Peter Jackson: A Film-maker’s Journey

by Sibley, Brian

  ‘To Harvey’s eternal credit,’ says Ken Kamins, ‘he didn’t miss a beat: he saw this as the moment to jump right back in and say, “You see, I always believed in you! If I’d had The Frighteners I would have made $50million more at the box office, these guys didn’t know what they were doing! It’s a well-directed movie; it’s all there, it’s a little bit of this, little bit of that, but I would have helped you fix it and it would have been amazing! Now let’s forget all the other nonsense and go forward with The Lord of the Rings.” As for the Miramax agreement with Universal, the understanding was that if one side moved forward and the other didn’t then the deal was null and void; so, with no King Kong, Harvey was off the hook with having to give half of any Rings earnings to Universal–and he’d still managed to get Shakespeare in Love!’

  Harvey was angry, because even though Miramax was a 50/50 investor in King Kong, at the point when I told him that Universal had canned Kong, he hadn’t been consulted, hadn’t heard the news, knew nothing about it. So he got very angry indeed and it’s always good when Harvey gets angry, because you know he’s motivated! He was immediately supportive, said he’d wrap up the rights issues with Saul Zaentz as soon as possible–the lawyers were still trying to sort all that out–and then we’d start work on The Lord of the Rings.

  It took the lawyers another four to six weeks to get the legal situation sorted out, which for Weta was a difficult period. Richard Taylor got the workshop various prop-making jobs on Hercules and Xena: what Richard describes as ‘small amounts of work for very small profit– if, at times, any profit at all.’

  They took on making special make-up effects for The Ugly, a New Zealand film about a serial killer with an underlying plot-analogy to Hans Andersen’s ‘The Ugly Duckling’, which kept people busy but was of little help financially since the budget for the film was small and Weta elected to do it as a non-profit job.

  It was a stressful time: ‘We were building Hercules props in the workshop; I’d be flying up to Auckland filming Hercules on set during the day and then filming The Ugly at night time. One day, I came off set at seven o’clock in the morning, flew to the States, went straight into a meeting at one o’clock that afternoon, secured quite a major job for the workshop working on miniatures for a TV drama called Tidal Wave: No Escape, went out to dinner with them that night, got back to my hotel room at two in the morning, got back on the plane four hours later, flew back to New Zealand, went back on to the Hercules set, filmed for the day, did a night shoot on The Ugly and then flew back down to Wellington to get started on Tidal Wave! It was only because of these projects that we managed to pull ourselves out of a very sticky situation.’

  There was still a problem with keeping Weta’s digital artists busy and it was Peter’s relationship with Zemeckis which saved the day; the producer of The Frighteners engaged Weta to create some of the special effects for Contact, a film he was making at Warner Brothers starring Jodi Foster, ‘It was,’ says Richard, ‘the project that saved our bacon.’

  While waiting for the legal issues between Saul Zaentz and Miramax to be resolved, Peter and Fran asked Costa Botes to assist them by preparing a synopsis of The Lord of the Rings, a scene-by-scene breakdown detailing what happens when and where and to whom.

  Obviously we also read the books again–but only when the project firmed up. When we first came up with the idea of doing The Lord of the Rings, I decided not to re-read the book because I thought to do so might jinx the project and make the film not happen! Even when we were on the cusp of making it, I still didn’t re-read it! I knew it would be an omen of bad luck: that at the very moment I started thinking about it as a movie, I’d get a phone call saying, ‘Sorry, Saul’s decided he doesn’t want to do it!’

  I did re-read The Hobbit because we had originally thought we would be adapting that book first; but, apart from the couple of pages of the prologue which I read on the plane coming home from London, I really hadn’t looked at The Lord of the Rings since I was a teenager. Most of my thinking about the film, therefore, was based on memories of reading it and of hearing audiotapes of the BBC’s radio dramatisation made in the early Eighties that I’d listened to while I was building models in my workshop. Now, however, it was a case of getting to grips with this huge story, not as a reader but in order to adapt it as a film. So now, for the very first time since I was 18 years old, I opened the book and started reading…

  Chapter 1, A Long-expected Party: When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton…

  That reading of The Lord of the Rings would be the first of many over the next few years and a growing, deepening relationship with Tolkien’s storytelling. ‘It was rather a protracted period,’ says Fran, ‘getting to know the true nature of the book and the job. It wasn’t something you could just dive into: it was more of a slow and ongoing education.’

  What makes reading The Lord of the Rings an incredibly interesting experience is that every time you read it, you discover new things in it. You read the book once and you think, ‘Okay, so that’s The Lord of the Rings, and then, when you are going to look at doing a scene breakdown, a treatment or a draft of the script and you read specific sections again you suddenly notice details you have missed or find yourself reading episodes as though you’ve never read them before.

  You have to get through to the end of the book once, before things that you read at the very beginning make any sense at all. It’s only then that you can start on what is really a huge exercise of ‘connecting the dots’, making links. It can take several reads of the book before you have fully acquired the understanding needed to put all the pieces together. The book is the story of a journey; reading it–and re-reading it–is also a journey…

  ‘To begin with, we planned one long, epic film,’ recalls Fran, ‘but by the time we had got to the end, it was clear that we were talking about two films.’

  The work had begun with Costa Botes’ précis/breakdown of the book; this was loaded into Peter and Fran’s computer so that they could start a process of ‘cutting and pasting’, developing and fleshing out ideas.

  We knew that we were going to represent the fundamental story–‘Hobbit goes on a journey to destroy the ring!’–in broad strokes but with reasonable accuracy: Hobbiton, Bree, Rivendell, Moria, Lothlórien, Isengard, Rohan, Gondor and Mordor are all going to be there.

  Once you start going to the next level of detail, below the main story points, that’s when you run up against the hard decisions: which is basically a case of, ‘We can’t include everything, so what’s our strategy? What do we want to focus on?’ You think beyond what your favourite bits are and you look at it in terms of a greater strategy, which in our case was really keeping a relationship between Frodo and the Ring, keeping the events totally focussed on the forward movement of the journey. This really explains, to some degree, why Tom Bombadil, Old Man Willow and the Barrow-wights aren’t there, because once Frodo left Hobbiton in the movie we wanted everything at that point to advance his journey to Rivendell and ultimately to Mordor.

  Every step of the way, in the movie, Frodo is encountering complications and obstacles but nonetheless it’s always a forward movement; it’s a story about a hobbit with a ring and the need to destroy it and, obviously, Bombadil and Old Man Willow are not really about that. Others may criticise the decisions we made, but for us they were relatively easy to make once we had identified what was to be the spine of the story in the film.

  When it was eventually announced that a film of The Lord of the Rings was to be made, there was much speculation among fans of the book about whether Tom Bombadil and the events in the Old Forest and on the Barrow-downs were to feature in the screenplay: almost as if the inclusion or exclusion of this detour were a litmus test for the authenticity of the entire project.

  People were asking, ‘Is the film going to be accurate? Is it g
oing to be faithful? Is Tom Bombadil going to be in it?’ But once the film was released all that debate and argument went away: nobody suggested that it was a really bad idea to leave Bombadil out because once they’ve seen the film they get it, they understand why we did what we did.

  In 1997, such issues were still a long way off. After two or three months of intensive work, Peter and Fran had completed drafting a treatment for the two films. The resulting ninety-two-page document, containing 266 sequences, was given (and retained throughout production) a code name–the same code name that had once been used to disguise the proposal for Bad Taste 2 and 3 and, long before that, to mask Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s Son of Kong–Jamboree.

  The front page of the treatment was decorated with the scout’s fleur-de-lis emblem and the not inappropriate motto, ‘BE PREPARED’, as well as an innocuous but entirely misleading description of what was to follow: ‘An affectionate coming-of-age drama set in the New Zealand Boy Scout Movement during the “years of turmoil”…1958–63’. The writers (no prizes for guessing their true identities) were credited as being ‘Fredricka Wharburton & Percy J. Judkins’!

  The treatment opened with an explanatory preamble addressed to ‘Dear Reader’:

  This is not a film script, but merely a treatment…a first pass at distilling Mr Tolkien’s vast narrative down into a form suitable for the movies.

  Our focus has been in making whatever modifications or deletions we feel are required to tell this complex and epic story in the clearest possible way.

  We have tried to make it work for an audience who have not–and never will–read the books…but at the same time, we have tried to write something that will be satisfying for those fans of the books who cannot wait to see the movie.

  Within just the first six pages, the reader is whisked across the landscape of Middle-earth, whirled through several thousand years of history and introduced to enough characters to set the mind reeling: Sauron, Gil-galad, Elrond, Elendil, Isildur, Déagol, Sméagol (Gollum), Bilbo, Frodo, Merry, Pippin, Sam and Gandalf.

  Small wonder the introduction added the caution: ‘You’re about to plough your way through something that is, by its nature, very dense and plot-heavy–and in that sense it does not contain the subtleties we intend to build into the finished scripts.’

  The introduction concluded on a note of nervous optimism: We hope you enjoy it…

  The opening scenes already bore the stylistic hallmarks with which the final version would be stamped:

  ‘We suddenly take in a BREATHTAKING VISTA of BATTLE…mighty armies of MEN and ELVES battle SAURON’S army of ORCS–loathsome ape-like humanoids…With nearly 150,000 soldiers on screen this is probably the single most spectacular shot ever committed to film…a seething mass of SWORD and SPEAR.’

  The major editorial decisions had already been taken:

  When you’re making any movie, there is a real sense that too much information can be very damaging in that if you confuse the audience and they say, ‘I don’t quite get it,’ then you’ve lost them and everything after that will also be confusing.

  It’s terribly easy to lose an audience, particularly at the beginning of a film–more so in fact than at the middle or the end–because people are adjusting to the experience of seeing the film, they’ve just come in from the street, they’ve been busy all day and they decide to go to the movies; to then bombard them with a lot of names of people and places they’ve never heard of before is pretty risky…We were really worried that if we alienated people in the first five minutes of The Lord of the Rings we’d lose them for the entire film.

  Many entire sequences detailed in the first treatment would survive unchanged into the final shooting script of The Lord of the Rings, showing that, from the beginning, Peter and Fran had grasped the story’s essential elements and dramatic arc.

  The differences–either from the original book or the completed film or both–are, of course, intriguing. Several additions and embellishments were already securely in place, such as the revisionist version of Denethor’s demise:

  ‘Trailing a long cloak of angry flame…DENETHOR runs across the top of the CLIFF above MINAS TIRITH and casts himself off…he falls–a squirming FIREBALL–700 feet into city below.’

  Quite a number of changes were still to be made: in this version, for example, Farmer Maggot is still a key character, Bilbo attends the Council of Elrond, Sam looks in the Mirror of Galadriel, Glorfindel has yet to be supplanted by Arwen and there are no Elves at the battle of Helm’s Deep.

  Other events were elided and several minor characters (in addition to Tom Bombadil) were eliminated, although such is the complexity and entirety of Tolkien’s creation that even seemingly incidental occurrences have great significance. In the book, for example, Gandalf’s ill-fated encounter with Saruman the White is told in flashback at the Council of Elrond and part of that story concerns a meeting between Gandalf the Grey and fellow wizard Radagast the Brown, who is especially wise in the ways of the birds and beasts of Middle-earth.

  Radagast carries a message from Saruman to Gandalf, revealing that Sauron’s emissaries are seeking for the Shire and that, if Gandalf needs his aid, he should consult with him at Orthanc. Radagast is unaware that Saruman is using him to set a trap for Gandalf, and that finally proves the undoing of Saruman’s plot. Before riding off to Isengard, Gandalf asks Radagast to request the help of all friendly creatures and to tell them that if they have any news relating to the Enemy, they should take it to Gandalf and Saruman at Orthanc. As a result, Gwaihir the Eagle flies to Isengard–only to discover Gandalf imprisoned on the top of the tower.

  Obviously this was another complication in an already involved plot and, quite early on, we made the decision that Radagast wouldn’t be in the movie. We simplified the storyline by having Gandalf ride to consult with Saruman on his own initiative, but that, in turn, presented us with a real problem: we had Gandalf stuck at the top of the tower with no one else knowing that he had gone to Isengard and absolutely no reason for Gwaihir the eagle to go looking for him there. Since Radagast had an ability to communicate with birds and animals, we transferred that skill to Gandalf who, in our version, uses the moth to take the news of his imprisonment to Gwaihir and bring the eagle to his rescue.

  This moth also helped with the justification for a camera move that I wanted to include. Sometimes shots pop into your head and once they are there, they never go away. This was one of them.

  I wanted to have the camera crane up and over the walls around Isengard–revealing the shocking image of the gardens stripped of their trees and transformed into a mass of mines and workings–before travelling on up to the very top of the tower and the imprisoned Gandalf.

  The beginning of this particular shot was straightforward: craning up over the wall to reveal the desolation of Isengard; but I felt that we needed a reason to continue on up the tower. I always prefer there to be a motivation for a camera move–something to draw you in–rather than it just going from A to B simply for the sake of having a move.

  Which is when we had the idea of having a moth fly into shot and to then follow it all the way up to the summit of the tower where it would eventually be caught by Gandalf.

  I honestly can’t quite remember which came first, the move or the moth, but out of those two ideas came the mechanism for what I think is one of the more dramatic shots in Fellowship.

  As outlined in the treatment, the first film ended following the death of Saruman and Pippin’s moment of looking into the palantír, with the Fellowship dividing once again: Gandalf and Pippin riding to Minas Tirith, Merry returning to Edoras with Théoden and Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas being delegated to ride south to gather news of Sauron’s allies. The second film opened with Frodo, Sam and Gollum arriving at the Black Gates and ended on the shores of the Sundering Sea with the Elven ship sailing off into the sunset for the Undying Lands. Not until the script stage would Sam’s return to Hobbiton and Tolkien’s closing line, �
��Well, I’m back,’ become the film’s final coda.

  Several intriguing developments are unique to this version of the story, such as the arrival of Nazgûl in the chamber of Sammath Naur just before Gollum plunges with the Ring into the Crack of Doom, and an interesting incident following Gwaihir’s rescue of Gandalf from Orthanc. The eagle carries the wizard to Edoras–alighting in the marketplace, knocking over stalls with his wide wingspan–and Gandalf unsuccessfully attempts to reason with Théeacute;oden who is in Saruman’s thrall. Wormtongue orders Gandalf’s imprisonment but Éomer and Éowyn sneak Gandalf into the royal stables where he finds Shadowfax, the ‘untameable’ horse which no man has ever ridden, jumps on his back and gallops out of the city…

  As described by Tolkien, Elrond’s sons, Elladan and Elrohir, join Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli on their journey through the Paths of the Dead; so too does Erkenbrand of Rohan (as is not described by Tolkien), where that noble warrior meets an ignoble death falling victim to the ‘spectral axe’ of one of the dead. The feverish scenes beyond the portals of the Dark Door are clearly the work of the zombie-meister of Braindead:

  The WALLS of the tunnel suddenly start to undulate as a FLESHY TUMOUR-LIKE texture spreads across them…Beneath their feet the tunnel floor heaves and breathes like diseased lungs!…A creepy GROUND-FOG spills down the walls and starts filling up the cavern…Suddenly GHOSTLY GHOULISH HANDS rise out of the fog and start…grabbing at clothes and equipment…ARAGORN, ELLADAN, ELROHIR, LEGOLAS and GIMLI suddenly find themselves lifted up out of the fog, held up by pyramids of groping, scrambling GHOULS! A SOLITARY FIGURE standing high on the rocky outcrop above the SQUIRMING SEA OF THE UNDEAD…their leader! He looks out through EYELESS SOCKETS, opens his decomposing jaw and utters one word…‘DIE!’