Ian Nathan - Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth

Contents

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright Ian Nathan 2018

Cover design by Claire Ward HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover photograph Paul Stuart/Camera Press London

Ian Nathan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780008192471

Ebook Edition May 2018 ISBN: 9780008192488

Version: 2018-04-04

For Kat, who cant abide hobbits.

The artist-initiated epic is an obsessive testing of possibilities It comes, too, from a conviction, or a hope, that if you give popular audiences the greatest you have in you they will respond.

Pauline Kael

It would be easier to film The Odyssey. Much less happens in it.

J.R.R. Tolkien

It feels like there was life before and life after.

I can remember the first time I saw Gollum. A finished Gollum. It was the sequence by the Forbidden Pool where he turns around to see Frodo, and he knows that somethings going on. Its almost like an animal instinct; he can sense it. It was absolutely extraordinary.

You dont know, you could never know. Here, finally, was the first proof that a level of psychological and emotional detail could be conveyed through ones and noughts. That thought could be conveyed through the combination of my performance and what they were doing at Weta Digital. I could sense that thought. I could feel that was exactly as I played it. That was incredibly gratifying.

Then I remember seeing The Two Towers for the first time. It was in New York, I was with Miranda Otto, Bernard Hill and Karl Urban. It was mind blowing. I knew every single frame.

I sensed that my life was never going to be the same again.

I supposed that was true for everyone who shared in The Lord of the Rings. The actors, the crew, everyone. None of us really knew what we were letting ourselves in for. And we went through so much together. Filmmaking is life. Every day youre making a film is as important as the end result, because it feeds into the fabric of that film. That counts tenfold for The Lord of the Rings. Thats what attracted me to go back and do so many projects with Peter, Fran and Philippa, and all those guys down there, because it is a way of life. You dont go to work; youre living and breathing it.

Nevertheless, it certainly wasnt the journey I was expecting for a second. Not for a second. Adding together both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, I have celebrated seven different birthdays in New Zealand. The first one was literally only days after I arrived. We were up at Ruapehu, shooting Mount Doom. That was pretty cool. We were staying at the Powderhorn, which looked like an alpine chalet. It was lovely. They made me a cake. The most memorable one was when Pete gave me the Ring for my birthday and on the same day asked me to be in King Kong. That was on an Easter Sunday. Other ones came and went, in so many beautiful places.

I still feel deeply connected to New Zealand. The beauty there is almost overwhelming. I was very into the outdoor life, walking, hiking and kayaking whenever I could. The whole experience was very spiritual. That country, root and branch, mountain and valley, is the soul of the films.

Moreover, I also cant express how honest and open the people are. How much they made us part of their community and gave us such a good time. I made so many great friends.

So many people migrated there to take up jobs on The Lord of the Rings, it created a film industry there.

In the end, though, all roads lead back to Pete. And Fran and Philippa, of course. Pete is the most fearless director Ive ever met. He has shared so much with me, taught me so much. I have said it often, but there is something truly maverick about him, an indie filmmaker working on the biggest scale possible. Thats what it always felt like. We were shooting these personal little indie films. These extraordinary films are an expression of who a person is. Pete is also such a visionary, just breaking barriers all the time with this marriage of technology and artistry.

I remember the glint in his eye when I first met him, so many years ago, in London. I could sense, even then, his vision for Gollum; neither of us really knew what we were letting ourselves in for but it was definitely going to be an unexpected journey. After principal photography on The Lord of the Rings ended, Pete signed a poster for me, which said Many thanks for all the fun and the fun to come. It was then, and for the next decade, and hopefully always will be just that

Andy Serkis

M onday, 1 December, 2003 was a typical summers day in Wellington. The sun was doing its level best, but the eternal, maddening winds were already scuffling over the bay and muscling their way inshore to ruffle pennants and hairdos but never spirits. Not on this day.

The red carpet was less familiar but not unexpected. Over 500 feet of imitation velvet swerved up Courtenay Place to the doors of the Embassy Cinema, recently refurbished at a cost of $5 million to a fetching cream and caramel Art Deco scheme. One of the myriad cinematic gifts Peter Jackson had bestowed upon his hometown. Fittingly, fifteen years earlier, his debut film, Bad Taste, had premiered at the Embassy, albeit with less salubrious dcor and a smaller turnout.

Less in keeping with the old movie-palace aesthetic was the cowled Nazgl astride a fell beast that had landed on top of the cinema virtually overnight to take up silent watch over the days festivities.

That full-size model, or maquette, with its great-scooped neck and outspread wings, sculpted by the imperious talents of Weta Workshop, still exists. Like so many Middle-earthian relics, it has been squirrelled away for posterity in one of Jacksons dusty warehouses, the Mines of Moria of the Upper Hutt Valley.

Jackson might have to still undertake the mandatory global press tour on behalf of his new film, with its procession of glad-handing and crowd waving, but he had been adamant that the official world premiere for TheReturn of the King was to be in Wellington, the city at the heart of the production. This was the victory lap for a filmmaking triumph that, even in his innermost fantasies, he could never have imagined, and he wanted to share the moment with the people who had contributed so much.

Naturally, it was to be a party of special magnificence.

The good folk of Wellington were beginning to line the streets, bringing picnics and an unusual air of excitement for such an imperturbable race. Some had even camped out overnight. It felt like a public holiday, or a homecoming parade. And in some senses that is exactly what it was. By the afternoon, over 125,000 locals were crammed ten rows deep on either side of the streets quite something for a city with a population of 164,000 their ranks swelled by out-of-towners (decreed honorary Wellingtonians for such an occasion), many wearing homespun wizard hats and Elf-ears, who had crammed themselves onto long-haul flights from every corner of the world just to be here on this day. You could hear the noise halfway to Wanganui.