by Brian Sibley
In terms of artistry, craftsmanship, planning and organisation, The Lord of the Rings was to prove, in every aspect of its visualisation and realisation, one of the most challenging productions in movie history.
A choice also needed to be made about the music for the film. When creating the Animatic from the storyboard, various pieces of music had been carefully selected in order to enhance the telling of the story. Several of the films from which the temporary music track was constructed had been scored by one composer – Howard Shore.
Even though films like Silence of the Lambs, Crash, Naked Lunch and The Fly seemed unlikely sources for music to accompany The Lord of the Rings, they worked incredibly well. Some of the more obvious choices, such as James Horner’s score for Braveheart, seemed predictable and clichéd whereas once you added Howard’s music to our pictures, they immediately became atmospheric, dark and evocative.
We eventually decided to call him up and he was really nice and warmed to our project.
‘We talked at length,’ Howard remembers, ‘about music and film-making in general and, finally, they asked if I was interested – and, of course, I was!
It sounds mercenary but we were looking for a composer who would give us a bit more than usual. The normal film industry arrangement is that you engage a composer, talk about the film and they then don’t start working till they get a cut of the movie. You pay them a fee for about six weeks and some composers do as many as four or five scores a year. We wanted to find the right person – somebody who was willing to commit to the project for a significant period of time – and Howard turned out to be perfect. He devoted himself to it slavishly and apart from Panic Room and Spider, which he scored for friends David Fincher and David Cronenberg, he worked virtually full time on The Lord of the Rings for three years. Unbelievable. He was as obsessed as we were!
Howard recalls, ‘I went down and visited Edoras, Rivendell and Lothlorien, saw some digital animation being done. It was obviously going to be a challenging project but for me it was irresistible: I could see that Middle-earth would be a wonderful world in which to work.’
An overriding key decision that had yet to be made was the appointment of a producer. Peter had wanted Marty Katz to continue with the project: he was hugely experienced and, during the difficult passage from Miramax to New Line, he had shown himself to be a loyal advocate of the project. Whilst wanting to be involved with a film that he had come to love, Marty had a number of personal family considerations that eventually made the prospect of being away from home on the other side of the world for five years an impossible option.
New Line approached Barrie M. Osborne who had worked with Francis Ford Coppola on The Cotton Club and had been a producer on the John Travolta/Nicholas Cage thriller Face/Off. Marty Katz had known Barrie from his days at the Disney studio when he had acted as executive producer on Dick Tracy: ‘Barrie Osborne had been my Senior Vice President of Production at Disney for several years and I really respected his abilities. I was thrilled when he committed to The Lord of the Rings, because I felt he was very talented and would be a great ally to Peter and Fran. Barrie loved working out of the country and particularly in New Zealand, so it was a winning combination.’
At the time, Barrie was in Sydney, Australia, completing his work as executive producer on the 1999 hit The Matrix, featuring the future ‘Elrond’, Hugo Weaving, as Agent Smith.
Barrie recalls his first visit to the workshop and studios and being ‘overwhelmed by the quality of the production.’ He also has vivid memories of his first encounter with Peter at The Chocolate Fish:
‘It was a beautiful, bright sunny Sunday in January, and I had breakfast with Peter and Fran. Peter, of course, was in his uniform of shorts and bare feet, and when we’d finished breakfast he said that he was going to go into town to see Nick Moran in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, who was being considered as a possible hobbit – Merry or Pippin, I think – and did I want to go? So we rode down to the Paramount Theatre, where the film was showing, Pete parked the car, walked down the street in his bare feet and into the cinema where everybody knew him: the people at the ticket office and the conces-sionaire…It felt very, very comfortable. Within the space of that short experience, I sized Pete up as being well-grounded, friendly, laid-back and with a sense of humour. It seemed to me that if you had someone with that kind of a personality as a partner then you’d be able to get through such a big, difficult, daunting production and, on the strength of that meeting, I committed to producing the movie, and Pete committed to my doing so.’
Looking back on Barrie Osborne’s contribution to The Lord of the Rings five years after that first meeting, Peter reflected:
Barrie was to prove an absolutely rock-solid power, relieving us of huge amounts of pressure. Simply put, Barrie took on the part of the job that I’d have been terrible at: dealing with the studio’s anxieties and grievances and allowing us to make our film. He understood that we like to knuckle down and concentrate on the creation of the film and his role – which he embraced superbly – was to enable that to happen.
Whatever the external problems – and there were to be some – it would still turn out to be one of the most straightforward shoots because Barrie would always ensure that I had everything I needed and he bore the brunt and took the grief when it came. He was the glue that held the production together, somebody who had the respect of everyone he worked with – both film-makers and studio.
In addition to Nick Moran, a great deal of thought was going into the question of casting, and Peter and Fran flew to Los Angeles and London to meet with potential actors and see them read.
Today, except for anyone who has been living on the dark side of the moon, the cast of The Lord of the Rings trilogy are internationally known and, for the majority of cinemagoers, are now inseparably associated with the roles they played. Just as for several generations of movie fans Clark Gable is Rhett Butler, Julie Andrews Mary Poppins, and Alec Guinness Obi-Wan Kenobi, so Ian McKellen now is Gandalf, Elijah Woods is Frodo, and Viggo Mortensen and Liv Tyler are Aragorn and Arwen.
Similarly, most Rings fans have heard the stories of how the various actors acquired the roles they played: how Elijah, anxious to be considered for the part of Frodo Baggins, donned a hobbit-style costume and shot an audition videotape in a woodland setting in the Hollywood Hills, performing dialogue from the books; how Sir Ian Holm was cast as Bilbo, partly as a result of Peter Jackson having heard his portrayal of Frodo in the BBC’s classic radio dramatisation of the book; how Christopher Lee auditioned for Gandalf and was offered Saruman, while Orlando Bloom tried out for Faramir and was given Legolas, and Dominic Monaghan went up for the part of Frodo and was cast as Merry.
Sir Ian McKellen recalls meeting with Peter and Fran in London: ‘They visited me at my house and showed me some designs. Peter said that he was concerned that everything on screen should be real: it would not be a stylised production, but illustrative and that the acting had to fit in with that. He was adamant that he wasn’t going to interfere with J.R.R. Tolkien and that the film wouldn’t be the stuff of fairytale or have anything of pantomime about it; above all, the wizards had to be believable people. The image he wanted for Gandalf was very clear in his mind and was inspired by the illustrations of John Howe. Peter seemed convinced that I could act it and hoped to be convinced by the make-up department that I could also look like
Sir Ian Holm and Sir Ian McKellen with Bob Shaye.
their Gandalf. What convinced me to take the part was the enthusiasm of the director, a sense that the project was worth doing – and was not a “Hollywood” movie – and the chance to play an icon of the twentieth century!’
The decision to cast Ian brought with it certain problems as filming approached, since the actor was also committed to X-Men, the schedule of which was being impacted by the fact that Dougray Scott – who at the time was slated to play Wolverine, a role which later went to Hugh Jackman – was stuck in an overrunning shoot
for Mission Impossible 2.
‘We re-jigged our entire schedule,’ recalls Mark Ordesky, ‘in order to try to push Gandalf as far along into the shoot as possible. Even so, it eventually got to the point where we weren’t sure that Ian would be able to show up on the day he was supposed to start work on set. Hold-ups on MI2 and, as a consequence, X-Men continued and I remember someone asking the question, “But what happens if there’s another delay?” We all looked at one another and started doing the sums! Some insane number like a million dollars a day was thrown out as being the negative impact of Ian not being able to arrive on the right day. It was a complete nail-biter and we actually looked into the possibility of getting an insurance policy in case Ian couldn’t get away from X-Men on schedule.’
In the event, Ian arrived in Wellington in time to shoot his first scenes in Hobbiton, although by that time the character had already appeared in a shot of the Fellowship trekking across country with Gandalf’s double, Michael Ellsworth, in the role. By a bizarre coincidence, it transpired that Michael had worked in repertory theatre in England with Ian McKellen, some thirty years earlier!
Despite the anxieties over timing, Peter has no regrets about the casting for Gandalf and as for the question: ‘What would the wizard have been like if he had been played by Mr Connery…?’
Ian McKellen has defined that role so much that I can’t quite imagine anyone else being as effective in the part. What I found interesting was what Ian McKellen did with the role because he is basically a chameleon with the ability to get under the skin of a character, to cease to exist as Ian McKellen and, instead, to become Gandalf.
In 2005, six years after turning down the role, Sean Connery talked about his decision to the New Zealand Herald: ‘Yeah, well, I never understood it. I read the book. I read the script. I saw the movie. I still don’t understand it…I would be interested in doing something that I didn’t fully understand, but not for eighteen months.’
As it transpired, I think that we were lucky to end up with an entire cast of actors who embodied their roles and bring the characters in the books to life without ever dominating the movie.
There was, however, a time when any number of actors might have been cast in The Lord of the Rings.
The studio occasionally had strong opinions about casting, there were certain actors they wouldn’t even entertain the thought of being in the film and there were names that we weren’t even allowed to have read for a part. For example, Richard Harris had been one of our early thoughts for Gandalf, but we were told: ‘Richard Harris will not be in this movie.’
Billy Connolly was talked about as a possible Gimli – and, had he been cast, would have been by far the tallest dwarf on Middle-earth – while the agents for Richard (Rocky Horror Show) O’Brien declined the role of Wormtongue, believing the film to be a potential disaster.
Two names were, at various times, in the offing for the role of Boromir: Bruce Willis, allegedly a fan of The Lord of the Rings, was mentioned but never approached; while Liam Neeson was sent the script to read but passed. New Line initially wanted Stephen Dorff to play Faramir but there were then later conversations with Ethan Hawke about the role and, simultaneous, discussions with Uma Thurman (then married to Hawke), about playing Éowyn.
Ethan was a huge fan of the books and was very keen to be involved. Uma was less sure and rightly so, because we were revising how we saw Éowyn’s character literally as we went. In the end, Ethan let it go – with some reluctance – and since, at that point, there was no word from the studio about whom we should talk to next, we went our own way and cast David Wenham.
That dealt with Faramir; Arwen was another, altogether trickier, matter. Viewing the eighteenth-century romp, Plunkett & Macleane, Peter and Fran began wondering whether Liv Tyler might be their Arwen.
We were trying to think of someone who was very ethereal and other-worldly to play the role and while Liv didn’t have much to do in that film we liked what she did with it. We mentioned the idea to New Line and they got very excited and suddenly, from being an idea, it became very important to have Liv Tyler in the film! The Sean Connery idea had failed to happen and they were still worried about having ‘star names’ on the posters; so, when Liv Tyler’s name came up, they felt that it would go some way towards putting a name in there that would appeal to some of their foreign markets.
Whoever was to be cast, the role had proved – and, for some time, would go on being – a challenge to the writers.
We were feeling very vulnerable because there was a big unknown about how much or how little you had to do with Arwen. We were going into three movies that didn’t have a really strong female role or a significant romantic theme until Éowyn appears – which is not until the second film.
We weren’t sure whether we had to push Arwen into a stronger role or whether we could get away with her being as relatively minor as she is in the books and therefore not have a love story. That set us wondering about whether or not the films might then be seen as a male-driven story with no appeal to female moviegoers. The alternative approach was also anxious-making, because anything we did with Arwen’s character would have to be a departure from what Tolkien wrote. It was a thorny situation and one about which we were very uncertain what to do…
Part of the argument had to do with the relationship between Aragorn and Arwen and the nature of Aragorn’s character as the ‘king in waiting’. ‘The biggest challenge,’ says Fran, ‘is that he is a lead character and has to engage with the audience on a psychological level in some way. You have to connect and identify with him and have a degree of hope that he will achieve what his story demands that he will become. Yet in the books he is an icon, a warrior from a saga and we felt that, in terms of a movie character, he lacked emotional and psychological depth.’
I wanted him to be more of a hero and we had the added problem of not just having to deal with a character’s journey through one film but across three movies. We had to make his character development work over a long time span, so we decided that Aragorn should be more of a ‘reluctant hero’. In the book he carries the broken sword around with him and seems to be waiting for the moment when he is finally to become king – a bit like Prince Charles, being heir to the throne without having much to do!
In our films Aragorn doesn’t really want to be king, he knows it’s his destiny but it’s not one that he particularly embraces and we felt that worked quite well because we were taking Tolkien’s ingredients but were mixing them up to produce a slightly differently flavoured cake! So, whilst our Aragorn was raised by the Elves at Rivendell, as per the book, we felt that the end result of that might be that he would feel a little alienated from the human race and would admire the Elves a lot more than his fellow men. The idea, therefore, of becoming a leader of what is, basically, a flawed race really doesn’t interest him that much, even though he understands it as being his inheritance.
In fact, our Aragorn is not sure whether men are even worthy of inheriting Middle-earth, he would much rather the Elves stayed and ran the place; but, since they’re not going to, he comes to see that the only salvation for Middle-earth is for men to seize control and, at that point, he realises that he must do what he has been destined to do and takes control.
Like Elijah Wood, Vin Diesel – at the time a virtually unknown actor – produced and submitted his own audition tape for the role of Aragorn: another fan of the book, he gave what Peter describes as ‘a very compelling’ performance but one which, ultimately did not ‘feel like Aragorn’. New Line mentioned the name of Brad Pitt, but, in the event, the role of Aragorn went to Irish actor Stuart Townsend who had appeared in a couple of successful pictures including a drama based on the Northern Ireland troubles, Resurrection Man, and the romantic comedy, Shooting Fish. It was to be a piece of casting that would result in agonising difficulties that would eventually burden the first few weeks of filming.
We liked Stuart as an actor and as a person; we were drawn to him by his loo
ks and his energy, by the fact that he had a gentle, slightly mystical side to him and, since he was a fan of The Lord of the Rings, his initial enthusiasm for the project.
People at New Line, however, were convinced that we were wrong and that Stuart was wrong for the part. As a result, I became increasingly determined that I wasn’t going to let the studio dictate to me; after all, I argued, it was essential for the film-maker to have control over casting. Even Fran and Philippa were probably not as cast-iron certain as I was but, having got the bit between my teeth, I was not letting go without a struggle.
To be honest, we knew that Stuart was too young for the role – by at least ten years – but we thought that it would give us an interesting take on the character and that we could figure out ways in which to play him older.
The studio insisted that Peter shoot a screen test on film – not video, but 35mm film – with full make-up and wardrobe. Stuart flew to New Zealand and rehearsed various Aragorn scenes: rallying the troops on the ramparts at Helm’s Deep; in conversation with Éowyn; confronting the King of the Dead and one of the character’s earliest appearances in the story when, as Strider, he talks to the hobbits in The Prancing Pony.
Pieces of set were constructed, local actors were engaged to play opposite Stuart and a film-crew was put together with Andrew Lesnie as Director of Photography – the first time he and Peter worked together on set. Stuart was kitted out in a generic costume and various experimentations were carried out to make him look older: adding stipple make-up around the eyes and grey streaks in his hair.
