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DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this report are those of Ian Smith (this IS a personal web site and a PERSONAL report!) and do not reflect the views and opinions of any other organisations or clubs that Ian Smith belongs to or may be involved with. Specifically this article does not purport to represent in any shape or form the views or opinions of TheOneRing.net or the Official Lord of the Rings Movie Fan Club or any of its members. 'Empire' is one of my favourite magazines (I'm a subscriber) and the fact that their awards are given by their readership, rather than some po-faced critics or Hollywood politicians who have little touch with reality, indicates that their awards ceremony might leave less of a 'bad taste in the mouth' than other 'political' awards ceremonies (no names, but 'Shakespeare in Love' as 'Best Film' - Give me a break!). So the signs were good that this event would be worth attending, the awards well placed, and I was really looking forward to covering it.
		My evening got off to a bad start because I'd not reckoned on the curse of modern life that is South West Trains. I managed to leave work early, only to have the train I was on break down five minutes down the line. It took them over an hour to get it moved and of course when the replacement arrived it was a case of 'shoehorn-yourself-in' room only. Why do these things always happen on the one night of the year you really don't want them to happen? We had been told a couple of days before the event who was 'expected' to attend. The names seemed rather odd, until the award winners list explained everything. I was somewhat surprised to receive the list of winners, albeit it embargoed until the scheduled start time of the event, several hours before it started. It's possible that the actors themselves don't get to hear anything, but suddenly I'm highly suspicious of claims along the lines of 'It was a total surprise to me'! We had been told we could pick up passes from 6.30pm. Despite the delay of over an hour, a timely encounter with a black cab meant that I just made it to the venue in time. The crowds were nowhere near as bad as I'd expected, but the two press pens for photographers, either side of the main entrance to The Dorchester Hotel, were full to bursting. I am slowly learning that times given are to be ignored and you can never be too early for events where celebrities and the tabloid press are likely to be involved. It was interesting to see that, as in New Zealand, a portable set of steps seems to be as de rigeur for the professional photographer (to see over the heads of other photographers) as the camera itself. There was no chance of getting into either of the press pens, other than to take pictures of someone's back, and the problem was compounded by some mix-up at check-in over which newspaper I was with. I hung around outside the front to see the celebrities arriving and 'soak up the atmosphere', but it soon became clear that the vast bulk of the small group gathered near me (to the left of the entrance as you looked at it) were 'professional' autograph dealers rather than fans out doing a bit of star spotting. With the press photographers blocking the entrance views and most celebrities arriving in cabs that pulled right up to the front door, there was little chance to actually see anyone. I did catch a glimpse of Martine McCutcheon posing for some time for photographers at the entrance, while studiously ignoring all the dealer and fan shouts to come over to the barriers, and also Saffron Burrows who did wander over for a few minutes to sign a few items for the group near my barrier before deciding it was time to move indoors. It was at this stage I realised I was as guilty as those photographers I'd criticised at the New Zealand premiere for not knowing who was who. I had no idea who the 'Saffron' everybody kept shouting at was, despite having seen most of the films she's been in, as listed over at The Internet Movie Database (what a Godsend that site is!) My journalistic colleagues arrived around 7pm and we wandered into the main press room, but not before witnessing the seamier side of the business. One cab arrived with a window partly wound down and a photographer just shoved his camera in the open window firing off one blinding flash after another at the people inside without so much as a 'please', 'thank you' or 'hello'. Quite disgraceful! As a newcomer to this sort of event (the New Zealand premiere was in a rather different league) I was surprised at how small the press room was, with probably less than 40 chairs set out and two large podiums at the back and behind that free hot food and drinks being served. My colleague, who attended the event last year, explained that the left side of the room was for photographers and was the best place to get pictures as the award winners stopped along the aisle, with journalists sitting on the right hand side of the room waiting until the award winners approached the podium at the end of the room to answer a few questions. A small plasma TV near the podium was to relay the main ceremony taking place in a large dining area next to the press room, as broadcast by Sky Movies, but in the event the sound was so low and chatter in the room so loud it was virtually impossible to make out anything other than the fact that Bill Bailey (who didn't come to the Press Area) was hosting the awards. With 45 minutes to go until the start of the ceremony and an almost empty room I bagged my seat next to the 'celebrity aisle' and we went off to discover the Dorchester hotel bar as the 'free drinks' in the press area offered little choice: seemingly white wine, red wine or a coke. We got a reprimanding 'You're supposed to be working!' telling off from one of the old farts who'd refused to let us get to the bar via the nearest entrance, and appeared to have one criteria of what 'working' meant for himself, and a different one for everybody else - Yah! Boo! Sucks!. A round of four drinks cost my colleague £34! Yikes -The Dorchester is a very nice hotel, but it's pricing policies reflect a very different lifestyle from the one that most of us have! Going to the bar turned out to be my big mistake as when we got back to the Press Room, 10 minutes before show time, the seats by the photographer's side of the room had been pushed apart and the front line was cramped and overflowing. Thankfully my chair with gear on was still there, but the presence of Sky Movies camera crew, suddenly installed on the podiums at the back of the room, meant that my plan to use my chair instead of a missing step-ladder to try and see over the other photographer's heads was thwarted when I was politely asked if I could not block the camera's view (a message that so many others seemed to ignore once the celebrities started coming through, I wonder if those guys got any footage at all!) Within seconds of a celebrity accepting an award they and whoever had given them their award would appear and the place would become a noisy area of people shouting out celebrity names as if they were trying to recall a disobediant dog, hoping for that 'looking straight at the camera' shot. It was pretty crazy, but, as in New Zealand, the humour of the professional photographers was pretty good and most got the shots they were looking for, thanks to the generosity of the celebrities who probably just wanted to get back to the main hall and celebrate, see the rest of the show and get some drinks, but nevertheless tried to help us all out. Particularly impressive was Sigourney Weaver (pictures are on next page of this report). She won the 'Career Achievement' award and spent an eternity holding up her prize, turning this way and that at the shout and call of the individual photographers who each wanted their own shot head-on, and then another one, and then another one.... Bernard Hill was the first of the 'Lord of the Rings' cast to win an award, accepting the 'Best Scene' award for 'The Ride of the Rohirrim'. Bernard is always very hard to photograph, I find. A very natural man in person (none of the false airs and graces that one might expect from an actor of his calibre), he always comes across as rather stone-faced when he is in a 'barrage of photographers' situation, which gives totally the wrong impression of what he's actually like. He indulged us for some time and then answered a few questions about the award and his experience on the movies (see transcripts on next page). I am relieved to say that the journalists at this event were asking more intelligent questions than those I'd witnessed at the New Zealand press premiere, and most seemed to have done their homework and worked out which questions had already been answered a million times before! The humour at the event was excellent - much like the ROTK premiere in New Zealand, most of the professionals seemed to know each other and there was a lot of horsing around and joking rather than the sort of rivalry one might perhaps expect given that most were from different newspapers allegedly 'in competition' with each other. Dominic Monaghan had been on the original 'expected guests' list but I had told friends I did not expect him to show as he'd been in LA recording a late night chat show with Craig Kilburn just a couple of nights before, and jet lag is a horrible thing. I was proved correct by his absence when the award for 'Best Movie' was given to 'Return of the King' and accepted by Andy Serkis, Billy Boyd and Bernard Hill. Peter Jackson recorded a thank you speech that seemed quite long - and was rather bizarre, featuring him in the front seat of a roller-coaster ride with the camera strapped to the front. One was vaguely aware of the noise of the roller coaster and his face being pulled in all sorts of directions by the wind-rush as the cart sped up and down some steep inclines, but it was impossible to hear anything he was saying in the press area because of the low volume and general chatter. Many names were not on our 'Expected Guests' list. John Hurt, who we only saw on the TV monitor, was a surprise as were three of the cast members of 'Pirates of the Carribean' (accepting Johnny Depp's 'Best Actor' award on his behalf). Jack Davenport stuck in the memory as someone who found the only way to deal with the whole bizarre experience of being shouted at and hassled with questions was to just treat the whole thing as the amusing, extremely surreal experience it was. He reminded me of a popular teacher dealing with kids who were getting a bit unruly by affectionately taking the mickey out of them. His colleague (also famous for playing 'Gareth' from 'The Office'), Mackenzie Crook seemed very shy (or just in shock at the whole ordeal) while Kevin McNally had the affability and presence of a professional who's had many dealings with the press. Richard Curtis seemed genuinely humbled by his award for 'Best British Film' for 'Love Actually', his debut as a director. Sigourney Weaver had to deal with the most stupid question of the evening: 'What's it like to be the subject of teenage boys' fantasies?' She politely responded 'I didn't realise I was' before the journalist explained, apparently assuming that 'Empire' was a magazine read mainly by teenage boys (I don't think so!). I won't comment on the Lord of the Rings cast comments as they are printed in full in the transcript on the next page of this report, but in general they seemed extremely grateful for their rewards, if a little more 'serious' than most of the other award winners, with the possible exception of Billy Boyd who was his usual ebullient and accommodating self. There was some controversy over the whole nature of CGI and blockbuster movies (the backlash starts here, or in any Viggo Mortensen interview appearing at a news stall near you right now!). This was the subject of some debate from both Roger Corman (who won the 'Independent Spirit' award) and Ray Harryhausen (who won the 'Spirit' award) spoke to the press. Corman, used to having to make movies with low budgets, had no objection to big budget movies like 'Titanic' where the money shows on film, it was the '70 or 80 million dollar movies where none of it's on screen' that he objected to. Harryhausen appeared to struggle with trying to say that too much money is being wasted on CGI 'event' movies on the one hand, while being a friend of Peter Jackson's on the other. He praised 'Lord of the Rings' many times, in particular saying he thought Gollum was amazing, but effectively appeared to take away from the hard work Andy Serkis had put into the Gollum role by saying that Gollum showed that actors could be 'replaced' by computers. The thorny subject of 'King Kong' came up after a rather public dissing of Hollywood's obsession with recycling and regurgitating the same few movies. I'm afraid I fall into the camp that thinks it's absolutely pointless re-making a definitive classic movie just because it was your favourite as a kid - it's a 'geek step too far' as far as I'm concerned, but maybe I'll live to eat my words! Harryhausen dealt with the subject far more delicately than I have here, carefully explaining that although the was adamant there could only ever be one original, he thought Peter Jackson's forthcoming one would be 'amazing' and 'wonderful'. He was quite a gentleman and for me his appearance at these awards was an unexpected delight. The awards were over by about 10pm and for any movie fan the awards ceremony as broadcast looked like it was an enjoyable evening. From my perspective, the whole event was very slick and it was clear that everyone was having a good time, in sharp contrast to other magazine award events I've heard about (SFX Awards, anyone?!). With Sky TV coverage for the first time this event is clearly becoming a big one on the movie awards calendar, and appears to be able to attract the celebrities because they have a pretty good time by all accounts. For me it was fascinating to get this 'behind the scenes' look at such an event and, as a huge movie fan, this was an evening I'm sure I shall remember with affection for some time to come. Click here for my cast member transcripts and more celebrity photo's from the event Click here for Empire magazine's own coverage of the events
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