There and Back Again (26 page)

“Come on, Sean, extend the word
that,
” the dialect coach would instruct. Say ‘Thaaaaat.”'

“Thaaaaat.”

“No … Stretch it out.
Thaaaaaaaaat.
”

“Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.”

“Again!
Thaaaaaaaaaaat.
”

“Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.”

“Good!”

I feel like an idiot.

For a while it seemed that Andy and Ro were a little nervous, concerned that I wasn't ever going to nail the dialect. And I'm not sure that I did nail it, but I tried, and I think the results are good enough.

The production team did a thorough job of filling our days with valuable instruction, so it was up to us to manage our own energy level, and to muster the requisite strength and courage and acumen. We had access to a personal trainer, Dave Nuku, for an hour and a half each day. There was, depending on the species you were playing, horseback training, archery training, canoe training, and sword training. It seemed as though whenever there was a free moment, we were sent back for more sword training. I think our endurance was being tested as much as anything else. We had to be battle-hardened, and we all accepted it.

We also accepted the idea that we were down there and we belonged to the studio. I got the distinct impression that if I wanted to do something with my wife and my child, I was expected to work it out on my own time. That didn't bother me, not in the beginning anyway, simply because I was so excited. I thought,
This must have been what it was like for Errol Flynn, or Jimmy Stewart, or any of the legendary stars in Hollywood who worked under the studio contract system and whose every move was dictated.
There's an aspect to that kind of control that's creepy, yes, but there's also something weirdly reassuring about it. I mean, I had dancing lessons during boot camp! This was to prepare me for a brief scene (trimmed to be even briefer) in which Sam dances with his future wife, Rosie Cotton.

Such devotion, such support, was exhilarating. It was an actor's dream. I felt at times like I was at the peak of my career, that nothing could ever hold a candle to what I was experiencing on
The Lord of the Rings
. I liked that these people understood everything about making a great movie, including the notion that an actor's body had to go through certain motions in preproduction so that he'd be ready to perform at a high level. Simply waking up in the morning and going to work felt good, like I was involved in something important. Something hard, yes, but also something that had the potential to be extraordinary. There was just one problem: I was getting fat. The weight lifting, combined with a diet that consisted of whatever the hell I wanted to toss down my gullet, left me feeling thick across the back and shoulders, and ample in the belly. Not an inappropriate state for Samwise Gamgee, I suppose, and I know Peter approved, but I found the transformation to be exhausting and depressing.

There was, as you might expect, considerable bonding between cast members.
The Lord of the Rings
was a male-dominated production, and the atmosphere often mirrored that of a football team's locker room. Conversation routinely was reduced to the most vile and base sort of talk—male bonding taken to its most ludicrous extreme. I remember thinking,
I hope the driver has a confidentiality agreement, because if anybody were to hear what we're talking about in this van right now, no one would ever respect us again. It's appalling. If my wife could hear me, I would be in grave danger of never being able to even hold her hand again.
We were all equally responsible for our sophomoric behavior, for telling raunchy jokes and heaving filthy insults at each other. Billy and Dom were particularly effective at this little game—not as good as I was, but close. Of course, their strength was impeccable comic timing. But we all played a part.

As I look back on it now, I realize that the point of preproduction training was not simply to get us ready for the hard work ahead, but to toss us all—hobbits, dwarves, elves, wizards, and men—into a cauldron and see what bubbled to the surface. With any luck we'd forge friendships and alliances, and the strength of those friendships would be reflected on screen. Elijah led the way. “We're going to be friends forever!” he'd say. Inside, I was more jaded. I was older and had been on numerous movie sets where I had felt similarly enthusiastic about my fellow actors. Inevitably, though, over time we drifted apart.

I wanted to believe Elijah was right, but he was young, and I thought he hadn't been around quite as much, so I had my doubts. However, at this writing, in the spring of 2004, I can honestly say that we do remain friends. But it's been easy so far. Looping and various postproduction obligations, as well as the seemingly endless publicity tour that has accompanied the trilogy, have made it easy, even necessary, to get together. We shall see what time holds. I hope the truth is closer to what Elijah believes than what my experience tells me is likely to happen, because we really did go through something special. The actors on
The Lord of the Rings
were closer than on any other movie I've ever been on—probably closer than on all the other movies combined.

Before the start of principal photography, Ian McKellen and I found ourselves at Peter Jackson's house viewing
The Lord of the Rings
in animatic form. An animatic is basically a crude animated version of a film, almost like storyboards set to music. It's a relatively cheap but effective way of presenting the complete story in visual form.

Arriving at Peter's home was like arriving at the modest castle of a king, or at least one of the noble lords of the manor. I had been to Steven Spielberg's house; I'd been to Richard Donner's house. I'd seen a lot of different mansions. I'd toured throughout Europe and visited ancient castles, and in my estimation Peter was the kind of feudal lord or captain of industry who would live in a way reflective of that spirit. Well before
The Lord of the Rings
phenomenon, I'd read a news story about him being one of the richest people in New Zealand, and when you meet people like that, you can't help but gauge how they wear their wealth, or whether they're worthy of their riches. I remember feeling as if Peter and Fran were like the king and queen of New Zealand. They were connected, and it reinforced my idea of them being masters of their domain. Peter is accurately depicted as a favorite son of New Zealand, someone who has pioneered an industry and given work to thousands of people—tens of thousands by extension, when you consider the money pumped into this film. He's a part owner of the movie theater in Wellington, and part owner of a film laboratory and special-effects company. He is a man who has had, and continues to have, a huge impact on the development of his country.

But the house …

The first time I saw it, I was struck by how little it resembled the house of a king. It was beautiful and sprawling and all of that, and the view toward the harbor was breathtaking. But it wasn't a mansion in the traditional sense of the word; it wasn't a monument to the ego of its owner. It was, well, comfortable. It felt like a home, rather than a museum, which I found extraordinarily appealing and impressive. I liked the idea that Peter and Fran weren't obsessed with their house; instead, they were more interested in work and family. Part brick, part wood, three stories high, it was an appealing, funky house that looked like a lot of older New Zealand homes. A very warm, unpretentious kind of residence. It didn't draw attention to itself. Yes, there was a playful coat of arms, but it wasn't like Bruce Wayne's house, where the coat of arms is standing there, and you feel like,
Ooooh, it's marble, maybe I should salute
. The house was lived in; even the couches were worn from having welcomed so many friends. The one thing that did concern me was accessibility. Peter and Fran were so reluctant to relinquish their normalcy and their comfort with people that they sometimes failed to understand the magnitude of their own celebrity. I once told them they needed a security buffer, and Peter looked at me rather disdainfully, like he was annoyed that I didn't understand New Zealand culture, that kind of Kiwi spirit, and that I was an elitist Hollywood guy. But I had a few glasses of wine in me, and I didn't mind telling him what I thought.

“You've got kids; you need to be careful. You shouldn't worry about preserving an image of being cool and down to earth.”

Peter dismissed me with a wave and a chuckle, but a few months later, when media and fan attention became oppressive, they made sensible adjustments to their entranceway.

This particular night was my first opportunity to spend a fair amount of time with Ian McKellen. When I had first arrived in New Zealand, the role of Gandalf had not yet been cast. Or, if it had, the news hadn't been leaked to the media. Gossip and innuendo had been circulating for some time that Sean Connery was going to be offered the part. I had asked Peter about this a couple days into my stay, and he merely raised an eyebrow and feigned disinterest, like someone enjoying the fact that the rumor mill had gotten going. Peter understands the value of such things; he knows that when the fan base is vibrating with that kind of noise and energy, when there's so much genuine interest—when Tolkien purists debate the merits of a given actor and question the director's wisdom—it's beneficial to the production, provided it's managed correctly. Sean Connery is a hero of mine; nevertheless, I thought he would have been distracting in the part, and I wanted to share with Peter my take on that. But he didn't bite.

Peter once said that New Line had told him to make an offer to Sean, and another time he said no such offer had ever been made, so I really don't know where the truth lies. I did find the process fascinating. It seemed that in the upper echelon of the business, it was all about saving face: Did someone make an offer? Did a brilliant and famous artist extend himself across the world? Did Sean Connery say, “This is something I would like to consider?” Obviously, Peter Jackson, when building a project of this magnitude, wanted to both capture and trade on the success of other people. Certainly, he wanted to include the core talents of incredibly gifted artists, while managing their egos and dealing with the ancillary business dynamic that is attendant with hiring world-class artists. Given all of that, did Peter reach out to Sean?

In other words, what the hell happened? How do you get sophisticated enough to do it? Do you fall in love with somebody's talent and say,
God, he's so right for my project that I'll put up with any amount of shit to have him here?
Or do you say,
I recognize that this person is a legend in his field, and he would bring a certain level of energy and distinction and credibility, but is he right? Is he really right?

A fair question. My father has such a nobility of purpose and philosophically realized attitude about human nature that I think he might have tried to impose that on his Gandalf. Sean Connery has a kind of rugged persona that has been honed and magnified over decades. Everybody knows Sean Connery and what his thing is. I wondered whether anyone would be able to see past that, past the fact that he was Sean Connery. Would the audience accept and believe him as Gandalf?

The only reason I mention this is that I'd like people to know that actors, like fans, are susceptible to curiosity and intrigue. I think there's a perception that once you're on the inside of the project, you get to know everything, but that's just not true. I suppose if any of us really wanted to know something on
The Lord of the Rings
, all we had to do was ask, but that's not the way it worked a lot of the time. The movies were a huge operation with many people, many egos, and a lot at stake for everyone involved. Some of us were on a need-to-know basis, and some of us had better or quicker access to information than others. Elijah was funny about this stuff; he always seemed to know everything that was going on a nanosecond before everyone else. I was generally a few beats behind everyone. We were deluged with such a mountain of paperwork, a seemingly endless stream of constantly updated information about locations, call times, crew lists, schedules, traveling itineraries, script pages, invitations to various events, publicity stuff, and so on. The data stream was like Muzak to me. I was focused more on the practical implications of what I was doing or would be required to do on a given day.

Unlike most productions, this project could nimbly adjust everything to accommodate for radically changing conditions in weather, set construction, or a myriad of other scheduling exigencies that might arise. Since I saw myself as a low man on the totem pole (at least in terms of having an impact on the schedule), I resisted staying too up to date with production logistics. I probably would have enjoyed myself more if I had treated the dynamics of the shooting schedule like a parlor game and played at getting inside the heads of the producers. But I experienced something on
The Lord of the Rings
that I'm not proud of. To anyone who happened by, it was obvious that the people in charge of the movie were engaged in something unique. I had so little decision-making ability on anything relating to the bigger picture of the films that I was, in a word, jealous. I envied the hell out of Barrie and Peter, the two most visible decision makers around. They got to make decisions every day that affected the movements and fortunes of dozens if not hundreds of people. They were focused on the business and creativity of the pictures, but in a larger human sense they were exerting a kind of power over others; in a very un-Sam-like manner, I wanted to share in that. But it was not to be. For obvious and more subtle reasons, I endured a kind of torture, watching people doing the very thing I had dreamt about my whole life—and doing it better than I probably ever would.

Peter and Elijah and virtually everyone who knew me well could sense that I had a hard time bottling my enthusiasm and desire to, if not be in charge, at least have a say. Again, I'm not proud of this, and even while we were shooting, I knew how inappropriate my feelings were. But it was such a long time commitment that I couldn't just tell myself,
Hang in there; soon enough you'll be able to get back to the business of trying to accomplish a modicum of what these geniuses are doing.