by Sean Astin
The writing process made this challenging. Christopher is from the old school. If he had a speech to deliver in a scene, he wanted to see the pages well in advance—at the very least, the night before filming—so that he could commit the words to memory. He wasn’t as quick to embrace the notion that on this production the smart survival strategy for an actor was to learn it, be willing to totally forget it, and know that if they write you a new scene ten minutes before you’re scheduled to perform it, somehow it will all work out. If you screwed up on the first ten or fifteen takes, that was all right. Peter would give you thirty. And by the thirtieth take, you’d have learned the lines. This was not just a one-way street, incidentally. To his immense credit, Peter understood the demands he placed on his cast, and he was willing to reciprocate. If you wanted another take, Peter was, within reason, willing to give you another one. To a large degree, he trusted the actor to be the ambassador of his character, and he expected him to communicate what was working and what was not working—above and beyond what he could sense.
Everything was fluid, especially the writing. There is no such thing as hyperbole or overstatement when talking about the constant nature of the rewrite process on The Lord of the Rings. Let me be clear about this, because Peter and Fran would doubtless be hurt, or feel their reputation was being impugned, if I were to suggest that there wasn’t a sense of professionalism about delivering pages on time. There were very real-world, budgetary consequences to having pages rewritten beyond a certain point, and Peter was always aware of such things. In fact, another area of expertise he demonstrated was knowing what needed to be written (and shown to the studio) in order for certain budgets to be drafted, for sets to be constructed, illustrations of the sets to be commissioned, and so on. But he also knew how to time everything so the writers could apply the best part of their creativity to the reworking of language at the right moments. Peter was deeply respectful of the screenwriters and the screenwriting process (and not simply because he is a credited writer on the screenplay and a coauthor of the original draft). He respected their autonomy, and was deferential to what they had done—unless, of course, push came to shove and he had to change something. Generally speaking, it’s fair to say that the standard response to suggestions made by the actors regarding dialogue was, “Oh, we can’t change that—the script girls will come in.” Peter jokingly referred to Fran and Philippa as the “script Nazis.” They were fiercely protective of their work. Understandable, really, since they bled for each and every word.
I recall feeling for them as we were prepared to shoot the Council of Elrond sequence, which was arguably the hardest scene in the book for Peter to film, because it involved so many main characters in one place at one time. With the exception of the closing scene of the final film, such crowded scenes were avoided. Like the characters in the movie, in fact, we were all scattered about New Zealand and Middle-earth. Just as Sam and Frodo, while marching to Mordor, have no way of knowing what is happening to Pippin and Merry, Elijah and I spent great stretches of time isolated from the other actors. The Council of Elrond, however, is a break from that style of storytelling, a pivotal moment in the first film that presents to the viewer the formation of the Fellowship. It’s an enormously complicated scene, one requiring significant exposition in the face of monumental technical challenges. I’m not sure the writers ever got it quite right, although God knows they tried. Tolkien devotes some seventy pages to the Council of Elrond meeting and its implications, and yet the scene as filmed lasts only a few minutes.
That only magnifies the challenge, for this is a scene that sets the tone not just for the remainder of the movie, but for the entire franchise. The story repeatedly refers back to the idea that it’s Frodo’s mission to carry the ring. That is the fundamental quest at the core of the trilogy, and the reasons for Frodo being assigned and accepting this burden, as well as the motivation of the other members of the Fellowship, are all established at the Council of Elrond.
Talk about a plot point!
In addition to the formidable task of communicating the information necessary to understanding the story, Peter was also dealing with the expectations and skills and egos of a score of world-class actors, all sort of jostling for space and screen time; at the same time, he was wrestling with the scale issues endemic to a production in which some of the characters are three and a half feet tall, and others are twice that height. It’s challenging enough to put Gandalf and Bilbo in a room together, and make it believable when the actors who portray them are roughly the same size. But when you put everyone in one place at one time—elves, dwarves, men, hobbits, and wizards—and ask the camera to sweep across the screen, scale issues become a point of great concern.
Many of the artful ways Peter devised to introduce various characters—like Boromir arriving in slow motion at Rivendell—hadn’t been completely determined at that point. The script called for ways of introducing characters and handling exposition, but changes were often made at the last second. This, of course, was one of the ways they struck terror into the hearts of studio executives: that $270 million had been committed, and the director wasn’t going to shoot the script. Well, he was shooting the script. And he was shooting so much more than the script. The script was a very real, living and breathing document, but Peter wasn’t a slave to it. While he was respectful of the script, he knew intuitively that when we’d get to a particular sequence and shoot all day long, the process would evolve organically. Each page of a script typically results in one minute of footage. On average. Well, Peter would shoot so much footage that each page could have filled fifteen minutes on screen. But he did it without going over budget, and he did it largely without incurring the wrath of his cast and crew, which speaks volumes about his managerial style and wisdom, as well as everyone’s faith in him.
The Council of Elrond, however, tested everyone’s patience and creativity, most notably Fran’s and Philippa’s. In the weeks leading up to that sequence, they worked tirelessly, like orc slaves locked in the mines being whipped and beaten every day. And they weren’t mining coal or ore; in a sense, it was harder than that. The sweat and blood and tears of having to continually go back into their imagination and back into the text, while trying to keep a macro vision of the movie in mind—their mental slogging, day in and day out—is hard to fathom. The kinds of things they were asked to do are almost incomprehensible. Listen, this set is going to be built in three days. We’re going to have fifteen actors show up on the set, ready to go, and right now the scene isn’t good enough. Make it better. Such requests happened all the time. That had to be maddening. Not that Fran and Philippa were wandering blindly. The original scripts, 150 pages apiece, were always available; there was always a blueprint. But Fran and Philippa understood that the blueprint was flexible, and what shocked me was their level of commitment to this kind of attitude and process. They were unflappable.
As we rehearsed the original Council of Elrond scene, it seemed that most of the actors were struggling with it. We had the rough rhythm of the scene, the emotions and information it was intended to convey. But we all knew it wasn’t quite right. A lot of people pitched ideas: some floated; some plummeted. For me, it was a rare occasion when something I suggested ended up in the film, although not in exactly the way I had envisioned. The idea that Frodo would stand up and shout, “I’ll do it! I’ll carry the ring!” when everyone else is screaming and yelling at each other wasn’t initially written in the script, and I don’t recall exactly how it appears in the books. I know when we were talking through the scene one day at Peter’s house, I made a suggestion, and Fran responded with, “That’s a good idea.” A small contribution, I admit, but I was proud of it, and I especially liked the idea that they were open to it, which is not to say they wouldn’t have come up with it on their own. They probably would have. I just happened to be invited into the process for a while, and Peter and Fran were open enough to include things. That was the cauldron of creativity that boiled
and bubbled throughout the production.
I don’t want to give the impression that we engaged in improvisational filmmaking. We didn’t. This wasn’t Waiting for Guffman. Fran and Philippa (and Peter) were quite open to suggestions, as long as their authority wasn’t questioned. Which is the way it should be, because if their authority is repeatedly questioned, then at other critical low moments, when people aren’t offering ideas, how are they going to do the triple lutz and nail the landing? It was their process, their baby, their screenplay. There was never any question about that. There were times when they solicited ideas and nothing came, so they went back to work. And there were times when suggestions came unsolicited. I know Viggo was relentless with them about his character. Absolutely relentless. He would go to them every day, it seemed, with thoughts and ideas and suggestions, things the script apparently missed; he constantly whittled and chipped away at what they were doing and tried valiantly to put his imprimatur on Aragorn.
Was this helpful? I don’t know. At times it seemed like they wanted to kill themselves, or Viggo, because it was so maddening that he was doing this, and then twenty minutes later they would turn around and honor his suggestions. There were times when it was unnecessary, and other times when it was unproductive, but overall he was a great ambassador for his character. Viggo helped them forge things and kept their feet to the fire. They hated him for it, and they resented it. They also loved him and appreciated it. If they had to do it over again, they probably wouldn’t change a thing, because that was the process they had invited.
On The Lord of the Rings, the door was always open, but I didn’t really take advantage of it. Why? That’s a complicated question, and I’ll offer one of my typically strangled explanations. At one point during the shoot Fran shared with me a story about the making of The Frighteners, and how the star, Michael J. Fox, who was away from his wife and children, spent enormous amounts of time at Fran and Peter’s home. The tone in Fran’s voice and the wistful look on her face revealed just how much she liked Michael and how much she enjoyed providing him a home away from home. But I also detected a bit of sadness, as if she felt sorry for him. There’s an openness about Peter and Fran, a family dynamic to them that is wonderfully appealing, but I always worried about pushing the boundaries. For some reason, after hearing her talk about Michael, I tried to be vigilant about not overstaying my welcome. I would have been there all the time, watching movies in their garage and borrowing videos even more than I did, but I found myself not wanting to overstep the bounds of propriety with them. This is what sometimes happens with relationships: you’ll pull back a little bit, just because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do, and then as a result the others pull back, too, until you reach emotional détente. The icebreaker for us was our kids. Our children created a common ground. I enjoyed the quiet confidence of knowing that Peter and Fran were such good parents and loving people that my daughter and their children were bonding in a way that would keep us communicating with each other. The movie was important, but our kids are our kids, and they’re more important. Being a parent allowed me to establish a connection with Peter and Fran that few other people on the film enjoyed.
That said, I wasn’t always sure how to approach Fran or Peter on professional or creative matters. The night before we filmed the Council of Elrond, I called Fran, fortified by the knowledge that Viggo had done this essentially every night, and said, “Look, the way it’s written, I don’t come in until the end of the scene. If you read the book, Sam is there throughout; if you look at Alan Lee’s illustrations, Sam is there. I think it’s critical that I’m visible as the scene plays out.”
Granted, the way the set was designed, with a dozen or more chairs up on the stage area, was very awkward. Where were they going to put me? With the visual aesthetic Peter was trying to capture, there was no way to accommodate my request, but I felt I had to say something. As I had with Warren Beatty, when he asked me to do some writing for Bulworth, I went out on a limb and built a case for myself. Sam belonged there. It was based on the text and my understanding of the narrative, and a legitimate desire to act as an audience surrogate. As the movie progresses, Sam demonstrates a clear understanding of everything that happens in that council meeting. Therefore, some explanation for this awareness must be proffered. He can’t stroll into the frame at the last moment.
Ultimately, we reached a compromise: to have Sam pop out of the bushes and shout, “Hey! Nobody’s going anywhere without me!” which lets the viewer know that Sam overheard everything. But it was where the rubber met the road for me, in terms of Peter wanting Sam to be comic relief and me wanting him to be serious. Peter, I think, would have been thrilled to have me say the line differently, to add a touch of comedy to it. Instead, I chose to frown a bit, to play it softly, proudly, which I think makes for a sweeter reading of the character and his motivation. Seconds later, of course, the other two hobbits, Merry and Pippin, come bouncing into the frame as well, smiling goofily, proclaiming their bravery and allegiance, and taking their place alongside Frodo.
Naked admission: I hate that part of the scene. When I see Billy and Dom come scurrying out, stumbling and bumbling like circus clowns, I just want to cringe. I’m being disrespectful, and I don’t mean to be. I love them both. I think Billy is a more talented actor than I am; I think Dom is braver than I am. And I was willing to appreciate Dom’s willingness, in service of the movie, to commit to the lightheartedness of hobbits more than I was. He and Billy both deserve a lot of credit for that. I was unwilling to pull on that thread, to embrace an undeniably legitimate reading of the characters of the hobbits as gentle, oafish, little creatures. That’s in there. No question about it. It’s not a mistake that Ralph Bakshi came up with the film he did and the characterizations he did. Nevertheless, I resented and rejected that particular characterization.
That’s why I called Fran and made an impassioned plea for Sam to be there from the beginning of the scene, even if my presence was merely alluded to with a quick, single shot of Sam listening off to the side. “You could do it with a B cam,” I suggested. “It won’t even change the way you set the shot.” Fran listened to me, said she understood, and promised to mention it to Peter. I wouldn’t say that my request fell on deaf ears; that would be unfair. I think it just fell on ears that were overwhelmed.
I remember almost wanting to cry at the outcome. Granted, there were a lot of actors in the Council of Elrond scene who wanted to cry, simply because there were so many people locked in a tight space for such a long time. There were too many performers, too many monologues, too much to do and explain. Several days were required to film that scene. We shot the same thing so many times that people were ready to scream because they were so sick of it. So I guess I was lucky in that sense. I placed out of the exam by being the guy who pops up out of the bushes at the end of the show. There I was, in my feet and ears and wig, just standing around for hours on end, day after day, like a pitcher in a bullpen, waiting to be called in for my shot, wondering if they were going to acknowledge my suggestion in any way, shape, or form. When I was finally called out onto the set, Peter was entrenched in his position, tucked behind the monitor, obviously battle-weary from hours of sparring with fifteen strong-willed actors—each trying to do the best job possible—but also trying to assert himself. For any director, that’s a daunting task, a process that wears you down, inch by inch. I could tell it was a low moment for Peter, and that filled me with sadness. I wanted Peter and Fran to respect me and appreciate me, and I’m sure they did. But not getting the feedback I wanted led me to indulge in self-pity, and I think traces of that existed for the rest of the project.
Not always, of course. There were numerous times when I was smart enough to take a good look around at the work being done and the almost unbearable pressure that Peter (and Fran) seemed to handle with uncommon grace and dignity, and to say to myself, “God, how stupid was I to have ever felt that way?” But other times, I’m almost ashamed to
admit, it would bubble to the surface again.
I wanted two things professionally out of the experience: I wanted Peter Jackson to respect me as an actor and as a peer—as a filmmaker, a cinema artist. And I think I wanted him to do it in a way that allowed me to help shape the overall product. To an infinitesimal degree, I suppose I did that. To expect anything more would have been impractical, even unrealistic. For example, in the early days of rehearsal, when we discussed some of the scale issues, and presentations were made to us by digital-effects people, it was easy to see the genius behind the ideas, and to gauge the level of comfort and confidence that people felt with given strategies for achieving certain visual effects. One of the most spectacular things I’ve learned from Peter is his passion for achieving illusion. Remember, this is a man who tricked much of New Zealand into believing that they had the right to be proud of having flown before the Wright Brothers. And yet, he’s not merely a master illusionist; he’s also a storyteller. But he loves the early days of film, and he loves special effects—within context. He loves the original King Kong, so it’s not surprising that he’s doing a remake. I can picture him studying the early version of King Kong, trying to figure out how they achieved some of the miniature effects and perspective effects. Peter’s favorite movies, though, are older Hollywood comedies. What a clever guy! A lot of filmmakers love the early effects of Hollywood, so they devote their entire lives to raising the bar on those effects. And there are a lot of filmmakers who appreciate the power and sophistication of the comedy of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Peter falls into both categories. He’s assimilated many elements of special effects and comedy, and is leveraging that to help shape cinema culture.
