Barliman Butterbur
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And Frodo makes five: The directorâs life
By Bob Baker
L.A. Times Staff Writer
Ask the âLord of the Ringsâ writer-director Peter Jackson and his co-writer-producer-domestic partner Fran Walsh when they met and he says, â1986.â She says, âSix movies ago.â
Either way, the two were working in their native Wellington, New Zealand, in different areas of the countryâs nascent entertainment industry. Jackson was an amateur director who was putting in six days a week as a newspaper printing production crew member to finance what he was doing on the seventh â making a move called âBad Taste,â in which aliens require human flesh for an intergalactic fast-food chain. Heâd been on the project for three years when he asked Walsh, an aspiring TV writer, to look at his script.
They were friends for a few years, then lovers, then, in 1995, Oscar nominees in the best original screenplay category for âHeavenly Creatures,â a story of two murderous teenage girls. Their first child, Billy, was born the next year, just before Jackson started shooting âThe Frighteners,â a Universal comedy-horror-thriller he and Walsh wrote about a psychic private eye who talked to dead souls. Their second child, Katie, was born just after âThe Frightenersâ premiered.
In 1995 Jackson, who had set up his own computer-animation studio near his home an hour outside Wellington, also decided to adapt J.R.R. Tolkienâs âThe Lord of the Rings.â In 1997, with a three-picture, $270-million commitment from New Line Cinema, Jackson and Walsh, along with Phillipa Boyens, started working on the script. Billy and Katie were babies.
Now, three films later, they are 8 and 7, perhaps the only children who can claim to have grown up in Middle-earth. They have cameos in all three movies, which allowed fans to track their growth and the children to decide that work as extras was not for them, so donât expect to see their bright eyes in Jacksonâs next project, âKing Kong.â
A Projectâs Duration
There have been many theatrical dynasties, from the Barrymores to the Douglases, but itâs hard to imagine any family tied so inextricably, so totally to a single film project. Billie and Katie donât remember a time when âRingsâ did not dominate life; these days, Jackson and Walsh have a hard time as well.
âI donât think we really knew what we were getting into,â says Walsh. âWhen we took it on, there was a sense that maybe it would be two or three years. The idea that our daughter would be half grown up [by the time the last film was released] seemed an incredible thing, and now she is. Itâs quite a good way to measure that chunk of time.â
The last weekend in January, Jackson and Walsh are sitting on a couch in a spacious cottage of the Four Seasons Biltmore in Santa Barbara. In less than a week, their film has won four Golden Globes (best drama, best director, best original score and best song from a movie) and 11 Academy Award nominations â they shared credits as producers for best picture and screenwriters for best adapted screenplay, while Jackson also is up for best director and Walsh shares the the best original song nomination. Well worth the 14-hour flight from New Zealand. In the past, when they have come to the U.S. for meetings or to do publicity, Walsh and Jackson usually came alone. But this time they brought Billy and Katie, who are playing somewhere on the hotel grounds with their nanny.
Itâs good to have your kids with you when you are racking up awards and nominations; if nothing else, it keeps you humble, as Walsh has discovered.
âThe other day Katie said to me, âMom, I want to watch a video.â I said, âWhich do you want?â She said âLord of the Rings.â I asked, âFellowship?â âTwo Towers?â âReturn of the King?â She said, âNo, Mom, the [mediocre] animated version.â Thatâs a good reality check.â
Physically, the two filmmakers are very different. Jackson, 42, is an overweight, disheveled, gregarious fellow wearing his trademarked frayed khaki shorts, dark socks (he hates shoes) and a grape-colored knit shirt. He is inevitably compared to an overgrown hobbit. Walsh is slight, with long dark hair that often hides much of her face. She is more reserved than Jackson and favors dark clothes; and if that keeps her from being noticed, so much the better. Although Jackson and Walsh are practically royalty in New Zealand â last year, 100,000 people lined the streets of Wellington for the movieâs premiere â Walsh has refused to be photographed for any story, including this one. She would not allow her face to be seen on the âmaking-of the âThe Lord of the Ringsââ DVD nor will she offer any information about the familyâs logistics, including whether the children attend public or private school.
âPrivacy is something once lost, you canât reclaim,â she says. âI donât want to be perceived as famous. I donât wish to have a public life. I want to do the right thing for [promotion of] the movie, but I also want to do the right thing for our family life. Itâs frightening going out when you're on television. I was shocked because I went into a shop the next day [after the Golden Globes] and somebody said, âOh, I know who you are.â
That was the first time that happened in America. At home, she says, theyâve encountered people hiding in the bushes with cameras. âThat felt so intrusive,â she says. It freaked me out....Itâs harder on the kids than on me. They have to deal with their dad being constantly recognized and interrupted for autographs when hi is supposed to be with them on a family outing.â
She is proud of the way the children handle it. On a recent trip up the California coast, as many people offered congratulations, âthe kids made a game out of it; they kept a count.â
âWe try not to participate in what I call the celebrity culture,â Jackson says. âWeâre filmmakers with a high exposures we deal with that, but we donât do interviews with celebrity magazines, we turn down requests for public speaking....Weâve always wanted one of us, which is obviously Fran, to be able to take our kids to the park and not be hassled.
âI just want a boundary,â he says.
That need for boundaries began early in the process when it became clear that making âThe Lord of the Ringsâ wasnât just a project, it was a life phase. It took years to write the script, and then came the famous 274-day shoot all over the countryâs North and South islands with virtually no breaks except 10 days at Christmas. Jackson and Walsh were on set every day. Their children, who were not yet in school, joined them on location with their nanny. Theyâd often come to the set for lunch, but it was a rare night when the four sat down to dinner together.
After the film was shot, there were literally years spent in the editing lab, filming special effects, overlaying them on live action, putting the whole thing together, then cutting it, over and over, to get it to a managable size. Jackson takes pride in how Tolkienâs epic took over Wellington, turning it into âWellywoodâ with practically every resident having some role in the films, but he and Walsh tried to minimize the invasion of their family.
(Part Two next post)
By Bob Baker
L.A. Times Staff Writer
Ask the âLord of the Ringsâ writer-director Peter Jackson and his co-writer-producer-domestic partner Fran Walsh when they met and he says, â1986.â She says, âSix movies ago.â
Either way, the two were working in their native Wellington, New Zealand, in different areas of the countryâs nascent entertainment industry. Jackson was an amateur director who was putting in six days a week as a newspaper printing production crew member to finance what he was doing on the seventh â making a move called âBad Taste,â in which aliens require human flesh for an intergalactic fast-food chain. Heâd been on the project for three years when he asked Walsh, an aspiring TV writer, to look at his script.
They were friends for a few years, then lovers, then, in 1995, Oscar nominees in the best original screenplay category for âHeavenly Creatures,â a story of two murderous teenage girls. Their first child, Billy, was born the next year, just before Jackson started shooting âThe Frighteners,â a Universal comedy-horror-thriller he and Walsh wrote about a psychic private eye who talked to dead souls. Their second child, Katie, was born just after âThe Frightenersâ premiered.
In 1995 Jackson, who had set up his own computer-animation studio near his home an hour outside Wellington, also decided to adapt J.R.R. Tolkienâs âThe Lord of the Rings.â In 1997, with a three-picture, $270-million commitment from New Line Cinema, Jackson and Walsh, along with Phillipa Boyens, started working on the script. Billy and Katie were babies.
Now, three films later, they are 8 and 7, perhaps the only children who can claim to have grown up in Middle-earth. They have cameos in all three movies, which allowed fans to track their growth and the children to decide that work as extras was not for them, so donât expect to see their bright eyes in Jacksonâs next project, âKing Kong.â
A Projectâs Duration
There have been many theatrical dynasties, from the Barrymores to the Douglases, but itâs hard to imagine any family tied so inextricably, so totally to a single film project. Billie and Katie donât remember a time when âRingsâ did not dominate life; these days, Jackson and Walsh have a hard time as well.
âI donât think we really knew what we were getting into,â says Walsh. âWhen we took it on, there was a sense that maybe it would be two or three years. The idea that our daughter would be half grown up [by the time the last film was released] seemed an incredible thing, and now she is. Itâs quite a good way to measure that chunk of time.â
The last weekend in January, Jackson and Walsh are sitting on a couch in a spacious cottage of the Four Seasons Biltmore in Santa Barbara. In less than a week, their film has won four Golden Globes (best drama, best director, best original score and best song from a movie) and 11 Academy Award nominations â they shared credits as producers for best picture and screenwriters for best adapted screenplay, while Jackson also is up for best director and Walsh shares the the best original song nomination. Well worth the 14-hour flight from New Zealand. In the past, when they have come to the U.S. for meetings or to do publicity, Walsh and Jackson usually came alone. But this time they brought Billy and Katie, who are playing somewhere on the hotel grounds with their nanny.
Itâs good to have your kids with you when you are racking up awards and nominations; if nothing else, it keeps you humble, as Walsh has discovered.
âThe other day Katie said to me, âMom, I want to watch a video.â I said, âWhich do you want?â She said âLord of the Rings.â I asked, âFellowship?â âTwo Towers?â âReturn of the King?â She said, âNo, Mom, the [mediocre] animated version.â Thatâs a good reality check.â
Physically, the two filmmakers are very different. Jackson, 42, is an overweight, disheveled, gregarious fellow wearing his trademarked frayed khaki shorts, dark socks (he hates shoes) and a grape-colored knit shirt. He is inevitably compared to an overgrown hobbit. Walsh is slight, with long dark hair that often hides much of her face. She is more reserved than Jackson and favors dark clothes; and if that keeps her from being noticed, so much the better. Although Jackson and Walsh are practically royalty in New Zealand â last year, 100,000 people lined the streets of Wellington for the movieâs premiere â Walsh has refused to be photographed for any story, including this one. She would not allow her face to be seen on the âmaking-of the âThe Lord of the Ringsââ DVD nor will she offer any information about the familyâs logistics, including whether the children attend public or private school.
âPrivacy is something once lost, you canât reclaim,â she says. âI donât want to be perceived as famous. I donât wish to have a public life. I want to do the right thing for [promotion of] the movie, but I also want to do the right thing for our family life. Itâs frightening going out when you're on television. I was shocked because I went into a shop the next day [after the Golden Globes] and somebody said, âOh, I know who you are.â
That was the first time that happened in America. At home, she says, theyâve encountered people hiding in the bushes with cameras. âThat felt so intrusive,â she says. It freaked me out....Itâs harder on the kids than on me. They have to deal with their dad being constantly recognized and interrupted for autographs when hi is supposed to be with them on a family outing.â
She is proud of the way the children handle it. On a recent trip up the California coast, as many people offered congratulations, âthe kids made a game out of it; they kept a count.â
âWe try not to participate in what I call the celebrity culture,â Jackson says. âWeâre filmmakers with a high exposures we deal with that, but we donât do interviews with celebrity magazines, we turn down requests for public speaking....Weâve always wanted one of us, which is obviously Fran, to be able to take our kids to the park and not be hassled.
âI just want a boundary,â he says.
That need for boundaries began early in the process when it became clear that making âThe Lord of the Ringsâ wasnât just a project, it was a life phase. It took years to write the script, and then came the famous 274-day shoot all over the countryâs North and South islands with virtually no breaks except 10 days at Christmas. Jackson and Walsh were on set every day. Their children, who were not yet in school, joined them on location with their nanny. Theyâd often come to the set for lunch, but it was a rare night when the four sat down to dinner together.
After the film was shot, there were literally years spent in the editing lab, filming special effects, overlaying them on live action, putting the whole thing together, then cutting it, over and over, to get it to a managable size. Jackson takes pride in how Tolkienâs epic took over Wellington, turning it into âWellywoodâ with practically every resident having some role in the films, but he and Walsh tried to minimize the invasion of their family.
(Part Two next post)
