Peter Jackson: A Film-Maker's Journey

by Brian Sibley

  That decision brought with it several concerns, not least of which was the need to complete 500 special effects shots on the film against a deadline with little or no flexibility. Weta rapidly had to evolve from a one-man-and-a-computer outfit to an effects facility on which the highest levels of expectation were being placed.

  Robert Zemeckis had already brought Wes Takahashi onto the project as Visual Effects Supervisor. A former director of animation with Industrial Light and Magic, Takahashi’s credits included The Abyss, Hook, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and three Zemeckis productions, Back to the Future II and III and Death Becomes Her. Now, with the delivery on The Frighteners coming suddenly under even greater pressure, Zemeckis secured a US$6 million top-up to the budget and Weta’s already growing staff was augmented with fifteen Americans and a new delivery of technology.

  It was not three years since Weta had been established and the learning curve proved sharp and occasionally painful. There were occasional tensions to be resolved, especially since there were not inconsiderable differentials between the salaries of the New Zealand animators and those who moved down from California, and the change in dynamics impacted on the relationship between George Port and the fellow founders of Weta.

  Early in 1996, George decided it was time to move on. Various factors were involved, including concerns over the initial failure to turn out effects on The Frighteners quickly enough to meet a difficult-to-impossible schedule on budget. Whilst George personally assumed the blame for these delays, the fact was that everyone involved in the film were–if not out of their depth–no longer swimming in the shallow end of the pool.

  Another, happier factor that encouraged George to leave the Weta partnership was his decision to marry Barbara Darragh, the costume designer on The Frighteners. The couple moved to Auckland where George would continue creating special effects on various projects, including the New Zealand television series Xena: Warrior Princess, which also involved various physical effects created by Richard Taylor’s Weta team and future Rings actors Karl Urban and Marton Csokas as well as costume designer Ngila Dickson.

  As special effects work on The Frighteners neared completion, the word was out that the next Jackson film was going to be something special. ‘There was a swirl of hype around Peter,’ says Ken Kamins. ‘Everyone was saying that the promise was real, that this guy, post Heavenly Creatures was all that and more. “Buzz-buzz-buzz!” “Oh, my God! Zemeckis has got Universal to move The Frighteners to a summer release!” “Hype-hype-hype!” “Buzz-buzz-buzz…” Then we get to Monday April 1 1996 and I come home from the premiere of Primal Fear to find that Peter has left an urgent message on my answering machine. He’d never left an urgent anything on my machine–he doesn’t use the word “urgent”–but on this occasion the message simply said, “I don’t care what time you get home, you have to call me.” It was eleven o’clock when called him. “Ken,” he said, “I’ve got a problem

  …”’ The problem was that the buzz-buzz-buzz was exciting the interest of the American special effects houses to the extent that they were beginning to head-hunt Weta’s digital animators. Peter’s only hope of keeping his workforce together was to be able to offer them new contracts before those on The Frighteners ran out. That meant knowing what, if any, film he was going to be making next–and knowing that within a week…

  ‘On Tuesday morning,’ recalls Ken, ‘I spoke first to Peter Nelson and we then made phone calls to everybody, saying, “We have to know what Peter’s next movie is by Friday otherwise he loses his effects team.” Peter needed to do this for self-preservation, since he thought it would be impossible to reassemble what was clearly a great team. Unwittingly, however, we created a bidding war for Peter’s next movie that was predicated on the hype generated by Universal and Zemeckis over The Frighteners.’

  The phone call with Miramax did not go well. ‘Harvey was apoplectic,’ says Ken, ‘he was furious that after he had been good enough to suspend and extend Peter’s first-look deal we were now putting Miramax in a “bidding situation” for Peter’s next picture.’

  Part of Harvey Weinstein’s frustration was undoubtedly due to the fact that what had seemed like a straightforward matter of negotiating the Tolkien film rights with Saul Zaentz had turned out to be more complicated than anyone had imagined. Saul Zaentz, it transpired, did not own all the rights to The Hobbit. United Artists owned the rights to theatrically distribute a film of The Hobbit but not the right to make one! Weinstein’s attempts to buy those rights from United Artists were unsuccessful: the studio was up for sale and no one was prepared to part with any assets, however insignificant they might appear.

  Harvey spoke with Ken Kamins, arguing that they should now forget The Hobbit and concentrate on The Lord of the Rings since the first 100 pages of The Fellowship of the Ring were effectively a review of the key incidents in The Hobbit concerning the One Ring. However, the deal over the rights in The Lord of the Rings had still to be settled.

  Ken reasoned with Weinstein: ‘I said, “Harvey, we started a conversation with you in October 1995; we’re not saying it’s anybody’s fault, we’re just saying it’s now April 1996 and you’re not even close to concluding a deal with Saul and we want to make that movie. If you are able to conclude a deal we are absolutely going to make that movie but we really need to know what Peter’s next movie is and we need to know now.”’

  To further complicate matters, Twentieth Century Fox had got wind of the fact that Peter was in advanced discussions with both Universal over Kong and Miramax over the Tolkien project.

  They evidently thought that they were missing out on something and decided to jump on the bandwagon with Planet of the Apes again. This time around, Fox were saying James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger were no longer involved, and that they were happy to turn the whole thing over to us and just let us do whatever we wanted…They were very anxious to start negotiations, but when Ken and Peter told them what stage we were at in our discussions with the other two studios, the lawyers at Fox laughed and said it was crazy and that they wouldn’t entertain thoughts of a deal even remotely approaching what we were being offered. So, once again the Apes bit the dust!

  Meanwhile, Peter and Fran had gone away for a few days’ break over the Easter holiday.

  We hadn’t had a holiday for years and there’s a nice hotel in Blenheim on the South Island where we thought we’d stay for four days, go on little drives, look around the countryside and relax. As it turned out, the entire Easter holiday went into madness! Miramax, Fox and Universal all now knew what each other was doing and, suddenly, it became an absolute frenzy, with people coming at us from all directions wanting it to be their project that we chose. It was insane! I was constantly changing batteries in the cellphone, which never stopped ringing with calls from studio chiefs, lawyers and agents. It was totally crazy and very, very stressful.

  Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Peter’s lawyer and agent, as well as a number of powerful movie people, were sitting at their telephones trying to resolve issues relating to a film-maker on the other side of the world!

  The first company to break the deal was Universal. There were at least two excellent reasons for them to do so: King Kong was a library project for Universal; any director taking on Kong would have to make it at Universal, which, as far as Peter Jackson was concerned, was convenient. Says Peter Nelson: ‘If there was any place in town that, arguably, had the largest appetite to have more of Peter Jackson in a hurry, it was the studio for whom who he was currently making The Frighteners.’

  Peter Nelson recalls, ‘Universal called us and said, “We’ve got to have Peter’s next movie…we’ll give you your first dollar gross…we’ll give you your final cut…” So we finally had someone ready to go with our prototype deal.’

  Peter and Fran heard the news that Universal were ready to go ahead and on terms that would enable them to begin work on a new project the moment The Frighteners was finished. It didn’t take Harvey Weinstein long
to hear the same news.

  We were driving along and Harvey rang us saying, ‘Listen! The rights for The Hobbit are going to take a long time to get, but Saul has The Lord of the Rings rights. So forget The Hobbit, we’ll do that some other time, and just do The Lord of the Rings, I can get those rights really quick!’ And we said that we’d still want to do The Lord of the Rings as two movies not one. ‘Sure,’ said Harvey. ‘We’ll do it as two films! You can start work on it; I’ll get the rights! But you’re going to do The Lord of the Rings as your next project! We have this deal!’ Harvey was angry, resentful, desperate–all of those things.

  I said we needed a couple of hours to decide and Harvey said that we’d to call him as soon as we’d decided or he’d call us again. So we kept driving and kept talking it over…

  The situation seemed clear: Twentieth Century Fox had by now ruled themselves and Planet of the Apes out of the picture. Universal were ready to sign a deal that meant that Peter could start work on writing and developing King Kong the moment they were back in Wellington. As for Miramax, they hadn’t secured the rights to The Hobbit and whilst they might very well get the rights to The Lord of the Rings, they hadn’t actually got them yet. Arriving in Nelson, Peter rang Ken Kamins and told him that he and Fran had decided to go with Universal and Kong.

  I asked Ken to tell Harvey our decision and Ken said–though he’d probably deny this now!–‘I think Harvey should hear that from you. It’s one thing for an agent to tell Harvey that you’re passing on his project, but you’ve really got to pay him the respect and preserve the relationship by telling him yourself.’

  Ken was being very correct. He is a rare agent, who has a very strict sense of honour, and I did need to discuss this personally with Harvey –but at the time I remember thinking, ‘Oh, thanks, Ken! Thank you very, very much!’ I was hoping that Ken would make the calls, deal with it and leave us to enjoy what was left of our break as best we could. Now I immediately started to get stressed, waiting for this bloody cellphone to ring and what I knew was going to be a very, very bad phone call! I knew that Harvey was already really worked up and I was going to have to break this bad news that was likely to be met by an explosively thunderous reaction! Our Easter holiday had now totally turned to custard!

  Passing the time in ‘a junky, second-hand antique’ store in Nelson, Peter spotted an old wooden propeller from a biplane. As a lover of aviation history, he had long wanted to own a propeller that he could hang on the wall and now here was one that he could buy.

  I bought it, but I had no sort of joy at finding it because I was so tense waiting for the moment when the cellphone in my pocket would ring.

  I thought, ‘Every time I look at this propeller I’m going to remember that I bought it when I was waiting for this bloody phone call from Harvey! It will be the Harvey Weinstein Memorial Propeller! Maybe one day, when this is all over, I’ll laugh about it…’ But right there and then it didn’t feel like it.

  Eventually, the phone rang…

  I broke the news to Harvey. I said, ‘Look, we’re going to do Kong and that’s going to take us a couple of years, which should give you time to sort out the Tolkien rights and then, when we’re through with Kong, we’ll do The Lord of the Rings…’ Harvey was furiously angry; my only memory of his side of the conversation was his just repeating, ‘You don’t want to tell me this…You do not want to be saying this…I am not hearing this…I am not hearing this…’

  As Peter recalls it, the ‘heavy hammered call’ ended as badly as had been anticipated. There were recriminations, accusations of breach of contract, threats of legal action. More angry conversations followed with Peter Nelson and Ken Kamins (‘Harvey was screaming, yelling, threatening; he was furious about being put in this position’) It was Peter who finally brokered a compromise. Come Easter Monday, Peter and Fran were on the ferry crossing the Cook Strait between the North and South islands. As the boat made its way from Picton to Wellington, the cellphone was still ringing…

  The situation had now exploded into a legal nightmare that had pretty much taken any joy away from it at all. I was walking round the decks of this crowded ferry, trying to get cellphone coverage so I could call America. I eventually managed to talk with Ken and his colleagues at the agency and made a suggestion: ‘To create a situation in which everybody can feel good about themselves, why on earth don’t we make a proposition that Miramax and Universal co-invest in both of these projects? Why doesn’t Universal let Harvey come on board as a 50/50 investor in King Kong and why doesn’t Miramax then give Universal a 50/50 share of Rings? Harvey still has to get the rights to The Lord of the Rings but, in the meantime, he would then be involved in our next project, as investor.’

  It was an astute move and one that both companies embraced relatively quickly, on the basis that Universal would take the domestic earnings on King Kong and give Miramax the foreign receipts, while Miramax would take the home American box-office receipts on The Lord of the Rings and give foreign takings to Universal. There was one catch: whilst Harvey Weinstein was ‘thrilled with the idea that he could be involved in Kong’, he was quick to point out that, when The Lord of the Rings went ahead, Universal would be getting two films for his one! Harvey needed another movie for Miramax in order to clinch the deal.

  Harvey Weinstein knew exactly which movie he wanted. In 1993, Universal Pictures were about to start filming a picture called Shakespeare in Love. They had bought Marc Norman’s original script in 1991 and, two years later, were ready to make the film as a vehicle for Julia Roberts. Following on from her Oscar/BAFTA nominated performance in Pretty Woman, Roberts was to play the Elizabethan girl whose fling with the young Will Shakespeare releases him from a nasty case of writer’s block and results in the Bard completing his greatest love story, Romeo and Juliet.

  The film was to be directed by Ed Zwick, whose films included Glory, the American Civil war movie which had so impressed Peter Jackson a few years earlier, and who would later direct such hits as Legends of the Fall, Courage Under Fire and The Last Samurai. The sets had been built at Pinewood Studios in England (at a cost of US$4 million) and the crew were lined up but then Shakespeare in Love ran into problems: Julia Roberts’ first choice for co-star, Daniel Day-Lewis, turned down the role. Then Ralph Fiennes, Colin Firth and Rufus Sewell were all rejected by Roberts who, finally, pulled out of the film altogether. The sets were dismantled, the crew disbanded and Shakespeare in Love descended into what is known in Hollywood as ‘Production Hell’.

  In 1995, Harvey Weinstein bought Shakespeare in Love as part of the Universal-Miramax deal on King Kong and The Lord of the Rings. Three years later, partially re-written by Tom Stoppard, directed by John Madden and starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes, Shakespeare in Love scooped seven Oscars including Best Actress and Best Screenplay.

  Which is how Peter Jackson arrived home in Wellington in April 1996 ready to start work on King Kong; how Shakespeare in Love was rescued from Hell and sent to Oscar Heaven; and how things really work in Hollywood.

  7

  QUEST FOR THE RING

  ‘Drumming upon his chest, Kong began to run at a spraddling speed which ate up the intervening distance…The first bomb landed squarely on his line of advance. As it broke a thick vapour rose and enveloped the beast-god from head to foot…’

  Writing in the 1932 novelisation of the film King Kong, Delos W. Lovelace described the moment on Skull Island when film-maker Carl Denham uses gas-bombs to capture the great ape:

  ‘Kong…struggled blindly on…Both hands rose towards Ann, now almost within arm’s reach. Unable to lift his heavy feet Kong groped, swung in a wide circle and crashed to the sand. Prone, his body still made a figure of incredible bulk in the moonlight…

  ‘Denham squared his shoulders, cocksure and buoyant…“We’ve got the biggest capture in the world! There’s a million in it!…Listen! A few months from now it will be up in lights on Broadway. The spectacle nobody will miss. King Kong! The Eighth
Wonder!”’

  As it happened, however, it was going to take a lot longer than anyone could have imagined for Peter Jackson to put the name of ‘Kong’ up in lights…

  The deal with Universal was finalised and Peter and Fran started work on the script, which on many plot points and character details departed significantly from the Lovelace novel and the original film.

  The action opens in the skies above occupied France in 1917 with a dogfight between a handful of British Sopwith Camel fighter planes and twenty-four ‘gaudily painted’ Fokker tri-planes of Von Richtoffen’s Flying Circus. This opening was clearly inspired by Peter’s lifelong fascination with the early days of air power.

  Jack Driscoll (first mate on the Venture in the 1933 movie) is now a daredevil WWI flying ace, passing the time between spats with the Germans by playing mid-air baseball with his best friend ‘Matt Hamon’, named no doubt for Ken Hammon, Peter’s school friend who shared his passion for Kong and such war movies as The Blue Max. The dogfight would be mirrored at the end of the film when Jack once again takes to the cockpit of a Sopwith Camel in an attempt to ward off the naval planes attacking Kong atop the Empire State Building.

  In the post-war Thirties, Jack is running a lumber business in Sumatra where he meets Ann Darrow, no longer the waif from the streets of depression-wracked New York. In this version, Ann is the daughter of Lord Darrow, a British Museum archaeologist who stumbles across clues suggesting that the pagan mythology of the beast-god, Kong, might have a basis in fact–a discovery which catches the interest of the unscrupulous showman, explorer and film-maker, Carl Denham.