit, and add a few more rays of light…

Lee Daniels: A little bit!! A lot of a bit. If I had done the book it would have been X-rated. Not that I have a problem with doing X-rated films. I haven’t yet. But this would have lost an audience. I think that the audience should be entitled to breathe. I think with the book, if it gets too much, emotionally, you can put it down. It affected me so that I had to stop. I had to digest it. I put it down and picked it up again later on and I think that the sequences and the touches of humour that we put in the script really do it justice. Geoffrey Fletcher really did a marvellous job translating this book, this script, and we just took it to another place on the screen. We had to let the audience breathe. If you’ve read that book you will know what I am talking about.

You’ve said that you knew people who were moments away from being characters in this story. From where in your life do you know these people?

Lee Daniels: I knew these people when I was a kid. I knew these people as an adult. I know these people now. As a 50-year-old man, there are Precious, there are Marys. These are real life people to me. Everybody in that movie is someone that I have known. And I find it surprising that people don’t know them. I know that if you live in New York City there is no way you don’t see Precious. And I often see Mary. I am down in the grocery store and I am watching mothers yank on their kids, and just really fuming at them, with a cigarette dangling from their mouth. It doesn’t matter if they’re black, Puerto Rican, white or Chinese. Each woman exists.

Was the character of Mary the hardest to cast? She needs to be very complex, almost macabre, yet able to show that she did have something good inside her once.

Lee Daniels: Mary is a very complex person and she was the first person that I did cast. Mo’Nique is my best friend; a very, very good friend and I speak to her every day. I like working with friends. Mariah Carey is another. Gabby has become a good friend. I like working with friends because I know they have my back and we have such a tight budgetary parameter in dealing with the film that you have to count on friendships to take you through those barriers. It is a difficult journey. With regards to Mo’Nique what we did, only friends can do. It went beyond the director-actor friendship; she really understands me. Mo’Nique understands me in my primal place and we just talked about her. And we talked about me. We talked about my insecurities, paranoia, hopes and dreams and sex life, and what I love poetry-wise and what literature I like. And then she sort of broke down and then we transcended all that shit that she knew that I wanted into her interpretation of Mary. It was volatile, explosive, a magical moment, for me. I expected everything that she gave me. I was not surprised by a syllable.

On that point, you’ve been very brave in talking about the abuse you suffered as a child. That’s reflected specifically in the movie, right, with Precious’ dream sequences?

Lee Daniels: I was never sexually abused, but I was physically abused at home. And when bad things happened to me or I saw bad things happen, I would fantasize. When I was 12, I saw someone killed. I remember very clearly that I went into a bubble and I became a prince in a silver crown, knighting someone with my sceptre. I just dropped into a place right there, so I wouldn’t feel the pain. My imagination was God’s way of protecting me and keeping me sane, and I think we catch that in the movie, yes.

When did you first decide that you wanted to direct films, as well as produce them?

Lee Daniels: I started directing theatre. That’s how it started. I was in theatre early on and I moved. The camera was an animal to me that scared me but I learned about that while I was managing actors, and while I was producing films. Because of that, actors have always been in my comfort zone. My whole thing to begin with in the entertainment industry was media and managing actors throughout the world and being on sets and studying. I was always studying the process of filmmaking through filmmakers and through cinematographers and through production designers etc etc. So that whole experience was learned not through your conventional way

Finally, what was the most important thing that you wanted to convey with this film?

Lee Daniels: That never again should we look at Precious and not look at Precious. When you stumble across this girl you will acknowledge her. Because I have cousins that are her, friends that are her and even having friends and cousins that are her, I still disassociate myself. It is so important for me that I embrace this girl with all my gusto, because she is embracing me. The other important part of this story is about learning to love yourself, and accepting who you are. Those are the two big points I hope people will walk away with from this film. Who knows if they will? But I pray to God that they do.

PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL “PUSH” BY SAPPHIRE is released in cinemas across the UK on 29th January 2010

I’ve made it no secret how much I loved A Prophet. It is hands down one of my favourite films of the last few years. The film fully deserves all the praise it’s been getting. Check out a Q & A with the acclaimed Director of A Prophet Jacques Audiard. A Prophet is released in cinemas January 22^nd go check it out, it’s worth it!

At the Cannes press conference you spoke a little about the irony in the title of A PROPHET.

Because this dimension is real but apparently it isn’t evident. The film could be called LITTLE BIG MAN for example. The title acts as a sort of injunction, obliging someone to understand something which isn’t necessarily developed in the film, namely, that we’re dealing with a little prophet, a new prototype of guy. Originally I wanted to find a French equivalent of “You Gotta Serve Somebody” a Bob Dylan song that says that we are always in the service of someone. I liked the fatalism and the moral dimension of this title but I simply never found a satisfying translation, so it stayed A PROPHET.

How did you come to tell the story?

What interested both myself and my co-writer Thomas Bidegain was to ask how we could begin with the subject by Abdel Raouf Dafri and Nicolas Peufaillit and create a pertinent cinematic story. We had to find a manner to make A Prophet resonate in a contemporary way. We wanted to create heroes from people that we didn’t know, that didn’t already have an iconic representation in cinema, like the Arabs for example. In France the tendency in cinema is to put them in representations that are naturalistic or sociological. So we wanted to do a pure genre film, a little in the manner of a western that spotlights people we don’t know and transforms them into heroes.

Through the character of Malik, the film conveys the idea that the knowledge and know how give access to power.

Yes, and it’s this that I find the most interesting. This type of person breaks the mould, he’s not your usual hooligan. Following Malik, we see his mind at work, a mind that shows phenomenal adaptability, that this character will use for any opportunistic possibility, at first to save his skin, then to survive and improve his lot, and finally to reach another level of power.

Malik seems to have a detached and opportunist rapport with his identity.

The Corsicans consider him an Arab and the Arabs as a Corsican. He is permanently between the two camps. However he will naturally lean towards his community. It’s here that he will discover something he has been ignoring. The same as he’s a particular kind of hooligan he’s also a particular kind of believer.

Can you talk to us about the ghost that accompanies Malik and that inspires his mystical visions?

The film does have fantastical moments but it’s not because of an intention to be mystical. Reyeb’s ghost comes from the scriptwriters as a way of helping us into the possibilities, a way of to passing into a level of imagination that helps us free what has already been told. It’s also thanks to him that we also invoke the ideas of Sufism and the Dervishes and allows the screenplay to take on another dimension.

There is a trend in current cinema for darker, more damaged heroes.  In A Prophet you take someone who is damaged yet lead them toward a kind of redemption.

And with tools that wouldn’t be recommendable. There is always a default way of making anti-heroes. This doesn’t interest me so much. Me, I like my heroes to learn something, to put it to use. I find that Cinema has that function: it looks at the real to teach us how to use it. Perhaps the lesson which strikes Malik is paradoxical, but it’s this which interests me.

In any case it says that you have to learn…

To learn, to be attentive, to not open one’s mouth all the time, to be reserved and most of all to not make the same mistake twice because the third time you’ll be dead.

Is A Prophet, according to you, a moral film ?

Yes, what would have been immoral would have been to create a character without conscience.  However he is conscious of both good and evil precisely because evil has been done to him.

How do you explain Malikʼs mysterious smile at the moment of the shooting?

Malik suddenly has the feeling of being in a film and has the feeling of invulnerability, like a fictional character whereas the others are reaching a stalemate in the events which are unfolding. Malik is a person who, instead of getting heavier under the weight of things he lives through, he gets lighter, and will free himself, little by little.

Is the prison a metaphor ?

Evidently, genre films always present themselves as metaphor. The character was incarcerated for a long sentence. The intention was that he would understand within himself that which would serve him later, on the outside, therefore arriving at a parallel between the two universes.

The ending of the film suggests there could be a sequel.

Indeed. It does induce us to question Malik’s destiny with this woman, this child and his life stretched out before him. Especially since Malik is a hooligan that hates hooligans, finding them unreliable, stupid and dangerous. He is someone with a very critical viewpoint. He wouldn’t tolerate bling or outward signs of hooliganism.

If there was a sequel, what would it be about ?

I would like to see Malik continue to develop his skills and watch him learn. A little like in The Beat That My Heart Skipped. That through trying to become a concert pianist the hero becomes really competent. He’s like Malik, we leave everything just formed and we sense that he has an interesting future…

Were you conscious while making A Prophet that you were making a film that was anchored in popular culture?

This is what I wanted to do. For as much, we wanted to make an anti SCARFACE. For me neurotics are pure cretins and simply cant be objects for identification. The rise to power of an absolute crazy person doest interest me at all. On the other hand a film like LA HAINE by Matthieu Kassovitz touches on something that I’m sensitive to. It’s no co-incidence that A Prophet occasionally inhabits the same terrain. These two films a looking to denounce that there is something missing in cinema.