The Third Age: The Lord of the Rings [Peter Jackson]

  Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson was born in New Zealand on Halloween 1961 and was raised in Pukerua Bay, a little town west of Wellington. He was the only child of Bill and Joan Jackson so he always had to come up with games, ideas and things for him to do. On Christmas 1969, Peter’s parents got an 8mm filmcamera. It didn’t take long until Peter laid his hands on the camera… His parents used the camera to shoot people walking towards the camera and ordinary things like that, but Peter had other ideas he would move around them at all sorts of wierd angles. He started making movies of his own and, in 1973, he and a couple of friends dug a hole in their garden and they made a WWII called ‘The Dwarf Patrol’ using pin-pricks in the film to simulate gunfire.

Peter continued making short films, one such short entitled ‘James Bond’ featuring a flick knife hidden inside a bow tie. He also experimented with animation. By opening and closing the shutter very fast he made son stop-motion animations like Ray Harryhausen but he was always disappointed with the results as they always looked jerky. After getting a job at The Evening Post, a newspaper made in Wellington, he could afford the purchase of a Bolex 16mm film camera. It was easy to handle and the results looked good enough for the “silver screen. This was in 1983 and Peter immediately started filming. The same year, he started on a 10 minute short film called Roast Of The Day, but he kept getting ideas and came up with all kinds of things he’d like to do with his new camera, so the 10 minute short film got extended to be a full length feature film.
Peter Jackson collected a bunch of friends that helped him make the movie (and they all starred in it) on weekends and holidays. They didn’t get payed and neither (of course) did Peter, so the entire budget consisted of Peter’s salary from The Evening Post. When 3/4 of the film was done, Peter Jackson went to The New Zealand Film Comission to ask for funds to finish the film.

After some begging he finally got the money and in 1987, 4 years after he started making the movie, the alien / splatter / comedy BAD TASTE was done and ready to be shown. The New Zealand Film Commission must have thought that this was something special because they brought the film to Cannes where the critics loved it (and those who didn’t love it hated it). Bad Taste was sold to 30 countries and Peter Jackson suddenly ‘had a name’.

During the making of Bad Taste, Peter had met his wife Frances Walsh and Stephen Sinclair, with whom he started to write a script. It was a script for a zombie movie, a type of film Peter always had a desire to make. Now it was happening and the only thing missing was finance. They got some (Japanese and Spanish) plus the New Zealand Film Commision but they figured that wasn’t enough. So instead they wrote another script, together with another friend of theirs, Danny Mulheron. It was a script for a puppet film and was made with the budget they had in 1989. The film was called MEET THE FEEBLES and is probably best described as “The Muppet show on drugs”. Meet The Feebles’ was shown on a lot of festivals around the world and after this, Peter Jackson got the budget to make the zombie movie. Peter, Fran and Stephen looked through the script and felt they needed to re-write it.

So they did and in 1991, they started making ‘the big breakthrough’, the ultimate splatter/zombie/comedy BRAINDEAD. The basic idea was to reverse the typical zombie movie, instead of the people inside the house trying to stop the zombies from getting in Lionel tries to stop them getting out. It was released worldwide and shown in theaters in many countries. In USA it was released on video but retitled DEAD/ALIVE because the video company had another film called Brain Dead and they didn’t want people to mix the two movies up. Peter didn’t have anything to do with either the change of title, the choice of new title nor the change of cover/poster. Along with the release of Braindead – Bad Taste and Meet The Feebles were released for the first time in many countries, re-released in some countries and even shown in theatres in some countries. Peter was asked to write a script for Freddy’s Dead (the 6th nightmare on elm street movie). He wrote a script that he was really satisfied with but when he sent it to New Line Cinema, they already had a script and this disappointed Peter a lot because he had put a lot of work into his script.

Going back to the subject; many people consider Braindead to be the bloodiest film of all times and fans wondered what Peter would come up with next to top that. What he did? A U-turn. After making some of the bloodiest movies ever, he and Fran made in 1994 the drama/thriller HEAVENLY CREATURES. Its based on a true story about two girls who get closer and closer to each other and they ultimately murder one of the girls’ mothers when their parents try to seperate them. It happened in New Zealand in the 50s and is a very famous murdercase. Audience and critics loved Heavenly Creatures (except for a few hardcore gore-fans claiming that Peter Jackson had “let them down” but if they thrive only on blood ‘n’ guts they don’t have much of a life) and those who weren’t already fans of Peter Jackson or at least enjoyed his work, certainly started doing that now.

In 1995, NZTV showed a documentary called Forgotten Silver, about a filmmaker: the New Zealand pioneer Colin McKenzie. The documentary was made by Peter Jackson and tells the story of a man who was always one step ahead: he filmed a man flying an aeroplane 9 months before the Wright brothers flew, he made color film a long time ago and he made film with sound. However, Colin McKenzie was a man with very bad luck, so he never made it. After it was shown, people started wondering, why hadn’t they heard of this Colin McKenzie untill now? The answer is – because he was made up. Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Costa Botes had managed to fool half of the New Zealand population.

Later that year, Peter and Fran took a break from writing the Heavenly Creatures script and decided to walk to the shops for some milk. On their way they discussed some ideas for a black comedy about ghosts. Soon they both started to write a script for THE FRIGHTENERS, this script found it’s way to the hands of Robert Zemeckis, via Jackson’s American agent, who was on the lookout for a new ‘Tales From The Crypt’. He liked it so much he felt that it could be fleshed out into an entire feature film.

The Frighteners wasn’t a box office hit but what can you expect when you release the film the same day s the opening of The Olympic Games in Atlanta, USA, 1996. Even though it wasn’t a box office hit, you can’t say that it was a flop, the movie was sold to many countries and gathered even more fans.

After The Frighteners, Peter Jackson decided to write a script for the remake of King Kong (the original is one of Peter’s all time favourite films and creative influences) which he plans to direct. It was going be a remake of the 1933 original (simply because all the other King Kong remakes and ripoffs suck). But the fact that Godzilla was coming out, and a remake of both Mighty Joe Young and Godzilla were on their way stopped the King Kong remake that was never “green-lit”. The script is there though so nothing is impossible…

But for the moment, he has just started production of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy with New Line Cinema, the first film should be out in the year 2001 and the other two closely followed. Looking forward to them already Peter!

The Fellowship Of The Ring 2001

The Two Towers 2002

The Return Of The King 2003