The blogosphere continues to buzz with news about the production of The Hobbit. Can you believe we are exactly one year away from that film’s Dec. 14, 2012 release? I can’t wait! To hold us over, I thought I’d share the rest of the comments I collected during my interviews with the cast and crew of The Lord of the Rings. You may recall that I posted a number of them last year. Well, here are more responses to the question: “While working on these films, did you learn a life lesson that would be valuable for teenagers today?”
Billy Boyd (Pippin): “Don’t get all stressed out wondering where your next 10 years are going to go. Partly from playing a Hobbit and partly from living in New Zealand, which has a more laid-back lifestyle, I’ve learned to be more happy in what’s happening now.”
Karl Urban (Eomer): “How Viggo [Mortensen] threw himself into his work was an inspiration to the younger cast members. He stood in the rain and sleet for three solid months of night shoots with no complaint. Then he chips a tooth in the middle of a fight and wants to superglue it back in and keep fighting so he doesn’t hold up production.”
Andy Serkis (Gollum): “Not seeing someone and taking them at face value. You can’t help but sense what’s going on in the world around you when you’re making these films. Obviously we started before 9-11, and these things have been in the back of my mind. The threat of war. The inability to see another person’s point of view. I feel it important to understand the nature of the dark and light sides of our personalities.”
Miranda Otto (Eowyn): “Lord of the Rings reveres and talks about things I think society is aching to go back to. A lot of films these days concentrate on so many negative aspects of society. In the ’40s, [cinematic] ideals were about honor, loyalty and dignity—qualities that we tend to forego so quickly for money. If someone says, ‘I’ll give you $200 if you take your clothes off and run around the block,’ a lot of people will do it.”
Brad Dourif (Grima Wormtongue): “The whole theme of fear and confrontation with yourself. Either we confront our fear or we don’t, and what happens if you don’t is really pathetic. What you’re afraid of seems bigger than you are, but if you let it overwhelm you and overcome you it makes you small. If you face it, you triumph and become much more.”
Bernard Hill (Theoden): “That it’s only prosthetic deep. Let me explain. For the battle scenes we learned sword positions and practiced a lot. Because it can be dangerous, we needed to learn to trust each other. So we’d hang out with the stunt guys in trousers and such and really got to know each other. When it came time for filming the Helm’s Deep scenes, they’d arrive in makeup and Uruk-hai armor with their false teeth in and we’d hear the call, ‘Okay, heads on!’ So they’d put their heads on and come at us and you couldn’t tell who was who. My immediate reaction was, ‘Ugh, I don’t like this person.’ Then you’d hear ‘Hey, Shaw!’ ‘Who’s that?’ ‘Andy.’ ‘Oh Andy, hi!’ Inside this head was my friend. But with the head on something happened to him. I was frightened of this person because of an appearance that was only prosthetic deep. It forced me to think about my fears and innate prejudice.”
Peter Jackson (Director): “The need for determination. You have to believe in yourself and not let anything stand in your way. There have been several periods in the history of this project when it could’ve just died. People refer to luck and say it was lucky that New Line wanted to do a movie when Miramax turned it down, and it was lucky they wanted to do three movies instead of two and all this. I don’t actually believe in luck. I think you sort of create your own luck.”
Considering the themes in J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic trilogy, some might even call it providence. Let’s hope for more of the same as The Hobbit marches toward completion!
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