Peter Jackson: A Film-maker’s Journey

by Sibley, Brian

  John’s prosthetic make-up was made from silicone, which is excellent and much better than foam latex because it has a translucent quality. Unfortunately, it is difficult to glue on and if the actor gets hot it lifts off much more easily than foam latex. On this particularly day the prosthetic came unglued from John’s forehead, from his eyebrows up, and as a result he was sitting there with big folds in his face. In the end we had to go with a ridiculous solution to the problem. Our prosthetic make-up artist, Gino Acevedo, ended up gluing a piece of string to the top of John’s forehead so as to pull the make-up back into place. In every shot of John sitting on the orc body, Gino was laying behind him, out of sight, tugging on the string to keep Gimli’s forehead tight!

  Of the many ludicrous moments that occurred, one that has remained firmly in Peter’s mind took place while filming the battle before the Black Gates. The New Zealand army were assisting the production by supplying military personnel to act as Orc and Gondorian extras. The ‘squaddies’ were cast as rank and file troops with lieutenants and sergeant majors, in make-up and costume, acting as Assistant Directors in the marshalling and deploying of troops. At the end of one shoot day, Peter spotted a curious altercation:

  We’d wrapped and we were making our way back to base camp when I heard this terrible army barracks-type voice shouting his head off. The behaviour of one of the privates had obviously annoyed the sergeant major, who had waited until filming was over for the day before giving the offender a dressing down. There was the soldier standing rigidly to attention, bolt upright while the sergeant major was just screaming and yelling full in his face – like something out of Full Metal Jacket. ‘How dare you! You horrible, hopeless piece of s***!’ Obviously this was a very serious moment, but what made it so bizarre was that were both dressed as Orcs and seemed totally unaware of how totally ridiculous they looked!

  Talk to anyone on set and they speak of Peter’s astonishing awareness of everything that is going on, his legendary ability to retain and act upon vast quantities of data and as a director who has a particular knack for encouraging actors towards memorable performances.

  The cast was diverse in its background, experience and approaches to acting, ranging from Orlando Bloom, making only his second appearance in a feature film, to Christopher Lee, who had well over 200 movie titles already to his credit; from two British theatrical knights to a ‘hot’ Hollywood star in Liv Tyler.

  Andrew Lesnie reflects, ‘It was apparent to me, within a matter of days of starting filming, that we were on a project that could work because I felt that the conviction of the cast, and the relationship between them and Peter, was rock solid. From the outset, Peter exercised ‘actor direction’ – which a lot of directors don’t do – and was forthright about the characterisations. Peter very quickly developed individual patterns of direction to suit the individual actors and pull the best performance from them: he’d work with Elijah in a different way to Sean Astin, Viggo or Orlando. That’s one of Peter’s gifts: to roll with the punches and be flexible. Whereas, during pre-production, I suppose I had given the project the benefit of the doubt, very shortly after we started filming I became a true believer!’

  There were, for Peter, many satisfying moments: bringing together the hobbit actors and helping them give both rounded individual characterisations as well as a meaningful and moving sense of shared identity; and working with Liv Tyler and Hugo Weaving in order to create the ‘look’ and the ‘feel’ for the Elves that made one of the most precarious elements in the story – the concept of a race of immortal, all-wise beings – real and believable.

  There was the obvious frisson of directing one of his childhood screen heroes, Christopher Lee, and of having the opportunity to make use of Andy Serkis’ physical acting talents, Viggo Mortensen’s ‘method’ approach of inhabiting a role and Ian Holm’s vigorously free-wheeling approach in which he will give a dozen different takes with a dozen different subtle variations, which can be both a director’s delight (particularly with as open a director as Peter) as well as, occasionally, a fellow actor’s worst nightmare!

  During one of my early conversations with Ian Holm he had said to me, ‘I ought to warn you that I like to try different things on each take, so if you let me do three or four takes, I’ll give you a variety of different readings;

  This was how Andy Serkis spent most of his four years with us.

  and then, if I haven’t given you something that you like, just let me know what it is you’re looking for and I’ll try and give it to you.’

  It was very interesting: he would look at every possible interpretation and, on each take, he’d come at it from a different place: he might give a quiet, introspective reading of a line on one take and then, on the next, play it animated and angry. He literally threw at you as many interpretations of a line as he could come up with.

  I think Ian McKellen was rather in awe of Ian Holm’s ability, as well as being slightly fazed by playing opposite a character who, on the face of it, seemed to be quite erratic, giving a whole new range of responses on every performance. Eventually, he pulled me to one side and asked, ‘Do you like what Ian does?’ I told him that I thought it was great and Ian just said, ‘I could never do it that way. I have to decide what the scene is about and then try to achieve that to the very best of my ability.’

  Which, indeed, Ian McKellen consistently did; taking the classic storybook characterisation of the wizard in the long beard and pointed hat, and infusing it with so many traits, tics and emotions – irascibility, forgetfulness, tiredness – that make him human (if a Tolkien wizard can ever be so called) and vulnerable.

  There are many scenes of Ian’s that I treasure, such as one of the first that we filmed in the Bag End set with Ian and Elijah in which Frodo rushes in through the door, calling ‘Bilbo!’ and then realizes that he has gone. It was a wonderfully moody scene with which to begin: shadows and flickering candles; Gandalf gazing into the fire, smoking his pipe and muttering Gollum’s word ‘Precious’; and the Ring lying on the floor in the hallway.

  I also really loved the scene where Frodo looks at the letters glowing on the Ring and asks what it means and Gandalf recites the Ring-rhyme – wonderful Gothic, creepy stuff from Ian, who was now really nailing Gandalf and bringing great strength to the character.

  Prior to these scenes, he’d only done Gandalf’s arrival at Bag End, which was a very different tone and mood. Now he had progressed Gandalf from the amiable eccentric with his fireworks to a point where we could reveal much more of the ‘essence’ of Gandalf: the powerful wizard; the tactician; the Grandmaster chess-player of Middle-earth.

  I know that Ian liked Gandalf the Grey much more than Gandalf the White, and I feel the same way. What I love most about the earlier version of Gandalf is his easygoing, tramp-like quality: when he’s riding around Middle-earth, you can easily imagine that he sleeps under a hedgerow at night and then rides on the next day. He has this wonderful, earthy quality to him. Whereas, even in your wildest dreams, you really can’t visualize Gandalf the White dossing down under a hedge!

  Ian McKellen reflects, ‘Peter always made sure we understood the direction in which we were going and why. He’s a bit of a performer himself and understands about acting. Many directors are more interested in the technicalities of acting and find it hard to empathise with the dilemmas of the actor, but not Peter!’

  Not that there weren’t stressful times – as, for example, when the actor was struggling with finding a way to portray Gandalf’s response to the elemental confrontation with the Balrog.

  Ian got very frustrated. In interviews later, he was very amusing about filming this scene: if anyone asked, ‘Can you tell us what the Balrog looks like?’ he’d say, ‘Yes, it’s a furry rubber ball!’ referring to the tennis ball on a stick that we had set up to give him an eye-line. At the time,

  Saruman to Gandalf: ‘And who is this irritating little fellow that’s been following us around all day!’

  howe
ver, he got a bit crotchety about having to do this powerhouse performance to absolutely nothing. The Balrog existed as conceptual art, so Ian had an idea of what it looked like, but it was incredibly tough on him.

  ‘There were never any tantrums,’ recalls Ian. ‘That’s not the Kiwi way. You discuss your point and you come to an agreement; you are doing it together. What impressed me about Peter was that the talents and gifts were there right from the beginning, fully formed – he never seems to have doubted the style of the photography and acting…On top of which, there’s his wonderful sense of humour; his ability to be involved in so many different things all the time; his seemingly inexhaustible energy; his patience, his modesty, his total lack of pretension and his optimism: he was constantly good-natured and welcoming and expecting to enjoy the day ahead…’

  Apart from imagining the presence of non-existent monsters, what was sometimes challenging for the cast was the fact that, to an extent, the script remained in a state of becoming throughout filming.

  On one level there were the very real problems inherent in having had to launch into full-on production without the time to finalise all details relating to the three-script structure. Once filming commenced – often with scenes from the second and third movies being shot concurrently with those in the first film – it was an unrelenting race.

  Fran and Philippa were often only able to keep just ahead of the shooting. There were times when it felt like we were trying to lay the railway track in front of a fast on-coming train!

  On at least one occasion, in the immensely problematical Council of Elrond sequence where the fate of the One Ring is determined, the script was literally ‘hot off the press’.

  The Council at Rivendell was a laborious shoot, and quite different to anything else in any of the films. It was very static – just people sitting in chairs, talking. The seven or eight pages of script took us five days to shoot because of the number of characters and amount of shots. We shot the entire sequence twice: firstly as one continuous take with the camera on Gandalf so that even if Ian wasn’t talking we would be seeing his reaction; then we shot it again as a series of takes, seen from Gandalf’s point of view. It was really very monotonous and we were all sick to death of the scene!

  Then came Sean Bean’s big moment! We weren’t filming Boromir on the first day or two and Sean simply delivered his dialogue off-screen. About three days in, Fran, Philippa and I had rewritten Boromir’s speech and handed him a brand new script! He was very happy with it, but hadn’t had time to learn it. So we taped the script onto his knee and if you look at the scene, you’ll see that he occasionally lowers his eyes, which is when he’s glancing down at his lines!

  Bernard Hill, on his first day on set as King Théoden, found himself arriving at Helm’s Deep and being given the news that following the Warg attack, Aragorn was missing. When the actor asked how he was to play his response – was he supposed to think that Aragorn was dead?; was he feeling a sense of guilt? – he was startled to discover that, at that precise moment, nobody quite knew what was going to happen during the Warg attack (which was still a long way off in the shooting schedule) or in what kind of jeopardy Aragorn would have been placed. Fortunately, the emotions of confusion and concern that flashed across his face and that of Miranda Otto as Éowyn were suitably in character for the circumstances!

  In the early stages of production, some characters – particularly Éowyn and Arwen – went through various transmogrifications as Peter, Fran and Philippa sought to make them meaningful to the drama and yet still maintain an integrity to Tolkien’s writing.

  There were rumours, at one time, that Arwen was being considered as a tenth member of the Fellowship. ‘That was never an option,’ says Fran. ‘It was a question of to what extent do we take liberties with the story and introduce her into places where she never turned up?’

  What was, for a while, an option was the notion of what might be described (in the country that birthed Xena) as an ‘Arwen, Warrior-Princess’ characterisation. It certainly became a possibility at the point when, contrary to the original text, the Elves of Lothlórien join with the race of Men in fighting the battle of Helm’s Deep. ‘Pete wanted to use the Elves in a dynamic way,’ says Philippa Boyens, ‘so we took our licence to adapt the book by going back to Tolkien’s own concept of the Last Alliance between Men and Elves in the Second Age of Middle-earth.’

  ‘It was plain to Aragorn’s story,’ says Fran, ‘that he has to rally the diverse and disparate races of Middle-earth. They have to come to him and there has to be a unity in that. For us, Helm’s Deep has to have significance beyond the world of Men. The Elves coming to join in that struggle fulfilled the myth of the Last Alliance that was part of the cultural memory of both races. I also felt that, dramatically, without having the Elves there the notion of a relatively small group of people defeating 10,000 Uruk-hai was difficult to believe. It lent credibility to the situation…Looking back on the decision, it feels probably rather more outrageous than it did at the time, although many fans of the book understood and accepted this digression from Tolkien.’

  Within the context of having the Elves at Helm’s Deep, it seemed natural to have Arwen fighting alongside Aragorn and her people. ‘Even though we never made Arwen into a warrior like Xena, it placed her character too close to that of Éowyn.’ Fran adds: ‘After contemplation, it felt wrong. To change the story to that extent was actually defeating the purpose.’

  A solution that was more in keeping with the original text was devised through the device of having Arwen give Aragorn the Evenstar, a jewel that symbolised her immortal nature and her willingness to sacrifice it for her love of Aragorn. That, along with scenes of Arwen and her father, Elrond, in Rivendell, together with various flashbacks, dreams and nightmare visions as the lovers think of one another and imagine the best and the worst of their future lives, holds Arwen in the story and adds an intensely human dimension to Aragorn’s persona of the remote hero-figure.

  At many junctures in the story, the writers sought to give veracity to their plot enhancements by drawing generally on Tolkien’s prose. So, for example, the words of comfort that Gandalf shares with Pippin as the assault on Minas Tirith moves towards its climax were inspired by the author’s description of Frodo’s first glimpse of the Undying Lands: ‘…the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.’

  In order to preserve Tolkien’s voice, if a scene didn’t exist in the book we’d filch lines from elsewhere. Philippa was the goldmine! Fran and I would say, ‘There was a good bit about such-and-such somewhere, but we can’t remember where it was…’ and Philippa could always pinpoint material! She was our invaluable encyclopedia!

  Repeatedly, in approaching the script and in interpreting it in shooting, crucial issues had to be resolved about aspects of Tolkien’s narrative. One such instance related to the seeing-stones, or palantíri, by means of which Sauron bends Saruman’s mind to his dark will.

  Working with your heroes is one of the perks of the job. Christopher Lee was continually fascinating, with a photographic memory and an endless supply of interesting stories.

  The palantír was one of those things I was always a little stressed about, because for me it was about stepping across that threshold of magic, which I didn’t really like. We knew from the book what the palantír did, but I wasn’t sure how to represent the way in which it worked and I found it particularly difficult to imagine how anyone would look when they were using it.

  Was there a correct method for communicating by these seeing-stones? Was it all done by thought? Do you touch it? Do you hold it in your hand or sit with it in your lap? These were all questions that needed answering and Tolkien hadn’t provided any answers in the book.

  So, working with Christopher Lee, we began figuring out an appropriate palantír-handling technique! The idea was that the user would stand holding out their hand abou
t four or five inches above the palantír. This gave us the opportunity to visually show when Sauron was drilling into Saruman’s mind by having Christopher’s outstretched hand quivering as he sought to resist the Dark Lord’s will and then involuntarily clamping onto the stone and getting his mind reamed out at the same time.

  Even so, it remained a challenge to try to get interesting shots because, just looking at Christopher standing there with his hand over what is essentially a crystal ball looked a little too fairytale-like, so I decided to heighten the camera angles and try to inject a feeling of creepiness into the shots in order to make them more interesting.

  What I ended up doing with the palantír was looking for more and more inventive camera moves, craning up with a wide-angle lens and then dropping the camera low so that it distorted the room.

  Whenever I’m faced with something that I find boring, I usually, after a moment of panic, try to use the camera in a way that’s sufficiently different as to disguise the boring aspect!

  Following what for Peter and Fran had now become an established pattern of writing, the process of taking the story from script to screen remained incredibly flexible. Even when they weren’t committed to having to write against the clock, they still tried to give themselves the leeway to rethink and then freedom to rewrite.