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Arise, Sir Peter | Dec 11, 2003 17:18
As promised, here's a fairly full transcript of the round table interview we did with Peter Jackson last week. I say we, as some of the questions are mine (noted with a "DC") whereas others belong to other members of the group. A few of the lamer questions have been cut out (read my previous post to learn why).
Many of PJ's responses are fairly lengthy, but I left them pretty much verbatim. This is Peter Jackson, and if anyone deserves a few Cracker column inches right now, it's him.
DC: Are you going to do The Hobbit?
PJ: We haven't even discussed it. Everybody asks me about The Hobbit – believe me. No, I've never had a conversation with New Line or anybody about The Hobbit and what I do know is that the rights are fairly encumbered because United Artists, for some reason – I don't have a clue why – since about the 70s or 80s they've had the distribution rights to The Hobbit in North America, so they would distribute it but they don't have the rights to make it. And New Line bought the rights to make it as part of the package that they did with Saul Zaentz at the beginning of this, but they don't have the rights to distribute it, and they distribute their own movies in North America. So there'd have to be some incredibly time-consuming complicated legal discussions between United Artists and New Line for it to actually happen, and I don't know, I haven't heard that they've actually taken place, I just don't know.
DC: Would you want to?
PJ: Yes I would. Yup. Yup. I would feel really weird somebody else doing it. So I'm just waiting like you guys are, waiting to see if the phone call ever happens.
Q: Surely you can make that phone call yourself?
PJ: I'll stay out of the legal side of it, it would be a nightmarish deal for them to do, I wouldn't like to even think about it.
Q: Did you always have the sense that you wanted to make Lord of the Rings?
PJ: No. I read Lord of the Rings when I was 18. I was on a train to Auckland when I first read it. I was a photo engraving apprentice, and was going up there for a 12 week course at ATI. And I'd seen the Ralph Bakshi movie. I'd just seen it, it was 1978 I guess, and the Ralph Bakshi film intrigued me enough about the story. I got a bit confused by it and obviously it finished halfway through, so I bought the book at the railways station and sat on the Silver Fern and got into it on the way up to Auckland.
It never even occurred to me once that I had a desire to make it. 'cos I was a 17 year old, photo-engraving apprentice. I didn't sit there on the train thinking [boldly] "ONE DAY, I WILL MAKE THIS!" because it just seemed too crazy. And I didn't read it again – people assume that I'm a geeky kinda reader, but I didn't read it again until the idea of doing the film came up. It was 20 years later, it was 1995 and I was thinking about what we could do, I was in post production of the The Frighteners, it was November '95, and I was just lying in bed on a Sunday morning, – I remember the moment –lying in bed, thinking about all these computers. We had about 35 computers at Weta at that point in time, we have about 400 now [laughs], and I was really intrigued, because it was at that time that computer technology was really happening, and I was lying in bed thinking what was possible now, what sort of stuff could you do now with computers that you couldn't do before. And the first thought that came into my head was a fantasy movie, because I loved Harryhausen's films Sinbad and Jason and things, and I thought it'd be great to do a fantasy film now with monsters, because Jurassic Park had come out and the dinosaurs looked amazing, and I thought wow, you know, imagine what you could do with a fantasy film, and then I thought about Lord of the Rings, and I thought wow, that's always been unfilmable and now it is filmable, and I just thought it was worth making a phone call. And I picked up the book again, and that was the second time I read the book, it was at that point when I thought about the idea.
Q: Was there something you did to maintain enthusiasm throughout the project?
PJ: The worst thing – because people always ask what the worst thing was – was really, I had this feeling during the shooting, the 15 month shooting in '99/2000, which is a very, very long time to be shooting a film. And I started to feel about eight or nine months into that I was getting exhausted, but it was the mental exhaustion that was more scary, physically I could just keep on going like a tortoise, just keep plodding along, but mentally I was realising my imagination was shutting down, and some days I'd come home at the end of shooting and think 'God, I just shot TV today', and I felt really bad, I just did a wide shot, two-shot, singles, was all I could think about.
And I thought 'God, I have no imagination anymore', and it was actually quite scary, quite frightening, and I lost the ability to think of two or three things at the same time. I actually thought at one stage, 'this must be what it's like to be 85 years old', it actually felt like my mind was just narrowing down. So what I started to do was on Sundays – because I had Sundays off – I'd sit at home on Sunday afternoons and put movies on, movies that I felt where the directors had really used the medium of film making in imaginative ways. And they were all films I'd seen before, like JFK, Goodfellas, Casino, Saving Private Ryan, and I just watched these movies on Sundays, and it would be stimulating. It would just be like this is what good filmmaking really is, this is people who are imaginative, who are using the camera, and it would kind of get me excited and reinvigorate me and get my brain a bit more focused on it.
Q: It's quite a D-Day moment when the orcs land out of those boats…
PJ: Yes it is, that is Saving Private Ryan. I know, I should have had an orc throwing up over the side of the boat on the way in. [laughs]
DC: What is your favourite scene out of the whole thing now, one scene where you feel you nailed it?
PJ: My mind is mainly on this most recent movie for obvious reasons. My favourite scenes in Return of the King: I like the scene where Theoden arrives at the top of the hill and rallies his guys, his Rohirrim before they do that big charge, and he does that speech, and it was Bernard's idea actually to go running along with the sword along all those spears, it was something he came up with, we were down in Twizel, and he said to me, we had all these horses, about 300 horses there, and Bernard said "I've been working something out with the horse guys, you want to have a look" and he demonstrated it to me and I thought it was really cool, and I like the speech and I like the music from that bit, it sort of does it for me all round there. I love stuff on the volcano with Frodo and Sam, my favourite bit of music is the bit where Frodo is crawling up the mountain and Howard has this wonderful pan pipe bit playing on the soundtrack. My favourite other scenes, I've always been very, very fond of the Mines of Moria scene from Fellowship of the Ring. Actually I was in England doing the music of this movie about two months ago and I was flicking around TV and The Fellowship was on and it was right at the Moria scene, I hadn't seen the movie for a couple of years, and I watched that Moria thing with the bloody rock and the guys on it, and I thought it was pretty cool.
DC: I read that Palmerston North is celebrating the premiere with a floral tribute representing the evil essence of Lord Sauron, the eye, in Palmerston North Square…
PJ: Yes, flowers make total sense, don't they?
DC: …possibly the first time it's been represented in floral form. Are you surprised or impressed at the way NZ has got behind this film? It's like the All Blacks, LOTR is our film, no other film maker would have this – Scarface wouldn't have had Florida putting on a parade.
PJ: [Laughs] That's funny. Yeah, I think New Zealanders have got every right to be proud because it is an achievement that in many ways has spanned the length and breadth of the country. I couldn't possibly imagine how many kiwis have actually worked on these films but it does go quite deeply, from the army – because we obviously had incredible cooperation from the army for this film in particular, this is the one that the defence force is, all that stuff at the Black Gates, all that stuff when Viggo's on the horse doing the speech to the soldiers, they're all kiwi soldiers, we were shooting it on that live firing area up by Ruapehu, it was the only place in New Zealand we could find flat desert terrain, we needed that sandy desert, but we found it, the army let us on their land in Wairouru, you know, the land that you're never allowed to go on, and we found this perfect bloody spot which was all just flat. And they said well, this is full of unexploded bombs. This is our live firing area, we've used this for 40 years, since WWII and there's so much unexploded munitions there, and we couldn't find anywhere else, and so the Govt ordered the army to go in and clear it all out for us, and they did all this minesweeping of this whole big area, and they just took away all this unexploded ordinance, old rusty old bloody bombs, and then we had a big lecture on the day that we arrived there, the army had a table out, and they had all these bombs on the table, and they said listen, these are all things that we've recovered from this area, so if you see any of these, don't move, just put up your hand and one of our bomb disposal guys will come over, and that was pretty surreal!
But they were great, the army were fantastic, the soldiers were great. But its gone down to the to the people making furniture – everything in the film had to be made, nothing was rented, or bought or hired, and the amount of New Zealand craftsmen, glassblowers, weavers, people doing the leather, making shoes, it's just gone right the way through the country. And so New Zealand does have every right to be proud of it, it's not just a pat yourself on the back, a lot of these people never worked on a film in their lives before but they just stepped up to it, and did what they needed to do to help us, and so they absolutely deserve to be proud.
Winston, Ryall and Liv Tyler - NUDE* | Dec 05, 2003 13:47
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I spoke to Winston Peters on my show yesterday about the racist pamphlet issue.
It seemed only fair to give him some air time, after Noelle McCarthy had spoken to the disgruntled posties the day before. It amused me that for someone so quick to bury interviews in statistics (he's only second to John Banks in that regard), there was one important figure he wasn't so sharp on…
DC: How much did you say Ahmed Zaoui has cost?
WP: Well Zaoui was $100,000 about three months ago, that figure does not include the cost of maximum security, which is $68,000 a year, before we even look at legal aid and everything else.
DC: How much did your pamphlets cost, 500,000 of them?
WP: I don't know the exact figure of that, but it…
DC: Why not?
WP: Well…
DC: Wouldn't you do a costing exercise before you sent out half a million pamphlets?
WP: Yes, yes, we did a costing exercise but to tell you what the exact figure is…
DC: Ballpark.
WP: Well I can't give you the ballpark figure either.
He then went on to complain, inter alia, about the lack of time he gets in the media. Which is probably true, for the most part. But I can't blame the media as a whole. No-one really wants to interview a politician who is generally belligerent and/or cantankerous, not to mention often downright rude. Hey, we're people too...
DC: So if we gave you more time, you might refrain from such expensive exercises?
WP: It's not an expensive exercise.
DC: Well you just told me you don't know how much it cost.
WP: Well it's not, well I know that we would never contemplate an expensive exercise.
DC: Was it half a million dollars?
WP: Well of course it wasn't half a million dollars.
DC: Including postage?
WP: No it's dramatically less than that.
So he didn't know the figure, but he knew what it wasn't. Convenient, huh?
Amongst the ever increasing pile in my in-tray…
From the office of Tony Ryall, National Police Spokesman
20 November 2003: Private prison ban costs taxpayers millions
21 November 2003: NZ decides its justice laws, not UN
25 November 2003: Another speed camera scam
28 November 2003: Beef up police powers to tackle gangs
30 November 2003: Call for rethink on age of criminal responsibility
1 December 2003: 'P' epidemic – why can't Hawkins see it?
2 December 2003: Justice delayed is justice denied
4 December 2003: Meth Lab Cases Facing Even Longer Delays
From the office of Hon George Hawkins - Minister of Police.
27 November 2003: Minister to attend Wing 214 graduation.
Now of course opposition politicians are always putting out press releases, unlike Ministers they don't have a real job. But I'm still allowed to have my doubts about exactly what it is the Minister does. You're welcome to draw your own conclusions.
Huge response to my Lord of the Rings post this week – cheers. Snippets of interviews and some more photos will be appearing over the weekend. You wanna know exactly how stoopid Ms Tyler really is? What about Orlando Bloom, the closet un-co? Stay tuned… oh okay, here's another few pics from the After Party to keep you hanging on. Have a great weekend.
*Nudeness may vary according to region.
Gollum Dies | Dec 02, 2003 09:23
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So I saw the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
Unlike Russell Baillie, who seems genuinely torn between his duty to let the people know what's going on, and sticking to his contractual obligations not to, I have no such dilemma. I'm not embargoed.
Sure, I signed the forms, but what New Line Cinema don't know, I was drunk at the time. I've been doing these sorts of reviews for a while now, I know how they work. "Registration, 8.45 – 9.15" is all about signing waivers, disclaimers and so forth. So, I ordered a wake up call for 6.15, a bottle of CC from room service, and set to work. Sure enough, come 8.45, and I was legally incapacitated from entering into binding contractual obligations. I also have a rather heinous photo on my press pass, but that's the price you pay for media freedom. Best thing, it's all tax deductible.
What was it like, you ask? Pretty damn fantastic. I'm not going to go into details though, who does what to whom etc. Not because I'm not allowed, mind (because I am), but because it's just no fun. Suffice to say, every dial is turned up to 11, and it is stirring stuff. Chills up the spine.
Some advice though: It's long. Christ it's long. Go to the toilet beforehand, and only drink the barest amount of liquid necessary. Otherwise you'll have the dilemma of choosing between possibly missing something great, or crossing your legs, rocking and slowly sobbing in pain. Still, you drink a bottle of CC first thing in the morning, these things are going to happen.
Second piece of advice, take a cushion and a jacket. You won't need a cushion if you go to the Embassy though, huge big plush seats, leather (or some simulacrum thereof) in the middle section. And the toilets? Worth the price of entry alone. But yes, and a jacket. Why must it always be so cold in cinemas?
And why must it be so damned hot when I'm interviewing Hollywood starlets? There was something decidedly Adaptation-esque about sitting in a stuffy little hotel room, the sun streaming in, wearing wool, beads of sweat forming on the brow as Liv Tyler enters the room. "Oh, it's a bit whiffy in here," first thing she says. Ah-yup.
It wasn't necessarily my fault though. The print and radio journos were thrown together into groups of ten or so for "round table" question and answer sessions. We stayed put in a small, poorly venitlated hotel room, while the cast and crew came in for 10-15 minutes each, and we tried to get as much out of them as we could in that time.
Or at least, most of us did. I've never done much press conference work before – most interviews are generally one-on-one – and I'm not used to sharing the talent. You have to jostle a bit for question time. You have to predict when the interviewee is about to stop talking so you can be first in. Get it wrong, and you've just rudely interrupted Peter Jackson. Well done.
Because each journo has their own angle, the interview has absolutely no flow. The discussion can go from recalling favourite moments, to the poor state of the New Zealand screenwriting industry in one question. And then you get the Excellent Questions from Wacky Radio Jocks and Gossip Rags. "Who's your favourite character?" asked at every…single…fucking…interview over a seven hour period by a young woman from New Weekly was inspired. What's the best answer you can hope for? "Orlando Bloom in Gollum appreciation scandal"? And when you don't get it – after ten goes – you think you might change tack?
"I'm off to have a one-on-one with Billy Boyd, what questions should I ask?" she asked.
I couldn't help myself. "I don't know, how about 'who's your favourite character'?"
"Oh don't be meeeeeean" she replied, "I'm doing a box, you know?"
In which case I stand corrected. Be sure to buy the next issue of NW to find out who your favourite actor's favourite character is…
AND Anyway, these are actors. Their favourite character is always themselves. Even for the also-rans. One gentleman, whose character shall remain nameless, but has a sum total of around five minutes in the entire trilogy answered "I like my character best. I think [%$@$] is actually the most complex and most difficult character to play in the whole film." Yes, those five lines must have been a real bitch.
But enough cynicism. I've had a wonderful few days. Wellington's amazing at the moment. It looks great, the weather is outstanding. The city is alive with tourists, Tolkein fans, star stalkers and the media. It's difficult not to get caught up in all the hype, to try and remain objective, oh bugger it, who am I kidding? I love the Lord of the Rings.
Yesterday outside the Intercontinental Hotel was Something Else. Hundreds of screaming fans, predominately young girls with the odd elf here and there, waited for each actor to emerge. When none did for a while they started screaming at random stuff. "Oh, there's a, a, A SPARROW OVER THERE AAAAAAHHHHHH!" My ears were quite literally sore afterwards.
A moment that should have been on Holmes, but wasn't: As Sir Ian McKellen emerged to shake hands, kiss babies and the like, he approached a man with a toddler on his shoulders. "Does he know why he's here?" Sir Ian inquired kindly of his father. Right on cue the wee lad smiles, claps his hands and shouts out "Gandalf!" Great stuff.
I can and will write a lot more on this when I'm back over the next few days. I've got interviews to transcribe up the wazzo, and many of these will also be played on bFM over the next week or two. Click the Gallery link below for a few pics snapped in Wellington.
Pissing Off Mike King - Priceless | Nov 28, 2003 11:15
As I predicted a week or so ago, Jeremy Newsboy's new show Eating Media Lunch is a lot of fun. But who could have guessed exactly how much hilarity it would have prompted in the past 24 hours?
Yesterday afternoon Jeremy came up to bFM, as he does each Thursday, for a little feature we like to call Newsboy's World of Sport. We talk, largely about cricket and rugby, people email us telling us we're wrong, we admit we don't know squat. It's what they call interactive radio.
But yesterday Jeremy came bearing gifts. "Have a listen to this," he says, a cheeky (some would say sinister) gleam in his eye.
Okay, enough build up: Here's the Mike King phone message you're looking for.
What else needs to be said really?
Actually, I should add, Jeremy didn't mean it to get out beyond his immediate circle of friends. I know that because I asked him what he was going to do about it. He said "nothing, we'll just hang on to it, see what happens." But things this precious, this classic have ways of getting out. And sure enough, after doing the rounds of a major advertising agency, it found its way quickly to TV3 News, and now to the front page of the Herald. I have it on good authority TV3 will be following up the story this evening.
I called Jeremy last night. He was sitting in the dark, contemplating life. Or so he says. I could imagine that grin getting ever wider, a smoking jacket, glass of cognac perhaps. When you've been Eating Media Lunch for a couple of weeks, it's good to have a solid feed of New Zealand Pork.
Oh and in case you were thinking its an isolated incident, it's certainly not the first time Mike's potty mouth has run away from him, on tape (.mov file). Here it is as a Windows Media file.
A friend in the know also advises me:
"He sent a stroppy email to the Star-Times when Megan Nicol Reed (very briefly) panned his show. The b must be buzzing with the thought that New Zealand's favourite comedian has been outed as a psycho."
Ok. Enough about that, back to me for a sec. As you know I'm off to the Lord of the Rings junket in Wellington tomorrow. For all you fans out there, I will be posting a review about the film on Saturday, and more stuff after the premiere and junket on Sunday/Monday.
Have a great weekend. I know I'm going to.
Summer is ready when you are... | Nov 26, 2003 13:36
The weather's all over the place at the moment. Last week I was savouring my early finishes at work. Home by three-ish, on the deck, stretched out beside the cats, enjoying the sun. Or at least trying to enjoy the sun. The odd swampy smell from round the side of the house that gets worse in summer has, well, gotten worse. The landlord reckons it's nothing to worry about, but I'm still not convinced that having the Bog of Eternal Stench on your property is a good idea.
Still, any day above ground is a good day, or so they say, even if the ground is a tad squelchy underfoot. This week, the weather's reverted, but people around me are optimistically talking about "the two weeks in late November when it always rains" as though it's written in stone, and the three months after that are gonna be scorchers. Let's hope they're right.
Summer's five days away, and I'm forced to admit my preparations are behind schedule. The car is still at the mechanics, where it's been for an age. A friend of mine had recommended them, advising me you can get a bit of a discount if you tell them not to hurry. Six weeks later, I'm thinking about making a phone call: "Hurry." It's a summer sort of a car, and spends as much time off the road as on (i.e. broken, not ploughing across hills and muddy terrain) so I'm keen to at least get three months' solid use before putting it back on blocks for the winter.
I joined the varsity gym yesterday. Last time I joined a somewhat flasher establishment, went twice, and stoopidly – for someone who occasionally calls himself a lawyer – got locked into a year long contract. Two sessions, that's four hundred dollars a session, you can see why I was more than a little hesitant to return.
[Actually, small gripe here: We all know people who have been locked into these sort of contracts, and it's obviously how the gym makes money. They sell memberships to x number of people, knowing that only a quarter-or-so of them are ever going to attend regularly, so they only need to provide facilities for this number. But surely they have some moral obligation to motivate you? They're keen as to sign you up and get you to part with your money, can't they at least extend some of this enthusiasm to getting you along? Wouldn't that be better PR in the long run? They have computers to monitor exactly how often you come, why not give you a friendly call if you haven't been in for a couple of months, just to see if they can help? Oh that's right, they only care about getting your money. Gripe over.]
With more outdoor entertaining in mind, Bog of Eternal Stench notwithstanding, I've decided to try my hand at a touch of gardening. There's an old Chinese proverb, if you want to be happy for a day, get drunk… if you want to be happy for a lifetime, grow a garden. [the proverb in full apparently has something about slaughtering a pig? Odd] Curiously enough, for me, it was getting drunk that led to my newfound love of home horticulture…
The idea had its genesis last Sunday when I'd had a few too many, and decided to remove a Big Tangly Weedy Vine Thing, armed with only a rusty saw and scotch-fuelled determination. It turns out the Big Tangly Weedy Vine Thing was actually called Wisteria, and my landlord had intended it to be there. I'll tell him the swamp got to it.
Not wanting said incident of intoxicated wanton destruction to be my sole legacy to what I optimistically call our garden, I've been making ecological amends. At least, I took some dead plants the little old lady next door didn't want, and I've planted them. I'm not sure what they are, they're pretty dead. Hopefully they're not little Wisterias.
Whatever they are, I fear, much like my car and my abs of steel, they're not going to be ready by summer. If, as the Breeders sing, "Summer is ready when you are", would it mind waiting a few weeks? Ta.
Start Spreadin' the News | Nov 17, 2003 10:13
First things first, yay, we won the award for best personal blog at the Netguide web awards. I'd like to thank our captain and convenor of selectors, Russell, who gave me the nod a year or so ago, despite some niggling injuries. Chad and Debra, ever supportive props, each proud of their singular cauliflowered ears; Jolisa and Rob, flankers, who despite being signed to overseas clubs, still manage to make it to the odd after-match (provided the drinks are flowing); The two locks, Karl and Matt from Cactuslab, whose style helped us push far beyond our collective weight. And, of course, you the readers and fellow bloggers, the thousands of numbers 8s and halfbacks, always ready to grab the ball and run with it. Me? Well I'm the hooker, of course.
It's almost exactly a year since my first post on Cracker. I remember a news story written shortly after we'd all made our first posts. I can't quote it precisely, but it was along the lines "Russell Brown is continuing his Hard News, Debra Daley will be writing about Yoga… and Damian Christie doesn't seem to know what he's writing about yet."
A year on, nothing's changed. Aside from being about stuff I'm interested in, or that affects me, there is no constant theme. Politics, music, films, sport, home renovation, they're all there, and they're all parts of the puzzle. I think if Cracker were a jigsaw, we'd be missing the picture on the box, not entirely sure whether we've got all the pieces, and we haven't managed to find many edge-bits yet.
It worked last post, let's try it again: So, we lost the rugby. I probably care a lot more than I otherwise would have, what with the effort and preparation that went into the 95bFM alternative commentary. For the record, we were great, and I'm disappointed we didn't get a chance to prove it again this coming Saturday. Jeremy "tells it like it is" Newsboy's calls – "ooh, he's fucked it" and "he's walking off the field injured, holding his balls" prompted great responses, and a number of callers remarked it was nice to be losing the game but still laughing. Thanks to everyone who responded, and no, we won't be commentating the playoff for third place between France and New Zealand.
We were having a party at Sando, which I had to duck out of for a couple of hours, and when I got back the mood was fairly sombre. I proceeded to drown my sorrows, but invariably just when I would start to enjoy myself, someone would come out with "We lost the rugby eh?" It wasn't until about 6.a.m, the new Xbox Karaoke system fired up, as I launched into "New York, New York", that I truly forgot my woes.
Partly due to the disappointment, partly due to the fact that I was singing Sinatra as the sun rose, I just didn't feel like watching England vs France last night. I was gunning for France though, God knows if we lost, I didn't want the English to win either. Unfortunately this was not to be my weekend.
It's a new week though, and because of some early starts at work, I was up with the sun just before six. It's the most peaceful time of the day, as the suburbs slowly wake around you. It gave me some time for reflection, and while the nation dissects the performance of Thorne, Mitchell et al, I'm moving on. Won't you join me?
Picks for the week: Two shows starting on Tuesday night, TV2. Jeremy Newsboy's media analysis show Eating Media Lunch looks promising, and the return of Slave & Otis' Mo' Show is always going to be worth a look. They're on at 9.30pm and 10.00pm respectively.
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