{"id":92898,"date":"2014-09-27T05:43:21","date_gmt":"2014-09-27T10:43:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/?p=92898"},"modified":"2014-09-27T05:43:21","modified_gmt":"2014-09-27T10:43:21","slug":"torn-book-now-available-for-kindle-nook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2014\/09\/27\/92898-torn-book-now-available-for-kindle-nook\/","title":{"rendered":"TORn Book Now Available For Kindle & Nook"},"content":{"rendered":"

The kindle version of TheOneRing.net’s new book, Middle-earth Madness, has been selling at Amazon<\/a> for the last week. Now it’s available for Nook!<\/a><\/p>\n

We’ve previously shared a sample chapter<\/a> about Lord of the Rings<\/em> executive producer Mark Ordesky. Now here’s another sample, our interview with Sylvester McCoy.<\/p>\n

Behind-the-Scenes with Sylvester McCoy (Radagast)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be honest. If you were sitting at a pub having a pint, and the fellow next to you was rambling about how he was almost Bilbo Baggins in the movies, you\u2019d wonder if he\u2019d had one too many of the Gaffer\u2019s home brew. But if that fellow happened to be Sylvester McCoy, you should know two things: first, he\u2019s telling you the truth, and second, the craziness has probably just begun.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was up for Bilbo Baggins originally,\u201d McCoy says, referring not to The Hobbit<\/em> but to The Lord of the Rings<\/em> movies. \u201cAnd it got down to me and another person. Just two left of the many hundreds that started off on the journey. And I didn\u2019t know Ian Holm was the other person, but if I had known, I would have known I wouldn\u2019t get it, because Ian Holm is a brilliant, wonderful actor. And later I was delighted to be at least in his company. But that was the beginning of the journey toward Radagast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sitting down to chat with TheOneRing.net, McCoy is as eccentric as the wizard he plays, at times pretending to have birds under his hat and at other times playing a pair of spoons for our entertainment. But then his journey from almost-Bilbo to Radagast was anything but conventional itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bilbo audition was the beginning of it. Then [the filmmakers] saw me as the Fool in King Lear<\/em> in New Zealand, and they offered me the job of Radagast. And when I went to see them, we were chatting about the fact that I didn\u2019t do Bilbo Baggins. And they said, \u2018We think maybe that\u2019s a pretty good thing, because we\u2019ve written you a bigger part.\u2019 I thought, \u2018I have to read the book again.\u2019 It had been years. And I read it, and I kept thinking, \u2018Where is Radagast? Where is he?\u2019 And I thought \u2018Oh dear, what kind of part is this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

McCoy, born as Percy Kent-Smith in Dunoon, Scotland in 1943, is a jack of all trades, having been a comedian, a busker and, of course, a character actor. Taking his stage name from a character he played in a comedy act (An Evening with Sylveste McCoy: the Human Bomb<\/em>), he gained international fame as the seventh Doctor in the long running British television series, Doctor Who<\/em>. (He still carries his question mark umbrella with him, showing it off to us while we chat.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I took over as Doctor Who from Colin Baker,\u201d he explains, \u201che had an umbrella in this story, so I ended up with an umbrella, and I actually quite like it. I\u2019m a proppy person. And in my mind I could see an image of the shape of me with an umbrella\u2014the shadow thing\u2014and I said, \u2018Let\u2019s make it with a question mark.\u2019 And one of the great designers of the Doctor Who<\/em> shoot said how wonderful she thought it was. She thought it was very witty and, in a sense, understated. I find the question mark [costume] overstated, and if I had had my way, or if I would have done the fourth season, I would have gotten rid of it. Because it was too many question marks. People should be continuously saying, \u2018Why the question marks? What does it mean?\u2019 But no one ever did, because people just ignored it. In real life they wouldn\u2019t, would they?\u201d<\/p>\n

As McCoy alluded to before, a few years before joining the cast of The Hobbit<\/em>, he toured for two years as the Fool in King Lear<\/em>. Playing the king was Ian McKellen, who was willing to bare it all for the production. \u201cOriginally, [director] Trevor Nunn wanted us both to take our clothes off, but luckily I had this harness on, so I didn\u2019t have to. In order to be hung I had to have a harness I could be strung up on. So thank goodness I was hung at the end of the first act, or otherwise I would have had to have been very well hung to compete with Ian. Because my God, who can compete with Ian?\u201d<\/p>\n

Stepping away from the \u201cbiggest little wizard\u201d competition, we ask McCoy about the beginning of his time in New Zealand as he was preparing to shoot The Hobbit<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love doing conventions, and I was doing a convention in Auckland, and the whole thing kind of fitted into my call on The Hobbit<\/em>. They were going to send a car for me on the Monday night after the convention finished and drive me down to Piopio, which is kind of halfway down the North Island, but then they changed their minds because of the weather. So I was on the stage\u2014trying not to talk about The Hobbit<\/em> to the conventioneers\u2014when my phone rang! And so I answered the phone, and I said to everyone, \u2018Oh my goodness, it\u2019s The Hobbit<\/em>! The Hobbit<\/em> [people] are on the phone!\u2019 And they all got very excited. And The Hobbit<\/em> people wanted to come and pick me up a day earlier. And I said, \u2018Well, I\u2019ll have to talk to the organizers of the convention.\u2019 And before I had finished, the organizer of the convention knew as much about it as I did because someone in the audience was texting or twittering, telling everything that was going on. But anyway, they ended up sending a helicopter for me. And so I got to fly all that way at seven in the morning and see half of the island, and it was stunning. You could see Middle-earth, with the mist coming off the rivers and the lakes and another kind of softer mist coming out through the woods. I mean, that was really magical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Radagast is only mentioned once in passing in Tolkien\u2019s version of The Hobbit<\/em>, director Peter Jackson assured McCoy there were bigger plans for the \u201ctender of the beasts,\u201d as the wizard\u2019s name translates to. It didn\u2019t take long for McCoy to fall in love with the part.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great. It\u2019s a nice role to do. When the costume arrived and I looked at myself, suddenly Radagast emerged. I\u2019m not really a method actor. I get an instinct about something. Sometimes it feels quite magical. Suddenly something arrives. Working with Ian in the theatre on the stage, he does that. He stands on the side of the stage, and he knows the lines and the moves and all that, but you can see the mysterious, spiritual part of it only comes when he steps onto the stage, and it\u2019s so exciting. And I started to realize I was doing the same\u2014partly because I didn\u2019t know what he was going to do and what emotion or strength I would require.\u201d<\/p>\n

And how long did it take to get into that make-up and wardrobe? \u201cOh, a couple of hours, really. They gave me a prosthetic nose. It was quite simple, really. They stuck on a nose, and it was slightly bent. And then I had big ears, but you couldn\u2019t see them because of the hair. Then they gave me a funny little tooth; a sweet little snaggletooth. It was alright, except for bird whistling. I had to learn how to whistle again with a tooth. The Dwarves had it worse. I knew some of those actors from Britain before, and I came in and was having lunch; I was sitting next to this dwarf, and I didn\u2019t realize it was an old mate of mine, Ken Stott! I didn\u2019t recognize him until he spoke. I was given an aide-m\u00e9moire [a cheat sheet] with the pictures of all the actors playing the dwarves. It was really handy, except it wasn\u2019t the characters. So I was going around with this, and you couldn\u2019t tell who was on this aide and who was there.\u201d<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long for McCoy to begin shooting at Rhosgobel. \u201cI\u2019d just arrived a couple of days before, and the scenes I did there were the first scenes. They picked me up at four in the morning, and I didn\u2019t get home until ten at night. And I literally could not walk. I was utterly exhausted. Because I was the only person there; with a stuffed hedgehog. So there was no one else to pass the buck to. It was just me. But when I went into the cottage I just fell in love with it. It was so beautiful. A higgledy-piggledy place. And I loved the idea that he was so in love with nature that he wouldn\u2019t cut down a tree that decided it was going to move in and live with him. You know, he was like, \u2018Come live with me, great oak!\u2019 But it was very hot. They had to blow in air to keep me cool. It was so enclosed. There were no false walls or anything like that. You know, sometimes they have a set and they can take a wall away so they can shoot from there. No, they built the actual thing. It\u2019s a shame they\u2019ve taken it away. I\u2019d loved if they had kept it, really. Because people would be delighted to be able to go through it. The detail! I cannot tell you the beautiful detail on the set. And some of it\u2019s not seen, really, on the screen. But those artists that work on The Hobbit<\/em> are just brilliant and detailed and so enthusiastic. Their love for it is just a joy. New Zealand is so far away, and especially in the old days before the internet, Peter said if they wanted to get anything they\u2019d have to write and wait six months for it to come from Europe or England or America to get there. So they had to invent their own stuff and be creative in that way. And out of it has grown this wondrous, creative industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCoy, of course, had to learn Elvish to save Sebastian. (Or at least he had to learn a couple lines of it.) But don\u2019t ask him to repeat it! \u201cI did know what it meant when I was saying it at the time. I had to learn it and say it properly again and again. It was a bit of a nightmare trying to get it, you know. The pronunciation had to be so precise because there are some people out there who are so pernickety about things,\u201d he says, looking straight at us. \u201cAnd you don\u2019t know how much that drives us poor actors mad! But I can\u2019t remember now what the Elvish was. As an actor, as soon I\u2019ve done something it\u2019s gone. Because I\u2019ve only got so much room in my head! I mean, I\u2019ve been an actor now for forty-odd years. And I\u2019ve been one of those very, very lucky actors who\u2019s continuously been employed in something or other. So many lines have gone through my head, they go in my ear, they come out my mouth and that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

After working with the stuffed hedgehog (used to give him a reference before the computer generated version was added), it was on to rabbits\u2014which were no more real! \u201cFor a while I thought they were going to get real rabbits. Because, they\u2019re based on these very large rabbits in northern Belgium, and I thought maybe I was going to have trained real rabbits, which would have been quite cool really. But then they would have all pooed all over the place and made more rabbits while we were watching and all that. But the wizards of Weta are marvelous. There\u2019s a bit in the film where we\u2019re kind of waiting, and one of the rabbits is stamping his foot on the ground, and another one is doing something else, and they\u2019ve all got individual little quirks about them. Astonishing really. Bloody upstaging rabbits!\u201d<\/p>\n

They say not to work with children or animals. Didn\u2019t anybody warn McCoy? \u201cThey did, but I thought I was going to get away with it on this film because I was working on green screen, so there weren\u2019t any animals there. I had to imagine them. And I didn\u2019t know those wizards at Weta were going to come up with these birds and animals that were going to upstage me like mad. Like Sebastian the upstager. I mean, look at him! No, it\u2019s true. Don\u2019t work with children or animals or Weta animals.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCoy, of course, spends frequent screen time with his old friend from the stage. \u201cSerena McKellen,\u201d he calls him, knowing McKellen would appreciate the mondegreen. \u201cI was working with him in London, and he just got \u2018Companion of Honor\u2019, which is another one of those medieval honors that they dish out in modern Britain. And we were going into the stage door, and he said \u2018My dear boy, I\u2019ve just become a camp onion of honor.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if he was able to meet fellow wizard Christopher Lee, he replies, \u201cNo. That\u2019s really sad. I didn\u2019t meet him, because he\u2019s getting on a bit and to travel out to New Zealand from London would be too much for him. So again, the magic of film, they went and filmed him in London. You know that scene [in Rivendell] where they\u2019re all together sitting around the table? He\u2019s not there. He\u2019s in London. But it was so real and so clever. Galadriel walks right behind him. It was just so wonderful. But I \u2014oh, I can\u2019t talk about the next film. I want to! I\u2019m so excited! I want to tell you all about it, but I can\u2019t. I got a letter the other day that said \u2018McCoy, keep your mouth shut!\u2019 Or something along those lines, anyway. I\u2019ve been programmed by Weta to cover my mouth whenever I\u2019m going to give a spoiler.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overall, McCoy says he enjoyed working in New Zealand. \u201cYes, it\u2019s funny really, I expected that I would be overawed by it all, but Peter Jackson is so good at making people relaxed. And the people of New Zealand, all of them (there are only four million of them in the country) must have somehow been connected with it. They\u2019re great. They\u2019re laid back, and you feel very relaxed. That was great. I mean, there are some times when you know the epic moments that you\u2019re involved in\u2014you felt the weight of that. But most of the time it\u2019s just great fun. I did a scene that I\u2019m not supposed to talk about with Cate Blanchett, and I would have given my fee back just to do that scene because she\u2019s great. She is absolutely amazing, and she\u2019s so lovely and down to earth. I mean, she\u2019s like Australian royalty. She\u2019s so elegant, so intelligent and beautiful, but she\u2019s also very, very friendly. Her children were there, and it was great getting to know her.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCoy was also very impressed with the Dale set, which he had the opportunity to see as a ghost town before it was shot. \u201cI went out with Andy Serkis, who was acting as second unit director. He invited me to come out one Sunday when no one was there. It had been built, and he was just going around kind of walking out some shots for the burning of it. So they spent all these millions building this amazing town, and then they burnt it down. But it was lovely. We had lunch there, and it was like being in some Italian village on top of a mountain. It was glorious.\u201d<\/p>\n

So was it a good idea to expand the film series to three parts?<\/p>\n

\u201cYes! My agent thinks it\u2019s a good idea. My bank manager thinks it\u2019s a good idea. I\u2019m not arguing with that one, really. In a way, I was slightly despondent I never got offered anything in Harry Potter<\/em>. Continuously while it was going on, people kept saying to me, \u2018Why aren\u2019t you in Harry Potter<\/em>?\u2019 And I said, \u2018Well, no one asked, or maybe I was busy.\u2019 I don\u2019t know whatever it was, but it would have been quite nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking back at his career, McCoy can\u2019t help but think about his clothes and the man who has been collecting them, a genre fan by the name of Peter Jackson. \u201cHe is a great collector of things. He\u2019s got warehouses of stuff. He has got my Doctor Who<\/em> costume. He\u2019s also got my Radagast the Brown costume. I\u2019m hanging on to my street clothes like mad. He\u2019s not getting them. I have to have something to walk about in!\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking of that seventh Doctor, when McCoy was cast as Radagast, many thought he might be given a \u201cquestion mark\u201d staff and some fans still look for, or think they see, a question mark in his costume. \u201cNo, there aren\u2019t any,\u201d he admits. \u201cIt\u2019s a different part altogether. The only hint of Doctor Who<\/em> in it is that I have to talk about rrrrabits, and there is a bit of rolling of r\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so what\u2019s left for McCoy? Something different, he says. \u201cThere are some actors who we love and adore who are the same in everything, and we like that. You know, Sean Connery never changes his accent, but he gets away with it because we love that accent. He got an Oscar for a Scottish Irishman, if you know what I mean. And there are others: Bob Hoskins, who had a great Cockney accent, and John Wayne. And we love actors like that, but I\u2019m not that kind of actor. I\u2019m a character actor. I want to be different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here is the complete table of contents for Middle-earth Madness<\/em>, a book that covers the first two Hobbit<\/em> movies and looks back at The Lord of the Rings<\/em>:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Introduction
\nThe History of The Hobbit<\/em> Films
\nBehind-the-Scenes with Richard Taylor<\/p>\n

An Unexpected Journey (AUJ)<\/em><\/p>\n

AUJ: A Long Expected Success
\nAUJ: An Unexpected Failure<\/p>\n

I: Prologue
\nII: An Unexpected Party
\nIII: The World is Ahead
\nIV: Roast Mutton
\nV: On the Run<\/p>\n

Behind-the-Scenes with Sylvester McCoy
\nAUJ Soundtrack Review
\nInside Information with Richard Armitage<\/p>\n

VI: A Short Rest
\nVII: Over Hill and Under Hill
\nVIII: Riddles in the Dark
\nIX: Out of the Frying-Pan, Into the Fire<\/p>\n

Getting to Know Kiran Shah
\nA Look Back at TheOneRing.net News
\nInside Information with Graham McTavish
\nHobbitception<\/p>\n

The Desolation of Smaug (DOS)<\/em><\/p>\n

DOS: A Deep Disappointment
\nDOS: A Dazzling Success
\nX: Queer Beginnings
\nXI: Lost in Mirkwood & Attacked by Spiders
\nXII: The Elves & the Woodland Realm
\nXIII: Barrels out of Bond<\/p>\n

Behind-the-Scenes with William Kircher
\nDOS Soundtrack Review
\nInside Information with Peter Hambleton<\/p>\n

XIV: Bard the Smuggler
\nXV: Lake-town
\nXVI: To the Doorstep
\nXVII: Inside the Mountain
\nXVIII: The Wrath of Smaug<\/p>\n

Inside Information with Jed Brophy
\nA Letter to the Cast and Crew
\nNine Mind-Blowing Reasons<\/p>\n

Looking Back at The Lord of the Rings<\/em><\/p>\n

Worldbuilding (From The Frodo Franchise)
\nQ&A with Design Artist Daniel Falconer
\nHobbiton (From The Lord of the Films)
\nThe Legacy of The Lord of the Rings<\/em> Films
\nGetting to Know Mark Ordesky
\nMiddle-earth Fans: Dressing the Part<\/p>\n

Looking Back at the Animated Hobbit<\/em><\/p>\n

MailBaggins
\nEpilogue<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The kindle version of TheOneRing.net’s new book, Middle-earth Madness, has been selling at Amazon for the last week….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":92012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,1228,148,156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hobbit-movie","category-sylvester-mccoy","category-hobbit","category-torn-announcements"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/TORNMM.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tLoH-oam","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92898"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92900,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92898\/revisions\/92900"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}