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Book Launch, London Waterstones, 6th November (Page 2) |
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Boromir (apparently now a magician!) kept the kids entertained while the speakers were getting themselves
organised. From the back we saw a rope trick, but nobody was quite sure if Boromir was playing the "Now you see it, now you don't" trick with
The One Ring!
Brian introduced the panel, in what was an entertaining session for the kids. Questions from the school children drove the session and there were some great questions asked. I don't want to spoil TORN's forthcoming video of the event by revealing all that was discussed here, but the stuff that was of most interest to me was the revelation that Gollum was actually Professor J.R.R. Tolkien's favourite character; that despite the very young age of most of the kids they all seemed to have seen the PG rated movie; and that, with a single exception, all those present thought that the movie was too short! So much for the theory that kids don't have an attention span long enough for a 3 hour movie. Jane and Brian did a magnificent job of selecting children to ask questions, so that pretty much everyone got to ask something, with the only disappointment being that the damned Tom Bombadil question came up AGAIN (but from an adult not a child!). Aaaaaaaarrrrrrgghhhhh! Get over it people! Bombadil slows down the plot, makes the idea of The One Ring being a terrible evil rather silly, and was clearly written in the days when Tolkien wasn't sure which direction to take the story in, and at a time when editors didn't have the power to advise on what should be cut, the way they do today. Really one wonders WHAT people are thinking of when they complain about Bombadil's omission. Brian diplomatically responded by pointing out that Phillipa Boyens had a very neat explanation he liked - which was that the hobbits did go into The Old Forest and meet Tom, just that it wasn't shown in the movie. Jane revealed that Peter Jackson had toyed with the idea of having the hobbits in a scene with a blue feather (from Tom's hat) floating as the hobbits walked towards Bree as a tribute to Tom and a hint that something may have happened that was simply not shown on film, but in the event it was felt nobody would notice it anyway. Andy Serkis spoke about his role in the movies, using pictures from Brian and Jude's books. He made comparisons with Jar Jar Binks from the Star Wars movies - a CGI creature that has no real interaction with other characters and, as a result is so clearly fake. In the case of Gollum, he explained, each scene was shot twice - once with him and once without him, with the CGI people painting on their work over his performance. This was hard work for the actors because everything took twice as long but will really pay off when viewed in the movie, he explained. The result is a very real CGI character - with Gollum's facial expressions based on those Andy acted out at the time. "When Gollum pulls at Sam's shirt you see no CGI fakery - the shirt gets pulled by me, giving real character interaction that hasn't been there in other movies with CGI characters" Andy went on to talk about how he played Smeagol (a gentle, higher, "nicer" voice) vs Gollum (a rougher, more spiteful voice) so that the role was almost that of two people - or of someone schizophrenic. Brian Sibley then cleverly tricked him into doing "the voice" - a performance that was short, but very sweet, and which terrified the hell out of the kids (and a few adults too!) - the atmosphere suddenly turned electric! Andy went on to explain that he used to have three cats who would have trouble with coughing up nasty furballs, and that the character was based very much on writhing as if a furball was stuck in his throat and spitting it out guterally with his voice. I've commented before about cast members of the movie being very humble, friendly, approachable and just plain nice, and am beginning to sound like a broken record on the subject. Needless to say, it was entirely in keeping with past experience of meeting cast members that despite Andy's agreement that he would be free to leave at 4pm he stayed much later, signing autographs and chatting to anyone and everyone about the movie. It was very generous of the actor to give up so much of his time, staying for something like 8 hours in the end. Andy Serkis is an amazing actor (if you haven't seen the wonderful movie "Topsy Turvey" which Andy also appears in, PLEASE check it out)! At this stage, you might be beginning to wonder what much of the day had to do with a book launch event - it had been more like a movie fan club event (not a bad thing, and it was great after more than a year of activity that seems to centre solely on the Los Angeles area, to have something on our own front doorstep) but things got back on track a little in the evening session. Both the main books were being snapped up, not least because of the free Alan Lee lithograph that was printed on strong cardboard-like paper and was being given away exclusively to purchasers at this event. In that evening session, for example, Jane explained how her second Visual Companion had much better photographs than the first volume because they had much more material to select pictures from this time round. She demonstrated this with an amazing picture of Helm's Deep from her book that folds out to a four page battle plan which "Peter and the Weta folks just loved doing for us. They had a lot of fun drawing it all up" Brian talked a little about his new book too - how his first volume, the official companion, had been an objective book, where this new volume is a much more personal account that he hoped fans would identify with. |
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The evening ended with more signing sessions.
The general concensus, not surprisingly, was that this had been a great event. Despite the atrocious weather, many had travelled from afar to attend, and I spoke to a lot of people - not one of whom felt it hadn't been worth the trip. In closing, my thanks go to all the fans who just behaved themselves so well - you're a credit to yourselves and the reputation of "fan clubs" in general. |
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Special thanks to Cadsy and
Maria for looking after all my bags while I went off on my "photo shoot" routine, Gemma (RiverMaiden) and her friends (Heidi was one, I'm
afraid I didn't get anyone else's name) who were representing TORn, for being such
fun to be around, FAKoriginal for bringing me the big bag of Crispy M&M's that have sustained me through into the small hours of the morning in writing
up this report to get it out in a timely fashion,
Jessica Livingstone at COW PR for keeping me informed as to what was going on and giving me access I wouldn't otherwise have had, the speakers who
gave us such a wonderful talk and were so friendly and accommodating, but most importantly of all Brian Sibley for being very much Master of
Ceremonies for most of the day and yet still somehow finding the time to make sure I got everything I wanted to get from the day.
On a very final note, those fans attending the Howard Shore concert on February 9th should check out the "News" section of this site. We are hoping to turn the concert day into a real party day. Check out the information and contact the people named to be kept "in the loop" on what's being planned. Thanks for reading! Click here to return to previous page |
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| Email: ian@iansmith.co.uk |
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