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It's up bright and early as the day's events kick off at 8am with a breakfast at the Te Papa museum for the media representatives covering the premiere.
		The breakfast is advertised as a chance to 'touch and feel' props and prosthetics from Weta Workshop, but there appear to be teething problems as half an hour after the advertised check-in we're still being held in the lobby, where thankfully there is at least some entertainment - a Maori drum group, providing rhythms to get everyone in a happy mood. The first thing we see is a gigantic 'bigature' of Barad-dur in the main entrance on the first floor. I need to return to take a picture of this as it's been installed especially for the premiere and will only be on display for a couple of weeks. Breakfast is good, but it's hard to eat with so many goodies around. Weta have gone full-out and provided a bunch of props for journalists to wear, play with and generally mimic parts of the movies with. Soon the place is buzzing, and one of the professional journalists from the UK, is not impressed. 'This is crazy. It's worse than Cannes', he says sniffily. A few minutes later he approaches Dan Hennah, 'So what did you do on the films then?' he asks. Nice to see you do your research before going off on a jolly, Baz! I meet Stefan from RingCon and the German movie web site, and he tells me he enjoyed the Ringers party the night before (I left early with some friends from the fan club and quite a lot of other people - let's just leave it at that for now!). I'd been there for Ian McKellen, Bruce Hopkins and Lawrence Makaore arriving, but with a stage that faced onto a narrow corridor rather than any sort of room, a low ceiling, and a ridiculous crush of fans I couldn't see the point in staying for photographic opportunities. Apparently Sean Astin and Richard Taylor had arrived soon after my party left, as did John Noble (Denethor) who went largely unrecognised at the party. Richard apparently stayed around for some time signing autographs and posing for photo's, as he always does at this sort of event. We had fun playing with the props and listening to Richard's talk before the crush of journalists got too mad, but I noticed people leaving for the press conference and followed them. Just as well as seats were filling fast. There was an area marked 'Photographers' at the front but of course anybody there with any sort of cheap camera was pretending they were a 'photographer' and I felt sorry for some of the professional guys who turned up later to find no room in the key positions. This became a common theme throughout the day. I'd had some really good photographic opportunities at the second TORn oscar party spoilt by a journalist with a 'one use' camera and extremely frizzy hair that just obliterated the camera lens no matter where you tried to put it, and today was to be a repeat performance. The professionals from the national papers were getting very aggrieved and I can't say I blame them - it must be extremely frustrating to have photo's that could be seen by thousands missed because 'reporter Jenny' with her single-use camera has decided she's more important! We even had children of journalists taking priority over 'real' photographers - which is just ridiculous. I have to say my experience of the pro photographers was that they were extremely polite and although their complaints were extremely vocal and expressed using expletives, there was always a humorous element to their complaints, and they always asked permission to duck and dive for a shot, or sit in the aisle. If only the same could be said for the amateurs or the fans at this sort of shindig. The press conference was surprisingly inane (I'd been warned journalists were fast and tough and it would be impossible to ask a question). Again, I heard professional journalists from the national papers complaining about what a waste of time many of the questions proved to be, and again I had to agree with them. Too many were of the closed 'yes' or 'no' variety or of the way too obvious 'Do you like New Zealand?' variety. As if anybody's going to say 'No'! But at least we got the opportunity to take lots of pictures, with thankfully a well lit room since flash photography was banned the minute the conference started, which was the second the cast sat down in their chairs! I will eventually post a transcript of the panels, but there was really nothing new here, except perhaps the clarification of a couple of things. First I got to ask a question about those Internet rumours of reshoots with the main cast for the extended DVD. As I suspected, the rumours aren't true, although Elijah made a joke about really wanting to come back to New Zealand to do reshoots if at all possible. The other major news, to this listener at least, was that Mark Ordesky seemed to be much more definite about the fact that 'The Hobbit' would be made, and made as a New Line film. I thought it interesting that the emphasis was on the words 'New Line' and no mention of Peter Jackson was made. When the answer Mark had given was repeated at the next panel, at which Peter Jackson was present, I sensed Jackson was more than a little irked. Of course I could be reading too much into Peter's seeming change of tone - he's normally such a laid back guy. Time will tell, I guess! I didn't get to ask Howard a question about possible European dates and venues for a performance of his new Symphony in six movements, but heard through another source that the hopes are to perform the work as part of The Proms series of concerts in the UK. With the two press conferences over we had a couple of hours before the next scheduled event - entrance to the press pens on the parade route. This gave me time to nip back to the hotel and 'empty out' my camera flash cards to my laptop so that they could be re-used. As I approached the front entrance to The Duxton a limo pulled up and out stepped Liv Tyler with two security guys who were giving strong 'Keep away' looks to anyone who met their gaze. Liv and her guys headed towards the lifts as did I, and I headed for the other end to keep out of their way. Of course my lift came first and they moved towards it and I moved out the way. The guards were giving off a 'Don't even think about it' look as I pondered perhaps stepping into the lift as well, so I moved back and said 'Go ahead'. Liv was having none of it. 'Come in. We can share. It was your lift. Please. Come in'. What a sweet lady! She made small talk about was I enjoying myself, what did I think of Wellington, but didn't remember our long conversation about music at the London premiere last year ('Was that the first premiere or the second one?') - guess I just didn't make enough of an impression from the 200 other similar events she must go to! The lift ride was over quickly enough, but it was encouraging to see that despite all the Hollywood glamour and glitz, Ms Tyler remains as nice and down-to-earth as you'd like her to be! Click here to continue on to Premiere Parade Report and Pictures Click here to read transcript of the first press panel and more pictures Click here to read transcript of second press panel and more pictures Stay tuned for future reports (indicated by a photo appearing in the main Itinerary calendar) Back to Day 7 report Forward to Day 9 report
Don't forget you can check out reports of lots of other Lord of the Rings -themed events in the Web Logs section

Email: ian@iansmith.co.uk