Aasif Mandvi did an interview with 30 Ninjas. You can check it out below.

Part 1:

DAN KAUFMAN: So how familiar with the cartoon were you when you auditioned?

AASIF MANDVI: I didn’t know anything about it. I’d never watched the cartoon before I got the audition. What happened was there was a period of time where they said, “Night is very interested in you for this role,” but he hadn’t actually made an offer yet. And so, in that period of time, between when they said, “Night is interested in you,” and when Night actually made the offer, I watched the first season of the cartoon. To understand a little bit more of my character, you know?

DAN: Were you excited to maybe be working with Night?

AASIF: It was weird, because I was actually—you know, I’d met M. Night Shyamalan briefly at the after-party for Lady in the Water, and I’d met him outside a Broadway show once. But I had never really spent any time talking to him or anything. After the audition they called me and said, “M. Night is gonna call you.” And I didn’t know if he was calling me to say, “Hey, you know, that was a terrible audition. Don’t ever audition for me again,” or if he was calling me to offer me a role. Maybe it’s, you know, a slow day, and he’s like, “Hey, I’ll call Aasif Mandvi and see what he’s up to. How’s life at The Daily Show?” I thought, “Maybe he’s just calling to chitchat, ’cause that’s what he does.”

DAN: Of course, he’s got nothing else going on.

AASIF: (laughs) Right. But then it turned out that he was calling to be like, “Hey, I loved your audition.” And we talked about it. I was in an airport, actually, on my way to shoot a piece for The Daily Show. So I was in the departure lounge at the airport and I get this call on my cell phone from Night, and he’s basically talking to me about this movie. And I’m boarding this flight, you know?

DAN: (laughs)

AASIF: By the end of it I was like, “Night, I gotta go! We’re taking off and they’re asking us to shut our cell phones off.” (laughs) And then he was just like, “Let’s do it. You wanna do it?” And I’m like, “Yeah, let’s do it!”

DAN: Awesome! So, the offer might have crashed the plane?

AASIF: It might have. It might have. (laughs) If I was like, “Listen! This is a really big deal for me! I can’t turn off my cell phone right now!” everyone on the plane would’ve been mad at me.

[READ MORE]

Part 2:

DAN KAUFMAN: In our interview with Night he said that he’s kind of a control freak. Did that manifest on set at all?

AASIF MANDVI: I can only say it if he says it. (laughs)

DAN: He did. But it sounds like it comes from a place of true affection for the material, and he just wanted everything to be right.

AASIF: Yeah. I would say he’s a control freak. But the truth is, many directors are control freaks. You become a director because you wanna tell everybody what to do and how to do it, you know? But at the end of the day, Night is an auteur. He’s somebody who creates a world that’s distinctly got his tone to it, in the same way that painters and writers do. He creates a feel and tone to his work that is very specifically him. So, in order to get that, he has to ask for exactly what he wants. And he does.

DAN: How was your experience with him different from other directors you’ve worked with?

AASIF: Well, some directors are very loose. Like with comedies, it’s much more about playing and improvising and riffing. In this, Night was more specific about things that he wanted. He’s like a musical conductor. He knows exactly what the musicality of the scene is supposed to be—he’s mapped it out in his head already. And the good thing about that is he doesn’t waste a lot of time, because he knows where he wants to go and how he wants to get there.

DAN: Yeah, he was saying his first table reads take so long because he would frequently be jumping up and describing scenes in great detail, acting out camera moves and such.

AASIF: Well, and this is an indication how technology is working today in making films, Night had many of his shots already animated onto his iPod.

DAN: Oh, cool!

AASIF: Yeah, he had them in an animated format so that he could see where he wanted the camera to go, and how he wanted to do it. So he was recreating things that had already been plotted out very specifically. It wasn’t like working with a director who’s figuring out where the shot is and how to do it [on the fly]. Because when you’re working on a huge production like this—this is not some indie film, you know what I mean?

DAN: Yeah, seriously. This is kind of a big deal.

AASIF: You can’t spend the whole afternoon figuring out how to set up this shot. I mean, you can’t do that on an indie film, either. But the thing is that he didn’t have that luxury, because there was a lot to do. There were a lot of things, CGI-wise and special effects-wise. So it’s quite a mammoth task. The good thing was that he had it all planned out — how he wanted the shot to ultimately look and how he wanted the camera to move. I’m sure that he varied from it to some degree, but for the most part, it was all kind of set up. He could tell you, “This is where I’m going with the camera.”

DAN: He also mentioned he doesn’t do a lot of coverage.

AASIF: He doesn’t do a lot of coverage and he doesn’t like to cut, which sometimes makes it hard for the actor, because you gotta get it, you know? It makes it difficult because normally, you can cut away, you can cut back. There was one scene that I did where we had to get it in one take, and it was a big, long scene! So the camera, the actor, everything had to work together as one. But then, when it works, it looks amazing. You’re like, “He got that all in one take?!” And that’s part of his style. I think that’s why the special effects and everything are gonna look so cool in this movie, because he doesn’t do a lot of cutting. The special effects, the waterbending and the firebending and all that stuff, it’s all being done in these long takes. I don’t think we’ve seen that before. I don’t think we’ve seen Night’s style in a special effects movie like this before.

DAN: I don’t think we have, either.

AASIF: It’s not gonna be like a lot of action movies, where you’re just like cut, cut, cut, cut, and half the time you don’t actually know what you’re watching. You’re just seeing a lot of close-ups. You know you ended up at the end of a battle, but you don’t quite know what happened. I think that’s what’s gonna be so cool about it; these long takes. That’s gonna be what makes it unique. So, on one hand it looks awesome. On the other hand sometimes it’s hard for the actors and for the special effects people and everybody involved. (laughs) And for Night himself, you know?

[READ MORE]

If you haven’t, be sure to check out Part 2 of M. Night Shyamalan’s interview with 30 Ninjas.

An excerpt can be read below:

JULINA: Can you give me any specific moments where you had to — because of the sprawlingness and the epicness of it all and the technical challenges of achieving your vision of this film — how you needed to change your vision as you went along?

NIGHT: Well, I had an answer to this, but not really an answer to your question, but it just popped in my head when you were talking, which is, I forget how many weeks the shoot was (sighs), maybe a 75-day shoot or something like that. There was about a three-week period at the three-quarter point of the movie where I just was overwhelmed. And I was just kind of on fumes, and for me, I just lost control of the movie a little bit. Nobody would have known this except me. It’s not like you’d watch and say, “Oh, he’s lost control of the movie.” It’s not like we were behind, or anything like that. Nothing empirical, nothing you could put down on paper. I just felt lost. And I had lost that kind of internal drive that was telling me exactly how to frame it and exactly, “Put the cam — put the lens 36 inches above the ground at this angle, with a 27-millimeter lens,” for example. That precision normally kind of speaks to me, and it’s painful when it’s not right and I tell the production designer to do this or the cinematographer, “Pan this way” and “The action goes here, you come in here,” and all that stuff. It started to — I got lost a little bit and I think that was — I was just — it was just too much.

JULINA: Mhm.

NIGHT: Too many things to keep track of with that kind of precision. To keep track of the 50 extras fighting on the wall … I was like, “I’m losing it.” So … (laughs) luckily, it came back after that period, and I remember when I first put the movie together that area of the movie bothered me because it wasn’t familiar, or it didn’t live in the parameters of my usual aesthetics — that is failing. For instance, if I’m driving by a house that’s not designed properly, one of these cookie-cutter houses or something like that. It’s painful, like I can’t even look at it. [I just think,] “Why would they put the window there?” and “This whole side of the house they totally ignored aesthetically,” and “This is definitely cookie-cutter out of some development program.” And I just feel like there’s no human being that was behind this and that there’s no expression of life there. If that’s your mentality — to get the shots better — that kind of stuff that doesn’t represent that aesthetic, it’s tricky.

JULINA: What was it about that part of production? Was there something about that particular material, do you think?.

NIGHT: Nah, it was just where it landed. (laughs) The way it landed in production and how everything was escalating. You know, the epic nature of it. And it was just — I was just tired.

JULINA: Did you end up having a different relationship, then, with your crew because you had to depend on them possibly more than in other films?

NIGHT: You know, I always, always depend on my crew — for sure. I had an amazing crew. To do one of these movies properly takes an enormous amount of endurance.

JULINA: And you were going all around the world, right?

NIGHT: Yeah, we started in Greenland. The scale, to try to know everything, which is what makes me able to lie down and sleep and feel like I think I know how to do it, to get to that place of comfort and of knowledge, is very difficult with that many factors.

[READ MORE]

Check out this NEW Behind the Scenes video featuring the Northern Water Tribe set!

Also, there was a NEW Last Airbender trailer that aired during Glee. Be sure to check it out as it features a few new scenes with Ozai, Zhao, and Iroh speaking!

Caps for both videos coming soon.

Also, a NEW photo of the Last Airbender cast during a Cast Screening was added to the GALLERY. Be sure to check it out!

Please forgive us once again for the delay of updates.

For now, here are the May SOTM winners. Congratulations to all of them!

1st Place

2nd Place and 3rd Place (tie)
Demi Style, Selena Gomez.bz, and Demi Lovato Daily

Please claim your awards below. 1st and 2nd placers, please contact us HERE to claim your prizes.

Also, we’ve added one new promotional image to the GALLERY.

And as for other news, check this interview out with writer Dave Roman about the new TLA manga, Zuko’s Story. Read an excerpt below:

MTV NEWS: How familiar were you with “The Last Airbender” before taking on this project? You worked at Nickelodeon Magazine for a while, so I assume you were pretty familiar with Aang and Zuko already…

DAVE ROMAN: I was actually there when the TV show first started. Whenever there was a new show on Nickelodeon, if it was successful enough we would do a comic based on the show for Nick Magazine. Those were usually just one- or two-page comics. So I was working with the creators of the show, Mike [Dante DiMartino] and Bryan [Konietzko], specifically Aaron Ehasz, who’s the head writer on the show. We specifically wanted to do comics that were really canon — comics that fit into the continuity of the show and you could actually pinpoint what episodes these comics would fit between and stuff like that.

So, over the course of the run of the show, we kept doing more and more, because I became a really big supporter. With comics based on a show, sometimes they’re a lot of work, and sometimes the creators are really into it and sometimes they’re not so into it. And sometimes I’m not into it, so I don’t push for more. But with “Avatar,” we found that not only were we really excited by them, but we actually hear from fans and a lot of the “Avatar” fan sites really championed these comics.

MTV: Well, with this comic specifically, how will it relate to the live-action movie and the animated series? Is it going to retell stories we’ve already seen in the animated series, tweaked for the movie? Will it be entirely new stories featuring Zuko? What area of the “Airbender” mythology will the book explore?

ROMAN: In a lot of ways, it’s like an expanded origin. With the film and the series, there are differences and there are places where they split off, but the setup for both is exactly the same — so when you’re introduced to the characters, that’s the part where they’re completely identical. When we wrote the prequel manga, we were writing a prequel to the series in a lot of ways, because our starting point was exactly the same.

There are certain things you know about Zuko as a character. There are certain events that take place — specifically, the fact that he battles his own father. His father scars him for life, and then banishes him from the kingdom. These are things we knew from the series and they show you certain details, but they don’t spend a lot of time on it, because the nature of episodic television is that you’ll spend a minute with a flashback then move on. So there were still a lot of questions, and there’s this three-year gap when Zuko was on his quest, and you never see anything about what that quest was like or what specifically kept him going during that quest. So the prequel allowed us to really explore it in a lot more depth. It showed you things you might have assumed, or things you might not have.

One of the best episodes of the series is called “The Blue Spirit,” and it’s also a scene that is integral to the film. M. Night just loved it, and everyone just loves that episode. So of course, the bulk of that episode is in the movie, but there’s no time to really explain it in the film, and there was barely any time to explain it in the series. So we were really able to delve into that in the prequel. It was really fun to give it a little bit more of an origin.

[READ MORE]

Five NEW scans of the Last Airbender prequel manga, Zuko’s Story, has been added to the GALLERY.

If you want to donate anything (scans, photos, etc.), please send them HERE and you will be given full credit.

Check out this NEW interview of M. Night Shyamalan with 30Ninjas. You can read an excerpt below:

JULINA TATLOCK: The Last Airbender has major elements in it that a lot of your other films don’t have: huge action fighting sequences and the big use of special effects. Was there anything about specifically the fighting and the action or the CGI that you were either concerned or particularly excited about?

M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN: Well, the fighting part of it was something I was really excited about, because I’ve been studying martial arts on and off for eight or nine years and probably, if somebody broke into my house or something, I would run like a schoolgirl, but I theoretically have been training for that moment for quite a while.

JULINA: [laughs] I study taekwondo, and the more I practice it the more I think my only winning fighting strategy would be: “Hit really hard and run as fast as I can.”

NIGHT: [laughs] Exactly. I’d like to believe that my mind would stay clear and all the training would just flow, but I’m not sure that would be the case. [laughs] But yeah, out of the applications you mentioned [fighting sequences and CGI], all of that is an understanding of the physics of fighting, and being able to apply that for the first time, really, in an acute way, was really exciting for me. I got to work with the choreographers in a real specific way, you know? If I was a dancer and I was choreographing a musical with the choreographer, it would be a similar relationship. I could say: “I’m not buying the stands on that punch; I’m not buying why you would do such a roundhouse at that moment.” All of those things, and the language, and I would talk to the two fight choreographers before, in the first days, and say: This [fighting] is dialogue, and the dialogue can’t be: “I hate you, you hate me. I hate you, you hate me,” you know? That’s not dialogue. [laughs] It’s got to be: “I don’t wanna fight you, please don’t make me fight you, please stop, I don’t wanna do this to you, OK, you’ve given me no choice.” That needs to be in one fight — that “conversation” that you’ve added to the fighting — and we would work through each fight sequence with, What’s the dialogue? What are they both saying to each other [through their body language]? Where there’s a change, who’s affecting who? And then we had the added one-of-a-kind choreography that this movie is forms against other forms … For people that aren’t familiar with martial arts, the form is where you learn particular techniques or you learn each belt. Or in Kempo, which I studied, there are different forms you learn for each belt and they teach you different movements and different stances and different katas [forms] for different purposes. It’s like tai chi — one of the four nations [in Airbender] is based off of tai chi, so there’s a lot of tai chi in the movie. There’s a lot of poetry in the martial arts. Let’s say, hypothetically, there’s a movie that my wife might not be into, but one that I would love — this [movie, Airbender,] is something that would speak to her because she would understand the emotion and the physics behind it, because we really spent time on that. It speaks to the beauty of what it’s like to control your body.

But the CGI part of it definitely scared me to death. It was something I had to learn, and really I felt like to be a “big boy” I had to learn this as part of my storytelling. [laughs] I felt like Mr. Spielberg, Mr. Lucas, Mr. Jackson and all these people were just naturals at it, and this was my training ground — just like if you want to play professional basketball you gotta learn to do [certain] types of moves. I definitely, probably, put everyone through the wringer as I was learning on the job, but I feel much more confident now where if I were given the opportunity to make parts two and three of this franchise I would love to continue the education.

JULINA: It was baptism by earth, air, fire and water!

NIGHT: [laughs] Yeah, exactly right.
[READ MORE]