The world has changed.
You can read it in the pages.
You can hear it in the music.
You can see it on the screen.
Much that once was, is now lost.
But many yet live who remember.
All right, thank you.
Have a seat.
This is sad. I have to look at his midsection.
No. You have to look at his eyes.
- Look at his eyes? - Yes.
Okay.
- Look him in the eyes. - All right.
- What's this? - This is a "Tolkien Confessional."
Answer the question. You can begin as soon as I close the doors.
When you want to come out, just give me a knock.
- Okay. All right. - Have fun.
Okay. What I like most about Lord of the Rings.
We are servants of the Secret Fire.
We are one generation of readers followed by another and another.
From every walk of life, from the four corners of the globe...
we are wanderers in Middle-earth.
We have truly gone there and back again.
Yet the world of J.R.R. Tolkien beckons us to return.
My precious.
I also brake for Elves and Dwarves, but not Orcs.
We write rock and roll songs.
We make visionary films.
We fight for the environment.
We stand in line for weeks.
We are Hobbits and we are wizened wizards.
We are the global following of The Lord of the Rings.
We are Ringers.
Within the walls of his Oxford home...
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien wrote fantastical fables...
to entertain his young children.
Friends encouraged him to take his stories outside the family nursery...
and share them with the world.
Publisher Stanley Unwin thought so, too.
And in 1937, The Hobbit first appeared in England.
The first printing quickly sold out.
The Duke of Kent purchased his own copy that same year.
The unassuming professor from Oxford was an overnight sensation.
Americans adored the book, which enjoyed waves of critical acclaim...
some of which was written anonymously by Tolkien's best friend, C.S. Lewis.
We need a sequel, we need a sequel!
Tolkien's publisher warned him that the public would be...
"Clamouring next year to hear more from you about Hobbits."
For Tolkien, the pursuit of his own private mythology...
was more attractive than any paycheque.
Tolkien had already written many legends and histories for early Middle-earth.
The Silmarillion was Tolkien's grand mythology...
and it was dearest to his heart.
Unfortunately, Sir Stanley Unwin found zero Hobbits within its pages.
Tolkien was now faced with the arduous task of crafting something new.
Shadows and traces of The Silmarillion...
would indeed appear in his newest book, The Lord of the Rings.
The lead character was a young Hobbit.
In the earliest drafts, his name was Bingo.
There was a Hobbit had a ring And Bingo was his name-O
B-l-N-G-O!
That name would soon change and so would much of the story.
Several chapters in, Tolkien would go back to square one, rewriting everything.
Building an epic story that would tie into his preexisting universe proved painstaking.
In 1954, The Lord of the Rings made its English debut.
One year later, it was published in America.
Science fiction fans, not surprisingly, were the first ones smart enough to realise...
a new classic was right under their noses.
Forrest J. Ackerman, known for publishing Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine...
and coining the term "sci-fi" already had his finger on the pulse...
as he watched over the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society.
Just that it was so overwhelming.
There had been nothing previous to it.
It was so complicated, so creative...
so imaginative.
At the 15th Annual World Science Fiction Convention in London...
Uncle Forry and his panel of judges awarded Tolkien...
the International Fantasy Award.
It was the first of many honours Tolkien would receive...
but he couldn't figure out what he described as:
"An absurd trophy...
"a massive metal model of an upended space rocket...
"combined with a Ronson lighter."
After receiving the prize, Tolkien found himself face-to-face with Uncle Forry...
who brought an unexpected offer to the table.
I had brought with me, there was a Grady Zimmerman...
a young science fiction fan...
who was a member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society.
And he had speculated on a script.
And Ron Cobb...
he had gone all around California...
and photographed various places...
that he thought would fit right in to a film version...
of Tolkien.
He verbally gave me permission...
to try for one year...
to see if I could find any...
film interest in it.
But, unfortunately, I found I was far ahead of my time.
The professor finally found time to read Zimmerman's storyline...
but the changes were too much to bear.
Radagast was now an eagle...
Lembas bread had become a food concentrate...
and Faramir's body floated aloft on a magical cloud.
Oh, dear.
Tolkien tried to keep his mouth shut...
in the hopes the movie option would have a huge payout...
but the project never came to fruition.
Meanwhile, critics around the world had finally gotten hold of...
The Lord of the Rings.
I say, what do you make of this dull, ill-written...
Lord of the Rings?
It's juvenile trash!
Inflated, overwritten, tendentious, and it's juvenile trash!
Grownups don't read fairy stories.
- Oh, those awful Orcs. - Awful Orcs!
Just a children's book that's gotten totally out of hand.
Quite simply, it's balderdash.
Balderdash!
It's a poverty of invention which is pathetic.
- Pathetic. - Pathetic.
On the other hand...
Tolkien was supported and praised by a lot of critics.
C. S. Lewis sung his praises far and wide.
This is the groundbreaking successor to The Odyssey.
Here are beauties that pierce like swords...
or burn like cold iron.
Tolkien's invention is unflagging.
No fiction I've read in the last five years has given me more joy.
It overwhelms the reader!
May it pass into merciful oblivion!
Oh, let's read Ulysses again.
Ouch!
I had read...
W. H. Auden's New York Times review of the books...
when they came out in '54 and I thought...
"This sounds like keen stuff. Where can I get my hands on it?"
Tolkien knew the critics were polarised.
He made up a little song that says it all:
"The Lord of the Rings is one of those things
"If you like it, you do If you don't, then you boo"
Without a doubt, critic Edmund Wilson said "boo" the loudest.
Before we go to the troubled Mr. Wilson...
let's first go to the fact that...
I think the year before last...
there was this survey done in England...
you probably know about it...
about, was it, the 100 greatest novels of the 20th Century?
And Lord of the Rings came out right there at the top.
And it brought this cry...
this scream of complaint from the literati...
saying that this reflected the juvenile tastes of English readers...
and so on.
Tolkien's worst critics never had enough firepower...
to slow down sales of the books...
but it would be another 10 years before popular taste and a publishing scandal...
would make The Lord of the Rings...
the true juggernaut of fantasy it was destined to become.
We are here in beautiful, sunny Los Angeles...
where it's freezing cold.
And we're getting ready to start our five-day line event...
for all of the Tolkien fans to see The Two Towers.
What is it that makes you want to be involved with them?
Just the experience of urban camping.
Better than wilderness camping?
It's a different type of camping. Yeah.
It's a new hobby that's on its way up now.
- Trading mosquitoes for drive-by bullets. - Yes, exactly.
Tolkien had an amazing...
I'm going to coin a word...
he was a philologist, I think he invented some words...
so maybe I'll invent a word...
"Truthometer," you know, about human experience. He just...
He clearly understood human beings.
Tolkien took so much of his life...
and created a beautiful piece of art...
and people relate to that.
People enjoy that another human being...
has done something so beautiful.
It's a great yarn. It's a great moral fable.
And it comes out of reading, literature...
and the experience of life.
I think that the themes are timeless, you know.
They will constantly be relevant because they are themes of...
of just that, of hope, of friendship, of fellowship.
You know, very classic, good versus evil.
People unfamiliar with The Lord of the Rings...
often assume nothing lies within its pages...
beyond the typical swashbuckling adventure yarn.
But those who truly understand Tolkien's work...
declare it is much more than a simple story.
To them, it reveals the heart of humanity.
What I find most enticing about The Lord of the Rings...
is the fact that once you have opened it...
once you have immersed yourself in it...
you are reading something, which to you, or to me at any rate...
feels real.
Ordinary people of popular culture ask the big philosophical questions...
and these are the kind of questions...
that Tolkien is addressing in storytelling form in his book.
I've reread his books and it's fascinating...
because every time I read his books, I get something different out of it...
something that I didn't see before.
And just new ways that I can relate it to my life.
Maybe it's an indescribable feeling as to why they like it so much.
But I think everybody's rooting for good and I think it's a good sign...
that good's hard...
but you stay on that road, you know...
because evil's everywhere you turn.
I mean, obviously his story, in large part, is the same story...
that has been told in different ways, you know...
in countries all over the world for thousands of years.
People have always had this fascination for those heroes...
who are coming out to try to save the world...
from a terrible blackness that is beginning to cover it.
It's a story with heart, and it's honest...
and it does several things at once. It lifts you out of this world.
But at the same time...
it delivers you into the arms of things that are familiar...
and emotions that are familiar.
It's a hard story of hope.
And it's a story of people having to work so hard...
so hard for what is right.
This story is told in terms of a fellowship, of a group of people...
who are trying to do the right thing...
without the benefit of a deity who is telling them what to do.
God doesn't appear in this story of good and evil.
It's up to each person to decide what they are going to do with their life...
as Gandalf said.
I think Lord of the Rings is just an incredible story...
about faith and trust and hope.
Incredible friendships between all different races.
I think the message of the fellowship is that...
as a sort of group of mixed races...
when they stand together against the forces of one great evil...
they can accomplish more.
And I think the reasons why Tolkien will continue to be popular...
it's not just because there's been the highly successful film by Peter Jackson...
which, obviously, has enormously increased the readership...
but we have to remember that the readership may have been...
what, 100 million readers, who knows...
before the films came out.
So, the films themselves wouldn't exist...
without that kind of context of fervent interest in The Lord of the Rings.
When people read it...
they understand themselves a little better...
they can really relate to the characters because of that quality of emotional truth.
They've asked me to tell you who my favourite Lord of the Rings...
I guess the character that I most identify with...
and I think that would be Pippin...
because I enjoy speaking to the forest...
and walking around, sitting in a tree.
And I have a lot of hair on my feet, too.
So, that would be another reason...
Hello, precious. Is there enough room for two?
- So are you having a good time? - I'm having a great time.
Yes? Oh good, good. Tell me what you're talking about.
I was just talking about how much I love Gollum.
That's what I was talking about, actually.
That's good, precious. Otherwise I'd get very cross.
- And you don't want to see me angry. - No, I don't.
Oh, no, precious.
- Are you having a good time? - I'm having a lovely time. I'm not!
That's excellent. You're looking better these days.
Thank you very much, precious.
Definitely.
All right. Well, that was interesting, as you can imagine.
Anyway, I'm gonna say Gollum now. He's my favourite.
Well, I've been a Tolkien fan for a long time.
In fact, I was part of the original generation of the 1960s...
that turned his book from a little-known, coterie, intellectual taste...
into mass culture.
There was a revolution going on that I guess...
really began with the assassination of Kennedy...
you know, that's when the '60s really began, in 1963.
The counterculture was fuelled by three main things:
Flower power, rock and roll, and J.R.R. Tolkien.
It's funny how, maybe, insular I was. I mean, the friends I knew loved it.
I mean, it was, like, so cool...
but it was still almost like a little bit of a secret, too.
When the books appeared...
they were immediately championed by all kinds of people.
There were all these sort of academics, poets, writers...
people who were serious writers...
queuing up to say, "This is a good book."
But then, in the 1960s, a decade later...
you get this discovery by ordinary people who go...
"Hey, man, this is good. This is cool!"
And find their own world, their own way into the world of Middle-earth.
And, of course, in a way, that's what the film's doing now...
it's just doing it and doing it differently.
So these are the unauthorised...
- fake editions. - Yes. Fake editions which...
Which caused such a great legal folderol between Ballantine Books...
who were the real American paperback publishers, and Ace.
They didn't have the rights to publish these.
Exactly. Although there was some loophole...
from what I understand.
These pirated books featured irrelevant, trippy, psychedelic covers.
One of them even featured a Ringwraith on a flying horse.
Since he wasn't receiving a dime from this bootlegged edition...
Tolkien helped the campaign to shut out the Ace editions.
In replies to American fan letters...
he urged them to tell their friends to boycott the Ace books.
A groundswell of support began among students.
They purchased the authorised Ballantine editions...
and protested booksellers who stocked the Ace versions.
The fight over The Lord of the Rings' American publishing rights...
brought the trilogy to the attention of the American readers.
"This paperback edition and no other has been published...
"with my consent and cooperation.
"Those who approve of courtesy, at least, to living authors...
- "will purchase it and no other." - "And no other."
The official Ballantine paperback sold over three million copies...
before the end of 1968.
The hippie movement became Tolkien's most visible audience.
As if Professor Tolkien wasn't frustrated enough...
with this paperback publishing debacle...
the official editions also had irrelevant, trippy, psychedelic covers.
You have to wonder where the emus factored into The Fellowship of the Ring.
There was this whole sort of feeling that Lord of the Rings was part of being "it"...
part of being hip.
Now, just think what this was like for Professor Tolkien.
There he is, living down in Oxford...
and suddenly he finds himself the focus...
of all this attention and interest.
They go down to Oxford en masse and they beat a path across his lawn...
and his rose beds to look at him through the window...
while he's sitting there having breakfast with his wife, Edith.
You know, this is not going to be something which, for someone like Tolkien...
is going to necessarily commend itself to being a great experience.
Tolkien himself didn't know how to deal with all this attention.
He once called his fans:
"My deplorable cultus."
I actually read The Lord of the Rings before I realised the popularity.
But then I started to hear about the buttons which said...
"Frodo Lives" and "Gandalf for President"...
and there was a club in London called Gandalf's Garden...
and people started to dress in Hobbit-type clothes.
One man by the name of Muz Murray was sowing the seeds of Gandalf's Garden...
in the heart of '60s London.
Starting an underground magazine with no money was nothing to get hung about.
Muz Murray knew that Gandalf was the perfect mystical hero...
to get out the message of '60s counterculture.
To help raise money for printing costs...
Murray and his friends staged a benefit concert...
with many yet-undiscovered poets and musicians...
including Marc Bolan of T. Rex and David Bowie.
Spiritual guidance, mystic teachings...
and daily readings from The Lord of the Rings...
kept the good vibration going.
I mean, it was all couches and you laid down on the floor.
It was like one of them old opium smokers like you got in...
What was that? Once Upon a Time in America.
It was like, you know, when they were living down in Venice in little shacks...
and bungalows and stuff like that and it was sort of very Shire-like.
You know, and they're all sitting around smoking their pipes.
Of course it wasn't tobacco.
Marijuana, LSD, and psychedelic drugs...
were as much a part of the counterculture as Tolkien.
It wasn't a stretch to see the simple pleasures of Hobbit life...
had inspired everyone.
After all, they smoked a unique form of pipe weed...
and enjoyed lots of mushrooms.
Love of the Rings became a permanent sign of the times.
We weren't cynical yet, you know?
I mean, I was as cynical as it gets and I wasn't cynical at all.
We believed in something that nobody believes in now.
We believed in the inherent goodness of other people.
In '68, I went off to college and, of course, now, everybody was reading it.
I actually started a Tolkien Society in college.
I was so embarrassed by it because it was just me and, like, one other guy...
that sort of showed up and then wandered off.
London had Gandalf's Garden.
But in the U.S., a student named Dick Plotz...
founded the Tolkien Society of America in 1965.
Some of the more serious British fans were not amused.
There's a lady called Vera Chapman founded the Society in 1969.
She was upset by the then-hippie culture...
taking over Tolkien...
and sort of...
having, taking drugs, trips, you know...
"Middle-earth, yeah, man," that sort of thing...
so she decided to found the Tolkien Society to show that it was not that...
it was a great author who'd written a great book.
The slogan "Frodo Lives"...
showed up scrawled on the walls of the New York subway.
Kids started wearing buttons written in Elvish.
They were the ultimate badges of hippie identity.
You know, we would go from city to city to protest the war...
to protest civil rights...
to sit together in a potter's house and listen to poetry.
In a way, it captured what they were trying to say with burning bras...
and flowers in your hair, and Woodstock.
What they were saying is oneness...
regardless of culture, regardless of background, regardless of race.
Oneness.
We are better when we pull together. All these themes.
You know, we're different.
The Elves are different from the Hobbits, in many ways.
But together, look what they accomplish. They save a world.
And that's very much the themes that was is in the heart...
of young people during the '60s.
But it infected, you know, everything...
I think even more than the movies have had their effect.
In spite of the fact that the movies have a much broader audience.
You know, I mean, millions and millions of people.
I mean, you have to understand that, you know...
we used to have a phrase in the '60s, the late '60s...
you know, with your long hair and your bell-bottoms...
you'd go out and you'd freak the mundanes.
You'd walk barefoot down the street.
"What's that guy doing in dungarees?"
I think when you ran into a Tolkien person it was like...
"Why is that guy wearing a robe and carrying a staff?"
I mean, you know, it just looked so bizarre. No one had ever seen this before.
Somebody said to me at Woodstock that there were a lot of Gandalfs...
and I wasn't at Woodstock...
but that there were a lot of Hobbiton people roaming around.
The Lord of the Rings was kind of the metaphysical statement of the decade.
Well, now we can have that again, we can continue it.
Because, basically, that's what we are, a bunch of hippies, you know, our age.
And we can breed some new hippies, and Tolkien is doing that.
The same thing is happening over and over again...
just like it happened in the '60s.
My name is Derek Iversen.
I am co-facilitator of The L.A. Greens, our local chapter of the Green Party.
And what we've decided to do today in the Doo Dah Parade...
is to be here as the "Fellowship of the Greens."
Every year in late November, the infamous Doo Dah Parade...
transforms the heart of Pasadena, California, into a mass of mayhem.
And that's just the way they like it.
The parade is a huge celebration of fringe artists, performers...
politicos, and local celebrities.
We saw the Ents as characters who represented defenders of the environment...
and in that, we really saw some solidarity between what they were after...
defending the forests, and what we're after as Green Party members...
which is also defending the forests.
So we've used them as sort of a mascot for today.
He's literally the voice of the earth.
And, you know, the earth never gets to speak for itself...
you know the Orcs chop it up, beat it up, not a thought.
You know, Isengard just takes the trees and destroys it.
And it's nice to hear the trees, or the earth, talk back for a change...
and see how it hurts them.
And so I thought it's a very sympathetic character...
because it gives so much to us and we don't do anything for them...
necessarily.
So coming as a tree is a very honourable thing to be.
Tolkien loved plants and gardens, but trees most of all.
He took the ancient power of nature...
and personified it in his unique race of Ents.
The great shepherds of the trees.
What do you see in Treebeard...
that you think has endeared him to so many readers over the years?
There is something so magical about this...
the oldest living thing on the planet.
We tend to despise age...
in our culture and society these days...
and yet part of us hankers for that ageless wisdom...
of the very old.
The onset of the industrial revolution seems to be a big key thing in the story...
with machines and metal and, you know, the building of swords and towers...
and castles in places where there was once nature...
in Fangorn Forest and places like that.
We think that there's plenty of evidence that...
Tolkien had strong concerns about the environment...
and that he was perhaps even a bit of a Luddite...
concerned about what technology was doing to the natural world.
We share his concern.
It doesn't necessarily mean that technology's a bad thing.
Doesn't necessarily mean that technology's going to make you into Saruman...
but it's something to keep an eye out for.
We're in solidarity with the people of Middle-earth...
in support of the environment and social justice.
What better place for the untamed spirit of rock and roll to stake its claim?
Rockers of the late '60s...
began placing Tolkien characters and references in their songs.
More than a few would become all-time classics of rock history.
In the middle of the earth in the land of the Shire
lives a brave little Hobbit whom we all admire
With his long wooden pipe fuzzy, woolly toes
He lives in a hobbit-hole and everybody knows him
Bilbo! Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins
He's only three feet tall
Bilbo! Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins!
The bravest little Hobbit of them all
In 1967, Leonard Nimoy appeared on Malibu U...
a summer replacement show on ABC...
singing his Vulcan heart out with adoration for Bilbo Baggins.
There was a big underground basement warehouse place...
as they all are, you know what I mean?
Rocker Marc Bolan released his first single, The Wizard...
while playing his earliest gigs at a cellar club known as Middle Earth...
where David Bowie, Pink Floyd and The Doors broke new ground.
And as you went down the steps to go in...
See, that's different, isn't it? You couldn't imagine that now.
Were you aware of all this Lord of the Rings references...
that was in the Led Zeppelin songs and the fantasy rock from the '70s?
- Oh, yeah. It's huge. - What's your impression of that?
Well, a lot of people, that are friends of mine...
think that it would be a great alternate soundtrack to the movie...
if it was all, like, old-school rock.
And not to mention the fact that the movie is very metal.
You know, a lot of heavy metal is based on sword and sorcery...
and riding on your steed against the great armies.
You know, Led Zeppelin are very much in the Lord of the Rings realm.
Let's just say it. It's all coming together, however many years later.
I'm also a big Led Zeppelin fan.
Of course, Led Zeppelin always has Lord of the Rings stuff.
So it's only natural that one day I would just kind of stumble upon these books...
sitting in my parents' bookshelf and just say...
"Oh, what's this? Let's check it out."
Led Zeppelin IV was released November 8, 1971.
It became known as "The Runes Album."
So many Zeppelin songs make reference to Mordor and Ringwraiths...
and, like, you've got "The Battle of Evermore"...
which is a classic sort of reference to Lord of the Rings.
And Misty Mountain Hop.
While on tour, Jimmy Page appeared onstage in full wizard costume.
Even the beautiful Beatles tapped into the zeitgeist...
with John Lennon pushing for a film version of The Lord of the Rings.
They were turned down by legendary filmmaker David Lean...
and Stanley Kubrick quickly said no.
MGM/United Artists smelt a hit on their hands and it might have worked out...
but a script treatment for the epic story could not be agreed upon.
Negotiations fell apart.
Yeah, that's one of the greatest losses of pop culture, I think...
that they weren't allowed to do that.
But in my mind, I can see the Beatles doing their own version of that.
Perhaps Ringers should be relieved that a disaster was safely averted.
They wanted Twiggy...
swinging London's favourite supermodel, to play the Lady Galadriel.
There was a place where rock intersected with Lord of the Rings...
bands like Yes and King Crimson...
and they all had that kind of baroque, mystical style...
and it felt like an easy segue, you know?
When we wrote Rivendell, let's see, it was '75, so you know...
do the math. We were 22.
You know, we were pretty young and naive, thank God.
And up for anything, and okay, so let's do a five-minute song...
based on this magical place that we all read about and love.
It was directly inspired by our love of the story...
and our image of what a glorious, peaceful place...
Rivendell would be to hang out in.
And we were big fans and we thought we would try this gentle kind of song...
which was our own personal tribute to Tolkien.
Then came the heavy metal bands...
all strongly identified with sword and sorcery...
running the gamut from Blind Guardian...
to the likes of former Black Sabbath front man, Ronnie James Dio.
Ronnie Dio was always very fond of goblins and things, wasn't he?
Yeah.
All them singers with high voices seemed to sing a lot about, like, fairies and shit...
which was very suspicious in and of itself. You know what I mean?
Because of the fact that it was fantasy...
you can get away with anything in a fantasy storyline, pretty well...
and make it work, on one level or another.
Roadside attractions are revered pieces of Americana, from Cabazon...
to the Mystery Spot to the Desert of Maine, there simply aren't that many left.
But if you drive 200 miles north of San Francisco on Highway 101...
deep within the untamed redwood Avenue of the Giants...
you'll find the hidden wonders of Hobbiton U.S.A.
This tall, old-growth forest has an ethereal, otherworldly quality.
The air is fresh here, and it isn't surprising to find Middle-earth...
revealed around the next bend in the road.
Here, in a hole in the ground, lives a Hobbit.
He's made of wood...
just like his friend Gandalf, who stands watch over him.
Both colourfully painted and lacquered.
First opened in 1981 and located near Phillipsville, California...
Hobbiton U.S.A. Is a living diorama of The Hobbit.
As you hike the path, you are following in Bilbo's footsteps through the story.
And with the help of a talking magic box...
a mellifluous narrator explains all of Bilbo's predicaments and narrow escapes.
He is surprised to find he is wrapped in the web of a giant spider!
It is decidedly low-tech, but beyond charming.
The matriarch of this attraction has passed on...
but it is still family-owned and operated by a second generation of Satterlees.
She did it basically by herself with her husband, Jack Stewart...
and they would just work together at that...
and I think they just got tired of ranching...
and wanted to do something a little more exciting.
You'll also find Gollum in his cave, and the Lord of the Eagles.
And if you get lost, there's a map.
You know, when you read the story, it is a fantasyland...
and, like I said, my mum loved it...
and she thought the redwoods were peaceful...
and she thought the Hobbits were peaceful people...
and she felt that they belonged here.
I kind of worried about her a little bit once in a while, too.
- We all did. - Once in a while?
If Middle-earth were a real place, would you like to go and visit?
Absolutely. Sure.
Why wouldn't you?
- Wolf would get you or something. - Oh, those wolves won't get you.
And for Ringers, Hobbiton U.S.A. Is a little slice of heaven.
In the early '70s, it was still very hip to be into Tolkien.
But that would soon change due to three animated Rings adaptations.
I was a record producer of children's records, story records mainly...
at Walt Disney Company. It was called Disneyland Records back then.
Arthur Rankin Jr. And Jules Bass...
enjoyed a string of televised animated hits during the '60s.
Their output included such classic holiday fare as...
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and The Year Without a Santa Claus.
Well, one of the properties we got hold of were the RankinlBass properties...
and they said, "Oh, we're doing The Hobbit and The Return of the King."
We got to go see the films, you know, and it was like...
"These are my most cherished stories, you know...
"and Bilbo looks like a frog, you know."
It was so odd-Iooking to me, and yet, you know, it's a RankinlBass thing...
somebody's doing something with the property at least.
The Hobbit originally aired on ABC in 1977.
Rankin and Bass' audience...
was the generation spawned from the Summer of Love.
And it was the first time they had ever heard of Hobbits.
We grew up with the Rankin and Bass films.
I probably haven't seen any movie more than the Rankin and Bass The Hobbit.
RankinlBass had these really, sort of...
let's say "exotic," you know, properties.
And they added their own spin to The Lord of the Rings.
MGM/United Artists acquired the film rights to The Lord of the Rings in the late '60s.
They tapped director John Boorman...
to adapt the trilogy into a single live-action film...
for the big screen.
Boorman spent a year adapting the film...
but UA ultimately didn't have the financing to produce it.
After shopping the project around to Disney and TriStar...
they finally sold the rights to Saul Zaentz...
winner of the 1975 Best Picture Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Professor Tolkien wrote to Boorman asking about the project...
and was relieved the film would be made using actors.
In Tolkien's opinion, an animated version of Rings...
was a "nightmare."
I found out reading the trades that MGM had purchased the rights to it...
and I found somebody to call up at MGM to say I wanted to be in it.
And they said, "Well, it's a cartoon."
And I was mortified at that idea...
because Lord of the Rings is not a cartoon.
That's just all there is to it.
And, so I found out Ralph Bakshi was doing it...
and I was a big fan of Ralph Bakshi.
Bakshi convinced MGM/United Artists and Saul Zaentz...
that he could make a better adaptation of the book...
by turning it into two animated features.
He told them he would use a cutting-edge new animation technique...
rotoscoping.
A technique invented in 1917...
and popularised by Walt Disney in the '30s.
Ralph Bakshi was famous for creating the X-rated animated feature...
Fritz the Cat.
And I made an appointment with him to try to talk him out of making it a cartoon.
And I went there and he showed me everything he was doing.
Which is to say, what he was doing was...
he was shooting the movie, live action...
and then translating it into a cartoon.
The first draft of this particular Rings script was written by Chris Conkling.
Author Peter S. Beagle was quickly brought in to doctor it up.
I had done so much work on the script I share a credit with Chris Conkling.
But there didn't seem to be any choice.
I did want to be involved in some sort of a Tolkien project.
And at that time it was the only game in town.
The idea of doing it live 25 years ago was inconceivable.
It's a horrible tragedy to me that they never finished the Bakshi cartoon...
or even that the first one was under-funded by the studio...
and they had to cut corners on the animation...
because I think Bakshi's a genius.
I actually kind of liked The Lord of the Rings...
Ralph Bakshi animated movie.
I think that it tried really hard and didn't quite make it...
because it was only half the story, so I thought...
Rankin and Bass then took another crack...
at children's animation.
The Return of the King was unleashed on unsuspecting Ringers in 1980.
Nobody saw it coming.
Though extremely dark in tone, this version of King...
was all over the map.
Hobbits Frodo and Sam, the fate of the world on their shoulders...
struggle across Mordor, gasping for breath...
only to have a musical number sneak up on them every few minutes...
bringing the story to a screeching halt.
The centrepiece musical number belongs to an army of Orcs.
Their melodic bitching and complaining will live as the coolest...
"so bad, it's good" song ever written.
This televised adaptation was the end of the road...
for The Lord of the Rings' cool, hip, counterculture image.
What does your girlfriend Amy think about all the time you spend on this?
Well, when I'm not smelling enough to attract flies...
she thinks that The Lord of the Rings...
She actually likes The Lord of the Rings, the movie and the books...
but she thinks we're all psychos.
"I can't believe you're doing this, what are you doing? Get back."
"I can't believe you're camping out for five days. Are you crazy?"
"You must be insane!"
"What are you organising a birthday party for a fictional character for?"
After our Bilbo Baggins birthday party...
Amy determined that...
Tolkien fans are much worse than Star Trek fans.
He is 7,000 years old, I think, isn't he?
And he is immortal, he does come back to life.
He's quite clearly died down there with the Balrog.
And he's brought back.
I don't know, is it his longevity? Is it his dependability?
Frail though he can sometimes be, and worried about his decisions...
whether he's done the right thing.
The Tolkien character that I like the most is Gandalf.
He's everyone's granddad, isn't he?
He's everyone's wizard, he's everyone's Father Christmas.
You know, it will all be all right if you sit on Gandalf's knee.
You know, I really like Gandalf. I remember when I read it...
I just thought that whenever Gandalf came in, he seemed to make this story...
become a lot more understandable. He kind of said to the reader...
"I've been away for a while and now I'm back.
"And let me just recap with what you've been reading.
"This is what's happening, you know, the bad guys are here...
"we're here, this guy's here, the Ring is still going on."
He's a magician. He does magic tricks, so do I.
And he's also grey of beard. So am I.
I don't know why Gandalf should be so popular.
But he's got a sense of humour, he's like us.
He's terribly human even though he's immortal.
After his father's death, J.R.R. Tolkien's son, Christopher...
had been toiling through his father's manuscripts, trying to put them in order.
He was faced with the gargantuan task of finishing his father's life work.
Then, of course, I remember vividly the publication of a book called...
The Silmarillion.
And we'd waited for this book, we'd heard about this book.
Anybody who'd read anything about Tolkien...
knew anything about Tolkien, knew that beyond The Lord of the Rings...
there was this phenomenal back history of documentation...
of myth and history and geography and language...
that was underlying the whole structure of the book that you had read and loved.
Though Allen & Unwin had previously thought The Silmarillion unpublishable...
the book at long last appeared in 1977.
Everyone was pleasantly surprised by its brisk sales.
It quickly shot straight up to Number 1 on the New York Times Best-Sellers list.
My favourite was probably The Silmarillion.
The Silmarillion, the history of the Elves, I loved it.
I loved everything about the crafting of the rings...
the turning of the Nazgül. That was so awesome.
This led another generation into the footsteps of the fellowship...
and sales of the book increased.
Retailers, finding consumers receptive to fantasy books...
felt they would also want posters, calendars...
candles, incense burners, lamps, T-shirts, and games.
I think you see it in Dungeons & Dragons...
and the whole proliferation of game-playing.
He is actually supposed to be one of the unintended authors...
of this whole phenomenon...
in addition to the growth of the sci-filfantasy industry...
that exists separately from his own popularity.
After reading The Lord of the Rings...
it was rare to find me without a book, a novel of some kind, to read.
Generally, I was looking for fantasy, but back in the '70s...
the early '70s, it was really hard to find fantasy novels.
There would not be huge sections in modern bookstores...
of fantasy and science fiction, if it hadn't been for Tolkien's work.
He was responsible for opening up the long fantasy book industry.
You know, the several volumes...
because that had never been done before, that I remember.
Yes, and I think it's influenced almost every single fantasy writer since.
In fact, that's why I started the Discworld series...
in the early 1980s because there was so much fantasy around then.
And a lot of it was, shall we say, to put it nicely, echoing Tolkien.
The analogy I use is Mount Fuji...
which seems to turn up in every single Japanese print.
You can either see the slopes of Mount Fuji...
or you can see Mount Fuji as a little dot in the distance...
and sometimes you can't see Mount Fuji at all...
and that's because the artist is actually standing on Mount Fuji.
Tolkien is visible somewhere.
Someone in Hollywood must have been paying attention.
Soon a huge glut of fantasy movies flooded the market.
Along with their published counterparts, some of these films were of dubious quality.
Like Tolkien's Silmarils, a few gems shone through.
A certain "space fantasy"...
went on to become one of the most influential and profitable films of all time.
I'd always wanted to make a fantasy film, as a lover of fantasy movies...
like Sinbad and Jason...
and The Lord of the Rings is just the ultimate fantasy story.
It has everything that you'd ever want for a story...
with great characters and great emotion, but set in a fantastical environment.
I'd say that fantasy is one of the best things a growing mind can read because...
it's kind of like an exercise bicycle for the brain.
It doesn't actually take you anywhere...
but it really tones up the muscles that will.
- Hi, Frodo! - Hi, Frodo. How are you?
I think, the thing that I want audiences to take away from the character most...
is a sense of hope, I think, you know...
that even the smallest person with all the odds against him...
completely ravaged by the ring and all of this...
can affect the world around him in a profound way.
And I think that it's a beautiful message throughout the stories...
and a very strong element of Frodo's journey.
You know, because he himself doubts whether he's capable of actually doing this.
And he manages to pull it off.
To me the role that Frodo plays in the story is actually somewhat...
in a Jungian sense, a female role.
He was somebody who was caught up in a situation he wanted nothing to do with.
All he wanted was to get out of this any way he could.
But his sense of responsibility...
for what he knew he had to do kept him going, even in a place where...
if he'd been at all rational about it, he would have said:
"Forget it, let somebody else do this."
And I think that made a tremendous impact.
- Frodo! - Frodo's your favourite character?
Frodo lives!
Kill Uruk-hai!
It's heavy!
- What's your name? - Call me Grimlock.
What turns you on about this event?
A lot of the people here, we all lined up for Star Wars in front of the Chinese Theatre.
So you're familiar with this community.
Yeah. I was number two in line. We waited for six weeks together.
- You waited six weeks for that movie? - Yeah.
And you don't mind waiting for five days for this?
- No. - This is a cakewalk.
This is nothing.
So, I could do this. I've had bowel movements longer.
Why are you such a Lord of the Rings fan?
Growing up, you know, reading fantasy books, playing role-playing games...
you live in a fantasy world up here.
You made this by hand, yourself?
Yeah, it took me about five months, about four hours a day.
I had a real dry spell from women so I needed something to do.
Surprisingly enough.
After the '80s, Tolkien mania had faded to a low rumble.
The spirit of popular fandom was quiet and the underground zines had all dried up.
Somewhere between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates...
after Space Invaders but before Final Fantasy VII...
the Internet happened in a big way.
Ringers could now find each other with a point and a click.
The fans were online en masse and passions ran high.
The hottest argument on the web was one of the oldest.
If the Five Wizards had a dial-up connection, they would have used a Gandalf modem.
The Internet became the great equaliser for geeks of every stripe.
No longer isolated from each other, Ringers were coming out of the woodwork...
to meet other Ringers.
They were building a new community, one keystroke at a time.
I thought I was isolated when the first movie came out...
because I never really went online to look at it.
Where else can you find a community where you get people...
all the way from Bangladesh talking about The Lord of the Rings?
The movies is surely one of the main thing that brought us all out.
But the Internet is what kept us together.
Because if you're somebody who's reading this...
for the first time in darkest Russia or way down in Buenos Aires...
and you're wondering "Are there other Tolkien fans?"
I mean, the book must sell but there doesn't seem to be necessarily...
all the sort of advertising of stuff.
But the web...
Google "The Lord of the Rings"...
and you'll have well more than six million sites to choose from.
Many of these are homespun fan sites.
Some are devoted to a particular star...
while others are unique outlets for creative Ringers.
Lord of the Peeps is The Lord of the Rings done with...
Starring marshmallow candy.
We have the movie, the behind the scenes interviews, extras like wallpapers...
and we have newspaper articles about the actors.
The ever-pressing question: Why?
Why not?
Why not, indeed?
And it's all done very tongue-in-cheek and with a great reverence for J.R.R. Tolkien.
You can find a site with the entire film The Two Towers...
animated with stick figures.
Beware the evil "Frodo Lives" virus...
that launches itself on September 22 every year...
marking Bilbo and Frodo's exact birthday.
Less destructive Ringers use the web as a clearing-house...
for their original fan fiction.
Fan-Fic is basically what happens when people who really enjoy...
another work of art, decide that they want to contribute something to it.
So, they'll write stories about the characters.
Fan fiction can take on many forms, including Mary Sue and Slash.
Basically Mary Sue is what happens when people write Fan-Fic...
and they add a particular character who is sort of resembling themselves.
They want to be part of the world so they put themselves into it.
Usually a Mary Sue's very "perfect."
Slash fic is what happens when people decide they like particular vibes...
between two of the characters, particularly two guys.
Even if it's not overtly a relationship...
they'll think that those two look like they really should be...
having a happy life together.
It's very clear what women are seeing in these films.
There is a lot of sex appeal and that really is bringing out...
I think a lot of people writing fan fiction, because they want to imagine themselves...
with these guys.
Probably one of the best known is Cassie Claire's...
Very Secret Diaries.
Imagine if the members of the Fellowship kept diary entries...
writing down their secret crushes on each other, as a 16-year-old girl might.
Day One.
Went to Council of Elrond.
Was prettiest person there.
Agreed to follow some tiny little man to Mordor.
Day 28.
Beginning to find Frodo disturbingly attractive.
Still not King...
Suspect Aragorn, son of Arathorn, of being...
pervy Hobbit-fancier.
Has been 25 days since I met Aragorn.
And he has not yet washed his hair.
It's really starting to bother me.
Day 35.
Killed by Orcs.
Stupid Orcs.
Everyone keeps hitting on me.
Cannot cope.
Off to Mordor.
Tell me something about these wonderful action figures that you've been collecting.
I started collecting them right after the Fellowship movie came out.
And I actually have a website. It's about their daily lives.
- Really? - Yes.
That's cool. So did you create it like fan fiction?
- It's fan fiction, definitely. - Yeah.
My goal is for the actors...
their actor counterpart to hold them and I get their photo.
- With... Holding each figure? - Yeah.
Did you make this? You hand-made this kilt?
It's just a little kilt, yeah. Merry had one, too, but...
You know how much Billy Boyd loves his kilts.
- Yes, he does! - Can you take this out?
Yes.
Usually they all have their swords, but I find their swords...
in my purse all the time and falling off.
There he is. Okay.
I have a bunch of props for them. I have furniture for them.
Yeah, it's... Yeah.
"You cannot pass!"
Especially, you know, girls are very much of the opinion that...
Elijah and Billy and Sean and myself...
are very cute, cuddly, affectionate...
slightly asexual...
non-threatening type characters.
I think when people meet Orlando or Viggo it's kind of like a... type of thing.
Whereas when they meet us it's more of a kind of...
I guess because I like the Hobbits, there's the Men, the Elves, and the Hobbits.
I kind of like the Hobbits.
I don't know, because they're little and cuddly, I guess.
My goal is to go this summer to his grave...
and get my action figures taken with him.
- Take pictures at Tolkien's grave? - Yes.
I have a friend who lives in Oxford and I sent her a letter to Tolkien.
This is so retarded, I can't believe I'm saying this.
And she put her Gandalf holding the letter on his grave and took photos for me.
And I felt so good, like he really got it, you know...
- That's beautiful. - I'm obsessed!
When the new movies were announced by New Line Cinema...
Erica Challis and Michael Regina shared a burning curiosity...
about what Peter Jackson was doing to their favourite story.
They combined forces to seek out any rumours or news...
about PJ's super-secret Rings project.
TheOneRing. Net was born.
Our roles were: Mike and Erica would do news, spy reports...
and jump 'em on the sets.
I would do all the design work and Bill would do all the server...
and all that stuff that we didn't need to bother with.
If you could go back in time 30 years...
how easy do you think it was for Tolkien fans to find one another?
It must have been really difficult.
Right now, just by a click of a button, you get information on everyone.
I'm really thankful we have the Internet and we have web sites like TORN.
It's remarkable that all the people in the production company...
Peter Jackson and the people working at Three Foot Six...
they were all reading our Web site.
I think once they saw the force of the online community...
they realised they needed to really respect the book...
and really respect the Tolkien vision, all in all...
and I think you see that in the product.
It's the most entertaining travelogue ever written.
I would go to Rivendell because the Elves were there...
and stay young and beautiful forever!
I would take vacations to Middle-earth...
because it is more home than this realm of reality.
Staying, I don't know. I happen to like cable TV.
I would go to the Shire.
I would love to visit Hobbiton.
I would probably go crazy there within about two days.
I would want to go to Lothlórien. That's just, like, the coolest place ever.
I have often thought about travelling to Middle-earth.
As long as we're inside each of these films...
Middle-earth exists.
Middle-earth is just alive in that movie.
It's so big.
I wish that they would leave the Hobbit land up in New Zealand...
because that would be a theme park I would go to.
Certain Ringers show a whole new level of affection...
for Peter Jackson's films and Tolkien's books by visiting Middle-earth.
New Zealand.
To many Ringers, Aotearoa, the "land of the long white cloud"...
as the native Maori call it...
is the place where the ancient landscape of Middle-earth exists today.
So I wrote to lan McKellen...
and I got a reply, which is great.
"Why don't you go back in December," he said...
"for the premiere of The Return of the King?"
And it was like a light going on in my head.
Great! What a good idea.
Then I got an e-mail back from Vic James saying...
"Would you like to join our tour?"
Wow, would I ever.
Vic James has a special job.
He is a modern-day Mr. Roarke, welcoming people, with open arms, to Fantasy Island.
Vic launched Red Carpet Tours in 2001...
giving Ringers the best opportunity...
to visit the pristine wilderness of New Zealand.
We were trying to figure out ideas for our honeymoon and I ran into this...
"Red Carpet Tours is doing tours of Middle-earth"...
and she didn't object, so here we are.
Vast cobalt lakes and the mighty Southern Alps combined...
to inspire awe, as Red Carpet Tours took a large group in December 2003...
to see Wellington's world premiere of The Return of the King.
They then travelled to the actual locations...
where Peter Jackson's Ring trilogy was filmed.
This goes beyond regular movies or fandom or geekdom.
I think, I don't know, for some people it would almost be like a pilgrimage.
For me, the clouds on Rotorua...
the wind that comes over from Edoras.
The beauty of Milford Sound.
The waterfalls and...
the majesty of everything...
and the way that it doesn't matter where you look...
you can always find something there that's Tolkien.
I am Sergeant Major Tabor of the Imperial Klingon Marine Force.
I first fell in love with The Lord of the Rings many years ago.
I came across a reference to it in one of our data banks.
There's wonderful characters, especially Sauron.
Reminds me of my own god, Fek'lhr.
My favourite character is Sauron.
I like the colour black and I like the...
presence of his eye.
I think it's a great icon. It's a great logo.
You don't really know that he was evil at first.
They thought that he was just this wonderful person that was making rings...
and giving them to people and a really wonderful guy...
and then he turns and he's deceitful.
We don't actually meet the villain, do we?
The Lord of the Rings isn't a character in the book or the film.
We don't know what he looks like.
He is the Lord of the Rings. Let's not forget.
My friends tell me I'm like Pippin. I'm carefree, I'm friendly...
I make people laugh...
and I like to have the finest food.
I really like the Cave Troll.
The Ringwraiths.
The screech was very effective.
I like Lurtz.
- Lurtz, he was a good villain. - Yeah.
He was a pretty big bad guy.
Do you know what?
If he came walking around that corner right now, would you run?
No. I'd just kick him in the wiener.
I'm just fanatical about it now.
It's grabbed me like nothing else ever has.
It's just the whole thing...
not just the story, not just the cast...
not just the scenery, not just the music...
but a complete mix of everything.
I don't know, it's a strange feeling. It's almost spiritual.
Middle-earth was born in the trenches of World War I.
Professor Tolkien began by inventing the Elvish language.
He then created a world in which it could be spoken.
This sub-creation continued throughout his lifetime as he intended...
the stories of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings...
to be a rediscovered mythology for England.
The fact that the books have been translated into languages all over the world...
the fact that the films are playing to audiences all over the world...
suggest that what he actually did was to create, or perhaps recreate...
a mythology for the world, a mythology for mankind, human-kind.
Several generations of Ringers have embraced the book...
for reasons other than escapism.
Its enduring themes have tremendous appeal in today's demythologised world.
In the kind of vacuum that people feel that they're in...
they're looking for spiritual values.
They're looking to the East or wherever they can pick values from...
and Tolkien has this very deep-rooted spirituality.
Tolkien based it on so much material...
and so many universal archetypes.
You know, myths, rituals, history.
Those stories endure, you know.
You can apply them because they have to do with people who are flawed...
with heroic characters who nonetheless have doubt...
have fear at times and struggle with their consciences.
And I think that's something we can all relate to.
It doesn't matter how fantastical it looks.
He's taken from, kind of, legends and stories...
that relate to everyone.
You know, from Nordic legends, Celtic, Maori legends would talk about...
the innocent who has to destroy a thing, the races coming together.
It's something that's almost in your subconscious, these stories.
I've found this to be one of the most diverse groups of people...
I've ever been involved with.
You've got really broad ranges...
of religious backgrounds and influences and geographic regions and everything...
and, yet, we all have this...
common desire...
to sort of live out this noble idea...
of man being redeemed and triumphing in the end.
It's a mythology and I think it's a compelling one.
It gives you this magical world that Tolkien invents.
But one that talks about...
purpose and friendship and self-worth.
And these are messages that I think are things people yearn for.
Tolkien even said that it's a difference between...
applicability and being a metaphor for something big...
and he said the last thing he wanted...
was for The Lord of the Rings to be a metaphor for anything.
And I think that he was particularly sensitive about the fact that, in his time...
Hitler and his government misapplied...
the literature and mythology of the North, of Northern Europe...
which he was so fond of and based a large part of The Lord of the Rings on.
I've felt the same way, as journalists didn't even ask the question...
they just made the assumption, made the statement...
that this story is allegorical, you know...
in terms of what's going on in our time...
in particular, the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq...
and that the good guys at Helm's Deep or the Fellowship at any given moment...
represents the United States and its cohorts...
against these dark forces, these, you know...
heathen hordes, that are, you know, holding...
the good and true Western civilisation hostage.
We have to be clear what it is we like about The Lord of the Rings...
and what it is we find useful and uplifting...
and can take away and make use of in our lives.
But we do have to bear in mind that the people out there...
are other human beings and if we happen, for example...
to be engaged in a war with some other people, they are not actually Orcs...
they are human beings, and perhaps we should deal with them in that respect.
And there aren't really such things as evil empires.
In other words, I think even though we live in a reductionist culture...
I think there is a profound hunger, still...
for things which carry...
yes, mythological weight.
It was worth every minute of waiting out here for five days.
With the cold and the floods and the sleepless nights?
And the rain. Yes.
- Worth being attacked by bums? - Exactly.
- Worth it all? - Worth all of it, yeah.
I'd do it again.
"V" is for Viggo.
How many eyes do you have up there?
I have eight eyes up here and then four eyes down here...
or so they used to tell me in school.
- How many hours did you put in? - Seventy-seven and a quarter.
And you guys are in what place?
I'm in fourth and he's in fourth. Four-and-a-half.
Four. Four-and-a-half. You're the half.
Yeah, it's a school night and he may not learn a thing tomorrow in school...
but the thing that my son learns tonight is that his father loves him.
Ladies and gentlemen.
Meet Gollum himself, Mr. Andy Serkis.
Oh, listen. Congratulations for waiting so long.
It's an awesome movie. You are going to be blown away by it.
- Can we hear you say, "My Precious"? - My Precious.
Everybody's piling into this auditorium...
trying to get the best prize seats that they can get.
Lord of the Rings kicks ass!
No movie has ever affected me and my husband in this way.
We have seen both the movies over 100 times apiece.
Peter Jackson comes from a true indie-film world...
where he is one of those guys that is unique as a director...
in the sense that he came from independent film...
and, you know, that, to me, is like running a marathon.
You know, you can have all the money in the world to make a movie...
and that doesn't mean you'll necessarily make a great film, right?
- Right. - Peter Jackson has been in the trenches...
and made movies under the worst of conditions.
But I think he's got that great, that amazing spirit.
It was a love of Lord of the Rings and a realisation in 1995...
that computer technology, which we'd been using on The Frighteners...
had sort of gotten to the level that now you could actually...
do one of these fantasy films really well.
You know, really realistically with all the creatures.
And we just... We contemplated...
Fran and I contemplated writing an original fantasy film.
And then thought... Every time we were talking about it, it was always...
"Well, it should be like Lord of the Rings.
"It should be a Lord of the Rings-type of film."
And we just ended up thinking...
"Well, we may as well just, before we abandon the idea completely...
"make one inquiry to see if Lord of the Rings...
"possibly might be available...
"to these, sort of, New Zealand filmmakers." It seemed pretty outrageous.
In August 1998...
New Line Cinema announced their newest franchise to the world.
By October of the following year, on the faraway island country of New Zealand...
cameras started rolling on the most complex movie production of all time.
I was very passionate about the idea of working with Peter Jackson.
I was a fan of his work before Lord of the Rings.
And the idea of being a part of this mythology...
and being able to go to New Zealand and make three films at one time...
and be a part of something kind of historic...
It was something that I was very excited about.
The prospect of leaving home and going on this journey was very exciting to me.
It was a triple threat.
Three films would be released over three consecutive Christmas holidays...
with a whopping price tag exceeding $270 million.
The survival of the studio now rested on the shoulders of this unpredictable director.
But Jackson's biggest concern...
was meeting the intensely high expectations of hardcore Ringers.
So, I want to ask him if he had any fears that he would butcher Tolkien's work.
The demands of film narrative storytelling...
did tell us a lot about what was going to survive from the books and what wasn't.
Having said that, the books have their own demands and their own beauty...
and their own originality that you wanted to preserve.
So many of the fans I know were worried about the making of this.
And the first thing that I was trying to say to fans was:
"Don't worry, this is being made by the biggest fan of all."
Tolkien thought it was unfilmable. It probably is.
The Lord of the Rings thing was just something that I never...
assumed would be attempted.
You know, you just read that book and you think...
"Well, that is quite clearly a book.
"There's no way this can become a film."
Tolkien's descriptions are incredibly vivid.
I mean, it was... One of his great loves, obviously, when he was writing the book...
was to sit in his bedroom in Oxford or wherever it was he was writing...
and just cast his mind to these incredible vistas...
and locations and landscapes.
And, you know, he devotes a lot of time to writing about the weather...
and the heather and the scent of thyme, and that stuff's great.
As a filmmaker, it allows you...
to paint a very vivid picture of the world of Middle-earth in your mind...
as you're reading the book. So, it is a gift.
Fellowship, it just felt like it was one of those things...
where everything came together right, at the right time, it was the right casting...
- it was the right production values. - The right script.
I mean, the costumes are stunning.
Fellowship was released in North America December 19th, 2001.
Both critics and audiences were stunned with the epic sweep of the film.
Peter's storytelling ability is what really has made this film.
We have not seen an epic of this scale.
Not since those classics.
Exactly, that kind of Lawrence of Arabia-style epic...
where you are swept in.
And you know what? It takes three hours to tell an epic.
I didn't want to go. My friend made me.
And then after the movie ended, I was just sitting there like...
Wow!
I was amazed. I'm not a fantasy fan.
It's kind of embarrassing because I can quote the whole movie for you.
And for nine solid weeks, my half-day off...
was to go see The Fellowship.
Before the trilogy was released...
several of the Rings actors were considered unknowns.
But overnight, they were skyrocketed to the heights of fame.
- I'm Kathy, also known as Garfeimao. - Yeah?
I'm Mary, also known as Mary.
- We're loons. - Definite loons.
- That means we go to the billyboy. Net... - Website.
We're fans of Pippin.
Three days before the premiere in London...
Billy and I walked through Leicester Square...
and it was, just, you know, to try it as an experiment.
There were people hanging around the Odeon waiting for the film to come on.
You walk through. A couple of people go, like, "Hey guys!"
But nothing too crazy.
Three nights later, I turn up with my Mum and Dad...
and there's 25,000 people and you get out of the car...
and you can't hear your own thoughts because people are just...
First of all, I love you, Elijah Wood.
That's like the coolest name, first of all. I mean, Elijah Wood.
That and Orlando Bloom. Okay.
Like, Orlando Bloom, Elijah Wood.
It could be Elijah Bloom and Orlando Wood...
or something like that anyway.
Hey, Courtney, it's Orlando Bloom.
I don't know Strider's real name. But damn! He's fine, too.
I love you so much.
Oh, my God. I saw you in, like, Flipper...
and then I was like, "That guy is so cute!"
And then I saw you in Deep Impact...
and I was like, "Oh my God," you know. And then I was like, "Who is that?"
So I waited after the credits, you know, and I was like, "Elijah Wood"?
And then I saw you in Lord of the Rings and I was like, "Oh my God!"
Thank you.
- You were really good. - Thank you.
I don't know any of them, but Elijah Wood is a cutie-pie.
This close!
Orlando Bloom!
We were 5 inches away!
- What do you got in the magazine there? - Elijah.
Orlando Bloom is... Well, he's a hottie.
Why do you like Frodo so much, Elijah Wood?
'Cause he's cute!
I'm not obsessed. So I'm not going to bring a sign that says...
"Elijah, lick me" or something, you know.
Legolas touched my hand.
- You were the first one here this morning? - Yeah.
- What time? - Just before 5:00 a.m.
Fellowship grossed more than $870 million worldwide.
It was soon showered with critical awards.
I can't believe how it has kind of... It's in pop culture now, you know?
People quote it. People talk about it as if...
I've seen an advert today for some car insurance...
and it's just a takeoff of the movie.
The Two Towers broke office records left and right.
In North America it topped $26 million on its opening day.
And I'm planning this December to fly over to Wellington...
to go see the final instalment.
When the people of New Zealand were given the chance...
to host the world premiere of The Return of the King...
on December 1, 2003...
the entire country turned out to celebrate their native son.
The capital city of Wellington hosted more than 100,000 people...
all of them flocking to the centre of town...
where a spectacular display of national pride included a ticker-tape parade...
for the filmmakers running down 470 meters of red carpet.
It was an event unequalled in the annals of Hollywood or Wellywood.
I actually had to sell my house to finance the trip to New Zealand.
Why was that trip to New Zealand so special?
The last film of the series. I had to be there.
It didn't matter how I got there, I had to be there. I had to.
- Was it ultimately worth it? - Absolutely.
Oh, I wish I could do it all over again.
I decided to leave Germany and Chile, South America...
and come here to New Zealand because of Lord of the Rings...
and my PhD, which is about fan tourism and New Zealand.
There's still a sense of community in New Zealand...
that a lot of the rest of my world in America had lost before I left.
I just didn't feel it there.
Everybody looks out for you here.
"Oh, you showed up without food, we'll feed you.
"Oh, you showed up without blankets, we'll blanket you." They all do that.
So it's a good place.
It could not have been made in the normal Hollywood system.
I think having that distance, being in New Zealand...
where you don't have a lot of the airs of working in Hollywood.
The Return of the King would easily become the crowning glory of the franchise.
Released late-December, 2003...
the film made more than $250 million worldwide...
in five days.
Peter has just swept everyone up involved in this production...
with his vision for the movie and it shows.
He hasn't forgotten that human story. Because that's what it's all about.
I love Peter Jackson. I think he's an amazing director...
and can't wait for him to sort of get hailed mightily...
in the upcoming months, hopefully.
The final instalment in the Rings trilogy...
scored the largest clean sweep in Oscar history.
Eleven out of eleven.
It was the first fantasy film to ever win Best Picture.
I wanted to ask you, could you have imagined from step one...
that it would become this much of a worldwide phenomenon?
Nope. In a word.
I mean, I think on some level you kind of hope...
that something would happen, but no.
- Kind of weird, isn't it? - Yeah.
Because all the fans of the movies...
have parents who probably read the books in the '60s.
So their parents are probably going, "Oh no! Not Lord of the Rings again."
Tolkien's epic story had come a long way since 1954.
Money, fame, success, and artistic integrity...
had suddenly made Rings cool again.
I think that for human beings on this planet to evolve...
and to try and create a world that is worth living in...
because this is a dangerous time on this planet...
and I think that the secret, the key...
is by using this magnificent instrument...
and muscle that is our brain.
And I think one of the best ways to activate it is by reading...
and expressing yourselves through language and writing.
If it takes people to read Tolkien...
or even better, some of the source material for Tolkien...
you know, the old sagas or fairy stories, or invent your own.
I've found a lot of young people...
who have seen these movies, and whether they've read Tolkien's book or not...
have written stories. I mean, I've received in the mail short stories...
that are sort of like this, but they have their own take on it.
From being true to yourself...
you can make bigger changes than you would expect.
But just try to think about your life and who matters...
and doing the right thing for those people...
I think, can have a sort of a ripple effect on the rest of the world.
And I think that's what Pippin does.
He tries to help the people that he knows...
and accidentally saves the world.
The books will have endured, and the films, I don't know.
I think nothing can touch the books.
I think they're just going to be very well-Ioved forever, I hope.
I think that it's a beautiful message that I hope that people can take away...
a sense of hope that they, too, can affect the world around them...
in a profound way.
My dad's generation connected to it so clearly...
that he wanted the next generation, his kids, to feel the same way.
I'm reading The Lord of the Rings...
to my 10-year-old daughter right now, you know.
That's something that we read together. She's totally up for it.
And it's been a wonderful experience re-reading those books with her...
and appreciating them again through her eyes.
It's just a great thing to pass on.
The inspiration is the same chronicle...
that The Lord of the Rings was built on.
Friendship, honour, integrity, compassion.
You find that no matter where you go within the Tolkien community.
That's what I try and emulate to my son.
And I think he's picking up on it. And that makes me feel complete.
For me there's this whole world of Tolkien and Lord of the Rings...
that's not really from our generation.
And it, sort of, connects us to, just different feelings...
from, like, the '60s and the '70s.
It's literally changed my life.
I'm 50 years old.
I've had a lot of problems with depression...
and this has helped me more than anyone could believe.
More than anything...
I think one of the major contributions Tolkien's made to young people...
is to turn people into readers.
It's a very long book, but it was really great.
I just loved it and it really, like, changed my life...
because now I really love to read, especially fantasy...
because that's how I kind of got into reading...
from reading The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien.
Everyone that I've come into contact with is so excited and so passionate about it...
and there is a real feeling of fellowship about it that just blows me away.
One of the reasons that I love The Lord of the Rings so much...
is that I have to credit it with bringing my husband and I together.
Somebody like Samwise Gamgee can believe in things...
and that you have to keep on going, then I figured I'll do the same, as well.
Thousands of people everywhere united...
in this common love and theme and wanting to be one.
That's the way I feel.
Is that everybody wants to be one, you know, they want to be loved...
and Frodo and Pippin and Merry and Gandalf...
and all of them are a medium by which we can reach out to each other.
And it works. It rocks. I love it.
New Line did all this research and they were saying...
"Lord of the Rings used to be popular once...
"but its sales have slumped and not many people are reading it...
"and the young generation today don't really read it."
So, if the movies have now reinvigorated it again...
because, you know, the masterpiece is not the movies...
the masterpiece is the book.
That was awesome!
The top 10 reasons that Hobbits are better lovers than Elves.
The feet. That's a wive's tale, I've heard. I haven't gotten proof of that.
- The feet? - The feet. The size of the feet.
- See, this is racy. There's children. - How do you know there's children?
- I don't know. - We're talking to Frodo!
We're gonna go with the Jedi master, Yoda.
Because Yoda says, "Based on height, size matters not."
- And if you can't believe Yoda... - Then who can you believe?
The next morning, we're skipping the racy part, ignore the racy part, forget it.
But, going to the next morning...
not only is a Hobbit more likely to still be there in the morning...
as opposed to an Elf, who's a flight-footed little thing, off he goes...
but a Hobbit will probably still be cuddling in the morning...
not to mention, get up and make you breakfast right after.
That's a really good reason.
Why would you want an Elf when you could have a Hobbit?
- Breakfast in bed. - I like Slider.
He's very sly, very mysterious, very strong...
- he has a bad streak. - Which one's Slider?
- Viggo Morrison. - Oh, right.
He's very good.
Tolkien's work, awesome.
Everything about it is so super great.
This is the coolest experience I've ever had, this booth.
And I'm just having a great time.
And I hope you guys watching it are having a great time...
because I know there's some great things on this movie...
and just have a blast. Yeah!
Yeah. I hope everyone out there who's watching me right now...
is getting... Is feeling my passion for Lord of the Rings, okay?
Because I am so...
Lord of the Rings, I love it so much. I would embrace it.
If it was an entity, I would kiss it and I would just hug it and just...
I want some!
I have all the movies. I play the Decipher card game.
Okay. I've read all the books.
I love being immersed in Lord of the Rings.
I wish it could rain Lord of the Rings from the sky...
and I could just get drenched in it. Oh, yeah.
And then I'd get Lord of the Rings hypothermia.
So I hope some of you guys...
If you've got that passion deep inside about Lord of the Rings...
bring that shit out. Bring it out!
Thank you.