Ian's Lord of the Rings Pages - Two Towers, The One Party, Hollywood, 23rd March 2003




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Day 4 - Two Towers, One Party (Page 2 of 6) Click here for Day 1 report Click here for Day 2 report Click here for Day 3 report Back to Page 1 of Day 4 report Forward to Page 3 of Day 4 report Move mouse over any picture for explanatory text. Click on any picture to see a larger version. VIEWS EXPRESSED ON THIS WEB SITE ARE THE PERSONAL OPINION OF IAN SMITH AND DO NOT IN ANY WAY REFLECT THE VIEWS AND OPINIONS OF DECIPHER, THE OFFICIAL FAN CLUB MAGAZINE OR STAFF AND VOLUNTEERS OF THEONERING.NET (TORn)

We decided to grab a bite to eat before the party proper kicked off. The food in the upstairs area (notice how I'm being diplomatic here and carefully avoiding THOSE three letters!) was, to be blunt, much better than that served downstairs, presumably because the sponsors were paying a lot to support the party and the least that could be done was to feed them well.
I got to meet a friend from my last trip Josh (Sarumann) who looked close to exhaustion after a stressful week preparing for the party, and also Matt (Arathorn) from the UK and his girlfriend, who made us all go green with envy when she revealed that not only had she managed to visit the "Buffy" set but she'd also seen Her Buffyness Sarah Michelle Geller to boot. It kinda put my excitement at seeing John Spencer (Leo from "The West Wing") to shame. It was also cool to meet Larry ("MrCere"), this time with his wife Shannon (last year at the time of the party she had been about to give birth so this was the first time we got to meet). Really nice people! Having finished our food Matt spotted a great photo opportunity - a long queue of party goers trailing down the block. It was only after I'd stepped onto the wire balcony, encouraging Lynne Machie (Lith) to wave up at the camera, that I heard a panicky voice shout "The balcony isn't load-bearing. Quick. Get off it". Fortunately I've lived to tell the tale, and got the photo Matt had spotted to boot (see previous page for resulting photo).
		Having eaten and grabbed a quick drink (drinks - even alcoholic drinks - were free all night, how good was that??!) we did another reccie of the venue. The huge Weta sculptures of the Wraith on horseback and Lurtz that we'd seen at last year's Comic-Con were spotted in various rooms, as were a deluge of old friends we hadn't seen at the fan club's pub moot yesterday. The raffle looked to have some great stuff this year, and it is a real regret that I didn't get the time to go back to the same room and check out all the auction items - I gather there were some real rarities to be had! The main floor had a huge stack of speakers, making it much easier than last year to hear the oscar broadcast itself, and also Quickbeam, who did his usual excellent job as compere. Last year's blue and green hair were discarded for his "fiery ent" look, although I don't believe his claims that it was him who'd played the part of the ent set on fire who extinguishes his flamey hair in the waters of Orthanc were believed by anyone ;-)! And if Cliff is reading this I've been asked to pass on a message from Cadsy: She apologises for embarrasing you by telling you all the British girls wanted to squeeze your a*** (even if it was true)! Moving swiftly on, the broadcast itself was, I felt, better than last year's, with Steve Martin doing an excellent job. I missed the controversial anti-War speech (which I'm told the Brits cheered but everyone else booed?!), but did catch the "Best Actor" speech. Maybe it was annoyance at Daniel Day Lewis not getting what should have been his, but I thought that ignoring the band telling him to "get on with it" and waffling incoherently about winning the award and then the current political situation was just bad manners, although it seemed popular with most of the party crowd. Asfaloth had asked Susan and I to be interviewed for a video TORn were putting together. I'm afraid that our timing on this was terrible and we missed quite a bit on the main stage waiting while the excellent group we'd heard at BowlMoot (Vis Sit Tecum Musicorum) were being interviewed. I really don't like being interviewed as I have a habbit of putting my foot in it, but Matt reassured me that my British accent would be enough to see me through it, LOL! Of course I made a faux pas when it got to the question about preferring the books or the movie. Not content with saying I preferred the books and the BBC radio dramatisation to the second movie (because they were more Tolkien than the second movie had been) I went on to say that the bits that had been written especially for the film added nothing to the film and just weren't Tolkien, where the bits that had been sacrificed to make way for them also made the film less like Tolkien and too much like a Hollywood special effects movie. I think there was genuine shock in the room. I tried to rescue myself by saying that of course if Peter Jackson showed up I'd deny all this and say exactly the opposite, but too late, the damage was done. "Nobody's ever said that" exlaimed the interviewer. Susan tried to come to my rescue by asking if they'd actually asked anybody else what they felt about the added stuff (they hadn't - phew!) but it was all too late and the damage was done. Hopefully the whole thing is on the cutting room floor somewhere! Taking a break in the Rohan bar with friends AngryPixie, Pippin's Scarf and some of our Brit contingent Susan and I were interrupted by a man in leather jeans, asking if we were press. We were told to go to a special press area in the front lobby, to be ready for the arrival of a special guest. With the benefit of hindsight we rushed over much too early and lost an hour standing in a cold, draughty hall where we could have got some great pictures of the TORn staffers being introduced on stage. However, we did have a good time, thanks to some of the other press folks, who were a mixture of people: from professional TV crews all the way down to a journalist who didn't have a notepad or recorder but did have one of those cheap "one use" camera's. Go figure! Alas our space was marked with a "Decipher" placard, which meant that the journalist next to us started to ask us about why his order for goods hadn't arrived (this wasn't the first member of staff/press who hit us with customer service issues on the assumption we were Decipher employees, and I think if I ever do this again I'll insist on being a magazine rather than a Decipher rep!) Susan looked after my camera gear while I charged back to the main hall to try and get a picture of the TORn staffers on the main stage (I got a very nice shot of the backs of some people's heads!) and then it was back to anticipation and excitement as word reached us a limo, with the first guest in, had drawn up. I think the TORn staff were as surprised as we were to see the first arrival - none other than John Rhys-Davies (Gimli). I heard one member of staff say they hadn't even known he was going to be in Los Angeles - were we blessed at this party, or what?!. With nine different press representatives trying to get photo's and interviews, we drew the short straw on John (he realised by the time he got to us that if he didn't hurry up he'd be there all night), but we did get some photo's of him talking to others (albeit with many spoilt by another journalist's hair getting in the way!) and we got to listen in on the interview conducted by the guys from TORn digital (who were really friendly folks). We heard Jon being asked why on earth he was coming to this party when there were so many others he could have gone to. "I come here out of respect for the fans" he told the interviewer. He then went on to give his tip for next year's oscars: "Sean Astin for Best Supporting Actor". When asked if he could say anything about the forthcoming "Return of the King" movie he was understandably reticent but did say: "All I can tell you is take a big handkerchief". It was no surprise to hear from friends the next day that John had quickly left the designated VIP area to wander around the main hall, without security, happily posing for photo's with the fans. Susan and I had a big advantage over the other press folks in that we had access to the VIP area so were able to follow Jon up the stairs once his entourage had disappeared, to try and get some more words of wisdom for the fan club magazine. Alas, he was ensconsed in a conversation with a couple of other people that looked like it might go on for a while, so we had to resort to Plan B - returning to the Press area to see who arrived next. This is where we hit our first problem - security wouldn't let us down the main stairs, which meant carousing the rabbit warren of corridors around the back of the building to try and get back to the front. This is where I saw some of the "scary" scenes that others have talked about when the cast appeared on the main stage. The exit from the Rohan bar to the main press corridor was absolutely solid. I thought we'd never get through it, but luckily enough people were nice enough to recognise us and try and help us make our way through. It was very claustrophobic! Susan talked to Larry ("MrCere") about the problems we had, and with amazing efficiency we were introduced to all the venue's security staff who were told they had to let us through. I said in my teaser page for this report that we were treated like Royalty by the TORn folks - well here's the proof: we were given a note which read "Asfaloth has agreed that Sir Ian" (LOL!) "and his assistant are to be allowed access to the stairway". We had no further problems that night :-) As we waited for the next special guest a member of staff came to inform us that it would be half an hour before the next guest - Billy Boyd - appeared. This gave me an excuse to nip off to the main rooms, let my mum and fellow Brits know that I was unlikely to be around for a while, and let friends know the gossip (cue lots of girly shrieks whenever Billy's name was mentioned!) Click here for NEXT page of report on The One Party Click here for PREVIOUS page of report on The One Party

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Email: ian@iansmith.co.uk