Ian Pryor, Peter Jackson: From Prince of Splatter to Lord of the Rings.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004.
ISBN: 0312322941.
380 pp. US$24.95 (hb)
(First published in 2003 by Random House New Zealand).
Sean Astin, with Joe Layden, There and Back Again: An Actor’s Tale. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004.
ISBN: 0312331460
320 pp.
US$24.95 (hb).

As I write this (October, 2004), the publicity campaign for the release of the extended DVD version of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, coming in two months’ time, has begun in the fan magazines and on Internet sites. In a preview article in the November 2004 issue of Premiere, Viggo Mortensen remarks, “Countless books could be filled with what we remember of the journey.”
Books, as well as articles, concerning LOTR will no doubt continue to be published for years. Even the numerous licensed tie-in books published by HarperCollins (in the UK) and Houghton Mifflin (in the US) have not yet all appeared. At least one more, on Howard Shore’s music, is to come, timed to coincide with the release of a nine-CD set of all the film’s music (as well as portions cut from the final version). The supplementary discs to the extended versions of the three parts all contain extensive commentary and talking-heads interviews by cast and crew recalling their experiences. Many recollections have also appeared in the (countless) interviews and articles published during the three years of anticipation leading up to the film’s serial release.

Studies of the film by academics are in progress around the world, and the first round of biographies and autobiographies has begun to appear. The two books under scrutiny here come from people who to one degree or another can claim direct access to the subject of their writing. To the best of my knowledge, Ian Pryor’s biography of Jackson is the second book on the filmmaker, following Andrea Bordoni and Matteo Marino’s Peter Jackson (Milan: Il Castoro Cinema, 2002) – an Italian auteur-oriented study of Jackson’s films that seems to have gone virtually unnoticed. Sean Astin’s memoirs are the first by a cast member to devote a substantial portion of their length to LOTR. (Christopher Lee’s autobiography, Lord of Misrule, published in an expanded edition in 2003, devotes only one short chapter to the film.)

For fans, the question concerning these books is whether they are entertaining and provide significant information not already available in the vast promotional literature that already exists. For academics, an additional question is whether they might provide source material for further analysis and historical study.

The cover of Pryor’s book declares it to be “An unauthorized biography.” It is based to a considerable degree on limited access that the author had to Jackson up to 1994 – access that the author clearly hoped would lead to an “authorized” status for his project. The “Author’s Note” at the back of the book does not clearly explain when and how Pryor conceived the book. His acquaintance with Jackson, however, began early on. Pryor apparently was a journalism major when he saw Bad Taste (NZ. 1987) on television. He soon gained a position as a volunteer photographer for Meet the Feebles (NZ, 1989). Later, working for Wellington’s Evening Post, he continued to receive cooperation from Jackson, publishing interviews and reviews. He was allowed on-set during the filming of Braindead (NZ, 1992) and Heavenly Creatures (UK, Germany, NZ, 1994) and was able to interview some of the cast and crew members. According to Pryor, all this was part of ongoing research for a book on Jackson that he had been planning since the early 1990s. After Heavenly Creatures, Pryor lost the cooperation of the director and no longer had access. His requests for access to the Lord of the Rings sets were denied, and people associated with Jackson’s films were told not to grant him interviews.

Presumably because of the considerable interest in LOTR and the consequent desire on the part of publishers to get books on related topics out – and no doubt because he had already done so much work on the project – Pryor forged ahead with his biography despite this obstacle. The result is a predictably unbalanced account of Jackson’s career, with the abrupt loss of access occurring about two thirds of the way through the text. The section on the filmmaker’s early life is fairly conventional, based on research into Jackson’s family background (his parents’ English origins, emigration to New Zealand, and so on). Discussions of the young Jackson’s tastes and formative experiences derive from an admirably extensive survey of interviews and other published source material. (Pryor’s bibliographic section is a useful selection of sources, though he is imprecise about attributing some of his quotations.)

The chapters on the director’s filmmaking career up to Heavenly Creatures and Forgotten Silver (NZ, 1995) present a serviceable account of his work, enhanced by Pryor’s direct familiarity with some of the events described and access to the people involved. The chapter on Braindead (aka Dead Alive) is particularly strong, with entries from the author’s on-set diary describing a couple of typical days during the filming. Pryor was able to interview such people as Jim Booth, who produced the film, and Diana Peñalver, the lead actress. This and other chapters are enhanced by brief inserts usefully summarizing the careers of people who worked on Jackson’s productions but whose names might not be familiar to most readers.

The section on “The Birth of Weta” (182-86) is one of the book’s most substantive sections, since Pryor was able to interview George Port, the technical expert who set up the initial basic digital technology for Weta when it acquired its first computer for the effects in Heavenly Creatures. Port continued to work on Jackson’s films up to The Frighteners (NZ/USA,1996)and Pryor’s chapter on that film also benefits from this interview. Port left Weta in March of 1996 to work in television in Auckland. As a result, he was not one of the many people routinely sought out by journalists covering LOTR, and information on his activities is welcome. Another useful chapter details Jackson’s tense relations with local government agencies, primarily the New Zealand Film Commission. Pryor’s thorough familiarity with the coverage of this subject in the local press yields an informative account, though one presented with what seems to be a bias against Jackson.

So far, so good. Just when fans of LOTR might sigh happily in anticipation of gaining new information, Pryor becomes, quite literally, just another journalist with his nose pressed up against the security fences surrounding LOTR location shoots. According to him, his requests for on-set access received such replies as “Peter won’t be able to decide if you can go on set until the end of filming” (274-75). Pryor attributes this falling-out to some remarks he made in an article on the Venice Film Festival that mentioned Heavenly Creatures. This claim appears in the “Author’s Note,” tucked away at the rear of the book. The reader would do well to treat it more as a preface and begin by skipping ahead to examine this Note, since it, along with the Acknowledgments that follow, reveal quite a bit about the biography’s strengths and weaknesses. Pryor gives no indication of realizing that suddenly Jackson and his team, who had previously been able to work so casually and openly, were involved in a mammoth undertaking controlled by a powerful Hollywood company.

Confidentiality clauses and on-set New Line publicists would serve to protect the project from Internet spies and eager reporters. Access to LOTR was not the same as access to Braindead.
Jackson himself describes Pryor’s requests for cooperation thus: “We said that we wanted to do our own book, which was basically on Lord of the Rings. It wasn’t a biography as such, but it was basically on Lord of the Rings, which we are doing, but he went ahead and did his unauthorized one, which is fine” (in an interview with me, Wellington, July 2, 2004). The book in question is by Brian Sibley, who had written some of the licensed tie-in books (as well as two similar books on Aardman animation and Chicken Run); he had also adapted Tolkien’s novel for the well-known BBC radio drama. Whether or not Pryor had at some point alienated Jackson through some remark in a newspaper story, the filmmakers would not have a real option of cooperating with an author writing a book that would compete with an authorized account by a well-known professional.

The coverage of LOTR begins with three chapters on the production, the first two of which are based on material gleaned from trade-press and other published sources. Chapter Fourteen, “Spies in Middle-earth,” is in some ways the most remarkable and entertaining in the book. It describes how local reporters and spies from fan Websites took to haunting the peripheries of LOTR locations, filming through long lenses and often creeping through prickly gorse and inclement weather to find a better view – and playing tag with security guards who sometimes seized film from their cameras. Remarkably, Pryor decided to continue the research for his book by becoming one of these spies himself. It certainly presents a new approach to film-historical research. With no apparent sense of irony, Pryor describes the way spies, including himself, operated during principal photography. We are treated to accounts of him discovering hiding places atop Haywards Hill, which offers a prospect down into the Dry Creek Quarry, a site in the Hutt Valley where sets for Helm’s Deep and Minas Tirith were constructed. Defying brambles, rain, and security guards, Pryor gained the sort of information that dozens of Websites were even then providing day by day to fans around the world – essentially that Jackson’s team was filming scenes with actors and extras in armor. As an account of spy activity, this chapter is vivid and invaluable. As a description of the filming, it is far less informative and detailed than, say, the production accounts published for each part of LOTR in Cinefex (a major source for Pryor in subsequent chapters) and American Cinematographer (which he seems not to have used). Other highly entertaining, illustrated, and less technically oriented on-set accounts were being provided serially during principal photography by Ian McKellen (his Grey Book and White Book diaries on mckellen.com) and journalist John Forde (in his authorized E!online series “Force of Hobbit”).

The rest of Pryor’s book reverts to a more conventional historical approach, discussing the events surrounding the releases of the films and the impact that they had, again mostly based on press sources. His description of the New Zealand world premiere of The Return of the King is fairly detailed but essentially consists of material that any Wellingtonian could have observed in the streets or read in local press coverage.

There are other odd aspects of Peter Jackson. For some reason it was decided (apparently by a publisher eager to beat other LOTR-related books into the shops) to end its coverage in September of 2003, when The Return of the King was still in post-production. Given that the reader will be aware of the rapturous reception of the third part and the awards heaped upon it, Pryor’s biography has a distinctly incomplete feel about it. Moreover, the few interviews with filmmakers actively engaged in working on LOTR that Pryor managed to obtain were done without the people involved (e.g., Philippa Boyens) being aware that their interlocutor was writing an unauthorized book. Some of these interviews were in fact simply journalistic encounters during press events relating to the New Zealand launches of the three parts. Once the word went out that people were not to cooperate with Pryor, even these on-the-fly interviews ceased.

The result is a book which yields some information to the researcher, but distinctly less than he or she might expect. As a reading experience for the fan, it might be interesting but somewhat disappointing toward the end. Without ongoing access to its central subject, Pryor has made the unfortunate decision to imagine scenes of Jackson’s life, especially as a way to start chapters. He writes these in a whimsical tone that becomes increasingly grating, as in this account of Jackson’s and Fran Walsh’s flight into Wellington on the day of the New Zealand premiere of The Fellowship of the Ring:

Like sitting in a darkened cinema, reading a book is partly about imagining yourself in someone else’s place. So imagine this.

Your name is Peter, and you are very tired. For the past fortnight you have been crisscrossing oceans and nations in an aeroplane – never one of your favourite places to be, and, after the recent tragic events of September 11, even less so. The rest of the time has been spent shaking hands and trying to appear calm… (285)

Pryor’s book will probably offer passages of pleasure and learning to those fans who are interested in Jackson’s career as a whole. For those interested largely in LOTR, it should prove disappointing. A researcher seeking new information will need to be quite familiar with the literature that already exists on this subject to be able to tease out material that is new and reliable–but there is some to be found.

The title of Sean Astin’s book of memoirs, There and Back Again, derives from the full title of Tolkien’s earlier novel: The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. (Astin’s book should not be confused with Mathew Lyons’ There and Back Again: In the Footsteps of J. R. R. Tolkien, which also was published in 2004.) Unlike Pryor, Astin obviously had extensive access at many of the stages of production on LOTR. Out of the book’s nineteen chapters, the first four deal briefly with the author’s life and career up to the events that led up to his joining the cast. The strengths and weaknesses of his book are basically the opposite of Pryor’s.

For a start, Astin does not try to write an historical account of the making of LOTR but sticks almost entirely to his own experiences. Thus most of his book offers highly personal material. He provides a fair amount of new information in what is clearly a candid fashion. (Although a co-author is credited, Astin’s own thoughts and personality come through distinctly.) For example, his account of receiving the offer to play Samwise Gamgee gives an exact sum for the salary involved: $250,000 for all three parts of LOTR (which involved fifteen months of principal photography and presumably extensive post-production commitments). This is the first time that I have seen an actor reveal such information, and it confirms that although Bob Shaye was gambling when New Line undertook to produce LOTR in three parts, he kept the stakes as low as possible. Once the first part was hugely successful, cast members obtained a bonus from New Line. Astin does not violate the attendant contractual agreement not to disclose that amount.

Astin also takes care to include his fellow cast members, and scattered through the book are brief verbal portraits of each star and descriptions of his relationships with them. There are considerably fewer on-the-set details than fans might enjoy, but one does get an overall sense of the film’s preparations, filming, and release. For the researcher, there is some interesting information to be found, though less than one might hope.

The thinness of anecdotes and information arises largely because Astin is concerned not so much to describe what is happening in a given situation but to assess his own feelings and thoughts about that situation. The results are surprisingly downbeat, for the author frequently describes at some length worries about supporting his family, about his own talent, about how other members of the cast feel about him or treat him, and how insecure he felt during most of the filming. Astin is constantly comparing himself with the people around him, wondering whether he is as clever, skilled, prepared, savvy, knowledgeable, and so on, as they are. When one is surrounded by people like Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens, Barrie Osborne, Ian McKellen, Richard Taylor, and the other extraordinary cast and crew members assembled to work on this film, the answer is all too likely to be “no,” at least occasionally. This problem was compounded by the fact that Astin somehow got the impression that Sam was a fairly minor character. Astin is remarkably candid about pointing this sort of thing out, time and again, and well as telling stories of embarrassing moments he experienced on the set or during the subsequent publicity tours.

He seems to be using a peculiar tactic to make up for such feelings of inferiority. Time and again he introduces someone with lavish praise and then immediately tells an anecdote that casts that person in a negative light. There are several descriptions of events involving Elijah Wood, and Astin emphasizes what close friends they became. Yet the most memorable story involving Wood has him partying with a group in a pub and revealing that he has locked his keys in his apartment. Astin then describes how he had taken it upon himself to leave the pub and arrange to retrieve the keys (a maneuver involving a locksmith) while Wood insouciantly stayed on at the pub enjoying himself (156).

The several pages that Astin devotes to his relationship with Ian McKellen make for rather uncomfortable reading, so candid are they about the author’s insecurities and resentments. They also point up his trick of using “That said” or “Not that” to abruptly switch from positive to negative:
Everything about Ian and the way he approached his craft was so thoughtful and evolved and considered that it was obvious why he’s the caliber of actor that he is. And I was in awe of him.
That said, there was also a part of me that sensed some artifice in Ian’s approach to acting. I wanted to arrive at the creation of my character in a more organic, honest, ground-up way, rather than from the brain down. (168)

He is somewhat apologetic about making such a comparison, but justifies it by stating, “I want to share the way that I felt.” Unfortunately the way Astin seems to have felt all too often does not make for a cheerful read. He goes on to describe being at a dinner at Jackson’s home at which McKellen was also a guest. “I studied him that night. I tried not to be too obvious about it, but that’s what I was doing. At the same time, I was trying to act like I belonged in the room, reminding myself that I had talent, too” (169). Small wonder that a few pages later Astin states, “My relationship with Ian was then, and remains to this day, somewhat [sic] of a disappointment. That’s my responsibility as much as his” (172). Similarly, Astin describes his first meeting with Christopher Lee: “I remember thinking while shaking his hand, Here’s somebody who wants you to know that he’s capable of determining that you’re not worthy of extended notice” (199).

At some moments one has to believe that Astin witnessed many more interesting events during the filming and to wish that he would have shared those instead. To be sure, some passages are effective. The account he gives of the replacement of Stuart Townsend with Viggo Mortensen in the role of Aragorn (176-183) is quite sympathetic and far more detailed than anything that appeared in the press. He also presents a vivid and detailed description of the session during which seven of the actors who had been part of the Fellowship got tattooed with the Elvish symbol for 9. The section of color photos is charming, consisting mostly of simple snapshots of Astin and his family in leisure moments with the other actors. These provide a breath of novelty in the wake of the endless reproduction of very familiar publicity photographs.

One certainly comes to sympathize with Astin in the course of the book. Several times he mentions ambitions to produce and direct his own films:

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. (167)

Such candor is admirable in a way, though one comes to wish that Astin had created a balance of tones by including more of the events – and there must have been quite a few – that he enjoyed, or, barring that, had given a more factual, objective chronicle of events.

Some readers might conclude that Astin’s candid, mostly somber account of his experiences is a salubrious balance to the relentlessly chipper coverage in the popular press. That said, it is a bit relentless.

Kristin Thompson,
University of Wisconsin.

Created on: Monday, 6 December 2004 | Last Updated: 6-Dec-04