| When the other Sir Ian (Holm that is) arrived from London in
March, he was of course jet-lagged but that didn't stop his schedule of
costume fittings and make-up tests from taking over straightaway. He was
wandering round the workshops in Hobbit feet and a curly wig. I was
filming in the Wellington studio next door and took him to the lunch tent.
"What's it like here?" he asked me, dolefully. I told him he was
in for a treat and within 24 hours he agreed. A month later, he couldn't
bear to leave, swearing he would be back in New Zealand before the movie
was complete. This was not that he expected the part of Bilbo to be
extended. Ian had discovered the South Island. |
Photo by Ian McKellen
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Ian McKellen
Queenstown, South Island, April 2000
Photo by Keith Stern
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New Zealand would amaze and enrapture anyone who responds to the
wild landscapes of Middle-earth. Although I am a chronic townee, I have
always been smitten by mountains and water, particularly in the Lake
District of my native northern England. Very little of the Lake District
has been untouched by man — walls, fences, plantations, holiday cottages
and working farmsteads are everywhere in sight, even from the tops, and they
define its character. In New Zealand there really is a natural untouched
wilderness and it is overwhelmingly spectacular and moving. |
| Until the last millennium there were no animals other than birds
here, some of which felt so safe that they forgot to fly, like the
nocturnal kiwi and the extinct moa, 12 feet tall. The Maori and the
Europeans invaded and brought rats, dogs, sheep of course and predatory
possums, stoats and rabbits who all upset the great aviary. The early
Maori ate all the moas and sometimes, I'm told, each other. The Scots,
Irish and English immigrants cut down all the heftier native trees for
construction and let their sheep graze through the unique bush. The
ecology was not everywhere despoiled and in the South Island's fjordland
and primeval rainforest there is an Eden never-cultivated nor, until
recently, charted even. |
Milford Sound, South Island NZ
Photo by Ian McKellen
|
The Road to Glenorchy, April 2000
Photo by Keith Stern
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There are just enough decent roads and some of them daringly
access the rivers and peaks. There are four-day tramps over the tops which
are so popular you have to get a permit. I'm thinking about doing one when
the spring comes. The other Ian has the same idea. |
| The North Island, where the population is concentrated in
Wellington and Auckland, is more of a playground with beaches, hot springs
and fishing. It is generally warmer and the cell-phones work. Yet each
time I spy the interisland ferry chugging past my Wellington window for
the two-hour sail south across the Cook Straits which separate the
islands, I envy its passengers. |
The Interisland Ferry, Wellington NZ
|
Photo by Ian McKellen
|
Bilbo's scenes were all shot in the studio and I shared three of
them. Gandalf knocked on the round door of Bag End last January - Peter
Jackson answered offscreen for Bilbo "Go away!" and then Kiran
Shah (shot from the back but in a mask of Ian Holm) let me in. Cut to two
months later as Ian Holm shuts his front door behind me in the interior of
the hobbit hole in the studio.
|
| Peter Jackson was alert to the need to get both Ians onscreen
together, rather than using the big or small double too much. By placing
Gandalf closer to the camera, Bilbo could be shrunk and the two of us
could see each other's eyes. Ian's twinkle and pierce you through — he is
so observant and yet he looks at you as the character. And this illusion
that Bilbo is present is achieved each time the camera rolls. |
|
Photo by Ian McKellen
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Ian never
repeats himself on film — in each take he is different and yet always in
character. It is a daring approach to film acting, dicing with
spontaneity. Most of us, pretty clear what is required, will hope to
deliver a good take full of life and believability and if a retake is
required for technical reasons ("Nothing to do with the actors —
let's go again!), we will try to repeat what felt good about the previous
attempt. Ian will have none of this so that what you eventually see of
Bilbo was never tried before — it happened for the first time just as you
see it. He calls this exploring the character as through a kaleidoscope,
giving the final choice from a wide range of takes, to the director and
editor. |
| It makes you think how limiting film can be — no matter how
often you see a movie, the performances are fixed, unaltering whether on
the big screen or on the back of a seat in a 747. See the same actor on
adjacent nights in the theatre however and assuming he is not aiming to be
an automaton, you will discover, as he does, new aspects of the character.
Ian Holm brings the advantages of live theatre to the cinema, so that
resting in the spool cans is a "complete Bilbo" until Peter
Jackson makes his selection. The actor not as marionette but as tool for
the director's storytelling. |
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For Bilbo's last scene, Ian wore a latex mask of wrinkles and
scrawn before sailing away to the distant Havens where Tolkien's good
people achieve their rest. It was an odd experience because Galadriel was
with us but Cate Blanchett was not — more scope for film magic to add the
genuine Elf Queen who goes voyaging with Bilbo and Gandalf at the end.
Odder still to realise that this final scene, when completed by the
technicians, will not be screened for another three years! |
| I have now been shown the first Bilbo/Gandalf scene at Bag End
roughly cut awaiting some revoicing that will remove extraneous noises and
the enhanced soundtrack of effects and music perhaps. So here is the first
critical review of Lord of the Rings. "Bilbo lives and if the
rest of the cast matches Ian Holm's performance, you are in for the treat
of a lifetime". |
|
Welcome to Ohakune
The Fat Pigeon Cafe
(Hearty soups and special curries)
Utopia Coffee House
(Omelettes, pastries, coffee)
|
When Ian flew away, so did the rest of us - he to Los Angeles
for the opening of Joe Gould's Secret and the film units to Ohakune
"Where Adventures Begin". This promise looked a little audacious
next to the giant plaster carrot denoting the town's principal export.
Part of the year, the non-farming locals service the visitors who lodge
there to be close to the skiing slopes of Mount Ruapehu, the live volcano
which shut down business in 1996 splurging molten rock over the
snowfields. This spectacular fireworks display is still recalled on
picture postcards and in the photo albums which Dale lent me from behind
her receptionist's desk at the Powderhorn Lodge. We arrived out of season
when the après ski bars were boarded up and the hostelries grateful to be
unwontedly full of non-holidaymakers, who were out at work all day and too
tired to stay up late in the short evenings. Indeed, after seeing the
previous day's rushes in a small conference room next to the restaurant
with log fire and candles and full of take-out pizza and diet soda, I was
each night happy that my bedroom was only eight doors down the corridor. |
| One Sunday I got time to scramble up the lower slopes of the
mountain whose upper reaches are sacred to the Maori. Climbing the tops is
discouraged although I was sorry to miss the organised tramp around the
volcano's rim. Most days we were filming on the flat lava fields that
skirt Ruapehu and are sacred only to the New Zealand Army who test
artillery there out of harm's way. |
On the slopes of Ruapehu
May 2000
Photo by Keith Stern
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The Road to Mordor
The Warning
Click to Enlarge
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On our first day we were gathered into a large tent to be
lectured by a senior officer whose joviality couldn't disguise his deadly
message — that to wander beyond the perimeter of the film unit was to risk
losing a limb or a life. The barren landscape was pitted with unexploded
shells, although we were re-assured that our bit of the ground had been
scoured and made safe. Nevertheless arriving on site in the early morning
dark, guided by the southern cross in the black sky, it was unnerving. The
track from the main road toward the mountain was newly beaten, rocky and
indistinct. 10 miles an hour was the maximum speed and after 30 minutes of
wondering if the next bump might be fatal, it was a relief to see the
distant welcoming glow of the unit where the generators illuminated
familiar faces and paraphernalia. |
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The dawns were spectacular, as dawn always is. Half way through
make-up we would step out of the trailer to watch the mountain turn pink
then golden a mile or so away. I was always so smitten that I forgot to
take a snap. [Webmaster's note: I got one!] Nor will you see Ruapehu in the movie. Filming it is also
discouraged and anyway we were shooting the latter moments of the
Fellowship's journey when depleted and exhausted they prepare to meet the
forces of evil in person. The towers of the Mordor bastion will be added
digitally, a model expanded to stretch behind the army entreating Sauron's
appearance.
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Mt Ruapehu
Photo by Keith Stern
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Members of the Fellowship et al were supported by a stunt team of horsemen and
opposed by the masked forces of the Kiwi military, earning an extra bit of
cash as a horrible-looking army. It must have made a welcome change from
testing bombs. |
Q: Was that Gandalf impaled on the wheel? Is it his death or
is he being tortured in some way?
