Youthful enthusiasms inform 'Clash' remake

Michael Ordoña, Special to The Chronicle

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Louis Leterrier does not look like a film director.

The slender, youthful 36-year-old Paris native is easier to picture playing beer pong and videogames than directing the latest big-budget epic adventure, "Clash of the Titans." Possessed of seemingly boundless energy, ranging all over the couch in a suite at the Four Seasons, he says of his kinetic directing style, "I feel action. I know what I want to see. I'm excited by cool action. I like the dramatic scenes, but also I get really excited when doing the action. You never stop the story."

Of one of the key sequences in the film, pitting Perseus (Sam Worthington) and his comrades against giant scorpions ("scorpiochs") in the desert: "On my own, I was writing the action scene and taking the little action figures - 'Yeah, go, Matt and Phil, I've got some work to do,' " he says, hunching in delight over the imaginary scorpion and warrior figures, his animated face lighting up. "Ehhh! The camera would be here, OK, little drawing, little sketch. ... It was hard to do, but I feel it. I like it."

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Quotable: On why Sam Worthington ("Avatar," "Terminator Salvation") is constantly being cast in blockbusters as the guy who has to struggle with his humanity to save everyone: "He's that guy. He struggles with his identity, he struggles with fame. He drives a bicycle coming here. He's Perseus, he's Jake Sully, he's all these guys. You have actors and you have hero actors, like Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt. But at the same time, he's wearing his Iron Maiden T-shirt and his jeans and he has, like, three pairs of shoes and you have to beg him - his publicist was like, 'Please get another pair of shoes!

Michael Ordoña is a freelance writer. E-mail him at pinkletters@sfchronicle.com.

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