megan writes:

Hi from Sydney Australia!!

Richard Taylor was a suprise last minute special guest at the Supanova Pop Culture expo this past weekend in Sydney. He spent the entire day at the Weta Workshop booth, just to meet people, shake their hands, and chat about lord of the rings, as well as other WETA projects, the one that recieved the most comment being the Evangelion live action movie, which Richard says is still seeking finance. He brought with him hobbit feet and ears, a Rohan helmet with real chainmail, warg rider costume with the plastic chainmail, and a gondorian breastplate. It was so delightful to see how down to earth he is, and seemed to just enjoy chatting to people! Richard also gave a 45 minute talk and specially mentioned the “fantastic” onering.net oscar party!

Other lord of the rings guest was John Noble, who was also a last minute standin for John-Rhys Davies, who had to withdraw due to filming commitments. John was signing all day, and gave a highly amusing talk about his experiences shooting the films, as well as commented on some extra scenes that are in the extended edition which hes seen and recorded commentary for. (though he didnt give away in depth things). The houses of healing are definitly in, and a scene which involved him falling down a step which resulted in a very bruised rear end from Peter Jackson’s many takes of “do it again”. He also quite cleverly looked at the role of Denathor in relation to King Lear, which as a Shakespeare nut really made me look again at his performance and how the character was established, and yes, a very good observation.

Stephen Ure was also present, however his talk was on Sunday afternoon which i wasn’t able to attend. Maybe you’ll get another spy report along!

Hope this helps. Didn’t know you guys quite want to write! I’ll get a couple of pictures developed in the next couple of days if you’re interested.

Keep up the great work!!