An Unexpected Director

From Bad Taste to Middle-earth, the wonderful saga of Peter Jackson in pictures

Written to support the release of my book, Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the M king of Middle-earth, you have before you a lively jaunt through the many facets of Sir Peter Jackson as glimpsed on set or thereabouts,. There is no greater science at work than the chance to present a perspective on an artist who has found his medium, splattered it in blood and viscera (in the early days, picked up from a nearby butcher), then expanded it to a golden horizon. What leaps out is the simple joy taken in filmmaking, in being on set, and a facility for hamming things up a little for the camera) even with many, many millions of dollars riding on his shoulders.

Bad Taste (1987): Humble beginnings, but a strenuous four-year shoot in which Jackson pretty much did it all (he has his back to us shouldering a camera): acting, directing, shooting, prop-making and cooking up a ton of splatter (including adding actual soil to the alien vomit mix). It was, unbeknownst to a debutant filmmaker struggling to stay sane, the perfect training ground for the epics to come (which featured fewer Ford Capris in a fetching grape).

Meet The Feebles (1989): Made under highly unsanitary conditions in a freezing Wellington warehouse, Feebles is like nothing else in Jackson’s career: a genuine slice of subversion. With Richard Taylor’s assistance (making this the start of a beautiful friendship), they built their perverted muppets, operated them and dragged the wheezing, furball-coughing film into existence as funding ran out (it had at one point been posited as a television show).

Braindead (1992): Just another day in the smelting pot of Jackson’s zomcom classic. No film has been so drenched in blood and guts (red food colouring cooked up in vats). Jackson and Taylor literally smelled of their movie for weeks afterwards.

Braindead (1989): A miniature Wellington tormented by a giant mutant director. Here marks the arrival of bigiatures; a sublime knack for model work that would find its zenith in Lord of the Rings.

Heavenly Creatures (1994): A change of pace, an artistic breakthrough, the film that introduced Jackson to the world (as an arthouse darling no less, with an Oscar nomination for the screenplay), but the same old cardie. Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey stand by in a brisk South Island breeze, while DOP Alum “Bollie” Bollinger sets up the shot. Bollinger was offered the chance to shoot Rings, but couldn’t face the long haul — he would though shoot second unit.

Heavenly Creatures (1994): Taylor (in Feebles tee) watches on as Jackson tests the heft of a sword (an early taste of what was to come) belonging to one of the clay citizens of Borovnia, the fantasy world created in the girls warped imaginations. Heavenly Creatures is the true inception point of Weta (although yet to be sliced in twain). Ironically, the film was all about the psychological perils of investing too heavily in fantasy worlds.

The Frighteners (1996): Jackson and spectral hound. His first Hollywood film, The Frighteners signalled the extent of his holistic filmmaking ambitions: to shoot large-scale productions solely in New Zealand, using the emergent talents of his own special effects teams, investing mainstream films with a distinctly Kiwi personality.

The Frighteners (1996): From the left executive producer Robert Zemeckis, star Michael J. Fox, Jackson and, I think, Zemeckis’s partner Steve Starkey. The Frighteners had begun life as a writing job for Jackson and Fran Walsh in need of work, initially as an episode of a Tales from the Crypt movie. When Zemeckis realised that Jackson was responsible for Heavenly Creatures, the project took flight as a stand alone movie. The film’s release was mishandled by Universal, however, who lifted it from its more fitting Halloween launch date and slapped it hurriedly into the middle of summer after their putative seasonal blockbuster Daylight ran into delays. The Frighteners poor performance helped put paid to Jackson’s first attempt at a King Kong remake, but that would open the door for The Lord of the Rings.

The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003): Walsh and Jackson deep into the writing process (note the hi-tech word processing equipment behind) for Rings. Jackson to this day remains adamant that out of all the challenges presented by Tolkien’s vast tome, nothing was a hard to figure out as the script.

The Fellowship of the Ring (2001): Elijah Wood and Jackson ponder hobbit motivation in Bag End. Bag End interiors were built at two scales on the soundstages at Stone Street Studios, each scene therein becoming an intricate jigsaw of images placed seamlessly alongside one another. For the actors the challenge was to maintain a consistent tone when often you were acting to an empty space, or with forced perspective staring a few past your co-star.

The Fellowship of the Ring (2001): Wizards at work – Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Christopher Lee and (soon to be) Sir Peter Jackson get to grips with the fine art of acting with a staff. The conviction in the performances was integral in grounding Middle-earth. This was particularly so in the case of these two doyens of the craft whose great, lined faces were an extension of the Middle-earth landscape.

The Fellowship of the Ring (2001): A notably frowzy Jackson inspects a pile of hobbits, who have crashed to ground after following a very shortcut to mushrooms (note a large hobbit prosthetic foot in the foreground). It is endlessly amusing that Jackson needed his own security pass like everyone else. Also a rare sighting of the director in footwear.

The Two Towers (2002): Ahh, this is a good one. It is a day I was on set. For one part of the scene, Brad Dourif, never venturing far from character, wandered over in my direction to hiss, “Come to see me fail?” Quite the opposite, in fact. I saw him deliver the scene with aplomb.

The Two Towers (2002): The massive Hornburg miniature built on location at Dry Creek Quarry beside the full sized version, with director for scale. This large-scale model was built in order for the Deeping Wall (out of shot) to be blown up by Saruman’s bomb.

The Return of the King (2003): Jackson talks dwarf motivation with John Rhys-Davies — in full inflexible Gimli prosthetics — and the help of a video monitor. Rhys-Davies would suffer greatly from an allergic reaction to the heavy make-up, often leaving him depressed. Hours were put in behind the scenes by the prosthetics department (led by Gino Acevedo) to come up with a solution, and a solution was achieved (utilising tiny feathers).

The Return of the King (2003): Gothmog, Taylor and Jackson share a joke between takes. The elaborate, tumour-ridden look of Sauron’s general came via a third film ‘refresh’ on orc design. With Gothmog, Jackson had taken a look at the proposed maquette and whacked a handful of clay on the side of his face. You can;t help but feel his bulbous noggin is a tribute to Jackson’s early splatter years.

The Return of the King (2003): Jackson finds himself shocked to take up the Steward’s throne. The Minas Tirith throne room filling one largest soundstages at Stone Street up to the rafters.

The Return of the King (2003): This, I am sure, is Jackson giving a little talk before (or after) the very last scene filmed on the year and a half of principal photography — featuring the Muster of Rohan for film three.

The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003): Jackson and Taylor have their own commemorative tattoos — the Elvish symbol for ten — done in a Wellington parlour on Cuba Street with Billy Boyd and Orlando Bloom on hand to make sure no one bottled out. Jackson doesn’t look overly comfortable.

The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003): A mark of Jackson’s rise to prominence in Hollywood was his place in Vanity Fair’s annual Hollywood issue, featuring shoots with the biggest names in the business. It was an awful long way from Bad Taste, but something about the image still captured that aura of innocence.

King Kong (2005): A director poses as director for the actor (Jack Black) playing a director. One of the key themes of Jackson’s remake of his all-time favourite film was the idea of directorial hubris out of control. Was it partially an in-joke? Alongside Forgotten Silver, it is the one film in his career that cleaves closest to a form of autobiography.

The Lovely Bones (2009): Jackson and Saorise Ronan ponder an autumnal afterlife (with the help of a requisite mug of tea). Alice Sebold’s dark, dreamy novel offered a return to the intensities of Heavenly Creatures (and also The Frighteners) and an opportunity for Jackson and Walsh to step away from epic-making. Nonetheless, in its vision of an afterlife, or at least the in-between world in which Susie’s Salmon is trapped, there is the continuum of fantastical world building that goes all the way back to Bad Taste.

The Adventures of Tintin (2011): Teaming up with Spielberg, Hollywood’s godhead, was a true mark of how far Jackson had come. Indeed even if Spielberg was director, in many respects Jackson was the driving force for this motion-captured version of Hergé’s comic-book legend. Spielberg had been convinced by Weta test footage in which Jackson played Captain Haddock. He had even wondered whether he could persuade his friend to play the role.

The Hobbit (2012-2014): Jackson on set (looks like Mirkwood), deep into another Middle-earth trilogy, having taken over after Guillermo del Toro’s surprising exit. Note the mentioned of the controversial 48 fps, an experiment which didn’t catch on, or hasn’t yet.  Jackson remains a very conscious of still breaking barriers in filmmaking methods.

The Desolation of Smaug (2013): Another day I was on set, as Orlando Bloom was repeatedly winched into the air to land astride the two balustrades on a Lake-town bridge, firing perfect elf arrows as he does. Effortlessly leaping about as an elf proved no easy business, but Bloom valiantly endured until that perfect take arrived.

Peter Jackson in his element? Right now, it seems unthinkable that Jackson will have no part in the forthcoming Amazon-based Middle-earth series (with the good money being on a Young Aragorn series). Who knows whether he will yet lend a hand. Nevertheless,  there may be other worlds to conquer… And who are we to stand in his way?

Ian Nathan 3/5/2018