WHAT WENT WRONG - The Lord Of The Rings (Part 2)

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

In Part 2 of our coverage of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, Chris & Lizzie learn how Sean Connery missed out on half a billion bucks, Stanley Kubrick inadvertently gave us Wolverine and Gandalf, and New Line’s decision to bet the franchise on a $2M blowout at Cannes.Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to part two of our three-episode journey into the making of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings. Folks, if you haven't listened to Part One, I encourage you to do so now. But before we begin, a quick recap, we last witnessed our intrepid heroes, Peter Jackson and friend Walsh, as they walked into the last studio in town willing to hear their pitch to bring the Lord of the Rings to the big screen. Upon arriving at New Line Cinema, they were told by the studio head Bob Shea that what they'd walked into was an effect to courtesy meeting. However, this intrepid duo from New Zealand, armed with the wonderful design of countless artists back home at Way to Digital and Wedda Workshop, somehow managed to save their film at the last minute. New Line not only wanted to back the movie, they wanted to make it a

trilogy. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Well, what Peter Jackson didn't know is that New Line was in a bit of a dry spell. They'd had a series of flops, which would culminate in Warren Beatty's town and country, a near $100 million big-time flopper. Yeah, big-time flopper. We covered it on this podcast. Check out our episode. It made $10 million against its $100 million budget, and they were actively looking for franchise opportunities.

In fact, Bob Shea had just finished a frustrating period of pursuit and development on an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's foundation that would never come to fruition. Yes, of course, now a TV show with Apple TV Plus. As much as Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Weta needed New Line cinema, New Line needed them. It's also possible that Bob Shea wanted to prove to Hollywood that Harvey Weinstein sucked and Bob Shea could eat his lunch. They had a bit of a rivalry, New Line and Miramax, both being kind of mini-major studios.

But New Line's investment was hefty up front. Lizzie, in order to pay back Harvey Weinstein for his development costs, $12 million, They had to then pony up $3 million to secure the rights, plus they had to pay an additional $10 million to keep Jackson and Walsh writing the scripts and pre-production running in New Zealand. So basically, New Line shawled out $20 to $25 million right off the top just to keep the project running. I mean, in retrospect, it sounds like a freaking bargain by because this is like such a lasting franchise that has now inspired two going on three spin-off franchises. So, like, sure.

Yeah, at the time, people thought this was insane, though. I mean, that's very true. In fact, Hollywood collectively thought that Bob Shea had lost his goddamn mind. This was another Titanic situation. Word spread quickly that New Line Cinema was investing upwards of $200 million. It would, of course, end up being more than that, in an adaptation of an unadaptable trilogy to be written in directed by the guy who made The Frighteners, which had, as we said, flopped in the summer of 1996.

But again, that's $200 million for three movies. But at the time, movies weren't typically more than about $100 million, so that wasn't as big a discount as it is in the Marvel Age. Still a Costco discount. Fair enough. If the first film failed, as Peter Jackson put it, the sequels would be the two most expensive direct-to-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-fills ever made. That would have been so sad and so funny if that had.

happen. So while now under the scrutiny of Hollywood and the pressures of an entire studio, depending on the success of the films, Jackson and Walsh had the opportunity to bring back in much of what they'd had to cut out when they had cut the books down to a two script. Oh, Harvey and Bob Weinstein's incredibly stupid notes? Great. Yeah. Cut Saramon. God damn it. Yeah. They didn't have to kill a hobbit as Bob had wanted them. Oh, good. Anyone. Pick one. Yeah. So Philip O'Boyans at this point, was brought in as a true third collaborator, like a true third screenwriter.

And they got to work translating their existing structure into a three-film format. So the first thing that was restored, Lizzie, Boyens brought back Lothlorian to the Fellowship of the Ring. Thank you. They had working drafts by November of 1998, although these drafts were quite different

than the finished films. Perhaps the biggest departure, as we'll discuss later, is Arwin's role. We talked about this a little bit in the first episode. In this version, she actually, follows the fellowship to Lothlorian, then Ederas, and the love triangle is established between her Aowen and Aragorn that plays out kind of in real time. Which you see remnants of in this, which doesn't totally make sense without her being more present, but like it's fine,

whatever. As we'll later see, they actually shot her at Helms Deep. They filmed her at Helms Deep, but she was not included. Point being, the trio wrote relentlessly. They edited and tweaked the script, cutting and adding things back in. In fact, they continued to write all the way through production and post-production until the film was finally locked. This was the giant work-in-progress script of the 21st century, 20th and 21st century. Exposition was, of course, always the tricky area of the story. This is where Boyans really shined.

She nailed the prolog, Lizzie, as we discussed. She gets a lot of information across very quickly. However, the first movie ground to a halt during the Council of Elron scene in Rivendale. Apparently, the script read really well and you hit the Council of Rivens, the Council of Elron, and it was like 45 pages of, and this is the history of the dwarves, and this is the history of the elves, and it just slowed down. Apparently, that log jam was unworked when they got to set and realized, oh, you don't have to explain the history of the dwarves. You just need John Rees Davies to turn up and be a dwarf, and the audience is going to get it.

Yeah. He's so good. During the production, the trio would learn to trust the actors and their instincts with the characters. For example, Boromir had this very long extended speech about Mordor. Actually, parts of it are in the extended cut, and you don't need it, because the speech is actually summed up beautifully with that performance of one line. One does not simply walk into Mordor. And thus, so many memes were born. So many memes.

And that line actually was written out on a piece of paper that had been balanced on his knee. and you can see him kind of glanced down in the middle of it, and he's actually checking his line there. The actors also got a decent amount of input. Sean Aston was the one that insisted that Sam would actually be eavesdropping on the council, and so that was worked into the script. And Boyens is very proud of some of the comic relief that she got into the script, including Pippin's line that ends that scene.

So, where are we going at the end of that scene, which is very fun. He's so great. He's really good. Billy Boyd is great. As the screenwriting progressed, which was really a process powered by Fran Walsh. Apparently she was the driving force of the script. Jackson and Boyans.

Partner as well, right? Partner, exactly. Both romantic partner and producing partner. They had done everything together following Peter Jackson's first film Bad Taste. So Jackson, knowing that the script was in good hands with Walsh and Boyens, he started working on storyboarding and pre-visualizing the movie. And he brought on this really talented young artist named Christian Rivers. Christian Rivers was from New Zealand, and he had approached Jackson after he had seen Brain Dead.

Christian Rivers was 17 years old. Saw Jackson's second film was like, I just want to be your protege. And Jackson said, great, you're now my storyboard artist. And he storyboarded all of his movies through Lord of the Rings. And actually, Peter Jackson produced Christian Rivers' directorial debut, 2018's The Mortal Engines, years later, starring Hugo Weaving. Yeah. So they had a really wonderful relationship.

and Jackson eventually helped him become a director himself. I'll say because that was a pretty big directorial day. Very, very big budget movie. We'll probably cover at some point. Yeah. Now, today, pre-vis is largely done virtually. You put the camera in a virtual environment. You place your actors around that environment,

and then you move your camera and figure out how you want to move it on set. Back in 1998 and 99, Peter Jackson, for the most part, actually used miniatures to do his pre-visualization. So they would make, think, you know, something not dissimilar from Warhammer, like a tabletop game, they would make these miniature sets, and he would move little pieces around and thimble for the camera. And there were two exceptions, two important exceptions. The first was the cave troll scene in Moria,

which they actually did a virtual digital pre-visualization, one of the first that had ever been done, where Jackson actually held a fake, like, virtual camera with sensors on it, and he moved it through an empty space in order to see where the cave troll would be. And then later, the Muma Kill scene, the giant elephants in Return of the King. So they did have two digital sequences.

So the script's underway. The studio has funded Weta, and Peter Jackson now finds himself facing a very big problem, which is where in God's name am I going to find hobbits? Lizzie? Any actor in Hollywood, they're all so small. They are very small. So he had decided early in the process

that he was going to use normally proportioned humans, scaled down through forced perspective, and other digital trickery. Oh, yes. I'm sorry. I just came across as a real asshole because there were other possibilities there, which are not just normal-sized humans.

Cancel her. So he was going to use normally proportioned humans scaled down through force perspective and digital trickery for the hobbits. So he was intent on finding four shorter actors who were British specifically. Also, to be fair, that does make sense, just given the sort of way that they're described

in the books and everything. Like they are proportionate. And they had toyed with ideas of like, could we use puppets in some sequences? And really it felt like we needed to use real people on set and we need to use whatever tools are at our disposal, practical and digital in order to accomplish that.

Jackson already had Ian Holm in mind for Bilbo. He'd wanted him for that part for a while. So he did, in a sense, have a template that he was working off of when he was looking for his Mary Pipp and Sam and Frodo. So in the summer of 1998, a worldwide search starts to figure out who these four hobbits are going to be.

Lizzie, any guesses of the four, which was the first to be cast? Sean Aston. No. Billy Boyd. Okay. Where'd they find him? So he was actually the oldest of all of the actors, even though he was playing the youngest of all of the hobbits. He was 31, oldest of the four, 13 years older than Elijah Wood.

But he was playing the youngest, yeah, of the characters. So he's born in Glasgow, and he ended up after. a number of different kind of false starts in his career at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama before booking a series of TV roles and indie film parts. And what Jackson and everybody really loved about Boyd so much was his voice. They loved his voice, they loved his accent, and they actually loved his singing voice. He really sings wonderfully. Beautiful. He actually co-wrote, along with Philippa Boyans and Howard Shore, the steward of Gondor, the song he sings to Denethor. Really?

As Fermier rides out to certain death, yeah. That's crazy. That's beautiful. It's beautiful. So they found their Mary next in Dominic Monaghan. Monaghan actually read for Frodo. He had never read for Mary, but Jackson thought he would play so well opposite Billy Boyd that he offered him the part.

And true to the books, their dynamic on screen really is reflective of their dynamic in real life. They became fast friends when they met on set. And Lizzie, they, as you mentioned, have a podcast together now, The Friendship Onion. They do. It's very cute. It's very sweet. Yes. I love them both. Also, God bless Billy Boyd.

He's like the only one that doesn't have sort of another iconic role outside of Lord of the Rings. All three of the other hobbits do. Yeah, obviously Sean Ashton and Elijah Wood were both child actors. And then Monaghan went on to Lost after that as Charlie. And he's so good and lost, yeah. So Sam and Frodo were not so easy to find. You mentioned Sean Astin, Lizzie. So in the summer of 1998, Sean Ashton was experiencing a professional slump.

He is the son of actress Patty Duke, which I had forgotten, and the stepson of actor John Aston, who had actually played a ghost in Peter Jackson's The Frighteners, which I didn't know. Yeah, so Sean Aston actually met Peter Jackson at the premiere of the Frighteners before Lord of the Rings was ever going to happen. I can't believe he's younger than Billy Boyd. He is.

So he was the second oldest of the three. Now, even though he's younger, he was at that point when they started filming, he was married and had had a daughter already. So he was... Well, he'd been working forever. He had been working forever. So he was first on screen when he was nine years old, he acted opposite his own mother, his real mom, Patty Duke, in a movie that was called, Please Don't Hit Me, Mother. Oh, no.

You guessed it, unabusive mother. He was nine years old, as I mentioned. But he really broke out at around age 12 or 13 with the Goonies. And obviously, incredible film. I love that movie. And then he found kind of not quite leading roles, but good roles in Memphis Bell, toy soldiers, and courage under fire. And of course, there was the exception, Rudy, as you mentioned.

And Rudy was a big success in Aston's career, and it's obviously a beloved sports film. He plays a young man who wants to play on the Notre Dame football team and accomplishes it eventually despite a lot of obstacles. However, the movie was not a big commercial hit. And so he had actually, as I mentioned, he married young, he had a daughter to raise. He also wanted to be a director.

He directed a short film in 1994 that was nominated for an Academy Award called Kangaroo Court. Wow. So on a Tuesday, that summer, Ashton, who apparently wasn't getting a lot of calls from his agent, that point, gets a call from his agent, and she just says, listen, Pete Jackson is doing Lord of the Rings for a new line, you're reading for Sam, you need a flawless British accent by Thursday, and then she hung up. And so he had two days to learn how to do a British accent for a book

that he had never read before. And so he rushed to a bookstore, bought the books, he said he got through about 100 pages, and then he had to stop. He got five pages of description and dialogue from the casting director, and he decided to lean into the part of the character that seems, to match what worked so well for his performance in Rudy, which is this idea that Sam is the blue-collar character of the group. He's Frodo's Gardner. He is the lower-class man. He's the every man.

In many ways, he's what Tolkien believed was kind of the every infantryman in World War I. And that's very much who Sam was supposed to represent. So he, for an accent, decided he would model one of his favorite actors, Michael Kane. And so that's how he got, like, his cockney accent. and he recorded it on tape and sent it out into the abyss. Then he was rereading the pages and it said that Sam was heavier than the other hobbits, like a thicker hobbit. And Aston had actually gotten into a really good shape that summer because he had run the L.A. Marathon that year.

And so he was like 30 pounds lighter than he normally was. So he was like, oh, shit, shit, shit. So he put together a tape of all the roles where he was heavier. And then he sent that in two. And he was like, just so you know, I can be heavier if needed for this role. Oh, God. I mean, this just makes me think of, like, how exhausting this process is for actors, like, even when they are as successful as Sean Aston was at that point. And had famous parents, like, that's a nightmare to have to be like, I can be whatever way you want to be. I can do whatever. It's like, oh, my God. It's, it's really tough. Now, meanwhile, Elijah Wood was very much a young star on the rise. He had been filming, Robert Rodriguez is the faculty that summer, which I just, I love that movie so much. It's not technically good, but we do love it.

It's not, it's sure. Good is relative. When he was on set, a young man who was kind of like a pioneering internet writer named Harry Knowles came to visit set and became friends with Elijah Wood. Harry Knowles had helped start and was running the website, Ain't It Cool News? which at the time, Ain't It Cool News was like a real big, it was like the BuzzFeed, you know, of 1998. Well, it just so happens that Peter Jackson had done an interview with Harry Knowles as a way to get ahead of fan whiplash, like backlash on the movies. So Peter Jackson did this interview where they solicited fan questions to the website, and Peter Jackson answered the fan questions. And he did that with Harry Knowles so that Ain't It Cool News became this really big supporter of the website.

the film to counter a lot of the negativity that they were getting in the Hollywood trades about how New Line had lost their minds, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it cool news was saying, like, no, no, no, this is awesome. These movies are going to rock. So, Knowles is hanging out with Wood, and he goes, yo, Peter Jackson's doing an adaptation of Lord of the Rings. You should play Frodo. And Elijah Wood's like, oh, maybe Wood had loved Jackson's early work, brain dead, heavenly

creatures, and he was a big fan of The Hobbit. So he calls his agent, his agent gets him a graph to the script. And they ask that he just, like Sean Ashton and the other actors, record one of the scenes on tape and send it in. But it turns out he's a lot like Peter Jackson, and he's not going to lead it to chance. So he recruits two of his friends. He puts together his best Frodo costume.

He goes to Griffith Park, and he shoots three scenes as Frodo, as if it's a movie, each one showing kind of a progression of the ring's effects on him as he's carrying it closer and closer to Mount Doom. Now, meanwhile, across the world, Peter Jackson's completely losing hope that they're ever going to find a Frodo or a Sam. He had personally auditioned over 200 actors across the world at this point trying to find the right fit. And one day he gets-

Do we know who else was up for it at all? We do know one very specific person that's about to come up. And for like I said, you know, some of the other hobbits did audition for Frodo originally. So he gets a tape and the guy delivering the tape just says, it's the kid from Flipper. Yes. And so Elijah Wood has been in Flipper in 1996. And the good son. Yeah, and the good son, obviously, with McCulley Colkin.

And Jackson's like, it's an American. There's no way. And then he puts the tape in, and apparently those baby blue eyes are what sealed the deal. He just fell into those eyes and was like, oh, my God. Just huge unblinking blue eyes. I don't know that he blinks in the entire trilogy. He also said that what he loved is that when Elijah Wood would smile, it seemed innocent. but if he held the smile too long or extended it a little bit,

he looked like an evil child. And he was like, I could totally see him succumbing to the ring. This is exactly what we need. However, it wasn't a done deal. Elijah Wood would have to meet with Peter Jackson. And in the meantime, Peter Jackson was auditioning another young up-and-coming actor, Jake Gyllenhaal. Oh, hmm.

So Jillenhall came into audition, Lizzie, and his agent didn't tell him about the British accent. What? So he auditioned with a California accent. Oh, no. And it did not go well. And apparently Peter Jackson told him at the end of his, when he revealed, he didn't know about the accent.

Peter Jackson was like, honestly, you should fire agent. I don't know if he did at this point. So Jillon Hall did not get the role. I mean, I'm glad. I don't think he's right for it between the two of them. And he was perfect for Donnie Darko. And, you know, I think the world got the two best versions. of those movies that we could have gotten.

So on July 8, 1999, New Line Cinema announced that Frodo Baggins was going to be played by Elijah Wood. He was 18 years old, and he was about to spend the next two years of his life on set filming the Lord of the Rings half a world away. I had no idea he's 18. He's 18. His college would be Lord of the Rings, which is just absolutely remarkable. New Line, meanwhile, had called Sean Aston to inform him that he had secured the role of Sam. Hell yeah. His agent, though, warned him that the pay was very, very low, especially for an actor with

as many credits as he had. For three films and two years of work, he would only be paid a flat rate of $250,000. What? Orlando Bloom, as we'll get to, was paid even less, $175,000. Oh, my God. Most of the non-top-billed actors on these movies were paid very little, which is how they were able to afford such an incredible amount of world building in these movies. Even so, Sean Ashton accepted the role, and after he hung up, he fell to the floor, and he cried

because he knew that this was going to change his life. Yeah. So the Hobbits arrived in New Zealand at the end of August 1999, just as winter was ending for those crazy Southern Hemisphere New Zealanders. They went through two months of training, costume fitting. They each had to learn specific accents and sword play. They had to obviously do their wig fittings, full head moldings, and foot moldings for their hobbit feet. It was relentless, and apparently they really did become like a unit, just like best friends.

Aston's daughter, Alexandra, would soon have three new uncles for the rest of her life. And in fact, little Alexander Aston would become part of the Rings universe when she would take the role of Eleanor Gamgee in the Return of the King. She plays Sam's daughter in the third film, which I think is so cool. That's so cute. Quick sidebar, Wood and Aston obviously had to learn their accents. Monaghan's accent was tweaked for the film, and everybody loved Billy Boyd's voice so much. They said, don't change a thing. I was going to say, it doesn't make any sense. Like, he has a totally different accent for the rest of them.

It's fine. No one cares, but, yeah. Buggins? Trudeau Baggans. I mean, he's clearly from Scotland. I love him. It's great. Right. It's perfect. Don't change a beat. So the next two cast members to join were the apparently absolutely love. I've heard he is absolutely lovely Orlando Bloom set to play Legolas. My love when I was 12. Well, and what's interesting is he originally auditioned for Faramere. And part of the reason is his natural complexion is not elf-like at all. He's actually very tan and he has very dark features and he has dark hair and eyebrows and everything.

I know, Chris, because let me tell you how does. disappointed I was. He's very beautiful. He did not look like Legolas. I know, I can't explain it. I saw what he looks like in real life. I think he's more handsome, not as an elf. I saw him as non-elf and I was like, oh my God, he's hotter.

As an adult, I'm aware that he is technically significantly hotter, not as an elf. At 12 years old, I was like, it's not going to work for me outside of the Legolas costume. Well, apparently it was like Philip Aboyens and Fran Wals for like, we need Legolas. We need young girls to love Legolas. Like, that's the only way they're going to see the movie. And then they were like, none of these guys are hot enough to play him. And they finally came across Orlando Bloom and they're like, what if we put blonde around him? Apparently his wig took forever and it cost $15,000.

It looks good. They could not get it right. You know I complain about wigs all the time on this. His wig looks good. There's some other ones in this that don't look as good. Some of the hobby ones don't hold up as well. His looks amazing. What's Aowen's brother's name, Carl Urban?

Ae Omer. Yeah, not as the hair line on that one is questionable. Yes. Okay. So the next cast member to show up is the man to play Aragorn, and that is, of course, Stuart Townsend. Yes. I do know this. Yeah, not Bigot Mortensen.

We will get back to Stuart Townsend in a moment. The problem from New Line's perspective about all of this great casting is that while Sean Aston and Elijah Wood were all great for their roles, none of these four. folks were box office draws, despite being wonderful for their parts. And so they were looking for a name to offset their investment. They were specifically looking for one name, Sean Connery. That's right. No. As Gandalf? As Gandalf, the man with the golden gun, new line said, Connery needed to play Gandalf to get the green light. Quick sidebar. They apparently also soft-pitched Brad Pitt as Aragorn, but that didn't go anywhere. I'm fine with that. I'm fine with that, too. He's a

smoke show also. Jackson apparently was not that opposed to Connery. He just didn't think he would fit in the world exactly. He worried that he would break the reality. He also just didn't think Sean Connery would want to spend 18 months in New Zealand shooting what was effectively an independent film with Peter Jackson. Also, who's he going to slap? There's nobody there for him to slap.

Slat him up. Bob Shea insisted that they were offering Mr. Connery the deal of a lifetime. So Peter Jackson relented and New Line sent the scripts to the Bahamas. where Sean Connery was vacationing. Now, here was the offer that Newline gave him. Six to $10 million per film up front. Oh, my God. That was actually pretty low for him at the time,

but he would get 15% of the film's gross on the back end. For Sean Connery, it's so wrong. I know. Listen, Sean Connery's great. He's an icon, he's fine. He's an icon, he's fine. This is dumb. Yeah.

Well, part of the issue, too, is they needed to really entice him because they were getting very close to shooting, and they needed to shoot a lot of the Gandalf scenes first. And so they needed him to say yes and say yes quickly. So they sent him the scripts, and they wait and they wait, and he literally never replied. No, because I guarantee you he read them and he was like, I don't get it. That's what he said. That's literally what he said. There you go.

Could have told you that. Saved you a long time. Can a few years later, he said, I read the books, I read the scripts. I even saw the first movie. I don't understand. He left it alone. Had he taken the role, he would have made over $450 million on these movies, which is mind-boggling. Let me guess.

They did not offer Ian McKellen that deal. No. I'm sure he did quite well, but he didn't get that deal. So while New Line is Quarter and Connery, Philip Oboyance was planting a very different version of Gandalf in both Jackson and Walsh's minds, and that's the English actor Ian McKellen. Now, he's perfect, but he was not an obvious choice at the time. He had almost no name recognition compared to someone like Sean Connery or Anthony Hopkins, who they had apparently also really considered for this role.

Well, that makes more sense, yes. Right. So McKellen, born in 1939, he'd largely been a theater actor and hadn't found success in the film world until his 50s. But I want to point out, he was one of the most renowned and well-known, particularly Shakespeare actors in the entire world. And, like, he was a known quantity. Like, I remember when I went to go see this, my mom was like, that's Sir Ian McKellan.

And then we watched Macbeth. We, like, she was... You lived in an unusual household. It's like, he... He, absolutely. And he had started to get known on screen in the 90s, six degrees of separation, last action hero. 1998, he's an apt...

Abpt and up pupil. And then, of course, gods and monsters, which was where he starred opposite Brennan Fraser. and that movie really got him the attention that he deserved. So Jackson and Walsh fly to England to meet with McKellen because Connery's not responding. McKellon reads the scripts. And by the way, McCallon sounds like the coolest person in the world. Just awesome. He was also an openly gay man at this point working in, obviously on stage and in Hollywood.

He reads the scripts. He really likes Jackson and Walsh. And candidly, he was like, I think the scripts are fine. I don't fully understand them, but I really like these two quirky people from New Zealand. And he politely has to turn them down. Because he's supposed to play Magneto and X-Men. Yes, which he does.

And he's so good. And he's all so great. He's so good. This would not be a problem if X-Ben were on schedule. But X-Men was not on schedule. Because the man that they had hired to play Wolverine, not Hugh Jackman, Dew-Gray Scott, was busy.

playing the villain on Mission Impossible 2. And this would not be a problem if Mission Impossible 2 was not delayed. But Mission Impossible 2 is delayed because Tom Cruise was still stuck on the set of eyes wide shut, which Stanley Kubrick had been shooting for like 400 days. So literally they have like a pile up of five movies happening at the same time. So they go back to the drawing board. They talked about Richard Harris, Tom Wilkinson, Christopher Plummer, Sam Neal, even Bernard Hill, who ended up playing Theodin.

But no one really felt right. So Bob Shea says, fuck it. And he steps up to the plate. And so first he tells Pete, he goes, I need you to delay Gandalf scenes until the beginning of the new year. So they're going to start principal photography in the fall of 1999. He's like, don't shoot Gandalf until January 2000. So Peter Jackson and his team are like trying to rebuild a 275 day schedule on the go right now.

then John Wu gives them an unexpected assist. Mission Impossible 2 gets delayed even longer. And so nothing they can do with X-Men except let go of Du Grey Scott, which boosts Hugh Jackman into the role of Wolverine, which would become the role of a lifetime. And then that would in turn get X-Men moving, which would free up Ian McKellen by January of 2000. Man, that is so crazy because, like, this just shows you how much chance goes into this stuff. It's all chance. Because DeGray Scott's career, like, didn't go that much farther. I mean, I remember him from ever after. He was poised to be something big. He was great.

And, yeah, that's, ah, I mean, I love Hugh Jackman, but. Yeah, I love Hugh Jackman. They're all great. I love all these people. I hope they all get great roles as Wolverine. Everyone's Wolverine. So unfortunately, Fox isn't going to put anything in writing that would bind McKellon to another shoot. So all Peter Jackson gets is a handshake deal from Brian Singer saying, all have McKellen wrapped in time for you to start shooting him in January. That's not a hand you want to shake. Yeah.

So they are literally banking a 275-day production on a guarantee from the guy that got canned off of Bohemian Rhapsody for not showing up to set. So rounding out the cast were the great Christopher Lee as Sarer. Riemann. Lee was obviously a veteran actor who'd played Dracula in the famous Hammer Monster Films. And he was actually the cast Lord of the Rings expert. He had read the books as a young man, and then he read them once a year, just like Philip of Boyans, every year until this point in time. And he also just was the storyteller and bullshitter of the production. And he had actually met J.R.R. Tolkien in a pub when Lee was a younger man. And this was a story that he would tell over and over again.

He also would critique anything that they got wrong about any of the characters. Good. I'm glad he was having fun. You can tell. You can tell. He had a great time. He also apparently really wanted to play Gandalf. But by the time...

No, you're too evil, sir. Well, he was also too old. So, McKellen had just turned 60 when the filming began. Lee was already 77. And the role... I was wondering about that, because Ian McKellen, like, they must have put quite a bit of old age makeup on him. And the wig and the hair and everything. Yeah.

And McKellon's always looked old. older than he is. He's had kind of a heaviness to his eyes and stuff. Like, there's a weariness to him that I think translates really well. Anyhow, it made more sense to have the older of the two play Saramon. Jackson apparently also considered Tim Curry, Jeremy Irons, Malcolm McDowell for Saramon, but Christopher Lee was always his top choice. Those are all good. Ooh, I'm not going to lie, Jeremy Irons is Saramund. I would love that. The production actually reached out to David Bowie to play Lord Elron, but he passed. But that would have been absolutely... and kind of wild, the Star Child.

He was busy with a cameo in Zoolander. Yeah. So Australian actor, Hugo Weaving, who had just stolen every scene in the Wachowski Sisters The Matrix as Agent Smith was brought in. And I think that was also a new line production, so I'm guessing he maybe got connected through New Line to them. He's great. Boromir, who is my favorite character from the Fellowship, was initially offered to Russell Crow. Oh, that makes sense.

Which would have been interesting. But Mr. Crow had just wrapped Gladiator. And he was like, he was a beat to shit. Listen to our episode on it. So he turned them down. They also then auditioned the unknown Daniel Craig, unknown at the time. He would go on to each and respond. And apparently that would have been good too.

Yeah. And apparently Bruce Willis really wanted the part. He was a big fan of the book. No. But Jackson said, no. Apparently also one of J.R. Tolkien's grandson, Simon Tolkien, who was a barrister, a British attorney was like, I would like to audition for Boramir, and they led him. And he was just thrilled to audition, apparently.

And Jackson said he was very nice, but it wasn't the part for him. That's great. So Boromir obviously is eventually played by the wonderful Sean Bean. Sean Bean, of course, I love Sean Bean. He has the looks of a leading man, yet he'd fallen into playing a series of villains in the 90s, including 006 or Janus and Golden Eye, the IRA Terest, Patriot Games, Sean Miller and Jack Ryan's Patriot Games. he was an enormous fan of the books,

and he had actually actively pursued a role in the production for over a year, and apparently he was in consideration early on for Aragorn, but did not win the part. And I think he would have actually been a really good Aeron. Yeah, 100%. I love Sean Bean. I mean, you see a lot of Aragorn in Ned Stark, I think, later.

Yeah. But he's just so perfect as Boromir. He's so good. He's so good. So Gimli proved to be a real challenge. British comedian Billy Connolly auditioned and was apparently in high consideration. If you don't know Billy Connolly, have you seen, this is not one of his most famous roles, but like The Last Samurai, he's like the wise cracking.

Yeah, never mind. Billy Connolly, look up his credits. But John Rees Davies stole the show because of his voice, which is just absolutely amazing. Even though he's six foot two, he actually was like pretty apathetic about taking the role. He later said, it occurs to you. Where's the mileage in playing a dwarf with prosthetic makeup? Certainly the money wasn't attractive. And so as we'll learn, the making.

makeup proved to be a sticking point for Mr. Davies. Well, he's wearing a lot of it. It's really, really important to note. While he performed Gimley's dialogue and close-ups, it was actually stunt double and actor Brett Beattie who played the grumpy yet heroic dwarf in anything wider than a medium shot. In fact, Davies famously spent less time

with the main cast than Brett Beatt Beatt did. And so Davies actually described the movie as being very lonely, and Beattie was more of a part of the fellowship than Davies was when they were on set. He sent Beatty to get the cast tattoo instead of him, right? Because he hadn't even been a part of it. When they did the cast tattoo, Davies turned them down, and then the rest of the cast invited Beatty to come with them instead to do it.

Wow. A couple other casting things to just crank through. Uma Thurman was offered the role of Aowen. Ooh. New Line was hopeful that her then husband, Ethan Hawk, would play Faramir. That would have been great. Such a cool one-two punch. Apparently Hawk wanted to do it.

He was a big fan of the books. but Thurman had just given birth to their first child, actress Maya Hoc, who you might know from Stranger Things. So she passed on the role. And much of her decision was based on the fact that Aowen's role seemed to be changing in scope relative to Arwin. And she couldn't tell if it was like a main part or a really small part. And she later said that I do consider it one of the worst decisions I have ever made. Oma. I would have loved to have seen that.

I love Uma Thurman so much. And that makes sense. And I mean, you can kind of tell something was going on, but also, of course, at the end of the day, Aowen ends up being a significantly bigger part than Arwen in a lot of ways. Yeah, and obviously Aeroen ends up being played by Australian actress Miranda Otto and Faramere by Australian actor David Wenham. So Arwen was the last of the major roles to be cast.

They had met with Ashley Judd and Helen Abonam Carter, but it was ultimately Liv Tyler, the model-turned actress and daughter of rock and roll superstar Steve Tyler, who would play the beguiling elf. Jackson presented her to New Line, and New Line was like, thank God, finally, someone that someone will recognize in this movie. Specifically, Livet Tyler was huge in Japan.

No joke. Okay. So she had played the major love interests in Michael Bay's Armageddon, which had been box office dynamite in Japan, specifically like they loved Liv Tyler in Japan. Lord of the Rings would end up making over $100 million in Japan alone. and when they did their marketing roll out there,

they used posters that featured for Lib Tyler. It was like, Lib Tyler takes the ring to Mordor. Great. Yes. She's in it for 20 minutes tops. Yeah. So, of course, Aragorn was both Jackson's biggest failure in the casting process and in the end, his greatest triumph.

Yes. Part of the issue was that Jackson, Boyens, and Walsh were having trouble figuring out Erragorn as a character themselves. He's very much a cipher. He's the reluctant hero, the would-be king. He doesn't have much interiority in the books. And then there was the issue of his age. And it's unclear, right?

Yeah. So technically, he is of Numenor. That's the lineage. And they were blessed by the Valar with long lives after they helped defeat Morgoth. What does that mean? According to Lord of the Rings experts, he was actually 87 years old during the events of the first film. He obviously doesn't look 87 years old. But that's because they live to be like 300 years old.

Exactly. So they're supposed to be super tall, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. The men of Numenor are, like, huge. They are. Vin Diesel sent in a tape to be considered. And Nicholas Cage claims he turned down the role, although Peter Jackson says, no, we offered him Boromir.

And he did turn down Boromere, apparently. Peter, Patrick Stewart also asked to meet with the filmmakers about the project. They assumed for Theodon, but Stewart was actually interested in Aragorn, which led to a very awkward meeting when he was like, no, I want to play Aragorn. And they all had to say like, we're sorry, we don't think it will work. But you can imagine he's like, he says he's 87 in the books. He was only in his late 50s at the time. So I can see where he thought.

And he was a very athletic man. So in the end, he had championed Stuart Townsend, an obscure 27-year-old Irish actor. He was very handsome, but far younger than expected. New Line is very confused by this choice. But Jackson's like, no, this is our guy. He flies Townsend to New Zealand. They do a full screen test, 35-millimeter. They shoot three scenes, full costume, full lighting.

apparently those would be the only scenes he would ever film for the trilogy. Oh, buddy. And we will get to that as we get into production. So these films are a masterclass in organization, delegation, and the division of labor. And where that labor came from was a problem all in its own, Lizzie. There's only 3.85 million people in New Zealand at this time. That is the population of Los Angeles in the entire country. So as pre-production gets underway, Richard Taylor, who runs Weta, the Weta, workshop,

shop side realizes we need a whole lot more people. So he creates an armor division, a weapons division, a prosthetic makeup division, a creature's division, and a miniatures division. And then he starts going around and he's like, I need all my local artists, all my crafts people. Doesn't matter if you've worked in film production or not. And then he starts flying internationally and he puts up flyers. He goes to L.A. Sick of living in Los Angeles. That's what the flyers said. And it said, major movie happening in New Zealand. He couldn't put Lord of the Rings on it. So he just had to say major movie in New Zealand. So they start flying people who are curious from all over the world down to New Zealand. And they make this incredible team of people, some of whom have

worked on movies, some who haven't. For example, they're like, we need a blacksmith's forge and we need to make armor that looks like it would have been made in Middle Earth, not 1990s, New Zealand. So they find this guy, Pete Lyon, who's from the Southern Island of New Zealand, and they bring him over, and he's like, oh, yeah, I make my alma in the way that they made it in the 15th century. And it turns out he'd been making armor for collectors and medieval reenactors for the last few years. and so they just started, like, building full sets of armor and full swords on this, like, backlot that they'd made in Wellington out of a bunch of old buildings. Every weapon was made multiple times. There was the hero version.

There were five less detailed aluminum versions and then rubber versions for stunts. Famously, Vigo Mortensen would only use the hero version. He just refused to hold any other version of his sword when he was acting. Richard Taylor and his team, they made 48,000 props, 10,000 facial appliances to do all of the different orcs. 2,000 pairs of Hobbit feet. Every orc and Urichai was specifically designed, complete with backstories to explain wounds and variations, including one very special orc that was designed to look like Harvey Weinstein.

You will know who we mean if you watch the movies. These orc and Urachai designs were not done digitally. They would be created first on paper, then they sculpted them in exquisite detail up to five feet tall. They would do this for the watcher in the water, the bellrog, the fell beast, And then when they needed to get them into the computer for CGI, they actually had to scan them. But the sculptures were too big for their scanner. So then they realized, okay, we got to get a bigger scanner.

So they realized that the New Zealand meat industry had a digital handheld scanner that they would scan giant slabs of meat with to get their rough weights. And they could use that to scan the sculptures in for Weta Digital. And they used that to scan the cave troll, for example. They also obviously had a miniatures division. This movie has so many amazing miniature shots. They built 68 miniatures. They called them bigotures because some of them were the size of a small house.

Jackson obviously didn't want this simple lock off the camera, Matt painting miniature establishing shot. He wanted swooping shots. He wanted to get as close to the towers of Gondor as possible. The models had to be incredibly detailed. It took a full year to make the staircase of Casa Doom that they run across and jump as they're playing the Balrog. It was 21 feet tall, 66 feet long. So these are not miniature miniatures.

Apparently, they would look at day, like during dailies, every once in a while, like a lizard would be crawling up the side of the staircase that they hadn't seen. So it looked like something out of the lost world because it was like so large in relation to the rest of the miniature. Now, of course, everything that's happening on the Weta Workshop side has to be matched by the Weta Digital side. They brought in over 200 animators from around the world. But the problem is they didn't have a workflow. So like ILM had established a workflow at this point where it was an assembly line. They would have a shot and you would have one group of people that would be doing. compositing one group of people that would be doing designing and then animating and then rendering.

It was total disarray and apparently New Line stepped in at this point and had to put their foot down. They fired the two top heads of Weta and they inserted Jim Rijal, an animation veteran who had worked on Alien 3. Listen to our episode on that. Starship Troopers, we will be doing an episode on that. And Last Action Hero, listen to our episode on that. he came in and apparently he was really convinced like oh my god new zealand i'm going to have to ship all this work back to l.A and when he showed up it was disorganized but he was like holy shit they are pioneering things that have never been done in the rest of the world here we'll get into this more when we get to gollum in our final episode there were some elements that were beyond wedda though

for example the water effects needed to accomplish that surge of river that looks like horses that arwin summons digital digital domain who had obviously been doing water effects for James Cameron. For James Cameron. They actually handled that shot. That was the one shot in Fellowship that was handled in North America, I believe. A few other folks I just want to mention in production, Andrew Lesney was brought on a cinematographer. He had been the cinematographer on Babe and Babe Pig in the City. Excellent.

Excellent films. And this is because Jackson's usual cinematographer, Alan Bollinger, couldn't commit two years of his life to the project. So Andrew Lesney was brought in. Grant Major was brought on as production designer. Dan Hena joined as art director. He is largely responsible for scouting New Zealand to find all of the perfect locations for Hobbiton and Mordor and Rohan, et cetera. Ingilla Dixon took on the shared role of costume designer with Richard Taylor and then Peter King and Peter Owen designed the makeup and hair. And I just want to highlight, there were 2,500 people working on this movie. I can't name them all, but they all did such incredible work. Check out the credits on this movie.

As I mentioned, the wigs were extremely high fidelity. Legolas's cost upwards of $15,000, and the Hobbit Wigs were apparently primarily sourced from Russian hair. Women in Russia, apparently. What Peter Jackson said. So on October 11, 1999, after months and months and months of pre-production, weeks and weeks of training, they begin production on Lord of the Rings.

And Lizzie, do you know what the first shot of the film is? It's the shot where they're hiding underneath the tree on the road as the ring race comes on the path above them. They wouldn't be able to shoot with Gandalf until the new year, but they had the rest of their cast, or so they thought, on the third day, third day of principal photography while shooting this scene, producer Barry Osborne steps up next to Peter Jackson. Peter Jackson turns to him and says,

Barry, I don't think I can work with Stewart. I don't think it's going to work out. Stuart Townsend obviously is supposed to play Aragorn, and the first shots of him in the prancing pony were scheduled for the following week. So they fired Stuart, Townsend during the first week of production. What happened? He hadn't even shot anything.

So apparently, the truth is, ever since Townsend had gotten to New Zealand, Jackson and Boyens and Walsh could tell that something was wrong. He didn't want to participate in a lot of the cast activities. He apparently didn't show up for a lot of training. He didn't want to rehearse. What? And he would just say, it's okay, we'll get it on the day. Philip O'Boyans would later say

that it really felt like he was very insecure about having gotten the role and that she felt he had internalized New Line's belief that he was too young for the part. And so he was almost like frozen up and didn't feel like he could do it. They fired him and it sent ripples through the production

as well as Hollywood at large. New Line ran damage control. They issued an announcement. It's not a problem on set. It was just bad chemistry. It wasn't the right fit. The press ran wild with it. And then of course, Townsend, who was feeling pretty burned, gave a quote shortly afterwards that was very negative toward the production, basically saying, I'd been there for two months working, and I got canned right before I was

supposed to start shooting, which was true. He also apparently didn't get paid because he had not put anything to film. Oh, no. So he got burnt pretty bad on this one. The cast got pretty spooked as well. Like Sean Aston said, he felt like it was the right decision, but they all realized, holy shit, the stakes are high. If we're not right for one of these parts, we're going to be gone.

In the end, though, realizing this mistake, led to, I think, probably the best casting decision outside of McKellen, Kate Blanchett, and Elijah Wood, and that is Vigo Mortensen as Eragorn. Yeah. But he wouldn't arrive in time to shoot at the prancing pony. In fact, when Peter Jackson shot that scene for the first time and they look into the corner, that guy's been eyeing you from the moment we came in, there was no one sitting in the corner.

They had not yet cast Viggo Mortensen. They didn't know who Strider was going to be. So Mark Ordesky, that new line executive who had long champion Peter Jackson, gets a call from Barry Osborne saying Townsend's out. Ordesky hung up the phone, he threw up, and then he wrote down three names, Russell Crow, Jason Patrick, and Vigo Mortensen. Meanwhile, Peter Jackson was similarly considering going back to Russell Crow with the bigger part of Aragorn. Boyenson and Walsh pitch him Mortensen. Now, he's not an obvious choice at the time. He had broken in with a tiny role in witness.

He'd had supporting roles in G.I. Jane, a perfect murder, and daylight. But he was not a huge name. But they did think he was perfect for the park. And that's because he is Eric Gorn in real life. He's half Danish, half American, raised in a land that was not his own, Argentina, then brought to New York for education. He is truly a man of the world. He is a writer, a poet.

He'd been a dock worker. sold flowers. He never turned himself over to the Hollywood life. He would ride his horse into the wilderness for days at a time. He spoke English, Danish, French, and Spanish fluently. And he was obsessed with Nordic and Icelandic sagas. He's Aragorn in real life. It's crazy. So before they go to Vigo, they did offer the part to Russell Crow. But again, he passed. It was too close to Gladiator. Which again would have been good. He's great. Yeah. He would. And it was like right at that right in his career. Maybe not as fun to be on set with for two years.

There would have been some broken phones in those hotels. So they go to Vigo. The only problem is they need him in New Zealand in two days. Well, actually, the only problem is they don't know where Vigo Mortensen is. So they send the script to his agent and they wait. So Peter Jackson's filming these scenes without Strider at the printing pony and Mortensen calls from a pay phone somewhere in Iowa. Jackson's not in the production offices.

so Fran Walsh and Philip Appoyance pick up the phone and they discuss the character with him. He then hangs up and says he'll think about it. By the way, apparently he talks extremely slow and puts incredibly long pauses into his conversations. So they couldn't tell if the call had cut out or if he was just waiting to speak on these calls. So then he calls back again and it's just Philip Aboyans in the office. So this is crazy. She has no screenwriting credits to her name. You know what I mean, Philippa at this point?

And she's like, I am the one person that is about to secure Vigo Mortensen for this production. And he asks her, how old was I when I was taken to the elves? And Philip Appoyance, Tolkien expert goes, you are two years old. And then he says, I'd like to talk to the director. So Peter Jackson gets called back from set. And apparently they have a very uncomfortable conversation because Peter Jackson does not understand why he is speaking so slow. And he is convinced because he's not interested in the project. So Peter Jackson's like, I got to get back to set.

And he ends the call by saying, thanks for reading the scripts. I guess I should get back to set. And then Morton said apparently just doesn't say anything for, I don't know how long. And then he just goes, well, I guess I'll see you next Tuesday. And then he hangs up. And that's how Jackson knew that Mortensen took the role. What they didn't know was that he was originally going to pass. He didn't want to be away from his 11-year-old son.

Henry, turns out Henry, huge Lord of the Rings fan. And when Vigo's like, yeah, it's this guy, Aragorn. Henry goes, dad, you have. to play him. Aww. So 48 hours, he shows up on set in full Aragorn attire. It's day 12 of production. And we have our Aragorn.

Now, I do want to Lizzie do a brief moment to explain how sprawling this production was because it's mind-boggling. So New Zealand covers 104,000 square miles across two main islands, and there are also 700 small islands that are also part of the country. Oh, my God. I did not know that. It's one of the most geographically diverse countries in the world. It's also, as I mentioned, nearly empty in terms of population density.

In 1999, lots of sheep. Yeah, its population was 3.85 million people, roughly the equivalent to today's Los Angeles. Its geographic diversity is unparalleled. It is the perfect place to create Middle Earth. Across this country canvas, Jackson and his team had 2,500 cast and crew members. They obviously shot over 274 shooting days, and the only way they could accomplish that is by splitting up into up to seven different shooting units at the same time. All which were fed back to Peter Jackson by a satellite system put up by the New Zealand

government and military so he could sit at his bank of monitors on whatever set he was at and watch the takes of all of the action being shot all the way around the country. New Zealand is kicking ass to make the Lord of the Rings. So he would direct the primary unit. which would oftentimes be actually split into two units, an A unit and a B unit. Then there would always be a second unit and a third unit, and then there was always a miniature unit shooting, and there was always a blue screen unit shooting.

Then on some days, they also had the helicopter unit shooting, and then they had a digital unit shooting other landscapes, and then eventually they had the GOLM unit shooting as well. Wait, okay, so how many units is normal for a film of the scale? Like three? Three, four, maybe five. You know, depending on what you're doing. Okay, not seven is what I'm hearing.

And it wasn't always seven, but it would reach seven. The point is, he's not the only director on this film. Yes, ultimately, his word goes. Fran Walsh directed many of the scenes in the film. And very importantly, very much ushered Gallum into being, as we'll get to. Jeff Murphy, a young New Zealand director in his own right, John Mahaffee, the Steadicam operator from Heavenly Creatures, Rick Porras, Richard Bluck, David Norris, and even

producer Barry Osborne, all directed units on this film. As I mentioned, they set up a satellite system to get Jackson the footage in real time. The schedule was an intricate clockwork design that necessitated that the actors perform scenes across all three films on a day-to-day basis. It's often said that these films were shot back to back. That's not true. They were shot all at the same time. For example, Ian McKellen often had days in which he both played Gandalf the Grey and Gandalf the White. So after a month of shooting in Wellington, that's where all of Weta's offices and staged are.

They splinter the production, and it would operate like this for 16 months. They send Liv Tyler to the southern tip of the South Island to be chased by ring race, while Peter Jackson is shooting with the hobbits in the marshes on the North Island. They're shooting in sensitive preserve areas. They have to get the military to help them out,

building roads into these desperate, you know, desolate locations in the middle of the middle of nowhere. They wrap shooting at the prancing pony. And this is where the entire main cast and director of the film almost died. And we almost never got these movies. They wrap at the prancing pony. They need to get to the southern island as fast as possible. So they're like, Pete, don't worry, we chartered you a plane. We're going to put you, Barry Osborne, Elijah Wood, Dominique Monaghan, Billy Boyd, and Orlando Bloom with some other crew on this plane and get you to the South Island. Well, they get to the airport and Pete Jackson apparently is a pretty nervous flyer.

It's not a 737. It's a World War II era, Douglas DC3, the very plane that transports Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, if you guys have seen that footage. No, absolutely not. Well, Lizzie, this plane's first flight had been in 1943 transporting American groups to troops to Guadalcanal. It had the same paint job as wanted to have done that. Adding insult to injury, there was no ground crew at the airport to held them load the camera gear. So Jackson and the Hobbits were doing a human line to get all the camera gear into the. the back of the plane. Then they get in the plane and the pilot's like, oh, just so you know,

this plane's only designed to hold 12,000 pounds and we're a bit over that. So it could have a bit of trouble leaving the ground. So according to Peter Jackson, the plane ran out of runway, doesn't clear the ground, is like floating over the top of the water and the pilot's like pulling up on the joystick and they finally clear the water and fly directly into a growing storm that apparently was like some of the worst turbulence of all time. They make it to the Southern Island. They start shooting, and Jackson's like, I am not getting another plane. So he has to get to Queenstown, which is on the other tip of the Southern Island.

He's like, I'm going to rent a car. We're going to drive. So he and Barry Osborne go in one car, and Orlando Bloom and Sean Bean are in another car following them. The storm gets worse and worse and worse. They're in the middle of the night. They realize we're going to run out of gas. There's nothing around us. They're driving through a mountain pass.

It's literally called the Southern Alps. They have no cell service, no food, no shell. They lose sight of Orlando Bloom and Sean Bean's car behind them. They don't know where they are. They reach a gas station that's got an attached living quarters. They stop. They wake the tenant up. It's like the middle of the night.

They pay them 500 bucks and spend the night. They're like, we hope Orlando Bloom and Sean Bean are alive. Listen, if there's one car of people that's going to be okay in this situation, I think it's Orlando Bloom and Sean Bean. The hottest car in the world. Truly. So apparently they got blocked in by. double mudslides. So like they

were going up the road and the road had been caved in with a mudslide. They tried to reverse and the road had been caved in with a mudslide. They get out of the car and there's a lone cabin out on the moor and they're just like I guess we should go check it out. They go up to this cabin and just a single old woman lives there

and she very kindly... Wow, best day of her life. She invites them in for tea and they apparently stay there and they live there for four days because they can't get a helicopter to them for four days. So They send a helicopter in, and apparently it's still really stormy. So they get in the helicopter, and Sean Bean hates helicopters.

He hates flying. And according to both him and Bloom, his hand was just like vice gripped on Orlando Bloom's thigh for the entire helicopter ride. So meanwhile, they're supposed to shoot this river sequence. The fellowship's going to navigate these rapids as the Urachai shoot arrows at them from the shore. The schedule's so tight, they've lost four days. Peter Jackson just cuts it. He's like, this is out of the movie. We're just not shooting it. It's just not happening.

Great. Didn't need it. He would later add the barrel river scene and The Hobbit as kind of an homage to that lost scene. We're not going to talk about that today. They move on to Lake Alta, this high Alpine Lake in the Remarkables. And Sean Bean's like, I cannot ride in a helicopter again. And they're like, Sean, there's no road. We have to take a helicopter. It's like sheer mountain face.

And he goes, fuck it. I'll climb. So they have a dawn call. And Sean Bean gets up hours before call in full. full costume, sword and shield, and just climbs up the side of this mountain, followed by his makeup girl to get to set for the dawn call time. Oh, my God. His poor makeup landing.

I know. Are you just going like full? Are you sure? Are you sure you don't want to take the helicopter? Full boss mode. It's amazing. They're eight weeks into the shoot now, and the weather has just ground them to a halt. They can't shoot any more outdoor stuff.

So they don't have Gandalf, and they improvise. And so they literally bring one of the sets from Wellington, the stairs of Sideth Ungol. This is like, I think late in the third film, it's the sheer staircase they go up when Golan has convinced Frodo that Sam is trying to take the ring from him. Right, on the way to She-Log. Yeah, and they're like, sorry, sorry, guys,

you've got to shoot this emotional scene from the third, like the third film at this point right now, two months into our production. They build this set in the squash court of the, hotel and then they fill in the rest of it digitally. They didn't know how they were going to do Gollum yet. And Sean Ashton gets the short end of the stick. Jackson flips a coin to see who's they're going to shoot first. They shoot Sean Astin's that day. Then the weather clears and they didn't finish the scene for another year until they're scheduled scene. So when you watch that

scene, the performances of Sean Ashton and Elijah Wood are filmed a year apart, which is crazy. That kind of makes sense because Elijah Wood at that almost works because Elijah Wood at that that point is, like, so dragged down by the ring and so tired that, like, it does look very different from Sean Aston. It does. So the last scenes they shot before Christmas break were Boromir's death. And these scenes really galvanized the crew. Apparently, not only does Sean Bean give a remarkable performance.

Yeah. It's my favorite scene in the entire series. And I think that people really on set understood that there would be gravity. to what they were making. This was not... They knew it wasn't going to just look like a fantasy film, but then they really knew it wasn't going to feel like the fantasy films that they'd known.

So obviously they come back to production in January of 2000, and Ian McKellen shows up right on time because a wizard is never late. Yes. So on January 17th, Gandalf walks onto the set. And although he would... I would argue set the tone for the film with his voice,

no one committed to their character like Vigo Mortensen did with Eric Horn. I don't know if this would have annoyed me or if I would have loved him. Apparently, he would camp out on location the night before a dawn shooting call. He also would insist they keep filming no matter what the weather, even if it was getting dangerous. He only used his hero sword for all shots. He broke a tooth during a battle scene and then wanted to keep going, so he glued it back in with chewing gum. He hit a rabbit with his car, then collected the carcass, roasted it, and ate it because that's what Eric

would do. Okay. And apparently, he would practice his sword moves on the sidewalks outside in Wellington until somebody called the police saying that a crazy man was singing a full-on broadsword in public. The police showed up. He explained what was happening, and they let him off after he took photos with locals. When they shot the scenes outside the black gates of Mordor, they needed a stretch of desert. Apparently, this is actually the one thing that New Zealand does not have in spades is desert.

There's one 40-square-mile area. while unfortunately that's also the one spot that the Army had found where they could explode bombs and test out their new ordinance. So they go, hey military, you've been helping us out. Could you clear the bombs out? So the military goes out. They clear a bunch of them, but they're like, just to be safe, stick inside these little roped off areas

and don't go outside of them because if you do, you literally could explode. So they're shooting out there, and there's a take where Mortensen charges off on his horse and he doesn't hear cut and he forgets about the boundary and so he keeps going and going and then he hears nothing

so he turns around assuming the shot's done turns out what he couldn't hear over the horse was the entire cast and crew screaming at him that he had gone like 100 yards out into basically a minefield and luckily he made it back in one piece and did not hit any unexploded ordinance.

Oh my God. Yeah. Now Peter Jackson of course had to shoot very fast. He was not doing a Kubrickian or David Fincher-like approach with this film, but as he was getting his sea legs at the beginning, he would shoot sometimes up to 15 takes, apparently.

By the time he was towards the end of production, it was six or seven takes. Now, for most people, 15 takes, that's not absurd. Christopher Lee, however, disagreed. He told Jackson, I have done entire movies where I have done less than 15

takes. And he was so frustrated that he would have to do more than two takes on any given scene. Because, of course, the Hammer Monster films that he'd done, you would not do very many takes. There are, of course, still constant battles with New Line over things to keep and things to cut. One example, the watcher in the water outside of Moria, New Line was like, we need to cut that. We don't need it. They can just go straight into Moria. It's going to be very expensive.

The effects are going to be very expensive. So Jackson actually shot that scene on his own time, effectively paying for it himself. in order to compromise with the studio. And this is the like octopus thing. Yes, the octopus outside of the door. I mean, you do need it because it blocks them into Moria. I agree. They were like, couldn't we just see them open the door

and then they're deep in Moria afterwards? As I mentioned, John Reese Davies had a bit of a lonely experience on the film. And part of that was because he actually had an allergic reaction to the silicon skin that they put on. So they wanted dwarves to have a rougher textured skin than he had. So they would add the sileskin skin to his. face, which apparently caused like a horrible eczema outbreak to the point where his skin was cracked and bleeding. The makeup artist on set actually then invented, the best thing I can describe it

as almost like a condom, it was a piece of almost cotton that went between the silicon and the face that has since been used by Weta Workshop and other makeup houses in order to apply prosthetics to sensitive skin. So again, some good came out of it. So as a shoot-stitches, stretches into its second year, the executives in L.A. are getting antsy. Shea and New Line need to placate their investors and distributors. They're getting increasing pressure from across the board to prove the prudence of their investment. Let's also remember, they just released Little Nikki and town and country. Things are not going great in Los Angeles. They had also apparently blown a right to buy the rights to Blair Witch Project, which had then become obviously a huge

success. So in December of 2000, as the production's taking a break, Shea and a group of New Line's closest partners get flown to New Zealand to see a work in progress of what they've filmed. This is the test for Peter Jackson. He chooses to show the now almost finished sequence where Boromir dies. They play the scene, the lights come up, and Michael Lynn, who was Bob Shea's partner at New Line, finally breaks the silence and said, quote, my God, it actually has drama. They finally understood what Jackson had said all along. This was not a fantasy film.

In fact, they thought this could be one of the best films to come out in recent memory. So they're emboldened, Lizzie, by what they've seen. And they decide to take a very big risk. They're going to show the world a sample of what they've been investing hundreds of millions of dollars into. not a trailer, not some sort of online snippet, they're going to host a screening at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001, seven months before the release of the Fellowship of the Ring, and they're going to show the press 30 minutes of the films.

Oh, wow. Which is like not, had not been done at this point in time. It's a very shrewd marketing move, not only priming the world through tastemakers as to what's to come, but it's also a calculated play to go head on at the very outlets that have been saying that they're wasting all of their money making these movements, making these movies. So at first, Shea suggests, why don't we just do like a bunch of the best moments of all the films, like a giant trailer? And Jackson's like, no, no, no. It should be a 25-minute stretch of the film.

And he's like, it should just be the Moria sequence, everything when they're underground. Shay then watched it and said, the cave troll sequence is amazing, but this is all set work. You guys have these amazing exterior shots around your country. So, ironically, they actually worked together to create an amazing compromise. The reel would open with shots and scenes from Hobbiton, basically five minutes of that, and then you would get 14 minutes of pure cave troll action sandwiched by, by sweeping shots from all three films showing epic moments at the very end of the real. At 10 a.m. on Friday, May 11th, 2001, a group of press and industry folks waited in line outside of Cannes,

not to see the new Cohen Brothers film that was headlining the festival, the man who wasn't there, but nearly 30 minutes of this mysterious Lord of the Rings movie that had been shooting in New Zealand on the other side of the world for the last 18 months. There were no posters. There was no red carpet, there was no step and repeat. There was just a theater called the Olympia 2 that was very old, although New Line apparently spent $500,000 replacing the entire sound system before they allowed the screening to happen there. Wow. It was a full circle moment for Jackson. This is the same exact theater where he had screened Bad Taste, his first film at the underground can film market 10 years earlier when he was still living in his parents' basement. Oh. He goes up to the front of the crowd with Bob.

Bob Shea. Bob She is apparently in a suit. Peter Jackson's in a pair of shorts. They had to convince him to wear shoes. He gives a brief intro. Some of the music's temp. We pulled it from Gladiator and the last of the Mohicans. But the cave troll scene had been scored by their composer, Howard Shore. So they were going to hear some of the real music from the film. He nervously stepped away. Bob Shea followed. The lights go down and the picture goes up. Apparently, Hobbiton, people gasped. They just couldn't believe that it looked like what they'd imagine Tolkien's books would look like.

Then the cave troll scene plays, and it blows people's goddamn minds. The cave troll itself rendered in stunning detail, which still looks great today. It does. It looks really good. Had been developed by Weta in a very different way than other design houses. They had first built the cave troll skeleton,

then added muscles, and skin and hair, and this is a process that they would refine to near perfection with the Planet of the Apes series 15 years later. Jackson also shot the scene entirely handheld with that virtual camera in pre-vis, something that had never been done before. The scene had a heft and a movement that wasn't felt with CGI characters outside of Jurassic Park. His horror roots were also present. This scene has tons of orc blood being spread all over the walls, as well as his amazing sense of humor. Sean Beans, they've got a cave troll, will always kill me in these scenes. Furthermore, the monsters weren't just monstrous. So, for example, with the cave troll, Weta had created

a haunting backstory for this character, deciding he should just be a baby, lured in by this, to be the flunky of the orcs. And when he dies, it's like kind of tragic. It seems like he doesn't understand what's happening, giving the victory of the fellowship an ambiguous quality. This was not going to be the morally black and white world of hyperbole and syllification that. that Tolkien feared his stories would be reduced to. This was serious fantasy. As Jackson had always said, this was more braveheart than it was Excalibur.

The sequence ended with the Balrogs stepping out of the smoke on the bridge of Kazad Doom, and then followed shots of Helms Deep, Edoras, Asgiliath, Theodin, Minas Tirith, the charging Rohirim, and then, of course, Frodo clutching the ring at the cracks of Doom. The lights go off, and apparently people just go ape shit. around the festival. Nobody's talking about the films at the festival. They're just talking about

the secret Lord of the Rings screening that a few people got to go to. Mark Odeski said that one of their foreign distributors, so one of the groups that was relying on New Line to make this a good movie, came up, picked Mark Dorodesky up off the ground and kissed him on the mouth. You was so relieved that these movies were good. Word spreads like wildfire. Lord of the Rings is the talk of Cannes. New York Times and BBC run stories on how it perfectly captures Middle Earth and ain't it cool news leads with the headline, quote, oh my God, fucking cool, wow, double exclamation point. New Line followed the screening with a $2 million party. They flew out the cast and the crew, Jackson's Brain Trust, Philip Aboyans, Fran Walsh, Richard Taylor, Barry Osborne, makes them all

available to the press. At sunset, nine Nazgul riders on horseback ride up and down the driveway to the party. They had brought in extras playing orcs to be stationed. in full makeup and costume all around the party for photographs. And they had also... It's the best party in the world. It's the best party in the world. They had flown up entire sections of the set and rebuilt them in this French warehouse where they were hosting the party so that hardy goers could go and explore a bag end and speak

friend and enter at Duren's Gate, etc. Famously, there were photos, framed photos of the cast along a far wall. And Christopher Lee was observed simply walking up, taking his photo off the wall and taking it with him when he left the party, which I just think. is amazing. You have to respect that they did this. It's like a baller. It's a baller move.

They follow up with a six-month publicity blackout. They'd given the world a taste, and now they wanted to leave them wanting more. And the truth is that the true Tolkien fans, Lizzie, did want more. Specifically, they were wondering where one important character was, who never showed up in the show reel at all. The question lingered, how the hell was Peter Jackson? Jackson going to pull off Ghalem. And that's a question that we will answer in the final installment of our coverage of the Lord of the Rings. Da-na-da-da-da-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Oh, I love these movies so much. Similarly to the seventh hour of these movies, I'm both very excited for the conclusion and ready for it to be done. Guys, thanks so much to listen to you. part two of our coverage of the Lord of the Rings. Please come back in two weeks for part three where we conclude the trilogy with post-production, the release, and the incredible technology that wedded Digital pioneered to bring Gollum to life,

one of the greatest characters that has ever graced the silver screen. As always, I'm so excited. If you enjoyed this podcast, leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. If you didn't enjoy this podcast, honestly, I don't know what to tell you. I feel like Lord of the Rings is so entertaining, guys. Come on. Lizzie, our Patreon, full stop members, Could you give them a shout out for us this week?

I certainly can. Thank you so much to Soman Chynani and Tom Christen for continuing to support us. You're the best. Thank you. We really appreciate you guys. Check out our Patreon. Patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast. And if you join our Patreon, you can vote in our poll for one of the next movies that we will cover

and the options, Back to the Future, Galaxy Quest, Star Trek the Motion Picture, and Brazil, Terry Gilliam's incredible sci-fi film. if you would like to vote, please join our Patreon. Anything else, Lizzie? Yes, as a reminder, if you have any horror stories, funny stories, any stories you would like to send us from your time on any sets, please send them to us. You can contact us via DM on Instagram. You can also, again, email us at what went wrong pod at gmail.com. We would love to hear from you.

You can absolutely be anonymous. If you would like to be, just let us know. We are collecting those. So if you would like to be featured in one of our bonus episodes, please. send in your story. That's it. Come back in two weeks as we travel to the gates of Mortar. Mordor. Go to patreon.com slash What Went Wrong podcast to support What Went Wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, video content, and more. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing music by David Bowman with cover art

from Uthana UOS.