THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWS OF THE RING
In 2001, Empire ran its first major report on Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. This excerpt gives a sense of the scale and intensity of the high-risk endeavour — not to mention the passion that was being poured into it.
AS THE SHOOT wore on and the pressure mounted, Jackson could be seen cycling from set to set at the Wellington studio on an old bicycle, eager to save time. Orlando Bloom remembers one miraculous day when he traversed the whole country by helicopter to get to his next shot, complete with stick-on ears and blond wig. Promised breaks came and went, six-day weeks of 14- to 15-hour days became the norm. And somehow throughout it all, spinning every plate, Jackson just kept going. “I’m totally unfit, but I’m the tortoise guy who can keep plodding on. Mentally I had days when my brain would feel like it was mush, I felt I had no imagination left. When your imagination starts to lock, you panic. Honestly, there were days when I was just turning to the actors and hoping they weren’t as tired as I was, and pointing the camera at them hoping we were getting good stuff.”
The cast, too, felt the pressure, sick of sticking on their Hobbit feet, sick of the outdoors, just completely knackered. Working together under such extremes, in an elemental, beautiful environment like New Zealand, combined with the spiritual rub-off of a storyline about a group of disparate personalities uniting for a common cause, was bound to bring them close. But these were friendships cast in stone.
“Because of the length of time, the unceasing grind of it,” says Viggo Mortensen, “we came to know each other’s good and bad points. You became entangled in each other’s lives in a good way. I felt that I became part of them and they became part of me.”
The Hobbits in particular became their own band of brothers. When not shooting they learned to surf together, they took trips to Thailand and Australia, they went skiing, snowboarding, white-water rafting and bungee jumping. They referred to themselves as Hobbits.
“We became friends for life,” says Sean Astin, who had his family with him for the duration. “They were like uncles to my daughter. Art imitated life or life imitated art, or something.”
Consequently, away from the camera, much hilarity was to be had. Sean Bean (a devout Sheffield United fan) would find himself frequently nutmegged by Dominic Monaghan (a devout Manchester United fan) during on-set football tournaments. The pair even enticed Mortensen back to the 20th century to watch England vs Germany in Euro 2000, via satellite. Monaghan returned one afternoon to find his trailer sealed up with police tape, care of Mortensen. He returned the favour by smothering the front of Aragorn’s trailer in shaving foam and tracing the words, “false king!”
“We would do this thing that if the Fellowship had to do a scene,” laughs Monaghan, “the last person on set, we would all scream their name. If we were waiting for Ian Mckellen, the whole of the Fellowship would start going, ‘Oh, we are just waiting for Ian Mckellen!’”
To commemorate the experience, the entire Fellowship got matching tattoos of the Elvish symbol for nine.
Naturally, any triumph of good over evil was going to require much pummelling, slashing and delivering of ugly enemies unto their makers. Thus the Fellowship were given expert training for months before shooting. For the swordplay, Bob anderson (who once taught Errol Flynn, no less) would put them through their paces. Bloom, who had to be a brilliant archer, spent his time firing arrows at paper plates in a unique spin on skeet shooting. as the shoot progressed and relationships developed with the stuntmen, the white heat of battle soon became second nature. “We got to know people’s body language so well that we got faster and faster, took more chances. it was like a dance partner you’ve worked with a long time,” says mortensen.
But, given Jackson’s previous form, just how bloodthirsty could it get?
“We pushed it as far as we could,” says Jackson slyly. making the orc blood black rather than red has allowed him some latitude. “it’s a PG, but i am pushing it...”
on 19 December 2001,
The Fellowship Of The Ring will be released on 10,000 screens worldwide, and John rhysdavies, at least, is convinced the biggest opening ever is assured. at the 2001 Empire awards, he confidently bet
Empire a bottle of fine vino on this very issue. Jackson, meanwhile, will not be drawn. He just hopes people partake of some of the joy of his journey.
“Hitchcock gave my favourite quote: ‘Where some people’s movies are slices of life, mine are slices of cake.’ i think that sums up what films should really do.”
This time, though, it’s the whole damn dessert trolley on offer.