Okay, here's one of those moments where I have a totally selfish reaction to something, and I invite you to share in it, but I am also well-aware that I am a big giant weirdo.
How else can you explain my immediate obsession with the new trailer for "Your Highness"? Right now, there is nothing I want more than my eventual Blu-ray copy of this film so I can watch and re-watch what looks like one of the craziest genre indulgences of all time. David Gordon Green's career amazes me, and it has taken one of the least predictable paths possible. If you look at early movies like "George Washington" and "All The Real Girls," it would be impossible to guess that he would eventually make a giant-budget fantasy epic with monsters and magic and wizard's weed and the dude who played "Bust-Ass" in the lead.
And yet here we are.
I love this trailer. I immediately and absolutely love this trailer. This looks like the ideal version of the film that Danny McBride and Green and James Franco and Zooey Deschanel and Justin Theroux all described to us while we were on set in Belfast last year. That's really the process that happens with any film I visit… there's the ideal version of the film that everyone on-set describes, and then there's the version that eventually hits theaters, and it's not often that those two things are the same.
"Your Highness" looks like a film that shouldn't exist. There's no rational business reason behind the film's existence. This is a case where you see the system working some mysterious voodoo. Universal has proven several times recently that they've got giant balls, and they're willing to gamble on some risky material. I know they've taken some lumps for it, but I will always cherish a "Scott Pilgrim," no matter what it did at the box-office, and I hope "Your Highness" has a very different fate in store for it.
For one thing, this movie looks filthy. FILTHY. And that's the way it should be. There's something about fantasy as a genre that is inherently more dirty than science-fiction, and it looks like they've embraced that. The "reality" of the film makes little practical sense, but the use of modern speech and real-world vernacular draws you into the fantasy world. It's "Krull," but the reality of it is indeed "from the director of 'Pineapple Express'". It's a crazy combination, and tone will be everything when it comes to getting this film right.
The scene you glimpse in the trailer where Lazar (Justin Theroux) kidnaps Belladonna (Deschanel) is the scene I was on-set for, and it's a key moment in the movie. We didn't see Portman on-set, but when I post my "Black Swan" video interview, watch her face the moment I mention "Your Highness." She lights up. She is obviously very pleased with this one, and I think part of it is just how different she appears to be than in anything else she's done.
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