12 November 2003
How many times have I thought it was over, my life with the
wizard? When I flew home to the UK from New Zealand in late
December 2000, the principal photography was completed. Funds
flowed as the film was finished on time, although how much
over-budget will no doubt occupy Peter Jackson and New Line
Cinema a good while yet. Before the release of the first film a
year later, I was back in Wellington for a little more time with
Gandalf the Grey by May 2001, meeting old friends and worrying
that the gummy false nose might be permanently damaging my skin
beneath.
Gandalf banner on the New Zealand Post building overlooking
Wellington Harbour
November 2003, Photo by Simon Allison
Gandalf is a spirit, laid down in Tolkien's novels with love and
respect. The wizard and his creator had more in common than a bowl of
weed. Isn't Gandalf the old man that Tolkien (and many more of us) would
like to be? I wouldn't mind having a few tricks like his up my sleeve
and I would be pleased to have a life as active and fulfilled as
Gandalf's. Is that why he is so beloved and respected by the readers and
now the filmgoers?
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The chatting and boasting to the world's media
followed. Then the release date (19 December 2001) and suddenly
Gandalf was everywhere. On the posters of course, but also in the
toy shops and on the New Zealand postage stamps. I met his life-size
cut-outs in video and book shops. But I have never felt that these
commercialisations of his image impinged on Gandalf himself.
When I'm asked to sign Gandalf as well as my own name by
importunate autograph hunters, I explain that Gandalf doesn't give
autographs and I remember how Alistair Sim always refused, often
really upsetting the juvenile with her album. If anyone persists I
also explain that Gandalf isn't here with us. Last week I went on to
say that Gandalf doesn't exist! Although of course he does.
Gandalf billboard
Los Angeles, August 2003
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Wardrobe Adjustments
Stone Street Studios, 2003
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I like him for his sense of humour and sense of occasion. I like
his independence and need for company. Kids, some as young as five, look
wonderingly up as their grandparents introduce us, searching for Gandalf
in my face. I hope they feel as I did aged three sitting on Father
Christmas's knee in the grotto of our local store in Wigan. I could see
it was a cotton-wool beard and it didn't fit. This wasn't the real Santa
Claus. He was elsewhere preparing my stocking. The real Gandalf is
elsewhere and I bet those kids know it because they trust him and love
him like their grandad.
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 It
has been often overwhelming to adjust to being his representative.
Should I sign every poster at every stage-door or in the street late at
night for the guy with six photographs I know he's going to try and flog
on E-bay? Reporters want to know if I resent Gandalf taking over my
career and the rest of my life. I don't. And I'm happy that, as this
site proves, Gandalf's fans have discovered
James Whale,
Richard III and the crazed
Dussander.
I expect that after the last hurrah, the long-expected party over
and the trilogy fully released, interest will subside but in the
meantime there have been other fascinating men in my life. In the last
two years I have worked again with
Magneto and then
Emile in Vancouver, Dr. Cleave in
Dublin and Leeds in Asylum
and still under my skin, much more so than Gandalf, is Edgar in
Dance of Death. He
gets a third outing at the
Sydney
Festival in January. He's heavily on my mind and I must read the
play soon.
I really did work on Lord of the Rings for the last time
last week. Two days before the film was to be locked-off, no more
changes possible, I was hurriedly called into a Soho sound studio to
re-record scraps of dialogue for the completed cut. I had to deliver at
full throttle 20 instructions to the troops of Minas Tirith. Three takes
each made it 60 times that I bellowed and scraped the larynx, leaving me
a little hoarse. Now with a cold on top, I have been a growling Prospero
for the Naxos audio of The Tempest, recording at the Royal
National Institute for the Blind headquarters in north London.
This has brought me to some old friends, principally the director
John Tydeman who is now retired as head of BBC Radio Drama. We were
undergraduates together. He was giving notes to the actors this morning
and he called me "the wizard." I jumped in indignation thinking "I am
Prospero not Gandalf, however gravelly my voice". But then I realised
John thinks of Prospero as a wizard too. — Ian McKellen, October 2003
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