July 16, 1991
Mark Abrams came and hung out for the day. He played Prince for hours, dungeon-mastered David and Liz, and tossed off ideas for Prince 2 like a Roman candle. Strange to see him after ten years. Strange, especially, to watch him play Prince, and realize we’d come full circle since high school.
July 18, 1991
Mark Abrams is so eager to help with Prince 2, I’ve hired him as a consultant and research assistant. It’s good for me to have someone to bounce ideas off of, and an experienced dungeonmaster to boot. (I wonder if he might be able to design levels, later on?)
Got another $30 grand in royalties this month, thanks to HudsonSoft in Japan. I’m rakin’ it in.
July 23, 1991
A DHL package arrived from Brian containing lots of fun items: NCS’s new storyline for Super FamiCom Prince; the new LC graphics for Mac Prince (beautiful); a sneak preview in a Japanese game players’ magazine of the upcoming Super FamiCom game Nosferatu, a blatant ripoff of Prince (NCS and Henry are foaming at the mouth about it and considering whether to sue); and, most satisfying of all, a letter from a fan in Saudi Arabia, suitable for framing. If I ever find myself stranded in Riyadh, I won’t have to sleep on the street.
July 25, 1991
Today I wrote letters. Literally. That’s all I did. One to Lobna, and then, prompted by Brian, a three-page beauty to Scott, which I fired off Fed Ex.
July 29, 1991
Working hard, making good progress on Prince 2.
Mark Netter came by. He was thrilled that I’d liked his second-year film. He said everyone at NYU had slammed it. Figures.
July 30, 1991
Sent out the first third of the Prince 2 bible Fed Ex, then dashed uptown for dinner with Grandpa, Mom and Dad, Dave and Liz. Then came back here and sat up three more hours laboring over the new “Princess’s Discovery” storyboards for Karl. I re-did it about five times, editing on paper. The sequence got progressively tighter and shorter and simpler and better. I enjoyed that.
First ideas are never the best. Even when you think they are, later on it turns out you can improve it.
Finally, I’m getting excited about this game.
I’d forgotten how much I enjoy drawing. Especially quick, comic-book style drawing. I wish I were better at it.
August 2, 1991
Spent the day studying Spanish verbs and working up a Prince 3 storyline. Yes, Prince 3 – I know I’m getting close to wrapping something up when I find myself thinking about the sequel. I’ve got some great ideas for Prince 3. The Princess and the mouse. It’ll be a milestone in computer gaming, a classic, a megahit. If only I ever get to do it.
Bought my plane tickets.
August 3, 1991
Spent two hours on the phone with Robert, playing around with what little Spanish we possess. He’s really nervous about this upcoming trip. It’s touching.
August 4, 1991
Mark Abrams drove down and we spent the day brainstorming about the Prince Saga (Parts 1 through 4).
In the morning on our way to MacDougal St. we ran into Sandra Levinson. She was with a beautiful Cuban woman whom she introduced as “the wife of Aléa.” Would that be Tomás Gutiérrez Aléa, the director of Memories of Underdevelopment? Wow! Sandra introduced me as the author of a screenplay about Cuba she was halfway through reading which was “very good.” O happy day!
Day before yesterday, Ken Sherman called to say that Herman Rush had offered $70,000 to do In the Dark as a TV movie but balked at $250,000 for a feature. Ken wanted to know if he should hold out for the full deal. For some reason, I can’t work up any excitement about seeing In the Dark get produced now. To get Bird of Paradise made, though, I’d give… well, don’t ask me what I’d give!
By this point, Ken must be wondering whether I’m really serious about screenwriting or if I’m just a dilettante who’s never going to leave the computer game business.
August 5, 1991
Finished reading El Principito on the subway. Great book.
It’s incredible, but my Spanish is improving noticeably from one day to the next, just from hitting the books. I turned on Telemundo CNN News tonight and found myself understanding entire sentences. It’s as if studying Spanish for a couple of hours each day has set in motion some mystic process by which I learn the language faster than I’m actually studying it. Like Christine.
August 7, 1991
Proved to myself I haven’t forgotten what a real day’s work is like. I took an hour for lunch and an hour for dinner (falafel at Mamoun’s, pasta at Lucca’s, strolling in the Village in the glorious weather, looking at the glorious long-legged girls) and spent the rest of the day inside, seated at the computer. Burned through pretty much the whole game design, revising and improving. Wish I had a few more days to keep going. That’s the way it always is. There’s something in me that won’t let me work on this project until I’m down to the wire.
Spoke to Brian and Scott. Miraculously, the Mac version [of Prince 1] has taken a turn for the better. It seems that letter I wrote has (belatedly) lit a fire under everyone at Presage, and now they’ve got Scott working nights and weekends. Maybe we actually will make Christmas.
Brian described the new box to me.
This Prince 2 is going to be great, if it comes out anything like the way I’ve designed it. If only I lived in SF, I could make sure it was done right. But I’ve got to keep my priorities straight. What’s more important – Prince 2, or screenwriting and travelling to foreign countries?
Oh, well. After I send off the Prince 2 bible tomorrow, I’m free!
August 9, 1991
I’m just beginning to realize that three days is not, in fact, a whole lot of time to pack up my worldly goods.
This is more difficult than a normal packing job because I’ve got to think: What will I need in Central America? In California? I have to ask myself about every item: “Can I live for a year or two without this (book, videotape, whatever)?”
There’s actually a kind of pleasure in the thought of going a year without my journals, photo albums, TV, stereo, music, computer games, car, all that crap. It strips me down to my bare humanity.
August 11, 1991
Stopped by the Center to see Sandra Levinson. She’d finished Bird of Paradise and liked it so much she couldn’t stop talking about it. I gave her two more copies, one to give to Aléa and one to a New York producer friend of hers who’s looking for a property for Aléa to direct. I encouraged her as much as I could without actually begging.
Two other interesting developments from that meeting. One, she offered me the use of her apartment in Havana after she leaves on the 29th. Two, she advised me that I do qualify to visit Cuba under the Treasury Dept. regulations. All I need to do is book a seat on a charter flight through Marazúl.
Feeling like a fool, I said: “But they denied permission to Sydney Pollack and Francis Coppola…”
“That’s because they’re Sydney Pollack and Francis Coppola! You, my dear, are a documentary filmmaker, and you can prove it.”
August 14, 1991
[Chappaqua] It’s done. With the help of Kevin Burget, David and Liz, Mom and her new tenant Stanley, and two Israeli movers from Shleppers, what’s left of my worldly goods is now boxed and stacked to the ceiling in what was once my bedroom.
Now I’m alone, doing laundry and rearranging boxes, and periodically getting blindsided by teenage flashbacks. Even writing in this journal – in this house, on a day like this – is a conditioned stimulus. It sweeps me, mentally and emotionally, right back to the summers of ’85 and ’86, when I was fresh out of college and Prince of Persia was just an idea.
I have no home now. Just a plane ticket.
Lost in Translation
September 16, 1991
[Ba
ck from Honduras and Cuba] Went to Gideon Brower’s apartment to sit in on a reading of his new screenplay, Thebes. Kevin and Jane were among the readers. Seeing him brought back fond memories of the night of George’s screening, when Lobna was here and we all went to a bar on 7th Ave. I liked Gideon. I’m glad to see he’s got talent.
Gideon’s reading made me want to live in New York again. Also it made me want to have written another screenplay. To have a new 120-page manuscript, suitable for Xeroxing, begging to be bought.
Five months ago all I wanted was to make films – to write them, shoot them, direct them – to become a success as fast as possible. I was so ambitious I couldn’t fall asleep at night. Now I seem to be following a different path. Travelling, learning languages, conducting courtships like some 19th-century gentleman who doesn’t have to work for a living and has nothing to occupy him except his own Bildung. It’s all very well as long as I keep writing… but what have I written lately?
September 20, 1991
[San Rafael] Nonstop meetings every day since I arrived, with different groupings of people. Even lunch is a meeting. It’s exhausting, and exhilarating. To be acting, to have a purpose, feels wonderful after a month of tourism.
Prince 2 is happening. I’m relieved… guardedly optimistic, anyway.
I’d been afraid I’d arrive to find the project scuttled, or at least that I’d have to fight tooth and nail to keep it afloat; but although I’d heard rumblings to the effect that the Powers that Be (John Baker and Michelle) were shocked and dismayed by the project’s size, all they’ve done is, quite reasonably, express concern that it not grow out of control, and entreat me to get as specific as I can, in the two weeks I’m here, about what graphics work will be required.
For now, it’s all going (seemingly) smoothly… a lot of work, taking the storyboards and spec’ing out how much graphics will be required to implement them. As to the actual content – what will be on the screen and how it should look – everyone is deferring to me the way a film crew defers to the director. Somehow, I’ve acquired that magic quality, credibility.
As long as they continue to trust me and believe in me, this job is a dream. If they ever start to doubt me, it could become a nightmare.
Mac Prince has been pushed back to January, which isn’t as good as shipping in October, but, after two years in the netherworld of “almost done,” will come as an enormous relief.
Dinner last night in SF with Tomi’s new collaborator, Bill Purdy of Purdy and Young, the job shop she’s contracted out the Authorware accounting program to. They are, in fact, purdy and young.
September 21, 1991
[L.A.] Met with Ken Sherman. It was sort of discouraging. He’ll keep sending out Bird of Paradise, but after eleven rejections, it’s clear he’s lost faith and isn’t expecting much. I told him the Hawaii story and the Golden Bowl-in-Prague story. He didn’t seem too excited about either of them.
September 23, 1991
I’ve been doing so much flying lately, it’s become automatic… I looked out the window just now and saw with a shock that we were 40,000 feet up. I’d been writing in my notebook and hadn’t noticed the takeoff.
I don’t think I want to live in L.A. It’s sort of exciting to be around the trappings of the movie business – agents and studios and so on – but it’s a thrill best experienced, I think, by the occasional visitor. As long as I’m making enough from the computer games to live wherever I want and write screenplays, why not take advantage of it?
September 24, 1991
[San Rafael] Dinner last night at the Hunan. There was a full moon and we walked to the restaurant from Kelly and Ann’s apartment by Coit Tower. The night was clear and the moon was shining on the water under the bridge. It took my breath away. San Francisco on certain days has that special, piercing beauty that’s almost painful, because it arouses a hunger it can never satisfy. You know that even if you live with that beauty, see it every day, wake up to it every morning, get as close as it is physically possible to get, you still can’t possess it, and its distance from you will make your heart ache.
Prince 2 is coming together, slowly.
Today Brian showed me the alpha version of Nintendo Prince. Nothing cheers me up like seeing Prince on a new machine.
September 26, 1991
Robert Cook’s in town. Software Toolworks flew him out for two days to chain him to a computer for the final playtesting and debugging of D-Gen. I’m writing this in Robert’s sumptuous suite at the newly constructed Embassy Suites Hotel (which, as I recall, was marshland the last time I was here).
Spent the morning at Broderbund and the afternoon at Presage, sitting at Scott’s elbow, tweaking the character animations frame by frame, pixel by pixel, like in the old days. We’re still not done. I’m going back tomorrow for more.
Everyone’s happy to see me, now that I don’t live here any more.
September 27, 1991
Scott’s leaving tomorrow for the national sky-diving championships in Arizona, so today had to be our last day pushing pixels. Fortunately, it’s looking pretty good. Barring further mishaps, Mac POP should ship in January as planned.
September 29, 1991
Tomi called her mom in Colorado who called cousin Midori in Salamanca who said they’d be delighted to have me and classes start on October 14. Yow! That’s in two weeks!
October 13, 1991
[Salamanca] Said goodbye to Patrick at two a.m. last night, in Paris, outside the Moroccan restaurant across the bridge where I’d spent three hours in a fog of cigarette smoke and animated conversation, drinking mint tea and trying to look as if I had any idea what anyone was saying. Said goodbye to Lobna this morning, on the sidewalk in front of her apartment in the 17th, in yet another scene that made me feel like I was living in a French movie. One short plane flight and one three-and-a-half-hour bus ride later, and here I am in a rented room in Señora Francisca Mesonero’s apartment on Calle Petunias in Salamanca, Spain, about to start a new life as a starving student. Class starts at 8:45 tomorrow morning.
Two weeks ago, Salamanca was a name on a map. I just can’t get over the way you can decide to do something and then the next thing you know, it’s really happening.
January 24, 1992
[San Rafael] Prince 2 is in good shape. The artists were thrilled to meet me after slaving away for three months. Daniel is off the project. The current team consists of Steve, Scott and Nicole.
Today I screened the 1940 Thief of Baghdad for them. They’re jazzed. In the art department, at least, Prince 2 is the “cool” project to be on. Meetings with Leila and Brian have been productive. We all seem to be in sync and happy.
Scott said: “For three months everybody’s been saying ‘Jordan this’ and ‘Jordan that’ and ‘When Jordan gets back.’ I thought you’d be much older. When I saw you, I thought: ‘My gosh, he’s just a baby!’”
When I arrived, the mood was a bit nervous because Brian and Leila felt that John (Baker, head of E2 which means entertainment and education) had doubts about the project and would probably cut our budget severely. It turned out he hadn’t seen any of the work the artists had done. I took him upstairs and had the artists show him what they were working on. That, plus I’ve been making a point of trying to include him in things and keep him informed so he feels like he’s a part of it. I really didn’t do all that much, but it seems to have turned John around 180 degrees. Today he told me that he’s bagged all the other entertainment products they had in development and is putting everything behind Prince 2. He wants it to be an example of the “New Broderbund” (whatever that is). Fine with me.
John is still nervous about the cost of the project, which he says is the biggest Broderbund has ever done. He wants to lower the licensing royalty rate so he’s covered in case it’s not a megahit. We’re discussing it.
Broderbund stock went out at $10 (after a split) and has gone to $25, making overnight millionaires of quite a few people. The company has been moved to a new building on Redwood Blvd. Very slick. Glass and elevators and chrome, and everything in the official Broderbund typeface. The front desk receptionist is even cute; I don’t know if that’s a coincidence or if it’s part of the new corporate image.
IBM and Mac Prince are going out February in the new box. I’ve spent a certain amount of time shmoozing with the fresh-faced marketing people who have been assigned to Prince. They seem inclined to promote the product, as opposed to burying it, which represents a considerable improvement in marketing strategy.
Feyna says Game Boy Prince should be on the shelves this week.
Saw a prototype of the 8-bit Nintendo version. It’s OK, nothing spectacular.
January 30, 1992
Nearing the end of my second week. It’s been a good trip. The Prince 2 Team (Leila, Scott, Steve, Nicole and Maureen on graphics; Tom, Michael and Jonelle on sound, Jeff programming, Brian producing) is more jazzed than ever. The Powers That Be (Doug and John) look favorably upon the enterprise and seem inclined to let us do it our way without interference despite the fact that it’s the costliest entertainment product in Broderbund’s history. Not only that, but John actually signed the contract!
Meanwhile, Prince 1 is chugging along. The IBM release/Mac release is getting a goodly share of marketing attention. They’re even doing a promotional video! (Today after work Dexter and I went down to Mill Valley to retape the swordfighting scenes. When they couldn’t get the camera to work, we went across the road and had a beer while they figured it out.)
Licensing activity continues. For the first time, Steve and Feyna seem to be on top of things, rather than buried underneath them. The Game Boy version arrived yesterday and got everyone all excited. 8-bit Nintendo and Sega Master versions are close to shipping, so they say. Some more new deals have been signed including Sega Game Gear.
So, it looks like I’ll be able to continue the “expatriate writer” life a while longer.
The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993 Page 15