Check out TBHL and Barlimans for a live chat event with Pete O’Herne and Craig Smith of Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste fame! Check out the TBHL chatroom in Barlimans at 7pm EDT (12 midnight GMT)
Category: Production
Anyone remember Tim Sanders? He was the other NZ producer on LOTR at the beginning of the project. He’d worked with PJ frequently before and was one of the three producers involved in setting up LOTR, but he left suddenly just after filming started. He’s never granted anyone an interview or explained why he left. He may have opted for a more eloquent answer by means of his latest project.
Called ‘The Distant Location,’ the pitch for it goes: “When Hollywood comes to NZ for all the wrong reasons, the locals and Mother Nature exact a hilarious revenge.”
Well, well, well. We’d love to know how it’s release will be timed against the first ‘Rings’ film. Meanwhile, for anyone wanting to read a good comedy on a similar subject, I’d recommend Terry Bisson’s “Voyage to the Red Planet,” which could be subtitled ‘When Hollywood goes to Mars for all the wrong reasons…..”etc. I kept being reminded of the LOTR film project.
Unfortunately, The cool dudes at TBHL have closed shop. I have kept up a relationship with these guys for months (You may have seen our link on their site) and they are really nice. Best of luck on all your future endevours.
The Bastards Have Landed – The Original ‘Ringers’
Just found a great article by way of Joram. It’s titled “Hobbit wanted – but no little people need apply”. by: Mark Burman, for Guartian Unlimited Network
In it Mark talk with PJ himself and asks him several questions, firstly why does he think he can tackle Tolkien’s work where other’s have failed in the past?
“I’m a real believer in trying to push yourself,” (Jackson) says. “And if you’re a film-maker, I don’t think there’s anything more amazing to be involved with than The Lord of the Rings. It’s the holy grail of film-making. It’s a once in a lifetime experience, and if we do it and we can be proud, then we want to retire when it’s all over.”
PJ also talks about shooting all 3 films back to back. And how it has it’s advantages.
“Shooting three separate movies back to back has never been done before,” says Jackson. “But I think it’s unfair to say to an audience, ‘Come to The Fellowship of the Ring and, if it’s successful, we make part two’. That’s not what we’re doing. We are making the entire trilogy, one long film shoot and then we’ll cut them all together. I guess it’s a certain form of madness.”
And when asked about fan sites (who me?) PJ had this to say:
“I do read the websites. People post up opinions about the actors and the story and I sometimes sit there for hours and hours and read the comments. It must be very frustrating to feel your favorite book is going to be filmed and think, ‘How are they going to stuff it up this time?’ “
He also discusses what you folks have been telling me is a big fear of yours, ‘the shrinking thing’
“Well, we’ve thought about that a lot. We still have tests to do but the Hobbits are the principal characters. If you study Tolkien’s descriptions of them, they are really described as small people. Between three and a half to four foot tall and they’re not strange in any other way than these large, hairy feet.
“I know casting authentic little people is the way that some people have thought we’ll go but it just doesn’t fit what Tolkien wrote. So we are casting normal sized actors and using prosthetics, computer tricks and other less complicated trickery to reduce them in size. I certainly don’t want to use puppets or CGI(computer-generated imagery) characters because this is a story about real people.”
For the rest of the article: Click Here
Got some different news from various sorces today:
I was watching the X-Files on FX last night and one
of the commercials was for the new paperback one
volume Lord of the Rings. It’s pretty unusual to have
a TV spot for a book thats been published for a long
time so I thought that it might be part of a campaign for the upcoming movies!
This come from Corona “…And we’ve got another scoop from the field for you today: “I was at an event called the Sword Spectacular Weekend, and one of the guests was supposed to be Bob Anderson..the swordmaster who has done swordwork for Star Wars, The Three Muskateers, The Princess Bride, and most recentlyThe Mask of Zorro. Anyway, he wasn’t able to attend,
because he was hired to ‘Work on a movie in New
Zealand’. Well, I did some asking around (I know the
event staff) and they confirmed through a head nod
(since they couldn’t tell me directly) when I asked if
he was working on The Lord of the Rings…”
I’m asking my spies if this Anderson rumor is true, but if any of you folks out there, who want to confirm this. email me