"I wrote and directed the Mel Gibson film Payback but got fired during post-production. It was my first film as director and I thought my career was over. It was during this downtime that I wrote A Knight's Tale. I loved the idea that jousting tournaments were medieval sports, but I had never figured out what to do with it."
"Heath Ledger was a rising star at the time. I met him at a restaurant in LAX airport and he had this long, leather case with him. What's in the case? I asked. He said: It's my didgeridoo. Can you play it? I asked. He said: Of course I can. And he started wailing on it like a white Australian Miles Davis. Everyone was looking. I fell in love with him in that moment and offered him the part."
"We jousted for real with re-enactors from a Las Vegas jousting show. But we made the lances of balsa wood so they wouldn't kill anybody. The art department made compartments in them and put uncooked spaghetti in: when the lances broke, they exploded and the pasta went up in the air looking like splinters. We put the Nike logo on Sir Ulrich's armour as a joke. Years later, someone at Nike told me how much they loved it."
The director was fired from Payback during post-production and used the resulting downtime to write A Knight's Tale. The film reimagines jousting tournaments as medieval sports and centers on a peasant who aspires to nobility, paralleling a screenwriter's desire to direct. Casting considered Paul Walker but ultimately chose Heath Ledger after an impromptu didgeridoo performance. The part of Chaucer was written for Paul Bettany despite studio preference for Hugh Grant. Real jousting scenes used reenactors and modified balsa lances filled with uncooked spaghetti to create splinter effects. The production included playful anachronisms, such as a Nike logo on Sir Ulrich's armour.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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