Peter Jackson: A Film-maker’s Journey
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After enduring the gimp suit on The Lord of the Rings, Andy Serkis got to spend another few months in a weighted, gorilla-shaped lycra leotard on King Kong. I think he enjoys it.
like the mother to the crew – although they still don’t like his cooking!’
Speaking of what Peter, Fran and Philippa brought to the characterisations in the film, Andy says: ‘In the same way in which they drew certain things out of The Lord of the Rings about love and companionship, Kong is very much about isolation. Kong, an alpha male beyond his prime, is essentially a deeply lonely creature; but all the characters have a massive sense of loneliness and each of the various crew members and passengers on the ship represents a different aspect of the male psyche.’
A story is told of how someone tackled Peter over why he was making King Kong, a film, the questioner claimed, which was really just about rampant male sexuality and featured a huge, hairy beast with a woman clutched in his hand, climbing one of the largest phallic symbols in the world. Peter, it is said, listened and replied, ‘Really? I just thought I was making a film about dinosaurs and a gorilla…’
The idea of interpreting films to mean whatever you wish them to mean is a pastime in which I’ve never taken much interest.
Our version of Kong obviously acknowledges the fact that a male gorilla is an incredibly dominant and macho creature; so that aspect of Kong’s character is something that Ann has to confront and certainly deal with and that awareness has helped shape the plot, but not in any particular depth.
Obviously I’m fully aware that the Kong story has any number of Freudian interpretations, but it’s not the point of the movie and it was not something I was aware of when I was 9 years old and saw King Kong. I was, quite simply, swept away by it.
Among the many subtle nuances in the writing of Kong are the obser-vations on writing and movie-making, such as a line of Carl Denham’s that didn’t survive through to the final cut (but which might, one day, turn up as a DVD extra): ‘You can’t run a film like a democracy,’ says the director; ‘if it’s not a dictatorship, it falls apart! Now let me finish this goddam picture so I can have a nervous breakdown!’
Because we happen to be telling the story which involves a team of film-makers, Kong certainly gave us an opportunity to try to hint at some of the pressures involved in writing and making a film and to have some fun with it and put a few of our frustrations on screen. We optioned a book written by a wonderful ex-Vaudeville actress, June Havoc, and that gave us an authentic voice for the time period.
As for Denham’s thoughts on democracy…I think it is actually true: democracy is never very helpful when you’re trying to make a film!
For Peter, King Kong also provided an opportunity to work with a new studio after a five-year sojourn with New Line. ‘By the end of The Return of the King,’ says Ken Kamins, ‘I think their relationship had run its course and they had pretty much exhausted each other. I like to describe that relationship as a well-intentioned marriage that had to end in divorce, but which produced three beautiful children!’
‘That is the wrong characterisation,’ says New Line’s Michael Lynne. ‘I don’t think Peter sees it like that and we certainly don’t. Until Peter decided to make King Kong for Universal, it wasn’t necessarily clear that Peter’s next project would be for a studio other than New Line…’ To which Bob Shaye adds, ‘It’s not like a marriage; nobody said, “Till death do you part!” It’s supposed to be over when the film is over! There was an amicable and necessary separation…’
There’s truth in all of that. In fact, I wanted New Line to be given a chance to co-produce King Kong, but they declined. I think it’s very important to honour relationships and after five years of making The Lord of the Rings, we ended up in a very happy, peaceful place with New Line. Bob and Michael are two people for whom I have the greatest respect and gratitude. It’s easy to highlight tensions and bad stuff – that makes for drama, and everyone loves drama – but at the end of the day, they risked everything on us, and we killed ourselves to deliver. It has defined all our lives to some degree and I look forward to working with them again.
Comparing the two studios, I think it would be fair to say that with New Line we got off to a shaky start and for quite a time things were a little combative and there was a sense of mistrust on both sides. With Universal, we’re able to have a relationship without the history.
The advantage that Universal have, which New Line never had, is the knowledge that we can make a film of this size and complexity – ironically, that has only been proven by our having made The Lord of the Rings.
That’s one reason why they felt able to sit back and allow us to do our thing, to go through our process and not feel threatened or intimidated.
Universal’s Mary Parent recalls the studio’s meeting with Peter and Fran on 2 March 2003 – a date that marked the seventieth anniversary, to the day, since the opening of the original King Kong: ‘I remember this meeting vividly. When Peter noted the anniversary of the date, I immediately had a sense not only of excitement but, maybe, even destiny…’
Of the many lessons – political, technical and aesthetic – learned in making The Lord of the Rings that would affect the way in which the filming of Kong was approached, there was one fundamental difference.
The Lord of the Rings was very much about using locations. Obviously there were sets as well, but using the natural countryside created much of the look and feel of the film. With Kong I made the decision not to go on location.
The jungle on Skull Island is rather like Fangorn gone mad! It is huge, high and vast and really tortuous with masses of gnarled and twisted trees and there are simply no actual jungles in the world that look like this. Kong’s jungle is something of an experimentation with stylisation: a little Tim Burtonesque but with a sufficient sense of reality for you to believe that this place could be real, could exist – except that you’re never actually going to find it!
Having decided that he was going to stay in the studio, Peter wanted to try to capture something of the look and feeling of the jungles in the 1933 film, which were also created on a soundstage.
As soon as the Kong project was announced, work began on creating the concept art for the film and in particular the styling of the Skull Island locations. Much as had been done on The Lord of the Rings, this art then provided the inspiration for the creation not just of the full-size sets but also of the detailed miniature models. These would be used to extend and enhance the jungle sets on which the actors would be filmed in a similar way to that in which computer graphics would enhance the city sets.
I really wanted to create the illusion that we had gone back to the same island where they had shot the original film…
The various locations on Skull Island were a composite creation of studio sets combined with rear projections, backgrounds created using glass paintings and with tabletop miniatures for the foreground. Even though those are not the techniques that we’re using this time around, we’re still able to replicate the feelings they had but in a more refined and realistic way.
What I’m doing with Kong is more akin to what George Lucas has been doing with the recent Star Wars films; I’m wanting to show how you can create believable environments by building sets that you need but then enhancing them either with models or by computer to an extent where a lot of the frame can actually be filled with composite images that you’ve put in there after the actors have left the set and gone home!
As was quickly reported by the media, in creating the new film Peter was intending to expand on the sequences set in ‘the mysterious and dangerous jungles of Skull Island’. No less than two thirds of the film was to take place on the island and, recalling the impact of his first experience of seeing Kong, Peter was as committed to creating the denizens of the jungles as the environment itself.
What is really interesting about King Kong is that it is difficult to know exactly what audiences will be expecting. Apart from the devotees, a l
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DP Andrew Lesnie and his gaffer, Reg Garside. They had some huge technical hurdles to overcome, and very big sets to light.
of people really don’t think of Kong as being anything more than clichés, either because they saw the original film a long, long time ago or because they have never seen it – which is not entirely surprising because it has only recently been released on DVD. To many individuals, therefore, it’s just a story about a big gorilla that destroys the town and throws cars around – the ape on the loose; they don’t actually realise, or remember, that Kong has other, emotional elements to its story.
Philippa Boyens recalls the first time she and Fran watched the original King Kong with Peter: ‘I looked across at Pete, towards the end of the film – at the point where the planes are attacking Kong on the top of the Empire State Building and he carefully puts Ann down and makes sure she is safe before he is shot and killed – and I noticed that Peter was crying. That moment, when Kong demonstrates his care and concern for Ann, always makes him cry…a recollection, perhaps, of some feeling that meant something to him when he was very young and which has stayed with him across the years.’
Apart from the emotional dimension to the story, which those less familiar with the original film may find unexpected, there is another surprising fact about Kong’s cinematic career.
What is fascinating is that because the 1976 Dino de Laurentiis film King Kong has been repeatedly screened on television, it is the version of the story that is most widely known. It’s particularly interesting for us, because our film contains ingredients that were in the 1933 film but were left out of the 1976 remake, such as the dinosaurs on Skull Island and the biplanes taking on Kong on top of the Empire State Building. So our Kong may come as something of a surprise to kids used to seeing Dino’s Kong.
AT THAT MOMENT: KONG CHARGES!
KONG meets the TYRANNOSAUR HEAD-ON at FULL SPEED! He swings his fist, smashing into the TYRANNOSAUR’S HEAD…ANN has to throw herself against a tree as the DINOSAUR SPRAWLS onto the ground beside her…in a flash, KONG is ON TOP of the TYRANNOSAUR, POUNDING HIS FIST DOWN on its body.
This is the beginning of one of the scenes that, in scope though not in detail, featured in Peter and Fran’s first screenplay for Kong. It is a set-piece that springs from the young Peter Jackson’s memory and which will be guaranteed to electrify any youngster for whom dinosaurs are an abidingly exciting wonder – which, in practice, means every youngster! – not to mention those of more mature years for whom prehistoric creatures provide a science-fact bridge back to a time when a belief in the dragon-lands of fairytale and folklore was permissible!
In the original 1933 film, Kong battles with an Allosaurus; in the new version, as one might expect with the Jackson imagination, the ape takes on not one but three carnivores – on this occasion of the more deadly species, Tyrannosaurus Rex. It was, after several years of waiting and anticipation, Peter’s first opportunity to choreograph a ‘monster fight’.
Our Kong maquette is still sitting in our office, as it had been since 1996. It was made as a gift for Universal when we developed Kong for the first time. It was duly presented to their senior executives with much pomp and ceremony. When the studio suddenly killed that version of Kong the only phone call I made to them was the one where I asked for the sculpture back! A little pathetic, I know – but in a situation like that you feel so powerless that any gesture to regain some form of pride is seized upon. Besides, it’s very cool!
Whilst the working script for Kong contained a tightly packed page of what Philippa Boyens calls ‘Big Print’ (graphically described action, liberally peppered with exclamation marks) that had remained virtually unchanged since the 1996 script, its continued presence was intended merely as an indication of possible action.
At the end of the day, the script is very much a placeholder for these types of scenes. Once the script is written, you then start work on visualising such sequences; in the process, a lot of stuff happens and it usually goes places that the descriptions in the screenplay didn’t!
Two of Weta’s conceptual artists, Jeremy Bennett and Gus Hunter, developed a whole series of production designs and ideas: thrilling visual concepts for Kong fighting the T-Rexes: great creatures thundering through tangled junglescapes and ancient ruins; hurling themselves at one another in a frenzy of animal rage and pain that are electrifying images of a dreadful primal world.
I would take Jeremy and Gus’ art, in much the same way as I did with Alan Lee and John Howe’s conceptual art for The Lord of the Rings, study and think about them, immersing myself in their mood. Slowly, over quite a long period of time, I would start coming up with ideas and gags, exciting and unexpected twists and turns that were needed to create the choreography for the fight which runs to a thrilling six or six-and-a-half minutes of the film – which, in film terms, is a meaty fight!
During the shoot, the Kong cast had to cope with the same challenges that The Lord of the Rings cast had faced in confronting Balrogs, Cave-trolls and fell beasts that would not be present until post-production. For Naomi Watts, in particular, the film required a convincing portrayal of Ann’s mercurial relationship with Kong that had been sensitively thought through and clearly delineated within the script.
Naomi has an incredible ability to make things truthful and real. When she acts, like any good actor, she taps into aspects of herself, a reservoir of personal experiences and feelings. Naomi is able to reach down and basically come up with the most incredibly believable, deep, emotional stuff onscreen. She is absolutely fantastic at that.
The interaction of ‘the ape and the girl’, in a way that audiences will relate to emotionally, was achieved through Naomi’s depiction of Ann combined with Andy Serkis’ performance in providing a physical and vocal inspiration for Kong. The way in which Weta Digital has managed the technical translation of Andy’s portrayal into a form
This is how Naomi spent many of her shoot days – surrounded by blue-screen and strange men dressed in low-budget superhero suits! They’re actually stuntmen who would pick her up whenever she was supposed to be in Kong’s hand. Naomi clutched the big blue finger, and Weta Digital eventually replaced them with Kong’s hand and fingers. She had so little to work with, but threw herself into every scene with a gutsy courage. Andy Serkis was always on set for Naomi, performing Kong and giving her a pair of real eyes to play against.
with which the animators can then work to give screen life to the creature and believably unite the characters.
‘I’d be standing on top of the Empire State Building,’ says Andy, ‘swiping at imaginary bi-planes – although there was no building and no planes. I was back in the same studio where I did all my work for Gollum, but involved in bringing a very different creature to life.’
Part of the time, as Andy explains, he would be acting with and for Naomi: ‘I was her eye line, on the top of ladders, going up and down on scissor-lifts, anything to create the right height. Naomi and I developed a very organic way of working at the relationship between Ann and Kong: sometimes I’d be towering above her; sometimes I’d be right next to her and playing Kong’s hand and she’d be holding on to me; all the time we’d be looking at one another and communicating emotions through those looks. We also used a sound system that took my vocalisations and put them through a huge speaker to give a sense of Kong’s size and scale – we called it “The Kongelizer”! The acting was remarkably uncomplicated, but the work with motion-capture was technically complicated and incredibly challenging.’
It’s a quantum leap beyond the Gollum work that was done with Andy on Rings. Gollum was the same size as the hobbits and humanoid so we were able to take Andy’s performance, translate it one-for-one to the digital puppet and arrive at Gollum.
With Kong it was much harder: he is twenty-five feet tall and has the features and the physical proportions of a gorilla, which – despite the similarities humans respond to in apes – are quite different to those of a man.
It’s been a very sophisticated and difficult thing to achieve, but it has proven to be a remarkable development for King Kong and has resulted in an incredibly expressive performance.
KONG…we see him clearly for the first time. A very old, brutish BULL GORILLA. Tears of survival have left SCARS on his face. One EYELID is mangled and his JAW is CROOKED…leaving a huge yellowed INCISOR TOOTH jutting up…
KONG stares at ANN…she dare not move; only her RAPID BREATHING belies her INNER TERROR…
Reflecting on the eventual on-screen chemistry between the Eighth Wonder of the World and the burlesque girl from New York, Peter adds:
I think we’ve ended up with something pretty powerful and the relationship between Ann and Kong is obviously the heart and soul of the film.
The tragedy of it and the irony within the story is that, for the first time in his existence, he opens a door in his heart to some other creature and it proves to be his undoing.