A message thanks to RingerSpyOliver: “….just thought I would let you know that Houghton Mifflin are sending LOTR…
Continue ReadingA message thanks to RingerSpyOliver:
“….just thought I would let you know that Houghton Mifflin are sending LOTR brochures out to English book distributors which preview the latest and upcoming LOTR books (i.e. the essential guide due out in November) and the display stands which come out with them. It even shows pictures from the books – one that includes Gil-Galad and some old shots of the Fellowship and orcs. The brochure is beautifully presented and really a collector’s ‘must.’
While Quickbeam and I were at Mythcon last week we got caught up in the sudden demand for serious journalism about Tolkien and Tolkien fandom. ‘Wired’ magazine was there taking photos for its article on Tolkien fandom, due out soon. Watch out also for Dan Timmons’ video documentary, ‘The Legacy of the Lord of the Rings.’ [More]
Geeks or not, the media are finding Tolkien fans worth documenting, and the amount of interest in this year’s Mythcon was proof of that. Smart people’s magazine ‘Wired’ sent a photographer to catch Tolkien fans doing weird and wacky things, which they didn’t whenever there was a camera around. I talked to the people at ‘Wired’ when I arrived in San Francisco and got the impression that they were doing a lot of work to produce a well-researched article on Tolkien fandom. Look out for it one of their next issues.
Another person doing a more elaborate project on Tolkien fans is Dan Timmons, who filmed a lot of footage at Mythcon. He’s making a documentary on Tolkien and Tolkien fans called “The Legacy of the Lord of the Rings,” using original music, narration, selected readings, illustrations, visual images of the author’s Oxford home, university, and surrounding landscape, and interviews with the world’s foremost Tolkien scholars and experts – some of whom were at MythCon.
Timmons has scored interviews with world-renowned Tolkien scholars like Tom Shippey and Joseph Pearce, who talk about Tolkien’s life and career in the first part of the documentary. The second part seeks to “demonstrate the greatness of LOTR through a discussion of the key motifs and themes, such as the mythic quest, conflict between good and evil, and the religious aura.” Here he calls on writers such as Peter S. Beagle, Joseph Sawyer, Patrick Curry and LOTR screenplay writer Phillipa Boyens.
The third part will look at the contrasting attitudes of the literary elitists who dislike Tolkien’s work, and the Tolkien fans. Quickbeam and I were interviewed for that section while we were at Mythcon, so we’re interested to follow the project and see how it all turns out.
The documentary is still in progress, and Dan mentioned that he would welcome input from Tolkien fans, so if you have any ideas for him, email him on dan.timmons@utoronto.ca
