Did I say things couldn’t get better? Nothing can compare to some of yesterday’s events, but this day was AMAZING.
Day Three began with the New Line Lord of the Rings movie preview. TORN Greenbooks staffer Ostadan came in for the show! Click here to read the summary: [More]
All that great footage was immediately followed by Quickbeam and me running into Elijah Wood! The pictures you see on the site are from that encounter. He took photos with us, and also signed both of our books. Elijah was swamped with fans and he gladly posed for pictures, shook hands, and chatted for a few minutes. Then he headed off to one of the presentations along with his friends. [More]
It was neat meeting Elijah like that! He said he was having a great time at the convention, and as you have heard from other fans, he was spotted all over. Elijah was very nice and now that I am starting to relate his voice to that of Frodo Baggins, it was a special treat.
After the New Line presentation Quickbeam and I headed to the Exhibition Hall. We decided to split up and meet later at the Sideshow/WETA booth. I made the rendezvous, but Quickbeam was detained. He later attended Decipher’s volunteer dinner, but I was swept along in the WETA winds for a few hours.
We jumped into a couple cabs and before I knew what happened I found myself hanging out with Elijah! We were alone together for about fifteen minutes and talked about LOTR and every day things too. TORN fans will be excited to know that he is a site visitor, and his mom is a site regular (Hullo Elijah’s Mom!).
Eventually the group was ready and we six walked to dinner, where our party’s numbers grew substantially. This dinner was the high point of my trip. I sat in between to two gentlemen from WETA and across the table from Elijah! It was an amazing two hours and it felt like hanging out with old friends. The guys I spent time with from WETA were the absolute best, and they shared some classic stories from the LOTR production. It’s hard to imagine that five years ago this team rolled up their sleeves (ok they probably were wearing t-shirts) and got their hands dirty with the project, and for those of you who feel like this production of The Lord of the Rings looks right, feels right, and IS right, WETA is the place that made it happen.
The dinner party ended up signing one of the tablecloths. It was incredible to watch some of the artists from WETA and Sideshow just whip out things like Gandalf, the LOTR film logo, a Moria Orc, Mt. Doom, and of course, Rings. Quickbeam made it over after his dinner, and they invited us to sign as well. Unfortunately I had a couple glasses of wine in me and my signature turned out a little large. Let’s just say that TORN is nicely represented on this tablecloth, and I’ll be forever embarrassed! Fool of a Took indeed!
So ended our third day at Comic-Con. Day Four coming soon!
Sir Ian McKellen has updated his mailbag section of his site,