Peter Jackson: A Film-maker’s Journey

by Sibley, Brian

  Opening with a great swell of music and the voice of Elrond – ‘Power can be held in the smallest of things and be used for the greatest of evils…’ – the thirty-five-minute film presents a compelling story of an ambitious dream to film another compelling story…

  Passionate and committed, it highlighted many of the staggering accomplishments that had already been achieved: from hand-forged weapons to the devising of the Massive software programs and its vast armies of digital warriors. Wisely, it also tantalisingly hints at wonders and marvels yet to come.

  By depicting the diversity of places found within Tolkien’s story – the rural tranquillity of the Shire, the peace and beauty of Rivendell, the devastation of Mordor – and focusing on the people and beings populating Middle-earth, from hobbits and elves to orcs and trolls (plus, of course, Gollum and the Balrog), the film hits its mark with a confidence and certainty that totally belies the anxiety and panic that had caused it to be made.

  In addition to the film, representing a personal investment by Peter of some $50,000, Weta Workshop mounted an impressive array of display-boards showing conceptual paintings and sketches by John, Alan and the other artists and designers who had been working on the project. The workshop also built a special metal box to transport a Gollum head, a Treebeard sculpture and a maquette of an Uruk-hai.

  While this work was going on in New Zealand, Ken Kamins was already bombarding the various Hollywood studios with advance material, hoping to arouse their interest in meeting with Peter so that he could show his film and make a pitch. Ken remembers, ‘We sent every studio the two screenplays and a copy of the animatic and we had to get every one of them to sign letters of confidentiality to Miramax for the material they were about to receive. We made sure that everyone knew what Harvey’s terms were, up front; we made no secret of the fact because there was no point in doing so. Whoever then responded positively would be invited to meet with Peter and Fran and the thirty-five-minute film would be shown to them as an in-room presentation.’

  One of those who received the two-script version of The Lord of the Rings was Mark Ordesky, who was now working at New Line Cinema. He knew the scripts were on their way, because Peter had put through a call to his old friend, whose couch he had been in the habit of using on his early trips to Hollywood.

  ‘Peter called me and said, “I’m taking it to all the studios, but I’m taking it to you so you can try and bring it into New Line. There is just this window, but it’s our chance, Mark! A chance for us to make a movie together!” Peter knew that I had tried, on several occasions, to get studios I was working for to finance or distribute previous Jackson films. Now he was offering me another one – not just any movie but this one of all things, because I’d been obsessed with The Lord of the Rings since I was 12 years old and had read it at least five or six times. So, I was a fanatic and Peter knew it!’

  In turn, Mark was well aware that Peter’s agent, International Creative Management, could have taken the project directly to New Line’s founder and co-chairman, Robert Shaye, but was, instead, choosing to bring it to the studio via Mark. ‘Peter is a superb strategist and a brilliant read of people; he knew Bob Shaye from his experience of working on the Nightmare on Elm Street script and he knew me and decided, “We’ll give this to Mark – because Mark is insane! Mark will carry the water right up the hill! Mark will put in the foundations! And if we can just get into New Line, Mark will lay down covering fire like nobody’s business!” Of course, he didn’t say any of this to me, but he knew it. Peter knew that if he gave me this shot, I would turn myself into a pretzel to try to get it done. And he was 100 per cent right because the minute I’d hung up, I immediately felt that this was like a Holy Crusade. This now had to happen!’

  With just three weeks left in which to clinch a deal, Peter and Fran boarded a plane for Los Angeles for what they hoped would be a series of meetings to which they would be accompanied by Ken and by Marty Katz, who they had asked to remain on the project as producer.

  We liked and got on well with Marty; he was an experienced Hollywood guy and an independent producer; he’d done a lot of budgeting work on the film and had been very supportive of us and the project.

  By the time they arrived in Hollywood, however, most of the studios which had been approached had already declined any involvement: Bob Zemeckis didn’t want to make a fantasy film; Centropolis, the company of Roland Emmerich who produced Independence Day, didn’t like the scripts; Dreamworks passed, as did Sony Pictures and others. It was, after all, a daunting prospect: two films which, even before any budget was discussed, already carried a $15million ticketprice.

  Twentieth Century Fox were interested but declined for political reasons: Saul Zaentz was a partner in The Lord of the Rings and Fox were still uncomfortably aware of their back-history with Zaentz over The English Patient; Universal, having only recently killed King Kong, were hardly ready to sign up to another Jackson film.

  ‘Shockingly,’ says Mark Ordesky, ‘the other Hollywood studios showed little interest in The Lord of the Rings. People foolishly assumed that Peter couldn’t handle a project like this, arguing that all he’d ever made were a few splatter movies and one art film. “Who’s Peter Jackson? Didn’t he make The Frighteners? Why on earth would we give him hundreds of millions of dollars?” But that’s typical of Hollywood short-sightedness.’

  We flew into town, hyped up and ready to go with our film, our display boards and a box with three or four models. We got off the plane expecting a busy week – but it quickly transpired that there were only two companies really interested in meeting and talking with us: one was PolyGram and the other was New Line.

  The first meeting was with Eric Fellner, co-chairman, with Tim Bevan, of PolyGram’s subsidiary, Working Title Films, whose successes already included Four Weddings and a Funeral, Dead Man Walking and Fargo.

  We arrived at their offices in Beverly Hills, there was Fran and Ken carrying the display boards and Marty and I manhandling this big metal box of maquettes. We dragged all this stuff out of the car and hauled it up in the elevator. We talked up the project and explained why Miramax were leaving – that it was not about the project or us but about problems over the size of the budget required – and Eric Fellner and a bunch of his colleagues looked at all the materials and watched the video. At the end of the film, Eric said it was something that Working Title were really very interested in and we thought, ‘Oh great!’ but then he said, ‘The trouble is, there’s a problem…’ And, immediately, our hearts sank.

  The problem was that Working Title’s owners, PolyGram, were on the market. No one knew how long it would be – three months, six months – before a sale might be finalised (the company was eventually bought by Universal in 1999) and there was no way that they could take on such a huge project while their parent company was up for sale.

  We explained that we needed a cheque for Miramax within a matter of days and Eric said, ‘Sorry, guys, but it’s impossible. We love everything we’ve seen, but it’s just not possible.’ I think he was meeting with us, hoping there might be some way in which to figure it out, but we all knew that there was no way Harvey was going to wait to see what happened with PolyGram. So that only left New Line.

  This was a Tuesday; we were due to fly home at the end of the week and the meeting with New Line was set for the following day. So Fran and I strategised and asked Ken to call Mark Ordesky and tell him that we were going to have to push back the meeting until later in the week because the property was so hot that everyone was in a frenzy about the project and we were so busy having meeting after meeting that we simply couldn’t fit in New Line on the Wednesday but would have to postpone until Friday.

  Michael Lynne and Barrie Osborne.

  It was a piece of amazingly daring brinkmanship that might easily have gone horribly awry, since – unbeknownst to Peter – New Line’s founder and co-chairman, Robert Shaye, had not initially warmed to the terms of the deal that Miramax had put on the
table: ‘When I had first heard that Miramax had got The Lord of the Rings, I thought it was a great coup for them. I had no idea of the magnitude of the project, but it was a smart idea. I’d just seen Heavenly Creatures and thought Peter did a particularly good job on that. Then, when it became available, Mark Ordesky and Mike De Luca together told me Peter and Fran were coming to Los Angeles and wanted to talk to us about The Lord of the Rings. I felt friendly towards Peter, but the stumbling block for me, without even talking to my partner Michael Lynne, was that we had to give a standard gross percentage to Miramax. I wasn’t particularly keen on doing that. The executive producer credit for the Weinsteins didn’t matter, the share of the money did. I actually said, “Forget it, we aren’t going to do it!” Mark and Mike left my office and that was that.’

  Mark Ordesky, however, was not easily going to take ‘No,’ for an answer. ‘When I had arrived at New Line, I told everybody, “Some day when I’m a big mocker in this f****** business I’m going to make a Peter Jackson movie!” I told everybody. I’m so compulsive as a person that I make these contracts with the universe. If I want to do something I will run around and tell everybody. That way I shame myself into having to deliver. This is how I do things. I essentially put myself in a place where I’ve told 500 people that I’m going to do something and if I fail I’m humiliated. I intentionally put myself in this little corner then, by the time I’m ready to move, I will burst out with such ferocious intensity that there’s no way I won’t succeed. This is how I manage my professional life.’

  Mark knew that there was a compelling argument to be placed before Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne: ‘The story of what happened with The Lord of the Rings needs to be told within the context of totally separate business issues that were currently facing New Line. The studio was having trouble successfully making sequels to its previously successful hits such as The Mask, Dumb and Dumber and the movies featuring the characters of Freddy (Elm Street) Krueger and Jason (Friday the 13th) Voorhees. Either we couldn’t put together the original talent or we simply couldn’t seem to clinch the deals. In any event, the idea of making a film with two sequels already in the can had a certain appeal.’

  As Bob Shaye puts it: ‘When it came to getting sequels, our tent poles weren’t holding up the tent very well. Michael and I began to think that the idea of having this trilogy available over three years could be an important and very valuable asset for the company.’

  ‘There were many incentives,’ says Mark, ‘for considering The Lord of the Rings: apart from the sequels, there were economies of scale; and New Zealand, where Peter’s muse was, offered amazing geography as well as being a very inexpensive place to shoot. You could see a million reasons why it would work. It all seemed to make perfect sense.’

  Bob Shaye recalls: ‘When Mark came back into my office a few weeks later to say that Peter was in town and to ask whether I wanted to meet him, I said I’d be glad to do so…’

  Apart from playing the risky game of giving New Line the illusion that they had to postpone their meeting because they were getting together with other – possibly more important – studios, Peter was using the time to have other, genuine meetings with studios – although not about The Lord of the Rings.

  One of my first reactions when we realised that Miramax weren’t going to go ahead with our version of Rings was to try to do something – anything – to stop Weta getting killed. I remember asking Ken, ‘What’s the quickest that you can get me on to another film? I’ll leave New Zealand and go to Los Angeles, but you’ve got to get me a directing gig; something which has special effects that will keep Weta alive. After trying to make Kong, then The Lord of the Rings for the last three years, I was beaten and resigned to becoming ‘a director for hire’. In actual fact, Ken unearthed several projects which were all quite interesting. Ironically, with only PolyGram and New Line meeting with us, I had time to go and visit several other studios to talk about making a film for them.

  Peter had fleetingly thought about having one more attempt at getting Planet of the Apes up and running as a backup project, but had decided not to pursue it, and the death of Roddy McDowall, a few months later, effectively caused Peter to lose whatever remnants of interest he had left in the idea.

  One possible project that had been explored some while before Peter arrived in Los Angeles on his hobbit-rescue mission would, had it happened, have been a reasonable compensation for not making The Lord of the Rings. Sometime in 1998, word was out that a director was being sought for the nineteenth James Bond feature, The World is Not Enough, after negotiations with Joe Dante had collapsed.

  The 007 movies had made a huge impact on the young Peter Jackson and, indeed, had inspired one of his adolescent, amateur film experiments.

  As the years went by, I had remained a Bond fan – even when the movies rather lost their way. Basically, I think I’m a Bond fan for what they could and should be rather than what they sometimes actually are! It is one of my unrealised dreams to direct a James Bond film and I like to say that I came close – although, in reality, I probably didn’t come anyway near!

  When I heard that they were looking for a director for The World is Not Enough, I thought it might be my chance to fulfil a lifelong passion!

  I think the studio view of the Bond franchise is that it is producer-driven, rather than director-driven. Whilst that is not necessarily a bad thing, I suspect that there is a feeling amongst those who control the copyright that they daren’t ever use directors who have any degree of power or they will lose power themselves – which is why they would never consider having a Tarantino or a Spielberg direct a Bond film.

  I wasn’t in that league of course, but Ken Kamins called Barbara Broccoli, daughter of Bond’s first producer, the late ‘Cubby’ Broccoli, who was interested in the proposal having seen and liked Heavenly Creatures. Ken arranged for her to see The Frighteners, which, unfortunately, she did not like! So, that was the end of my chances with Mr Bond!

  The World is Not Enough was eventually filmed in 1999, directed by Michael Apted. If Peter Jackson’s analysis of how directors of Bond films are chosen is correct, then he is now way too big a player to ever be considered. All that remains of his ambition, therefore, are a few reels of silent Super 8 film shot in 1979 – the year that saw the ‘official’ Bond launched into outer space in Moonraker.

  Although there was no meeting with Barbara Broccoli, there were a number of other discussions: with Disney and Jim Henson Productions about a possible science-fiction project; with Joel Silver about a possible Matrix sequel entitled Logose; and with producer Kathleen Kennedy (Back to the Future, Empire of the Sun and Who Framed Roger Rabbit) about directing Robin Williams as the Big Friendly Giant in a movie version of Roald Dahl’s The BFG.

  There was also interest in making a film based on Concrete, the heavyweight superhero with rocklike epidermis from Dark Horse Comics.

  When the income from Miramax dried up, Fran and I wrote a Concrete script for Disney. Like we’d done originally with The Frighteners, it was just a writing assignment – one that I wasn’t necessarily going to direct. We had a lot of fun with the script. Maybe it’ll get made one day.

  But perhaps the most promising project was with Chris Columbus’ production company, 1492, who were interested in developing a film entitled Twenty-One, about Frank Luke, a 21-year-old American World War I flying ace who shot down eighteen German planes and observation balloons during seventeen days in September 1918 before being brought down by ground fire and dying, pistol in hand, while resisting capture. Born in Phoenix, Luke was known as the ‘Arizona Balloon Buster’ and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

  With Peter’s lifelong fascination with aviation in the First World War, it was another filmic subject uniquely suited to his knowledge and enthusiasms.

  A copy of the script for Twenty-One was sent to my hotel and we had a couple of meetings with Fox about the concept. As soon as I knew about the project, I had Weta urgently courier
me an old King Kong computer test we’d done. It featured a digital WWI dogfight, with dozens of planes wheeling around the skies. I showed up for the meeting at Fox and stuck the tape on. The executives’ eyes were bulging when they saw the spectacle, and how realistic it was. The plan, if The Lord of the Rings didn’t get picked up, was that Weta would immediately start building the period planes and Fran and I would gear up to work on the script and begin shooting. Our back-up plan was in place.

  The chance to tell the story of Frank Luke was the strongest bet if the meeting with New Line failed to breathe new life into Mr Frodo Baggins.

  Come the Friday 24 July, Peter, Fran, Ken Kamins and Marty Katz arrived at the offices of New Line for their meeting and were shown into the boardroom. Ken Kamins recalls: ‘Mark Ordesky had warned us, very dramatically in advance, that Bob is a mercurial guy, that he doesn’t care that you’ve flown 7,500 miles or that you’ve spent $50,000 out of your own pocket to produce a video: if he’s five minutes into the presentation and he’s not interested, he’ll just say, “Thank you. I pass…”’

  Mark had said that Bob might just get up and walk out of the room without saying a word. ‘If he does that,’ he told us, ‘don’t be alarmed – well, be alarmed, but don’t be insulted or offended because it’s just Bob’s way and if it happens, it happens…’

  Commenting on these accounts of his behaviour, Bob Shaye notes, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been rude, but there is no reason not to be frank in a gracious way. After all, any meeting is our time as much as theirs and there are probably only some 150,000 people that want to have movies made at any given minute!’