There and Back Again

by Sean Astin

  “Okay, now put the blade under his chin,” Peter yelled to Elijah, who was kneeling over my prone, lumpen form.

  Elijah smiled. “Which one?”

  That cracked up everyone on the set, including me, although the truth of it hurt a little because I was mad at myself for getting that fat again. And I think the additional weight might have hindered my performance. I’d nailed the speech in rehearsal, but for some reason, when we went to shoot the scene, we needed twenty-five takes to get it right. Ultimately I think the scene met the expectations I had had when the fax came through; I mean, it was so well-written that there really was almost no way to blow it. Even so, I was a little concerned that I felt more emotionally connected to the scene in my bathrobe in Los Angeles, and when I was rehearsing it alone with Elijah, than I did when we actually shot it. I honestly believe it plays well in the movie, and I’m not disappointed with the finished product in any way, but somehow it wasn’t the perfect acting experience I had anticipated. But then maybe there’s no such thing. When we finally finished, Elijah gave me a hug and said, “That was hard, wasn’t it?” But he was so patient. It was a strong Sam moment, and I needed his help and inspiration to get through it.

  When I saw the final version of The Two Towers, I felt really good about it, better than I had felt about the first film. Naturally, this was partly due to the scene that was written for Sam, but it was also because I was so impressed that Peter and Fran had figured out how to start and end the movie without it being the beginning or ending of the trilogy. The Two Towers is a bridge, a link between the setup of The Fellowship of the Ring and the denouement of The Return of the King, and as such it presents a unique challenge to the director. When most people think of The Two Towers, they think of the battle of Helm’s Deep, a titanic standoff between ten thousand digital orcs and a far smaller army of men. It’s an amazing, visceral sequence, and the indisputable highlight of the film, if not the entire trilogy. Audiences reacted that way when they saw the movie in theaters, and I felt that way when we were making the movies. Even though I had absolutely nothing to do with the battle of Helm’s Deep (Frodo and Sam were off on an adventure of their own), it always felt like the most important thing about The Two Towers.

  But The Two Towers succeeds on so many levels: as pure adventure, as epic storytelling, and most notably, as an examination of evil, as personified by Saruman and Wormtongue, and the courage required to stand up against it. Like the entire trilogy, I suppose it also says something about the value of brotherhood. Good triumphs over evil in The Lord of the Rings primarily because characters of different races, even different species, are willing to set aside their innate differences, and even their dislike for each other, in pursuit of a common goal.

  It was related to the sentiment that I tried to capture, at least in some small way, when I made my short film, The Long and the Short of It, during our return trip to New Zealand in the summer of 2002. The idea came to me early in the production, and Dominic Monaghan helped me flesh it out. We ended up with a sweet and simple five-minute film about a man who gets some unexpected assistance while trying to paste a large poster on a wall. Really, though, it’s about people silently joining forces to complete a task. Each has some talent, some ability that makes him or her uniquely suited to the job. Simply put, it’s a tribute to teamwork, and thus a tribute to The Lord of the Rings.

  There were twenty-four cameras available during the production, and Peter’s attitude was, Hey, if you can find the time, go ahead and take one of them and do your short film. Remarkably enough, though, there was never a single camera available during principal photography. We were just too busy. Every camera was in use every day, and nobody had a minute to spare. When we returned for pickups, however, the opportunity presented itself.

  A couple of guys from Panavision were on the set demonstrating for Peter the new digital technology that George Lucas had used on Star Wars. As soon as I learned of their presence, I leaped into action. All of the thousands of hours of muted frustration that I experienced wishing I could be directing came pouring out in a rush of excitement. Peter, Barrie, Elijah, and everyone around was gracious and supportive. Peter, in particular, had always honored my passion as a filmmaker, in theory and in practice, so long as I demonstrated the right level of respect to the Lord of the Rings process. It was during principal photography, while filming the Bridge of Khazad-Dum sequence, that I was originally inspired with the idea for the short film. Actually, the first seeds were planted on the first day in New Zealand and then again on the first day of principal photography. During the tour on the first day in New Zealand, Peter mentioned that he would be using all of these cameras, and he didn’t blanch for a moment when I suggested I could do a side project. The only time I ever acted on that impulse was years later during pickups, and Peter was instantly and characteristically supportive.

  On the first day of filming, Brian Bansgrove, our gaffer, first came to my attention. Elijah was reading aloft and I was cooking the tomatoes and potatoes and mushrooms and ham, when we heard the most singular and gravelly Australian voice proclaim, “Why don’t you point some light at the little bloke in the trayee?” I looked at his leathery face and instantly thought, Man, would he be compelling to watch on screen. I ruminated that I should try to come up with a way to showcase his charisma and individuality in a short film. Much later in the filming, during Gandalf the Grey’s clash with Balrog, and the Fellowship’s horrified witnessing of Gandalf’s apparent demise, I was noodling the idea of finding some way to showcase in a short film the beauty of a woman named Praphaphorn “Fon” Chansantor. As noted, all of the hobbits had scale doubles who endured so much and evinced remarkable patience in the seemingly thankless task of helping convey the notion of relative height without the promise of future glory. They were bona fide, legitimate members of the Fellowship, and yet few people outside production were likely to ever know that they existed. Fon, who primarily doubled Billy Boyd, was one of the most exquisitely beautiful creatures anyone had ever seen. In her late twenties, she stood about three and a half feet tall, and on her arrival from Thailand, where she’d been discovered for this job, she spoke not a single word of English. Well, besides forming a lifelong friendship with Billy and enjoying a lovely rapport with my wife and daughter, Fon taught herself English over the course of the shoot and now speaks the language fluently. I wanted to do something to celebrate her beauty.

  As I stood off to the side of the set watching Fon and Brian (who has since tragically taken his own life), I started cooking up an idea to make a short film about the two of them. I started talking aloud to everyone, and Dom jumped in the most enthusiastically and helped me fashion a story. I walked over to Peter, who was waiting for something to be done, and told him the story. He said it sounded cool and asked if he could be in it. I was thrilled. He asked if he could play the part of a bus driver. I hadn’t thought about a bus driver, but if that’s what Peter wanted to be, by Jove, I was going to adjust the story to ensure that a bus driver was included! I went home that night and wrote the script. Three pages long, it took me about twenty-five minutes to write. Then nothing happened with it for years. Oh, sure, I thought about it and looked for an opportunity when it might be done, but as I’ve said, one just didn’t present itself. Until the summer of 2002, that is.

  So there I was in the makeup bus for the umpteenth time, having ears and wig applied, when I was told by Zane Weiner, our unit production manager, that the Panavision guys would be performing a test of their equipment. As it turned out, the actual body of the camera they were testing was one that George Lucas had used on Phantom Menace. Anyway, I jumped out of my chair, and within fifteen minutes I had secured not only the commitment of the Panavision guys to extend their visit over the weekend, but also Peter’s agreement to come in on Sunday, and Barrie and Zane’s agreement to help me put the project together.

  That was just fine, because it was only Wednesday and we weren’t going to shoot until Sunday. Never
mind that this would be everyone’s first day off in weeks. I was a man on a mission. Andrew Lesnie, our now legendary cinematographer, graciously agreed to replace his late gaffer as the star of the picture. I didn’t have to ask Paul Randall, our seven-foot-tall elf, human-scale double, and all-around utility crew member, to round out the trifecta of my cast. To my extraordinary benefit, everyone I asked for assistance instantly accommodated my every request.

  Without going into too much more detail (the film and its “making of” documentary can be seen on The Two Towers DVD), I had an absolute ball. The film was accepted at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to win several film festival prizes. None of that would have happened if I wasn’t in The Lord of the Rings. It never ceases to amaze me that out of hardship or perceived hardship comes the most glorious of rewards.

  To my utter astonishment and great relief, quite a few people turned out for the shoot even though most of them had been out partying until two or three in the morning. They staggered in, bleary-eyed, and volunteered their services. I’ll never forget it. At one point, I thought we were going to have to cancel the shoot because of the weather—steady rain and gale-force winds—but no one begged off. We put in a six-hour day and got it done. If you’ve seen the DVD, you know how it turned out. You also know that Peter Jackson is quite a capable actor. But that’s not the point. The point is this: he showed up to do a cameo in my short film, and he treated the job with respect and seriousness. He figured out how to work the bus within a few minutes, and he looked totally authentic. Unlike me, he didn’t complain. Not once.

  It’s fair to say that Peter the actor was a director’s dream.

  And you know what? I’m not sure I deserved that kind of treatment.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  In September 2003 I found myself at a postproduction sound facility in London, doing work on the final installment of the trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. As with each of the first two films, this one was completed under enormous deadline pressure. I wonder sometimes how Peter handled it. There was so much at stake, and yet he seemed unfazed by it all. Here we were, less than three months before the film’s scheduled release date, and still there was an enormous amount of work to be done: the looping of dialogue, the refining of computer animation, the musical score (which is an awesome task in itself, and the importance of which can’t be overlooked). All of these things had to be in order by December. There were, after all, publicity and marketing schedules to be met, and premiere dates that had been set in stone. To be even one day late would have serious repercussions.

  Not that there was any cause for concern, as it turned out. I was granted the privilege of screening an early cut of a large portion of The Return of the King in London, and was utterly mesmerized by what I saw. The movie was astonishingly good—a nearly perfect conclusion to the trilogy. On a more personal level, it represented Samwise Gamgee as everything I hoped he would be. Philippa was in charge of the screening. She came to me after a week of looping, before we got to the final reels involving all of the heavy crying scenes, and explained that Fran and Peter had agreed to let me watch the movie to help facilitate the emotion required to recreate the climactic scenes on Mount Doom. In other words, to put me in the proper frame of mind.

  So I sat on a couch in front of the mixing board, with only Philippa and a couple of technicians in the room, and I watched. To say I was moved would be the understatement of my career. I started bawling about halfway through the footage and didn’t stop until well after it had ended. I cried when Sam was on-screen, and I cried when he wasn’t on-screen. I cried when Gollum tricked Frodo into believing that Sam had betrayed him, and I cried when Sam cradled Frodo on the side of Mount Doom, as a river of lava threatened to sweep them away “at the end of all things.” When Alexandra appeared at my side, playing the role of Sam’s daughter, and I heard her tiny whisper of a voice (her lines had not yet been dubbed over by Frodo’s narration), I could barely see the screen through the haze of my tears. I don’t think I’ve ever cried that hard in my entire life.

  The anxiety and tension, the doubt and disappointment, the pride and gratification—all were mixed together and flooded out, and I became this throbbing, sobbing mass. For me, The Lord of the Rings had been like a five-year period of psychoanalysis. Now it was over.

  And Peter had done right by me.

  * * *

  In April 2000, some eighteen months before the first film hit the theaters, an online preview trailer for The Fellowship of the Ring drew approximately 1.7 million hits in less than twenty-four hours. In January 2001, the official Lord of the Rings website was launched. In its first week, the site attracted an astounding forty-one million visitors! And this was still ten months prior to the film’s release. Small wonder that Gordon Paddison, senior vice president in New Line’s marketing department, felt like he had one of the best jobs in the world.

  “The Lord of the Rings has a global prebuilt fan base,” Paddison said. “We just embraced that community.”

  Fans repeatedly and overwhelmingly returned the embrace. The Fellowship of the Ring grossed more than $860 million worldwide. The Two Towers earned in excess of $910 million. Both are among the top ten grossing films in history.

  But The Lord of the Rings proved to be more than just a commercial success. It was that rarest of Hollywood creatures: a film (or in this case, films) that was warmly received by both critics and moviegoers. The Fellowship of the Ring, in fact, was one of the most decorated films released in 2001, earning not only rave reviews from critics across the country but also thirteen Academy Award nominations, including best picture. The Two Towers was similarly lauded, and also was nominated for an Academy Award, as the best film of 2002.

  I’ve agreed not to talk about my finances with regard to the success of the pictures. But suffice it to say that in the fall of 2003, for the first time in my life, I had a pretty good sense that if I played my cards right with my career, I would be able to support my family and live comfortably for the foreseeable future. So I sat there, as the lights came up, utterly drained. When the film ended, Philippa wrapped her arms around me and let me cry on her shoulder for a few minutes. After I collected myself, I left the studio and got in my car. On the way back to my hotel I called Peter and thanked him. Later I called my agent and manager and told them that everything I had hinted at, everything I believed would happen once people saw the third movie, was about to come true.

  “Will there be Oscar talk?” the agent asked.

  I thought about it for only a second or two.

  “You know what? I think I might get nominated.”

  To be honest, in the afterglow of that screening, I didn’t see how I could miss.

  * * *

  My attitude changed in late November when I saw the movie in its final version, the version that would be released to the public. A private screening had been arranged in Wellington prior to the official world premiere and the tidal wave of publicity that would follow. This was a different experience, one that left me feeling vaguely uneasy and even a bit disappointed. Liv Tyler was sitting next to me, and she seemed delighted with it. So did Andy Serkis, and with good reason. The movie, of course, opens with Andy in hobbit form, as Smeagol, and becomes a showcase for the character’s split personality and the talent of the actor behind it. I remember feeling thrilled for Andy, but it was weird: I wasn’t really drawn into the movie, mainly because I was too focused on the ways in which it differed from the version I had seen in London. Once I realized that a particular scene had come and gone—or just “gone,” since it had been cut from the final version—I started getting a negative feeling that I couldn’t shake. I just didn’t like the movie as much.

  Since then, I’ve come to my senses. Fans loved The Return of the King, probably more than either of the first two films. I’ve seen it six times now, and my enjoyment and appreciation have increased with each viewing. But I’m trying to be honest about how I felt, and I can’t d
eny that when I saw the movie in New Zealand in its completed form, I was disappointed. Granted, it was a selfish reaction, one that stemmed primarily from the fact that Sam’s screen time had been reduced. There was, for example, a scene right before Gollum tricks Frodo into believing that Sam has eaten the last of their dwindling supply of food. Sam grabs Gollum by the throat and warns the creature, “If one hair is out of place on his head … no more Slinker, no more Stinker. You’re gone!” Gollum looks at Sam with fear in his eyes, and it’s a moment of real strength and heroism, so that the swing from tough guy to sniveling, crying victim (“Don’t send me away, Mr. Frodo; it’s not true!”) is so much stronger. When I realized that scene had been cut, the excitement and enthusiasm were sucked out of me, replaced by sadness.

  The orc encampment is another example. Frodo and Sam don armor and say, “We’ve done it; they’re moving off. A bit of luck at last.” And then all of a sudden there’s this whole sequence where the orcs come around the corner, and they slap us and whip us and put us in their column, and we’re marching with the bad guys. Then I pick a mock fight with Frodo to distract the orcs so that we can escape. That’s followed by an incredible scene on the Gorgoroth plains, where an exhausted Frodo and Sam are slumped against each other, looking up at the night sky. Sam sees a star and observes, “In the end, a shadow is only a passing thing, Mr. Frodo. Darkness will fade.” Basically, it’s an echo of Sam’s speech at the end of the second film, and almost as good. It was beautifully written and sensitively directed by Fran, with a violin concerto providing accompaniment. I think people were crying as we performed that scene, and I was so happy with the way it turned out in the film. But now it was gone, along with the miles and miles of walking and suffering endured by Sam and Frodo in their march to Morder. Now I thought, The orc armor is on, it’s off, they’re at the top of the mountain … what? How did that happen?