The highly remunerated screenwriter co-adapted "L. A. Confidential," and directed (most of ) the re-shot Mel Gibson thriller "Payback." After a European-set thriller collapsed, Helgeland pulled into his quiver of notions and came out with this exuberant, if shambling popcorn picture, a period melange set in the world of jousting that combines elements of "Prince and the Pauper, "Ever After"-style romance, a separated father-and-son story strand, road-movie buddy comedy, Pythonesque scatology ("The spark of his life is smothered in shite!") and musical numbers of unabashed anachronism. Helgeland's film opens at a jousting match where ranks of nobles, awaiting the battles, pound their fists on tables and do the wave in time to Queen's "We Will Rock You."

The movie opens at a match where ranks of nobles, awaiting their, pounding their fists and do the wave in time to Queen's "We Will Rock You." You start to think: "Gladiator" with a touch of the Three Stooges. And: How the heck will this work?

The movie sets commoner William Thatcher (Heath Ledger) in the center of the royal swirl as if Ledger were a superstar already, but the 22-year-old with the graveled smoker's voice, long curly blonde hair and goofy smile in a chiseled face, parades through the film with immense confidence and charm. His sidekicks include Mark Addy, the impossibly doe-eyed and pillow-lipped Laura Fraser and Paul Bettany's steal-the-show turn, posing as the writer Geoffrey Chaucer. "Yes, I'm a writer," he says, showing his hand as a gifted liar. "I give the truth scope." There's a romance with a dazedly cute yet utterly contemporary princess (Shannyn Sossamon) and Rufus Sewell is the gleeful bad guy, snarling and throwing his raven curls at every turn.

As befits a budding action director, Helgeland had his arm in a sling when we talked, but only after busting his collarbone on his kids' trampoline the weekend before. As for the genesis of this unlikely confection, he recalls, "I was just coming off a contemporary film that I was prepping at Fox that they had pulled the plug on. We were going to shoot in Prague, set in Paris, with Prague doubling Paris. A lot of my crew for that [unmade] film became my crew on this film."

Underneath this summer picture, there's a more sophisticated strand, he confesses. "Odd as it sounds, as a screenwriter tying to direct, I had ideas about that [as a story], but [a movie about] people [who work] in film was the last thing I wanted to write. I had come across a book about jousting years earlier, but had never had a story. I was looking though some old files and I had written a note about how [those who jousted] had to be of noble birth to compete, and I thought, there's a parallel to screenwriters as peasants and directors as knights." He grins goofily. "[I could use that metaphor] without boring everybody with a guy walking up and down Sunset Boulevard. Then I wanted it to be a story about youth and finding your place in the world."

But how did the anachronistic songs find their place in the tale? "When I write a script, I like to play music that seems to go with the story I'm writing. When I analyzed this one, the thematics about youth and identity seemed to be rock 'n' roll. I started playing those songs and decided to see if I could pull off incorporating the music into the movie as well, and not half-hearted." Helgeland then couldn't envision any other kind of music being used and incorporated Queen and Thin Lizzy ("The Boys Are Back In Town") and other arena rock. "People liked it or didn't like it," in focus groups, he says, grinning. "There wasn't much middle ground. My argument to the studio was, sure, there are people who don't like it, that's what 'sucks' means when they write those cards out, but they [still] seemed to like the movie anyway."

With his privileged positition as a big-budget screenwriter, I wondered why he thought this was the turn his career should take. First, he says, "I didn't want to do another kind of noir-ish thing. It'd all be over, probably, then. I obviously don't have a lot of directing experience. It was a challenge to do a big [$40 million or so] period piece [with] all the extras and all that. I'm friends with Dick Donner, who did 'Conspiracy Theory,' which I wrote. He said to me, 'If you pull it off, it'll be like pulling off four different films and your experience level would jump way up.' That seemed like a good thing. But it was just like anything else: really long pre-production, four months that I spent almost [entirely] in Prague. You plan it enough, you have the answer to a lot of questions you don't really know you even have the answer to, [once] you start shooting." Construction costs were key to the choice to shoot in the Czech Republic, "but there were some practical locations we used that were very good. The weakness of it"—problems directing enormous numbers of extras who tended to look into the camera—"turned out to be the strength of it. I couldn't have gotten those faces any place else. Since the cast was all there, basically living together, that gave an intangible but invaluable kind of thing to the movie. When you watch it and [the lead trio] seem to like each other so much, it's because they were hanging out together so much." Lots of Czech beer? "Lots of beer."

"A Knight's Tale" opens Friday.

Also by Ray Pride

WB-SPLOITATION
J. S. Cardone's eighth feature, "The Forsaken," is a hurtling, old-fashioned slam-bang near-Tromafilm variation on "Near Dark," noisy, restless and cheerfully, unabashedly "B."
(2001-04-26)

KINGDOM COME
Life was hard during the California Gold Rush; contemporary art film distribution may be slightly tougher.
(2001-04-19)

MULLETING IT OVER
David Spade's newest star vehicle, likable, headlong and often nonsensical, finds the small comic playing an obstinate, put-upon janitor in acid-washed jeans and a ratty mullet wig, who lives for Van Halen and a dream of rejoining his family -- who deserted him at a Grand Canyon rest stop when he was only 8 years old
(2001-04-12)

WORLDS KNOWN
A mirror of language and a dance of desire, the culmination of "The Beauty of the Husband"'s performance takes the breath away.
(2001-04-05)

BLOWN
(2001-04-05)

THIS AMERICAN SO-CALLED LIFE
(2001-03-29)

WHOLE CLOTH
(2001-03-29)

COLOR BIND
(2001-03-22)

WORDS ON PICTURES
(2001-03-22)

OFF CAMERA
(2001-03-22)

MANNY FROM HEAVEN
(2001-03-08)

RAINSTORMS OF WORDS
(2001-03-01)