Movieline was on the scene late last week at a press gathering for Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and while the event on the 61st floor of the Empire State Building was classy and featured unquestionably the best city view of any junket ever, it bears noting that things got a little... weird. And awkward. And fast, with the topics of sexual tension, drug interludes, Roman Polanski and Pinocchio all arising in quick succession. (To say nothing of CGI-centaur Pierce Brosnan's blue-tights-wearing anecdotes.) Needless to say, it was everything we go to PG-rated film junkets for in the first place.
A Fox embargo forbids me from anything review-ish until the kids' novel adaptation opens Friday, but it's pretty common knowledge that director Chris Columbus aged the title character (played by Logan Lerman) and his comrades in mythological, half-human arms Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) and Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) ahead a few years of the 11-year-olds in Rick Riordan's bestselling source material. Columbus explained he'd preferred older characters as a means of exploring the nuances and challenges of growing up, including Percy's broken home, learning disabilities and...
"Sexual tension?" one journalist asked.
"No, I can't do sexual tension with 11-year-olds!" Columbus quickly replied, shifting uncomfortably. "Then I'd be in there with Polanski."
The comment drew a roar from most in the room, with the exception of the children attending in the front few rows and the even more notable exception of Brosnan -- who co-stars in Polanski's latest film The Ghost Writer while the director languishes in house arrest awaiting his likely extradition to the United States. Whoops! Perhaps sensing his faux pas, Columbus shifted again and avoided looking at the actor sitting next to him, his darting eyes looking at anyone in the room who might change the subject.
Things had settled down before your Movieline correspondent finally asked the (vaguely spoilerish) query that had been bugging him since seeing the film that morning: When Percy's quest takes him and his friends to Las Vegas -- where they are distracted in a hotel/casino by delicious, hallucinogenic "lotus flowers" -- was I really to understand they were interrupted... by a five-day drug trip?
"I can give you a very quick and succinct answer," Columbus told me. "That was just a little homage to Pinocchio -- the fantasy land in Pinocchio. Remember, people were saying it's druggy or something, but that's 1940. And the kids went into a bar and drank pints of beer and smoked cigars. They of course turned into donkeys. So there are ramifications, obviously, for eating a lotus flower."
"Not to mention it has a negative connotation," Lerman added. "They may be thinking they have a great time, but when they escape, they thought spent hours [there] and it turns out to be days. And they're trapped in there. It's a metaphor for that."
"It's telling kids: Do not go to Vegas," Jackson joked before straightening out. "You've got to look at the underlying message: If you have too much fun -- besides this lotus flower or whatever -- if you have too much fun in life, you lose track of time and your quest doesn't get done. So it teaches you how to get out there and get focused and listen to that thing inside you when you are having fun. A piece of Grover is in me: I like to have fun, but I don't let it get in the way of my work or in the way of my quest. Poseidon spoke, and we all got out of there. Now, if we would have stayed in Lotus Land for the rest of the movie, that would have been a problem."
I beg to differ -- but more on that in the review coming Friday. Until then, we'll always have awkwardness.