London, Mar 9: “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” may bring people to the movies just to see what the title is all about.
“At least everyone's talking about it,” said actress Emily Blunt, who co-stars in the new romantic comedy/drama with Ewan McGregor.
“You know, I think that's a good thing. I think once people have seen it they don't really understand what else it should be called, you know. You can call it something generic like, ‘Swimming Upstream,' but it doesn't make any sense for the film. I think the film is about salmon fishing in the the Yemen, that's what it's about. And you know, I think that's an original title and it's an original movie.”
The film tells the story of a rich sheikh who loves to fish and dreams of bringing the sport of fly fishing to his desert country.
“It's a nice, a very nice center of the film,” said McGregor about his character's friendship with Sheikh Muhammed, played by Amr Waked.
“And in fact it's one of the themes of the film—the idea of finding some common ground and breaking down the kind of stigma or stereotype that, you know, the Middle Eastern character in the film is the bad guy or the terrorist. It's not.”
“It's the other way around. I'm the terrorist,” he then joked.
McGregor actually plays Dr. Alfred Jones, a fisheries expert hired by the sheikh to make his dream a reality.
“Fred is like seriously awkward, but at the same time quite confident about it, isn't he?” said McGregor about his character. “He's confident about his awkwardness in a way, because he's quite brusque.”
