Ringer Spy Armel was so kind to translate this article from ‘Les nouvel obs’ a french magazine. The mag recently interviewed John Howe, and they asked him about the LOTR movies, Tolkien Mania and more about a member of the Tolkien family actually having a role in the films?!
Tolkien-mania, by Dominique Gaulme
In the beginning was a nice scholar, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. He was teaching philology in Oxford university and wrote Bilbo the Hobbit, a book that Rayner, son of Stanley Unwin, an English publisher, liked a lot. His dad gave him a shilling and never regretted it since it was an absolute hit. Unwin asked for a sequel and he finally got it more than 15 years later, in 1954 and 1955, because Tolkien had made up his mind to create a whole universe. The Lord of The Ring became a myth as soon as it came out and the Tolkiens settled in France to escape from too much fame. Even today, Christopher, his son, has to take an alias when travelling to Great Britain.
Stanley Unwin guessed that the movie industry would love LoTR and decided with Tolkien to give it up for big money or glory. At the end of 1957, first offers : three US businessmen want to make a cartoon. The fact they murder the names, calling Boromir, “Borimor”, that they want everybody to travel on eagle back, that the lembas turn out to be a kind of astronaut food, is ominous and the negotiations stop abruptly. But in the 70’s, the taxes rise too high and Tolkien has to sell a rights portfolio to Saul Zaentz, an American producer. In the portfolio, the movie rights.
That is why Tolkien’s heirs, and particularly Christopher, can object to anything but the films. They can’t prevent Alan Lee and John Howe, both conceptual artists for Peter Jackson, from illustrating the famous Tolkien Calendars till 2005, but as to the film, no way ! Christopher hates the very idea whereas one of the grand-sons flew to New Zealand to play a bit-part.
At first, John Boorman is asked to make the movie even if nothing was really possible before the digital special effects. With $3 millions, he tries to work on the script, to make the story shorter, but he fails and shoots Excalibur instead. They pass the buck to Ralph Bakshi who had made Fritz the Cat, the first X-rated cartoon. In 1978, LoTR, the toon, is released. Quite predicably, hollywood declares it a financial flop and the Tolkien addicts feel sick and betrayed. Moreover, Bakshi used rotoscoping, a real shame. Everybody forgets about LoTR for years, till Peter Jackson, who had helped Miramax, is proposed to make it “We are about to lose the rights, don’t you want to have a try ?”. He plans two films of 2 1/2 hours. One year and $12 millions later, Miramax gives up. Okay for one 3hour film and we’ll cut here and there. John Howe tells “They had already called for spin doctors to simplify the plot : “All these folks and coutries are much too complicated. Let’s say that Gondor and Rohan are the same and that Sarüman is a kind of Darth Vader. It was becoming Dungeons and Dragons, a real trash ! Miramax said to Peter “If you find someone else to shoot the films and $12 millions within three weeks, it is fine with us.” Fortunately, Pete found NewLine because they had begun to pack our sets for other projects.”
Three years later, the film is expected by millions of fans all around the world. The trailer on internet was watched by more people than Star Wars: Episode One. As for Episode Two, the secret is deep. We know the code name : Jamboree. We heard the working atmosphere was juvenile, a gang of old kids playing giants and hobbits. It seems the book defended itself quite well. Every attempt to alter characters turned out to be a mistake. For instance, the script writers had decided that Arwen, a part played by Liv Tyler, Aerosmith singer Steve Tyler’s daughter, was some kind of tough cookie, riding horses and fighting like a man to save her boy-friend Aragorn, a real he-man, not a slipper-footed dwarf. But Liv felt akward about it, even if it is the way women are shown today in the movies, and little by little came back to the real Arwen as depicted by Tolkien. Christopher Lee who plays Sarüman knows the books by heart and had been dreaming to have something to do with it since he read it.
Another one had dreamt : Sean Connery was looking forward to playing Gandalf. But Jackson chose the less conspicuous Ian McKellen. Sean never set a foot in New Zealand but everybody saw him there. Once a guy called to speak about “you know who”. He had spent his afternoon at a cricket match side by side with a man he was sure to be Sean Connery. He had asked semi-naive questions such as “Are you from New Zealand ?” On hearing a “yes”, he had thought it a stratage and wanted to be the actor’s professional guide during the shooting period. When fiction and fantasm mix together.
The second article :
A Passion for the Middle-Ages by Dominique Gaulme
John Howe opens his door, a little dishevelled and shortsighted, looking like Gandalf’s younger brother, his Gandalf, the one everybody knows. He speaks very good French with a slight Canadian accent -he was born in Vancouver-, plus the special Helvetic intonation since he has been living in Switzerland since he left the Ecole des Arts Déco in Strasbourg.
He just cannot believe someone came from Paris to meet him, moreover a journalist. Here is Howe’s paradox : quite famous as an illustrator, he and Alan Lee, his alter ego, are the conceptual artists of Lord of The Rings, the movies by Peter Jackson, but the public at large doesn’t know him. He feels even his job is not aknowledged. “When I am asked what is my profession, nobody understands. They think comic-strip or something like that. Sometimes I wonder wether I exist !”
John Howe does exist in his own universe, with bluish skyline, misty contours and haze he likes especially “because that is easier. It is so much more difficult when you have to draw everything”. Is he lazy ? Certainly not, he rarely leaves his working table and his inks because Tolkien is only a part of his work. We are expecting La Ville Abandonnée (The Deserted Town) with Claude Clément, and another book picturing the Haut-Konigsbourg fortress in Alsace. But, true enough, he doesn’t care for sandy beaches and palm-trees, he prefers green, moist places where to find mosses and lichens, where the impressive roots of his trees look like Art Nouveau wrought iron, where the cliffs turn into castles, where the willows never weep “I hate those trees, I cannot draw them!”. He loved New Zealand nature “the trees look normal but, in fact, when you examine them, they are bizarre. It is exactly what we needed for Middle-Earth.” Although he hates everything clean and modern, he sometimes illustrates science-fiction, but in his own way with medieval touches. As to the women, even if he admires Frazetta’s sexy heroins, he prefers scaly monsters springing out of the waves and when he has to draw a lady, he often asks his wife, Fataneh, to do it. In fact, we envy John Howe, he gave up none of his dreams and he gets money with them.
So, don’t ask him to change anything : his life turned upside down when he first came to Strasbourg. He would only know trappers’log-cabins and he discovered the sandstone laces of one of the most beautiful gothic cathedral in Europe. An actual cultural revolution which led him to make a book where gargoyles are real dragons. Since that day, John Howe is convinced the most perfect period of European history took place in the XVth century and more precesely during its last thirty years. “Everything is beautiful, the shoes, the socks, the castles, the caldrons, the lanterns, the windows. eveything but plague and poverty “.
He even made himself a nice rocking backed bench. Among the things that irritate him, the widespread commonplaces about the Middle-Ages : people were much shorter than today, they didn’t know how to make left and right shoes. “They were too busy building cathedrals, I guess!” When he has a little time, John Howe publishes a fanzine for XVth century lovers. Dragon is a mine of informations about lanterns, swords, measures, machicolations. So when it came to details during the shooting of Lord of the Rings, the team saw clearly it wasn’t going to be easy. He was adamant about Aragorn’s sword, it wasn’t to be molded in plastic like Conan the Barbarian’s ! He and Alan Lee took also a very special special care not to mix with Tolkien’s universe, ninjas, Bruce Lee, kickboxing and samurai. In fact, every two years, John Howe and his friends organize real medieval fights in armours in Haut-Konigsbourg castle in Alsace, so there is no way of cheating !
28 Days (2000) Psycho (1998) UK Thin Red Line, The (1998) UK Perfect Murder, A (1998) UK Portrait of a Lady, The (1996) Passion of Darkly Noon, The (1995) Prophecy, The (1995) Young Guns II (1990) Witness (1985)
Liv Tyler (Arwen)
Dr. T and the Women (2000) Cookie’s Fortune (1999) UK Plunkett & Macleane (1999) UK Can’t Hardly Wait (1998) UK
Ian Holm (Bilbo)
Bless the Child (2000) Last of the Blonde Bombshells, The (2000) (TV) eXistenZ (1999) UK Alice Through the Looking Glass (1999) (TV) Simon Magus (1999/I) UK Fifth Element, The (1997) UK Hamlet (1990) UK Brazil (1985) UK Return of the Soldier, The (1982) Chariots of Fire (1981) S.O.S. Titanic (1979) (TV) Juggernaut (1974) Severed Head, A (1971) UK Bofors Gun, The (1968) UK Fixer, The (1968) UK
Sean Bean (Boromir)
Black Beauty (1994) UK
Marton Csokas (Celeborn)
Halifax f.p: Swimming with Sharks (1999) (TV)
Hugo Weaving (Elrond)
Matrix, The (1999) UK Interview, The (1998) Babe: Pig in the City (1998) UK Babe (1995) UK Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The (1994)
Miranda Otto (Eowyn)
What Lies Beneath (2000) Jack Bull, The (1999) (TV) UK Thin Red Line, The (1998) UK
Elijah Wood (Frodo)
Bumblebee Flies Anyway, The (2000) Faculty, The (1998) UK Flipper (1996) Good Son, The (1993) Forever Young (1992) UK Paradise (1991) Avalon (1990) UK Internal Affairs (1990)
Cate Blanchett (Galadriel)
Ideal Husband, An (1999) UK Pushing Tin (1999) UK Thank God He Met Lizzie (1997) UK
Ian McKellen (Gandalf)
Apt Pupil (1998) UK Restoration (1995) I’ll Do Anything (1994) Scandal (1989) Plenty (1985) UK Touch of Love, A (1969) UK
Au Pair (1999) (TV) Secret of the Andes (1998) UK Great White Hype, The (1996) UK Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1996) (V) Cyborg Cop (1994) Sunset Grill (1993) Perry Mason: The Case of the Fatal Framing (1992) (TV) Nairobi Affair (1984) (TV) UK Victor/Victoria (1982)
Sweet Talker (1991) Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
Sean Astin (Sam)
Kimberly (1999) Bulworth (1998) Long Way Home, The (1997) UK Safe Passage (1994) UK Where the Day Takes You (1992) Encino Man (1992) UK Memphis Belle (1990) UK War of the Roses, The (1989) Staying Together (1989) UK White Water Summer (1987) UK Goonies, The (1985)
Christopher Lee (Saruman)
Sleepy Hollow (1999) Jinnah (1998) UK Tale of the Mummy (1998) UK Odyssey, The (1997) (TV) UK Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) Mio min Mio (1987) UK Safari 3000 (1982) 1941 (1979) UK Return from Witch Mountain (1978) Creeping Flesh, The (1973) Horror Express (1972) Nothing But the Night (1972) Scream and Scream Again (1969) Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968) UK Gorgon, The (1964) UK Mummy, The (1959) Crimson Pirate, The (1952) My Brother’s Keeper (1948) UK
Bernard Hill (Theoden)
Criminal, The (2000) UK Midsummer Night’s Dream, A (1999) UK True Crime (1999) UK Wind in the Willows, The (1996/I) UK Mountains of the Moon (1990) UK Shirley Valentine (1989) Gandhi (1982) UK
Brad Dourif (Wormtongue)
Shadow Hours (2000) Prophecy 3: The Ascent, The (2000) (V) Color of Night (1994) UK Trauma (1993) Body Parts (1991) UK Cerro Torre: Schrei aus Stein (1991) Child’s Play 2 (1990) UK Exorcist III, The (1990) Mississippi Burning (1988) Fatal Beauty (1987) Dune (1984) Uk Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) UK
Jim Rygiel (SFX)
Anna and the King (1999) Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) UK Multiplicity (1996) UK Batman Returns (1992) Alien³ (1992) UK Last of the Mohicans, The (1992) Ghost (1990) 2010 (1984) UK
Howard Shore (Composer)
Cell, The (2000) eXistenZ (1999) UK Analyze This (1999) UK Gloria (1999) Striptease (1996) UK White Man’s Burden (1995) UK Se7en (1995) Single White Female (1992) UK Silence of the Lambs, The (1991) Postcards from the Edge (1990) She-Devil (1989) Dead Ringers (1988) UK Big (1988) Moving (1988) Fly, The (1986) Places in the Heart (1984) UK Videodrome (1983)
Peter Jackson (Director)
Heavenly Creatures (1994)
To get more information, use the sites I use like:
Are you still interested in stuff about LotR being mentioned in papers and such? (of course! – Xo) Well, here’s a small article from the May issue of “TDC Magasinet” on page 34 (a small magazine published by Danish tele-company TDC (Tele Danmark Communications). The article reads as follows (English Translation):
Hobbits hits on the Net
The internet has been a part of creating an enormous advance interest in the coming three movies based on the fantasy novels about the hobbits, Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.”
The first one premieres in December, but just an early trailer for the movie garnered enormous attention. I the span of the first 24 hours it was downloaded almost two million times on the internet, which is an unofficial world record.
And that’s even in spite of he company behind the movies has shrouding the filming in mystery. But from first go the Tolkien-fans around the world has had a encompassing network on the internet where even the smallest tidbit of news from the filming on New Zealand has been passed on and discussed. There has even been an exchange of spy photos from the filming and a couple of satellite pictures [???].
The great advance interest has had some unexpected side effects. A few dishonest souls on the production crew has stolen items from the movies and put them up for sale on internet auctions, where e.g. swords from the filming has been sold for a small fortune.
The official English page is at this address: www.lordoftherings.net
The winner of the Swedish contest concerning a trip to cannes and a pass to the castle in wich the lord of the rings party will be, has been decided.
The winner is Johanna Enhörning, by the way her last name translated into english is unicorn. She and a friend will fly down to cannes and attend a party with the cast and crew of the movies.
She answed all the qustions correctly, of course, and on the last “question”, on Wich character she would like to play and why, she wrote:
– In this beutiful fantasy world There is one that has known it all, Whos power in talkt of everywere and desired a thousen times. – In many hands im an undescribeble danger, although the fate that me awaits I am the one ring.
It sounds better in swedish because it rhymes:
I denna vakra sagovärld finns en som upplevt allt, vars makt är onämd vida kring och åtrådd tusenfalt. I mångas händer kan jag bli en obeskrivlig fara, trots ödet som mig väntar vill jag härskarringen vara.
Grattis Johanna vi lär nog ses på premiären i götet.
Ringer Joel B was kind enough to send us some excerpts from a recent article in the Austrailian PC Authority Magazine:
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I’m just writing to let you know that in this month’s Australian PC Authority magazine, there’s a long feature on animation techniques in film. LOTR is mentioned several times. They have a website which is utterly devoid of content, so I’ve written out the LOTR bit for your convenience 🙂 Some good technical detail about WETA and so forth.
“One of the most talked-about movies in the animation world is the upcoming Lord of the Rings trilogy, expected to be the most costly film ever produced outside the US – a film with the potential to push animation still further.
Using a low-tech derived process known as rotoscoping, the trilogy originates on film, although CGI plays an integral role in the movie (how else do you create several thousand beasties). All the landscapes of Middle Earth – enough images to cover hundreds of thousands of frames – are first shot on ‘Super 35’ film before being digitised to allow each frame to be enhanced or altered to make the weather fit the scene. We’re already talking serious bytes. This framework is fleshout with the beasts and characters – both real actors and pure CGI – before interaction, movement and complex lighting are thrown into the pot.
Such complex imagery moving independently and in three dimensions takes serious rendering, the term given to the process by which the algorithms describing an animated 3D image are transformed into that image either on screen or disk. Rendering has long been the bane of the animator’s life, at least those that don’t want endless coffee breaks. While much of the production work has been accelerated through the advances in technology, rendering continues to frustrate animators.
The Lord of the Rings, using a network based around some 80 SGI Octane and Unix O2 workstations and another 25 high-end processors behind the scenes, found the daily rendering requirements stored up for the nightshift began to take their toll. There are now dedicated Linux farms in place for the rendering process, an ongoing response to days when staff were turning up for work only to find the processors still doing the rendering from the previous day’s work.
By the time the first film went into production, New Zealand-based producer Weta was working from a wall of rendering-dedicated, dual-processor SGI 1200 servers running Red Hat’s Linux. The film’s technical guru Jon Labrie expects the number of rendering servers to reach a peak of 200.
The ongoing processing purchasing may sound like a problem, but herein is a piece of purchasing nous. With the final part of the trilogy not expected until 2003, the Weta team has time on its side. Labrie knows the company will need more machines as the work goes into the final stages of production, but he’s not buying all the machines just yet. ‘The price is coming down and the processors are getting faster,’ he believes, preferring to wait until he can buy more bang for his buck.
He’s preparing for the possibility that director Peter Jackson may call for up to a million CGI combatants in the final battle scenes, a stunning number and one so data-intensive that Labrie will call for all the processing power his budget allows.”
The article goes on to talk about different ways of rendering and so forth. Hope this is of use to you!
Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn)
Liv Tyler (Arwen)
Ian Holm (Bilbo)
Sean Bean (Boromir)
Marton Csokas (Celeborn)
Hugo Weaving (Elrond)
Miranda Otto (Eowyn)
Elijah Wood (Frodo)
Cate Blanchett (Galadriel)
Ian McKellen (Gandalf)
Andy Serkis (
Bruce Spence (Mouth of Sauron)
Sean Astin (Sam)
Christopher Lee (Saruman)
Bernard Hill (Theoden)
Brad Dourif (Wormtongue)