Inside the Tomb of the Dragon Emperor with Brendan Fraser

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It's been seven years since Brendan Fraser stepped into the bootsof Rick O'Connell in The Mummy franchise. Now Fraser is looking to the Far East for adventure asdirector Rob Cohen takes the reigns on The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor , which hits theaters this summer on August 1. This time around,Fraser jumps into action with Maria Bello and Luke Ford to dig upthe mummy of the first Emperor of Qin, a shape-shifting being witha centuries old curse. Also starring Jet Li, The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor takes the cast to Shanghai and beyond to kick start the franchisefor a third time.
While doing press for the film, Brendan Fraser enlightenedjournalists on his time spent in China, why Rachel Weisz didn'tclimb on board, and how they unearthed the famous Terra Cottawarriors.
Why do you like Stockholm so much?
BRENDAN FRASER: Everything worked! I mean, it just functioned. I'd been in manydifferent situations and was a bit road-weary at that time - it wasabout ten years ago. I was pushing a movie about a guy in a loincloth who ate bananas and plays with monkeys and smashes intotrees, and the people from Stockholm thought that that was veryamusing: "You'll be all right..." [laughs] And a doctor came andgave me an injection and he said, "There, now, you're inoculatedfor the rest of the life." And I said, 'Wait, aren't you supposedto get six of these?" And he said, "No. We only do it once here."Anyways, I won't name the doctor in case he comes after me...[laughs] Let's talk about The Mummy'. Have you seen it or not?Because I haven't. Let's make sure we're all on the same pagehere...
Is the third time a charm?
FRASER: I think it was charming the first and the second. The first onewas a fantastic experience. The second was really a remake of thefirst one, but what can you say? The people wanted it, the peoplegot it. What they loved about it was that it was a bigaction-adventure pic with romance and enough - "Boo!" - scaringwithout being kind of freaky. And that's the spirit of the movie isto go on location and really live the environment of it, to takeadvantage of an archeologically-rich nation and find a story thateveryone feels they had a handle on because we are fascinated byworld history. I mean, we only need walk through the British Museumand see the halls of Egyptian mummies and... this was cool -- itwas like meeting a rock star, cooler actually. I haven't met Stingyet but he'd definitely make me fall sideways. I'm a child of the'70s and '80s, give me a break... [laughs]
You didn't get to go and see The Police when they played?
FRASER: I did, I saw them in Montreal when we were shooting this. I boughtthe tee-shirt... what was I saying? I met an Egyptologist and theenthusiasm for the way that the man spoke about the doc-- I guessit was, about what he saw on the walls; it was almost as if he wasreading the newspaper that day. I mean, it just smacked at mealmost as if it was a current event. I mean, such is the interestfor this subject. I guess it makes sense because the first one wasa sleeper hit, and the second one was, 'We wanted more of it!', andthe third one, now seven years later, for various studio politicalreasons I'm sure - and me sitting around rubbing my fingers going,Are we gonna make a movie? - until finally getting a call fromSteven. This would've been going on a year or a half now... I wasworking in the Piedmont region. Anyway, Steven wasn't going todirect it. We had a good script, he said, but we're going tolook for a director.
You broke some ribs, bruised yourself because you do all yourstunts. I was wondering why would you keep torturing yourself forthe third one? And did you take some precautions?
FRASER: Because I take my job too seriously! I cracked a couple of twigs,but you know, everybody else has. What are you gonna do? Justbasically feel sorry for yourself a little while. It'll heal. Youknow what, I pay attention because I am seven years older. There isstill fluid in my knees; I've had some tune-ups done. I've had theoil changed. I made sure I trained as hard as I could before Istarted this picture - less out of vanity and more out of survivalbecause I didn't want to limp over the finish line on this movielike I did on the other ones. Because the truth is we'd be going toChina, working on location in deserts in remote areas and the mostchallenging, read dangerous, part of the day was actually gettingto the set. It was outside Shanghai, probably about an hour and ahalf, but we stayed in a local hotel in a region that I just can'tpronounce the name of properly... It was a mining community and sothe roads were backed up with eighteen million trucks back-to-backfor miles and they only let them in several at a time intoShanghai. And getting to work was taking just pot-hilled roads anda convoy of silly sedans when we should have been in 4-wheel drivevehicles. I'm like breaking the axels off... but hey, you're reallythere, and the authenticity of this picture has the feel of it notbeing such a CGI-intensive picture that you lose sight of anenvironment that's created as opposed to really living it.
Certainly, coupled with the fact that to make a movie like thisrequired so much of what I learned on the job from the first two,which was how to work as effectively as I could with CGI and to dothat in a way that brought the story together and made sense forall of the legions of technicians and computer technicians later onwho would have to be tracking in elements. You know, the fantasy isso supernatural that if the performances they have and the actorson screen don't match, it makes their job a lot more difficult. Forinstance, if something as simple as the eye line is off-- okay,there's a big scary monster here and you're looking over here, wellthen you can't make it work, or your eyes are crossed or something.What it comes down to is essentially letting your audience knowthat you believe what is really happening in the situation. As longas you do, then the CGI guys will-- and then they can make themovie and it should all be as it is meant to be, as believable afantastical situation as it is.
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