News for Jul. 07, 2003

Caffeine lover saves favoured place

7/07/03, 3:05 pm EST - Xoanon

The future of the third Lord of the Rings movie might have been saved by the heroic efforts of a caffeine crazy art director. The thought of missing out on his daily grind drove Lord of the Rings art designer Ben Hawker to risk life, limb - and facial hair - to tackle a fire threatening his favourite cafe, Eva Dixon's Place, yesterday. "I'll be damned if I'm going to miss out on a coffee, mate," he said. The Weta Workshop employee was walking past the cafe in the Wellington suburb of Miramar yesterday afternoon when he noticed smoke billowing out of a room above the cafe, a favourite haunt for cast and crew working on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. [more]