'Mummy' Star Brendan Fraser Finds the 'Tomb of the Dragon Emperor'
By Emily Christianson, Hollywood.com Staff
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Monday, August 04, 2008
HW: We've seen you working in film for 20 years and now and here you are playing the part of the dad of a twenty-something year old, was that a change for you?
BF: No, I think it's good because it allowed for that dynamic of what Rob [Cohen] called the “old-bull” and the “young-bull” - knocking skulls and having that tension that families can usually identify with and you need to have that in the midst of all of this huge imagery and cinematographical pyrotechnics.
HW: How would you compare working with Rob Cohen to working with Stephen Sommers?
BF: In the case of this picture, Rob, knowing that he had so much experience, and that he, as I learned, was an archaeologist or at least was a student of it when he was a young man at Harvard with a particular interest in Chinese history and he is a practicing Buddhist, so putting together everything that is his life's passion I think shows when I watch the picture because it's everything that he cares about all in one. And Stephen, the godfather of this generation of the Mummy, forgetting that these pictures had been made back in the '30s [laughs], – he's enthusiastic like you wouldn't believe. He is a Midwestern boy from Minnesota, son of a pediatrician, family guy. My favorite moments working with Stephen on the other two pictures was on the first one, two of them actually, he set up some big shot with columns and things are gonna fall down and he's like, “Ready and DON”T SUCK! ACTION!” Things are crashing around us and you run like your pants are on fire so you don't have to do it again. And when things were getting a little bit, sticky, he'd say, “Oh man, the next movie I make is going to be like two chicks sitting on a beach on towels talking, that's it, that's all they're going to do. No more of this action stuff.”