board77

Actually guys, there was no chance to ask questions. Peter talked for pver 2 hrs on where he got his start in flims, expanded on the almost disaster with Miramax wanting to make LOTR into a 2hr film with a $75M budget and the selling of the idea by his agent to the rest of the Hollywood studios when Harvey W of Miramax gave him 4 weeks to find a new deal. That must have been very scary and I am very glad that Bob from NL went for it. They only had 2 studios interested and Polygram couldn't pick up the deal as they were about to be sold. Sam or one of the others will write a much better report and I will "copy" it here for you with a full list of the bloopers we got to see. They were so funny, I had tears running down my face. There were from Peter's private dvd copy (as the rest of the footage is at NL) I know a list won't be as funny as actually seeing them but you will get a pretty good picture. Can you imagine Gandalf saying: Now comes the days of the Queen. They pan up and his hair is done up like a brides set with pink flowers? or Aragorn coming out of the Rohan tent and opening a can of beer/pepsi? or Theoden and the men holding up the gate at Helm's Deep saying "it's the jehovah's witnesses?" I think my favourite was Aragorn getting hit by Sauron in the battle outside the Black Gate saying "That does it. For Frodo" and getting out an Uzi and shooting Sauron...

anyway, the rest will get posted when I am more awake or Sam or Cel have written a must better worded post.

nl

You are so quick! I am impressed!

I'll be back with really bad pictures.

Quote:

Now comes the days of the Queen. They pan up and his hair is done up like a brides set with pink flowers? or Aragorn coming out of the Rohan tent and opening a can of beer/pepsi? or Theoden and the men holding up the gate at Helm's Deep saying "it's the jehovah's witnesses?" I think my favourite was Aragorn getting hit by Sauron in the battle outside the Black Gate saying "That does it. For Frodo" and getting out an Uzi and shooting Sauron...

I'm astonished they didn't include those scenes in the theatrical version.

Just kidding....

Glad you guys enjoyed yourselves! Sounds like you had a fun time.

<impatient>

<taps foot>

<twiddles thumbs>

Um, nl ... more Viggo stuff ... pleeeeeeazzze ... more, we wants more, precious.



Did PJ say that the bloopers would ever be released?

Morning all!

nl, nl! here's the report!!

The event was held in the State Theatre in Sydney, a massive, Art Deco theatre that seats 2,000. And it was sold out, not one spare seat. Unfortunately for me there was a very pointed announcement about putting cameras away. Plus they dimmed the house lights, which really put the lid on taking notes. So I’m going to have to rely on memory (scary!) and notes taken during a hasty post-talk conference. Many thanks to lotrgrrrl of TORC who could see in the dark. Sadly there were no audience Q&A, either.

It started with the super-trailer, which was just brilliant up on the big screen. All those the very best visual moments, underpinned by the score. And then PJ came out on stage to a tumultuous reception. He looked quite shy, standing there. And also quite thin, so that while the voice and the face in profile were very, very familiar, he also looked like a stranger. They had set up a couple of comfortable chairs to the side of the stage, and also had a projected version of themselves on the big screen beside them.

David Stratton’s approach was to pose a question or two, and then just let PJ talk. Occasionally he’d guide PJ back on track with another gentle question, but basically it was PJ talking for the whole two hours.

After all this time and all those interviews and specials and whatnot we had all been wondering if there was actually anything we hadn’t already heard. But yes, indeed there was. Amongst all the old stories were insights about how he felt about things, how they affected him and his. It might just be some hint of gossip, or traces of whatever emotion he had felt at the time, or the very bright twinkle in his eye, but it was a very personal, non-egotistical presentation. ‘Just like being in my own living room, with 2,000 guests’ he said.

And so, he talked about his early experiments in filming, using a Super 8 camera and later a 16mm one, and the awful cost of film stock, which meant he often had to store film in the fridge in order to save up enough to have it processed, and then to save up some more to buy new film. And this is how ‘Bad Taste’ was made, on Sundays (he worked Saturdays because of the pay.)

He spoke briefly about making Heavenly Creatures, Forgotten Silver, and the Frighteners before talking about the day he and Fran were tossing around ideas for the next project, and they kept coming back to the idea of a fantasy film, and then they kept coming back to the idea of Lord of the Rings, and then one day they had the bright idea of actually finding out who owned the rights.

At this point Peter mentioned that it seemed that fate had played a large part in the making of LoTR. First off, the ‘first look’ contract they had struck with Miramax following and earlier film. He then described the relationship between Saul Zaentz and Harvey Weinstein and Miramax, and how if it hadn’t have been for The English Patient there might not have been a LOTR. Deals, counter-deals and the calling in of favours. Hollywood politics. We could just see a glimpse of the core of steel he must have, to be able to survive in that business.

The original plan had been to film The Hobbit, and then film the 3 LOTR films. But the rights issues with the Hobbit are well known, and (according to an article in today’s paper) while they are very interested in filming it, it probably won’t be for another 3-4 years. If then.

So there they were, having gone into pre-production, having already invested about $10 million in design, scripting, creating the models, etc etc, they cost the project properly and it’s about 70 million or so above Miramax’s permitted budget. And Disney (the parent company) would not agree to an increase. So Fran and Peter made the journey to New York and had a very tense, angry meeting with Harvey Weinstein (Bob apparently was too angry to even meet with them) where he demanded that they condense the story down to one film, no longer than two hours. When PJ and Fran protested about the feasibility of this Harvey pushed a 3 page treatment across the table to them, saying ‘well yes it can’. PJ said he still has that document, it hasn’t been released anywhere (‘although I should have brought it here to read out because this is one audience that would understand’), but it essentially had the name ‘Lord of the Rings’, and not much more than that. For example, the whole Moria sequence was gone, the idea being that they’d pick the story up on the other side and Frodo would say ‘Well, damn, weren’t those caves/orcs something. Pity about Gandalf.’ Applying the ‘Tell not Show’ principle, obviously. Gondor and Rohan were to be collapsed into one country, ruled over by a synthesis of Theoden and Denethor. The mind just boggles.

‘It can’t be done!’ PJ and Fran said, ‘You will alienate everyone who has ever read the book!’, they said. ‘Oh yes it can’, he said. Weinstein had already lined up a scriptwriter, and a director to take over the project if PJ decided to bail. PJ and Fran said they had to think about it, and flew back to NZ. They went away for the weekend (it was Fran’s birthday) and discussed it as they were walking along the beach, and decided to opt out of the likely ‘debacle’. So they rang their agent and told him to contact Miramax, and call it off. However, their agent pointed out to Miramax that this was a project that PJ had brought to them, not vice versa, and that PJ should have the opportunity to pitch the project elsewhere before Miramax took over. They agreed, PJ’s agent contacted him to say they had 4 weeks starting that second, so that was the end of the weekend.

And so it went, putting together the 35 minute documentary on the making of the film, which wasn’t actually being made and in fact was about to wobble over. He described the experience as surreal, being very positive about something which seemed to be at death’s door. Plus there was a general lack of interest in the project in Hollywood. But New Line bit, and famously decided it should be three movies and not two (and definitely not one.)

PJ spoke briefly about the casting, and how it was so important to cast people who were up to the challenge of a 15 month shoot, far away from their own environments. The cast had to have those special qualities and he was unstinting in his praise of them.

It was at around about this point that he seemed to remember that he had promised some ‘new scenes’. So he showed us the greater part of the Blooper Reel. Yes, it does exist. No, it has not been widely distributed, if it has been distributed at all (I know I’ve seen one of these clips on the ‘Net, and some seemed vaguely familiar so I must have read descriptions of them), but the majority were completely unexpected and almost terminally funny. NL and I were practically rolling on the ground, I had tears streaming down my cheeks, and the woman sitting in front of me almost had an asthma attack. They broke these viewing segments into three separate lots, otherwise there would have been 2,000 deceased persons in that theatre. Remember, a lot of these were funny because of the timing, or because of a lift of an eyebrow…they’re not going to sound much on paper (or it’s virtual equivalent). So with that in mind, the clips included:

* PJ getting his finger badly caught in the clapper board.

* The usual fluffed lines, and lots and lots and lots of fuck language. In the sequence where Theoden and Aragorn are at Dunharrow, surveying ‘6,000 spears’, Theoden would keep giving Aragorn his line, and Aragorn kept blowing it, until he said ‘they will not…..fuck…’ and Theoden asked ‘The Rohirrim will not fuck?’ with an expression of extreme concern on his face.

* Aragorn assisting the hobbits up a rocky part of the path, with a full drawl American accent ‘move that fat ass’, hobbit, after hobbit, after hobbit.

* Pippin in the Citadel, pacing purposefully towards Denethor, and crashing right into the camera.

* Take 2: Pippin pacing purposefully towards Denethor, avoiding the camera, but being attached by the Peter puppet. (This almost life size dummy featured a number of times.)

* PJ waltzing with one of the size doubles;

* Arwen tripping up the stairs on several occasions.

* Some very interesting faces pulled at the camera. One in particular, Pippin and Gandalf riding into Minas Tirith, where they turned and smiled ever so cheesily for the camera.

* PJ riding through a crowd – this was a blue screen shot, I think, and the crowd were the crew…I saw Andrew Lesnie and a few other familiar faces. They were waving farewell (as per Faramir leaving to defend the Pelennor Fields), all very sad until PJs horse started to go backwards.

* Frodo’s horse going backwards, Frodo maintaining character at all costs.

* Frodo’s cloak getting caught on some bushes as he’s trying to duck for cover at Amon Hen. Meanwhile the Uruk Hai have already started thundering down the hill, so they keep on thundering by him.

* Pippin unable to unsheath his sword during the seige of the Citadel, and doing a quick tap routine off behind the gateway.

* A sequence where PJ was talking to camera, describing a new really effective snow machine they’d bought, which had the capacity to blanket whole mountains in white. Then he called for the machine to be turned off, because they wanted to start work now. But it just kept blizzarding on.

* In Rohan, Pippin is out of bed and on his way to investigate the Palantir. ‘What are you doing?’ asked Merry. ‘Nothing, what are you doing?’ asked Pippin. ‘Well, I was having this great dream about Gimli’s helmet…’ said Merry (indicating the huge bulge in the bed clothes) so Pippin got into bed with Merry and they rolled around and generally cracked up laughing like little kids.

* Merry and Pippin seemed to have quite a few of the more risqué ones, including ‘come, come, come …. from the Green Dragon’, and another one in a trailer where they have their trousers down, undertaking a comparative analysis. A lifesize doll was also involved. Use your imaginations.

* At one of those intensely emotional moments in the film (‘Go home Sam!’), Sam collapses in a heap in tears, and breaks away part of the set. Oops.

* Gandalf holding the crown, puts it down and says ‘Now come the days of the Return of the Queen’, and the camera pans up to this wonderful hairdo, all beehive and studded with pink flowers.

* Sean Astin and Sarah McLeod holding their respective children for the filming of those last scenes. Sean is giving his daughter an encouraging ‘you can do this!’ talk, and she says ‘yes’, so they roll camera and both Elanor and Baby Frodo start howling. Deafening. Sean and Sarah just roll their eyes.

* Aragorn at the Black Gate, is thwacked very hard on the side of the head. ‘Right’, he says, pulling out a machine gun. “‘ackatackatackatackatack’ that’s for Frodo. And ‘ackatackatackatackatack’ that’s for Sam.”

*There was a brilliant little sequence of Faramir and Eowyn at the coronation, where they are looking dewily at each other, then Faramir looks at the camera and mouths ‘bullshit’, they look dewily at each other again, he looks to the camera again and does this wonderful wiggle with his eyebrows.

* Legolas-the-wonderful completely unable to fit an arrow to his bow at Helm’s Deep.

* Theoden exhorting the Rohirrim to hold the doors at Helm’s Deep ‘make them fast! It’s the Jehovah’s Witnesses’.

* Theoden again, on the steps at Helm’s Deep ‘Helm has arisen’, and then he turns around and prances back up the steps.

* Theoden close to camera ’10,000 strong you say’, to which Aragorn goes on about scanning of skulls and making of children’s toys. This is one I had seen on the ‘Net. Still funny, though, because they did it a couple of times, a couple of different ways.

* Aragorn leaving his tent at Dunharrow, and opening up a tin of Pepsi.

* The scene where Aragorn and Legolas run out of the armoury when they hear the Elves arriving…and Gimli (or his double) follows in that overlong chainmail, and the poor guy kept falling over, and getting up, and tripping over and getting up. A bit like Maggie in the Simpsons.

* Outside the doors of Durin…The Watcher in the Water….and the music from Jaws.

* Pippin and Merry performing mouth to mouth on the head of an Uruk Hai

* A chorus of Uruk Hai singing ‘You make me feel like a natural woman’, and very tunefully too!

* Elrond doing a very strange little dance at Mt Doom

* Gandalf having costume fittings, and doing a very camp dance in white undies (holding up grey robes)

* A close-up shot of Aragorn talking on a mobile phone, the camera pulls back and it’s the scene where they are fleeing Edoras. He’s sitting on his horse, chatting away.

* Frodo, in the scene where Gollum wakes him with the coneys. And Frodo squints into the sun, and pops on his sun glasses.

* And then he chews on the rabbits.

* That’s after Sam has been attacked by one of his coneys.

* The four hobbits at the coronation, standing against a blue screen, looking all shy and out of place, and suddenly whipping out bottles of champagne shaking them and popping the corks. Very messy.

* The close up shot of Frodo at Sam’s wedding. And how determined was Merry to get his face in the picture too.

For the last few minutes PJ talked about King Kong, which is still being shot (another three weeks filming to go) and is scheduled for release in December. And then it was time to go. We gave him a standing ovation, and it felt good to be able to do that, to be able to express appreciation in person for all of the joy that the films have brought me (and us) over the past few years.

There are a couple of pictures of the theatre and the mini-mooters here.

Sass, (hi, by the way, I don’t think we’ve ever crossed paths before), he didn’t say anything about a release day, but I’ve heard that he is intending to release this at some point sometime, along with ‘deleted scenes’. (I can’t remember where I heard it, I’ll try and confirm that.)

I sw00n for you, samaranth!

don't be scared. I'm harmless, really I am.



Thank you sooo much for that. It must have taken you ages to type it all. In such detail and so neatly too!
Sounds as though you had a perfectly wonderful time.

Now I know that I will buy whatever dvd comes with the bloopers and unreleased scenes. Even if I have to duplicate the entire trilogy.

Quote:

A chorus of Uruk Hai singing ‘You make me feel like a natural woman’,

I'd give my eye teeth to see this!

What a great report, sam! Thank you so much!!

so kewl!!! Thanks for sharing - now I'm even more envious than I was before!!

Samaranth, thanks! This is the most thorough report I've seen anywhere, by far.

I do hope those bloopers are released sometime.

Regarding the mouth of Sauron losing his head to Aragorn ----
I have a three year old grandson named Alyjah who loves all three films and watches them over and over and over when he comes over which is at least two days and nights per week. Far and away his favorite secenes are any where a character loses his head in violence. When I first showed him the Mouth of Sauron scene he kept saying he wanted to see it again and again -- we must have watched it a dozen times the first night.

He also loves Aragorn decapitating Lurtz, the entire battle of Helms Deep especially where Theoden chops off an orcs arm at the gates , and the Ents stomping on Orcs at Isengard.

So somebody out there likes those scenes even if it is a three year old.
I have no idea where he gets his love of LOTR from especially this sick streak for violence.

There's plenty of somebodies out there who like the Aragorn decapitating the MoS scene.

Only not this somebody.

As for kids and their prediliction for violence .... when my daughter was five she insisted on watching the original King Kong every time it was on television. After about the third time ... she had nightmares.

NL and samaranth - thank you so much for the report.

*drools with envy*

Sam,

That was wonderful! And eeek! Photos of me online??? Scawy, shouldn’t frighten nice b77 peoples…just saying…

I think there are a couple you missed blooper wise:

Aragorn pats Merry on the back and he falls face forward out of shot.

Gimli having a lot of trouble saying Uruk Hai, saying what sounded like Uruguay…

And there was the one about the three hunters running up to Fangorn forest saying: Leading into Fangorn…what the **** do you think they are doing in there?

nl

I knew there were more! Thanks NL ("ennelle")

Somehow I don't think B77 posters scare all that easily

we don't like using swear words, Sam. It's an nl thing.

ack! got chocolate custard on my keyboard...

well, my first thread on b77 doing much better than my first torc thread. Can even remember what that was? lame I would guess.

nl

Another great report, with more detail about how the films ended up getting made by NL, from Chickenlegs, at TORC.

Quote:

At the risk of boring you all silly, I've taken the liberty of posting a summary I put together of Peter's account of actually getting the trilogy off the ground. I've just posted this over at the Frodo/Elijah Swooning Thread in the Movie Fandom forum at the request of my fellow Frodophiles. But I thought it might be appropriate to also post it here for everyone's interest.

After three days my memory is already getting fuzzy so I've had to fill in the blanks in places. If you were there on the night please DO correct me where I've gotten things wrong.

*****

PJ explained the long drawn out and often heart-breaking process of getting these films off the ground. Challenges were thrown at Peter and Fran that would certainly daunt less courageous and committed people. And quite often, as PJ explained, fate just seemed to be on their side. It almost seemd that they were meant to make these films. Peter explained how, looking back on this sequence of events, he can see all the bits of the puzzle click into place at critical points in time.

How did PJ and Fran come to the point of wanting to film LOTR anyway? In the early to mid 90s (let's say it was around 1995 although my memory may be wrong here), Peter and Fran were kicking round the idea of making a fantasy film. They didn't just want to film any old fantasy story. It had to be the right kind of story. As we know PJ can't stand magic in the movies e.g. wizards with lighting bolts fired from magic wands etc. LOTR became their benchmark, although at this stage they never seriously considered actually filming it. Fran kept saying "well it needs to be a story LIKE LOTR". Then one day, in the absence of finding a story that hit the mark, they finally decided that if it had to be like LOTR they may as well actually film that story. PJ mentioned that he first read the book when he was about 17 or 18 during his train commutes to work into Wellington each day. And even though he loved the book he never became such a fan whereby he read it over and over. He felt it was such an immense and detailed piece of work it would be too overwhelming to read it repeatedly.

Anyway, when they finally got the idea, they had to first take it to Miramax because Peter and Fran were under a First Look contract with them. Following the success of Heavenly Creatures which was produced by Miramax, they were under contract to give Miramax first refusal at any new project they came up with in the 3 years following HC. The first major hurdle was securing the rights.

Saul Zaentz held the rights to the LOTR books which he'd bought off the Tokien estate back in the 70s. Saul had refused numerous proposals from other directors, writers, studios who wanted to film the books. PJ mentioned that initially he and Fran had wanted to make The Hobbit and then, if that was a success, move on to film the LOTR trilogy. The difficulties that prevented them securing the rights to the The Hobbit are the same ones preventing that film getting off the ground today. So LOTR it had to be.

As luck would have it Saul owed Harvey Weinstien (head of Miramax) a favour. Harvey had bailed out The English Patient when Saul lost backing prior to The English Patient commencing shooting. First click of the puzzle! So Saul gave in and agreed to let Miramax develop LOTR.

Miramax funded development of the LOTR movie concept to the tune of $12 million dollars. For 18 months Peter and Fran and the creative team at Weta along with Alan Lee and John Howe, developed the script, conceptual designs and built models including Rivendell which was the one used in the films. By mid 1996 they were ready to pitch the finished concept and seek approval from Miramax to start production on the movies. PJ and Fran had developed two scripts for two movies and budgeted that each movie would cost $120 million to make $240 m in total. The first movie would end with the battle of Helm's Deep with the second movie pretty much covering the same ground as the film we know it today.

Unfortunately, Miramax parent company Disney had only given Harvey authority to approve movie projects up to a limit of $75 million. And Harvey unfortunately saw LOTR as ONE, 2 HOUR movie!!

Peter painted a rather vivid picture of how he and Fran flew to New York to pitch the idea to Harvey. Imagine our two kiwi heroes esconced in a un-air-conditioned, stuffy boardroom in New York with no windows, being intimated or rather bullied by Big Harvey into bowing to Miramax's idea of how LOTR should be developed. Both he and Fran were trembling with shock and emotion as Harvey proceeded to tell them in no uncertain terms that Miramax would only fund ONE film that ran no longer than 2 hours. Peter and Fran tried to reason with Harvey that there was no way this story could be condensed so drastically. They told Harvey that if Miramax went ahead with that idea they would disappoint every Tolkien fan who went to see the movie. They just kept telling Harvey it was impossible for them to make a 2 hour film.

That's when Harvey produced is Ace card. Impossible he told them? I think not. Harvey then laid on the table a 3 page document which was a 2 hour treatment of LOTR. Peter told us that he wished so much he had brought the document with him as he still has it. He said we would have really appreciated how ludicrous the treatment was. Imagine if you will an LOTR movie which completely deletes the whole Mines of Moria sequence. (At this point there were mass uttereances of outrage from the 2000 strong audience). The only reference to the Mines of Moria was the Fellowship sitting round talking about it with Frodo saying something like "Gee that was exciting". Miramax's logic was that the audience don't need to see something if the characters just talk about it happening!

Miramax's other brainwaves for condensing the story were to merge the civilisations of Gondor and Rohan into one. (More outrage from the audience) And merging the characters of Denethor and Theoden. (By this stage the audience were laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.)

Peter and Fran were gutted (to use David Stratton's suggested description). They told Harvey they could not possibly be a part of that. Harvey told them it's either Miramax's way or Miramax would film it without Peter and Fran's or Weta's involvement. They would get their own director, namely John Madden who had helmed Shakespeare in Love.

He gave Peter and Fran one (or was it two) weeks to think about what they wanted to do.

They left the meeting shaking and in shock. They immediately went to the home of a director friend of theirs who lived in New York. PJ was shaking so badly he asked his friend to give him a Scotch. PJ said he'd never had a Scotch before in his life, but he'd seen so many movies where they have a Scotch to calm their nerves, so he thought he'd better have one too. (It was so cute and funny when he said that! I just wanted to give him a big hug).

Finally they flew back to New Zealand still not knowing what to do. I think PJ said it was Fran's birthday so they went somewhere special for that and were walking along the beach. It was then that they finally made the tough decision to let LOTR go. They knew they just couldn't live with making it Miramax's way and it was better to just give it up. They'd rather have nothing to do with it. Tough! But I think we'd all agree it was the right decision for them.

So they phoned their agent Ken Cameron to ask him to phone Harvey and let him know they're answer was no. But unbeknownst to Peter and Fran good ole Ken, as well as telling Havey "No", also put in a last ditch plea with the Miramax boss to make him see reason.

Ken pleaded with Harvey to allow Peter and Fran the opportunity to at least take their LOTR concept to another studio. Afterall, he told Harvey, they brought the idea to you, it wasn't the other way around.

Harvey finally gave way, but he put a seemingly impossible proviso on the deal. He told Ken they had only 4 weeks to find another studio and that studio had to agree to repay Miramax the $12 million already spent by Miramax in development. What a lovely civilised chap he seems!

When Peter and Fran got the news they immediately swung into action. Four weeks? Ok here was their plan of action:

Week One - Make a documentary on the making of LOTR - Ok the film hadn't actually been filmed as yet, but this had to be a doco they promoted their script, ideas and designs to the max. The doco included interviews of all the production team, so they were like, filming themselves interviewing themselves!

Week Two - Meetings with all the major studios in LA. Only trouble is, of all the studios they had written to, only two were interedsted in actually meeting Peter and Fran to watch the doco.. The rest had rejected them outright. They weren't even slightly interested.

The two studios interested were Polygram and, of course, New Line.

The met with Polygram early in the week. Polygram, being a British company were very interested. They wanted the movie to be associated with a British studio, because of course it's a British story. They liked Peter and Fran's script, doco and concept and wanted to go with it. Only problem was, Polygram was involved in a take-over bid from another studio/corporation (can't remember which one) at that point in time. They had no authority to give the go ahead to any project until a few more months had elapsed. But unfortunately as we know, Peter and Fran didn't have a few months up their sleeve. They only had four weeks (thanks to Harvey!).

In the meantime, they were playing a rather dangerous game with New Line, the other company who had agreed to see them. Peter and Fran purposely cancelled meeting after meeting with New Line. Foolhardy you may say, but it was all part of their Cunning Plan! By cancelling several meetings they were playing a game of smoke and daggers whereby New Line would be tricked into thinking every other studio in town was hustling to take on LOTR. Finally on their very last day in LA they met with New Line.

Mark Odesky was there and I think Bob Shay (correct me gurus if I have that wrong which I probably do). It was a daunting experience again for Peter and Fran. As with Miramax the meeting took place in a stuffy, un-air conditioned boardroom. They felt Mark Odesky was onside but just couldn't read the reaction from Bob Shay who said not a word as Fran and Peter showed him all the sketches and designs that their team had developed so far and then played their hastily prepared documentary. Finally at the end of the documentary, Bob Shay turned around and said something along the lines of "You want to make two films? We can't make this in two films. *PREGNANT PAUSE as Peter and Fran's hearts sink to their boots* This is THREE FILMS!!"

Yes New Line wanted to take it on and Yes they would pay Harvey Weinstein is $12 million bucks. LOTR was back on track!! YAY!!!

And of course the rest is history as they say.

Thanks, Voronwe! There are some fun details I hadn't heard before.

PJ asking for a Scotch to calm his nerves. . . . I hope it wasn't an Islay. Going PHTHOOOO!!!! all over his friend's rug probably wouldn't have calmed him, or anybody.

Excellent write-ups from everyone.

Color me green with envy.

hmm I had heard that the only reason that they didn't go with the one movie thingy was that they would have to cut the Aragorn fall from the cliff sequence.

Sass wouldn't have handled that very well.

And green is a good colour to be today, Lidless.

they did record the interview and a friend of mine works for the ABC. I will try and see if/when it will be telecast or if I can get a copy and pass it on to you guys (PAL)

nl