Ringer Spy Shawna attended the Denver Starland Starfest this past weekend, and sent us a richly-detailed report on Sean Astins talk. [More]
Month: April 2004
Ringer Spy Shawna writes:
Never let it be said that Sean Astin doesn’t go the extra mile for fans. Low on sleep from two days of driving for the Toyota Pro/Celeb race in Long Beach, he came to Denver’s Starfest just for the day, to do a couple of autograph sessions and an afternoon talk.
Here’s what I remember of the talk-quotes where I could manage them from recorded snippets and notes. I didn’t catch it all, I’m afraid.
He came out to wild applause, posed a little, and got some cheers and whistles when he (quite sexily!) took his jacket off. He talked about needing a caffeine hit because he’d just gotten up at 4am to fly in from Long Beach (and later mentioned he was flying back to LA the same day.) Said Denver fans were all very nice and welcoming. He wasn’t wearing shoes, and explained, as he said he told his wife on the phone that afternoon, that he just wanted some freedom, and he was a hobbit anyway! He briefly showed his tattoo, saying it was all over the place anyway, and mentioned his website, which was apparently familiar to a small but healthy contingent.
He first talked about his book about his LOTR filming experience (“There and Back again, an Actor’s Tale,” which is coming out in October), and how that got set up. He said he felt it necessary to write it all down, because people were always asking him about whether it was fun to film, and he said it was like asking someone “so, how were the 70’s for you?” He said he hopes maybe his book will find a place on people’s bookshelves along with all the other LOTR editions and companion volumes, along with Andy’s book. (He also mentioned-I don’t remember if it was an audience question or something previous he was referencing–someone asking him about what it was like to work with a CG character, and he said “I wouldn’t know. I worked with Andy.”)
He talked about the Oscars, and how people say he was robbed of a nom, but he said he always tells people he’s proudest of the ensemble SAG award (and rightly so!)
He talked about upcoming projects: Celebrity Poker on Bravo, and a mother’s day special on 20/20 (or was it Dateline? 😉 ) with his mom. Said the program was emotional, honest, and that he felt “stupefied that I was a part of American cultural life this way.”
He talked about his recent film projects-Slipstream, which he filmed in South Africa last year, and Smile, where he plays a teacher who encourages a student to work with disfigured children in China. He mentioned that he and his family were just in Shanghai last weekend, watching the last bits of filming for that project, and how thrilled he was that people recognized him even over there. He also talked about being disappointed on losing out on the directing job for Fantastic Four, but that he’s very interested in doing a comic book adaptation sometime, now that he’s had the epiphany of what makes them so great, and he said Marvel has assured him that he’ll get a chance to direct something for them soon. He also talked about his work with the Presidents council on service and civic participation, and about volunteerism, and how his current pet cause is literacy, and about how important it is to read to your children. He also said he recently met one of his idols, Jimmy Carter, and that he hoped he might be helping out with one of Carter’s Habitat for Humanity projects.
The first audience question was about the ideals that Sam represented-friendship, loyalty, etc. Some very nice quotes here about that:
“I just love the idea of friendship. Part of what I go into in the book is that now that I’m sort of this-as the actor who portrayed Sam who is arguably sort of the sort of quintessence of the ideal of friendship, now I’m sort of an ambassador for that. So it’s really just a matter of time until I screw up bad enough to not be worthy of that. (pauses) It might have just happened!”
“But no, I love that idea, and I liked sort of affecting it off-camera as well as living it on-camera in character. Just trying to be that friend to Elijah. (pauses) Um.. yeah.. I mean.. It’s not like he needed a mentor or protector he’s a pretty self-sufficient and forward-looking individual and um.. but I just liked the idea of doing it so I did it. Y’know, get him stuff and bring him stuff-at least for the first half of filming. Then he was like “can you bring that over here?”– “no!”
“There’s a lot of different Sams in the book. It’s almost hard to imagine sometimes that it’s the same character. The one who’s so instantly afraid, or bursts into tears, or quivers that he’s going to get turned into something unnatural by Gandalf, that it’s the same guy who picks up Frodo and says ‘I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you.’ (applause) Is that the same character?”
“The ideas about the character that resonated the most with me were those heroic things. Despite the fact that I was getting ever more portly, I still in my heart and in my consciousness, I wanted to believe that I, Sean, was able to play a heroic part, so those were the qualities that I gravitated towards. To the extent that I’m able to manifest or resonate with those ideas in a way that feels authentic to myself and to the filmmaker and to an audience is my great benefit as a human being to be able to enjoy that space. So it was my determination to honor it and to try and not to disappoint.”
He got a question from someone about his experience of directing Angel, and what it was like to come into an already-established team like that. Sean explained how he got the job, and how there was definitely a sense of established history and protocol there, and how it felt to be the new guy on set telling everyone what to do.
Another fan presented him with a gold rabbit statue [Edit: The statue we gave him from the Misty Mountain Smial is the order of the Golden Coney. — Scott McKenzie, Misty Mt. Smial] (complete with backpack full of pots and pans), as a replacement for the Oscar he should’ve gotten. He was delighted, and decided he should give an Oscar speech:
“I’d like to thank the Misty Mountain Smile for acknowledging my work in this film. I really can’t tell you how many times I’ve imagined this.” (lots of laughs)
He told a cute story about how his mom put her Oscar and her statue of Bill and Sam close to each other, hoping the Oscar would bring luck.
He continued with his “Oscar speech”: “I’d like to thank my wife. They always thank their wife. I REALLY understand why they thank their wife. My wife is the most patient person in the history of the planet!”
He then talked about how, if he’d won at the Oscars, he’d have started his acceptance speech with the line “I’m happy to accept my party’s nomination…”
His next question was from someone who asked him what it was like meeting June Lockhart, who was one of his co-stars on the episode of Las Vegas he was on. He talked a little bit about his character on that show– “loveable, but an idiot”-and seemed like he’d had a lot of fun with it. He said he didn’t work with June much, but found her delightful, and mentioned that she rather enjoyed the risque scene she had (she was surrounded by male strippers) He said he always was amused that young people found things like that shocking, as if they’d forgotten where they came from! He said he enjoyed meeting June, and connecting with her on a generation-to-generation of actors level.
His last question was from a woman (with a very shy child who couldn’t quite get the courage to say hello to Sean) who asked about how Sean felt about Tolkien wanting to create a mythological history of England. After admitting (to some shock-apparently some people don’t watch the DVD extras!) that he hadn’t even heard of Tolkien before hearing about the film project (he said blame his college and his parents!) he talked about how he finds it fascinating that the mythology Tolkien created is being re-created in derivative forms, such as the movies, and in things like fan-created works (he mentioned that he collects fanart) and how technology is helping that process along.
He finished his talk by signing a big poster that all the celebs at the con had signed that was to be auctioned off. He decided he’d sign his name with several different pens, apparently how presidents sign bills, and made the fantasy complete by sitting down at the table on the stage to do it, and acting quite Presidential!
I’m sure I’ve missed a few things, so perhaps someone else will report in, but in general, I think it was a great talk. None of the questions were silly, and Sean’s responses were all very well-thought-out. It was nice to see him in a setting where he could go in-depth into his thoughts about something instead of having to come up with a soundbite. It’s a pity there wasn’t more time-there were a lot of people lined up to ask questions who didn’t make it-but overall, it was a great talk. I highly recommend seeing him do one of these live if you can, preferably when he’s just on his own and has plenty of time to ramble.
The third installment of Ring*Con is gearing up for its Halloween ‘release’. Ringer Spy Hiriel allerted us to the first confirmed guests. Back by popular demand are Craig Parker and Mark Ferguson while John Noble and German actor Sandro Kopp (Gildor) will be new to the Ring*Con-experience. Head over to the Ring*Con 2004 official website for more!
Ringer Spy Choice of Lúthien writes: Here’s a very detailed report of a fabulous presentation by Barrie Osborne. While it was all interesting, I think the character farewell montages information may be of particular interest to some.
I attended the Session with Barrie Osborne at the Riverview Theater in Minneapolis and it was a fantastic night. Despite having been busy all day, Barrie was wonderful and extremely gracious. His talk focused on some of the major challenges of the project and how they were “solved”.
1) The challenge of bringing a 1200 page novel to the screen. Barrie mentioned that this was both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing since there was so much detail there in the books already to guide the filmmakers. The curse was of course the length. He cited the “Council of Elrond” chapter as an example and also talked about how they had to make dramatic liberties.
Barrie also discussed the challenge of LOTR being a fantasy and how they wanted to connect with the audience and “make it real”. An important part of this was making the characters 3 dimensional. For example Gandalf was a wizard, but a wizard who smokes, likes to drink and loves life. Aragorn is aware of how his ancestors failed and fears he could never amount to anything. And for Boromir, important backstory was added to show how he was motivated by the love of his kingdom and his father. He makes a mistake and sacrifices his life to redeem himself.
Barrie also cited how important leadership was and that Viggo and Ian McKellan supplied this to the younger actors. Apparently when Viggo went back to LA for Christmas break, he got permission to take his sword back with him so he could practice! Viggo’s last minute casting was also brought up and Barrie said that Stuart was actually the first one to realize that he was too young to play Aragorn.
2) The challenge of scale. Different techniques were discussed such as forced perspective, motion capture and scale doubles. He talked about the scene in Bag End between Gandalf and Bilbo as one example, and mentioned that Gandalf‘s hat in that scene is CG!
3) The challenge of the long journey. It was a long journey both in terms of the story and of the shooting. Barrie talked about some of the techniques used to show the passage of time in the movies: music, set designs, costumes, digital coloring and even sound design. One scene discussed in particular was the opening of ROTK. Digital coloring had to be used to turn the lake from brown (it had been raining) to blue and to add leaves to the trees (since that scene was filmed in the fall.
4) The challenge of the epic battles. Discussion on this topic was centered around MASSIVE – how it was developed, how it works and how it was used. One thing I did not know was that the two different armies are each assigned a different pitch in the program. There were some very interesting clips shown detailing how a scene was composited using MASSIVE, the different stages in the process. The main scene used was the Rohirrim charging into the orc army outside Minas Tirith.
5) The challenge of CG creatures. Gollum was the main creature discussed. Clips similar to the previous ones were shown, detailed how Andy’s performance was turned into the Gollum we see. There were also some comparison shots of Andy & Gollum from ROTK. Barrie said that Fran and Andy were the heart and soul of Gollum.
6) The challenge of the infrastructure in NZ. There was very limited space at WETA, they had to dub almost all the sound and had to import most of the equipment. Barrie cited the expansion of WETA-at one point during ROTK production there were 2,500 computers being used but 1,000 more were needed and within two weeks! The sattelite system they ended up using in order to meet the challenges associated with filming at rural locations.
He summarized by saying these challenges were met by a clear vision, an understanding of the financial and technical resources, an early recognition of the unknown, open communication and collaboration, a willingness to adjust plans to fit reality and the courage to go on when things got dark and difficult.
Barrie saved the best for last. He said how each actor had a farewell clip made for them on their last day of shooting (the ones we’ve heard so much about) and then proceed to show us the clips for Legolas and Elrond! The clips were fantastic. Each one was a montage of character moments and some bloopers set to several different song clips.
For Legolas: I forget the first song but things really picked up when “Hungry Eyes” started. This of course highlighted many of Legolas‘ looks, carefully chosen to fit the lyrics. The final bit was to “Poison Arrow” (or something like that) and showcased his archery.
For Elrond: The only song I remember was “I will Surive”. Some footage from the prologue battle that didn’t make the cut was shown (some good stuff), a scene in Rivendell I didn’t recognize and clips from all three movies. The second half was titled “Agent Elrond“. A couple of bloopers from a scene where Hugo couldn’t get the dialogue right and kept swearing. Also when he threw back his hood in ROTK (to give Anduril to Aragorn), he was wearing the Agent Smith sunglasses. And from that same scene when Viggo drew the sword he clipped Hugo’s nose. Both of them were way too funny. Barrie wouldn’t show more, saying that they might be showing up on DVD in a few years!
During the Q & A part someone asked him about his most memorable experience. Barrie described 2: the camping out to get the sunset on film that we hear about on the TT EE.
The other one was after they had finished some filming near Nelson and had to go to Queenstown. Apparently PJ decided to drive (instead of flying) and so Andrew Lesnie decided to go with him. At that point Barrie figured he better go with both of them. They left late afternoon/early evening after filming and stopped somewhere for the night. The next morning it was discovered they were almost out of gas. PJ assured them it wasn’t a problem.they would pass lots of farms along the way where they could get a farmer to fill the car up. But as they drove there were no farms so they had to turn around to where they had been staying to the gas station. It was now 6am and the station didn’t open until 8am. PJ mentioned that the owner probably lived in the house behind the station, so why didn’t they go wake them up? As the producer, Barrie was given this task. He knocked on the door and when the owner answered, offered him 100 dollars to fill up the tank. Apparently John Rhys Davies was following behind them and when he stopped at the same gas station later heard a story about some “crazy people”.
Sean Bean and Orlando were also driving. They stopped on the way to do some antique shopping at the request of Orlando. It was raining extremely hard and they ran into a landslide so they had to turn around and go back. But then they ran into another landslide. They ended up staying and some random house for the night and then they had to convince Sean to fly out on a helicopter the next day since he was needed.
When it comes to film-making New Zealand is well and truly on the map but it will take some serious petitioning before it makes it onto the globe – at Universal Studios. When tourists arrive from all over the world the first thing they see at the Universal Studios in Los Angeles is a huge replica of the world. The globe is very impressive but has one problem – New Zealand is missing and despite pleas from an expat Kiwi, Universal appears to have no plans to put it there. [More]
Kiwi actors have been left out of New Zealand’s film-making bonanza, with officials flouting immigration laws to entice big-budget movie makers. Local actors, already annoyed they were sidelined for roles in The Lord of the Rings after the government waived immigration rules, are upset they are still being ignored. [More]