Hey folks, Harry here... Originally, Peter was supposed to be at this Lincoln Center Event in person, but due to the work he's doing on the RETURN OF THE KING Expanded Edition and doing full on script work on King Kong with Fran and Phil... well, that bazillion hour plane ride just didn't fit in. However, due to the miracles of science and technology, he was there and apparently could see everything as well. Here's Elanor's report on the evening... Pic by RENO!

Hello Harry

Here is my report from this afternoon's "Conversation with Peter Jackson" at Lincoln Center in NYC

Utter Geek Heaven!

Two days ago I was so disappointed when I learned that Peter would not be there in person, but the event in actuality turned that fully around. It was even better because I got to share it with friends old and new. A bunch of us met ahead of time for brunch, so we were primed. One intrepid person in our party, djinnj, is a champion knitter; she had made moibus scarves as gifts (quite beautiful as well as clever) for Andy, Elijah and Sean. I was not convinced that they were all coming, but we hoped since Peter was NOT going to be there, perhaps the cast would feel they should make up for his absence. So our first adventure was getting the scarves delivered. Another one in our party, lightwards, excels at getting things done and convinced the backstage security guard to call a stage manager to meet us and accept the scarves, with a promise to deliver them properly. That done, we headed inside and to our seats.

We were lucky enough to be in the front row, which were the only seats still available when my turn came after I waited in line on a rainy morning way back when. We saw four chairs arranged center stage so I took that as a hopeful sign of cast visitation. The lights dimmed and we were treated to a montage of clips from Peter’s body of work; lots of gore, mayhem, and macabre humor, interspersed with a few LOTR and Heavenly Creatures images. Then out came the moderator, Richard Pena, who I say deserves a ton of credit. I have never been to one of these events before and I suppose he does them all the time but he really is very good at it. He was relaxed and calmly in control, had a sense of humor and asked the kind of questions that encouraged detailed answers from Peter. Peter was also relaxed and so utterly charming in his impish way. He still seems the kind of person you would have a great time with in a pub, humble and funny, amazed and delighted at his good fortune. His pride is revealed in his enjoyment of his “maverick” status, having begun making movies at age 7. He still thinks of making movies as a “hobby” and seems utterly delighted that it has become his career. Richard was very good at keeping the emphasis on Peter as a director, not just a plug for LOTR, and the audience seemed enthralled with anecdotes about his early days.

These were elaborations on stories that have been alluded to in countless interviews, but here Peter was telling a longer version of the tale, and obviously enjoying it as he did so. And they are great stories, like the day he quit his newspaper job to make Bad Taste full time with the money he had managed to coax out of the NZ film commission; the “black day” when financing for “Braindead” fell through; the week or so of secret Meet the Feebles filmmaking at night, as a result of the film commission‘s threat to pull him off the project for going over budget; how he met Fran, Costa Botes, Richard Taylor and Stephen Sinclair. We got a second film montage of this early work.

Then he talked about Heavenly Creatures, how that came about, the research he and Fran did in Christchurch and how some of the shots were done. Then we moved into LOTR territory with a nice montage of scenes from all three films. Peter told tales of how Gollum came to be, and how Fran became especially involved in those scenes, and he gave her credit for having directed the most famous scene from the whole movie! Then Richard brought out the cast - Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Andy Serkis and Bernard Hill. We gave them a very warm welcome, and Elijah seemed particularly perky. He made a crack right away about Peter’s shirt, which evidently Peter appeared in last night as well, during the ROTK Q & A. It was, I confess, a thrill to see these people whose talent and hard work has given me so many hours of moving entertainment.

Peter answered what I thought was a hard question about what Tolkien “meant” by writing

LOTR, and I felt his answer showed an excellent understanding of both the man and the work. The cast chimed in with some additional ideas and we got an extremely funny bit of good-natured teasing between Elijah and Sean when Peter was talking about Tolkien’s WWI batman shining his boots. Elijah pointed at Sean and nodded, and Peter seemed to SEE this via satellite, saying something like, yes, we had Sean shine Elijah’s boots for the first few weeks. We laughed a lot and Sean grinned. Then Richard asked Peter to talk about how he dealt with making the hobbits small on film. During his answer the satellite feed winked out, but the actors seemed totally used to it, so they picked up without missing a beat. Sean said “he’ll be back, he has to get recharged” and Elijah demonstrated one technique for making the hobbits “small” by getting down on his knees.

Then Sean told a story about the duplicate sets of Bag End, ending with a sort of complaint that such a “trick” sort of “ruined the magic” for him and Elijah shook his head at Sean in a “there you go again” sort of way which cracked us up good. Then Bernard Hill talked about the first Bilbo/Gandalf scene as being shot from a hobbit’s POV which he thought ingenious and we all agreed. Then Sean told a story about Gillette giving them goodie bags which included a shaving kit and he launched into a story about the horror of being made to be a spokesman for Gillette, such as “Hobbits can’t grow facial hair, but actors can, so when I‘m having a hard day climbing Mt Doom, I’m glad for the close shave I get with a Gillette razor” (What he said, and the way he said it, with an “announcer voice” was much funnier than what I just wrote) and the crowd went crazy.

Then someone yelled a question about a gag reel being on the DVD and the actors just ran with it, and it seemed to me that these four did indeed relish the chance let loose. I get the feeling that they are so sick of doing publicity for the films and “being good” for interviews, and that perhaps they looked at today as a bit less pressure and more fun. Or maybe they are always like this! Anyway, it was just unbelievably fun from here on in, because they began to tell tales, the kind of stuff you always want to hear, what went wrong, who had a hissy fit, jokes and pranks played on each other.

Bernard Hill told a great one about Viggo and Sean told one about demanding a close-up while acting with Sir Ian McKellen. Then Bernard told another one about Helm’s Deep and at some point in here, Elijah did an impersonation of Viggo’s great door- opening moment from T2T that Andy also did, and then someone mimicked him flinging his hair and we fans just went nuts. Then Peter came back on and said he had heard all the stories that had been told and was giggling like a kid. Someone yelled about the gag reel and Peter made a promise that it would be in a DVD (he didn’t specifically promise it would be on the ROTK SEE but there is always hope!) Then Richard noticed the time and said we had to close.

Everybody started clapping and cheering and the cast got up to leave but Peter interrupted and everybody quieted back down. He said he was sorry for not being there in person and thanked us for coming, which I thought was really sweet. Poor Andy had not been able to squeeze a word in. He’s still new at this, I guess. Maybe I‘ll get down to Barnes and Noble tomorrow to see him. Elijah asked if any of us had been here yesterday and it seems most of us had. Being in the front row, we wasted no time stepping up and getting their attention in order to say lovely things to them. For me it was a real thrill to be able to thank Elijah for his wonderful work as Frodo. That’s all I got to say before a half dozen pleading younger fans got his attention. I also was able to thank Andy and Sean and I thanked Bernard for making it so special and interesting. These actors are all good to their fans but their security guards were on top of things and rightly so, for people really did rush the stage and I got a glimpse of the odd thing it is to be famous. Lightwards asked Andy if he got the scarves and his face lit up and he said “Yes! Thank you! Did you make them?” We both said, no, djinnj did, but that we helped deliver them.

Pallando got Sean and Andy’s autograph and Qualomir thanked Andy for the actor-insights in his book about Gollum. When it was all over we just stood there with big grins on our faces, feeling very lucky indeed. Out in the lobby we hooked up with a bunch of other folk and decided to head out for some food and drink. But before we left, we gladly accepted the giveaway gift from New Line personnel, The Two Towers Special Extended DVD. Nevermind that we each already own one!

For a Tolkien geek like me it was just heaven. And I will remain convinced that Peter and these four actors enjoyed themselves, too. I didn’t care a whit that I wasn’t able to ask any of the questions I had prepared. The event was so thoroughly enjoyable and it was money well spent.