Peter Jackson: A Film-maker’s Journey. Brian Sibley

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       2 GETTING SERIOUS

      The ‘Situations Vacant’ column of Wellington’s Evening Post wasn’t the most promising place for a would-be film-maker to be looking for an opening, but Peter Jackson needed a job…

      On that evening, in 1978, when Peter and his father returned from the unsuccessful interview at the National Film Unit, the Jackson family went through the Evening Post newspaper to see what employment opportunities were on offer.

      We found an advertisement for a vacancy at the newspaper itself – as an apprentice photoengraver. I didn’t have a clue what a photoengraver was, but it had the word ‘photo’ in it and that was good enough for me. At this point, I wanted to take anything so I could, at least, start earning some money. I also think if I’d failed to get this job, my parents would have sent me to university, so a job interview was arranged. I was as nervous as all hell – it’s weird the things you remember, but the night before my interview I saw The Sound of Music for the first time. In the movie, Maria sings a song about being confident – and I sat there in the dark, being totally inspired by this damn song. The next day, I walked into the interview carrying the sound of Julie Andrews’ voice in my head! I also took Dad to this interview as well – and, thank God, I got the job!

      I was amazed at what it felt like to be earning money: my first week’s pay cheque was for NZ$77. I couldn’t believe it: all I had to do was turn up there and every week somebody would give me $77! After sixteen years of pocket money, it opened up a lot of possibilities!

      The apprenticeship required Peter to attend a twelve-week course at the Auckland Technical Institute (now the Auckland Institute of Technology), which had originally been founded in the 1890s by the local Working Men’s Club to run evening classes in teaching various trades. By 1978, when Peter began his studies, the ATI was a full-time establishment running courses in engineering, commerce, fashion technology, printing, art and design.

      At the concourse bookstall on Wellington railway station, the 17-year-old Peter Jackson decided to buy a chunky paperback to while away the twelve-hour rail journey to Auckland that lay ahead. The book was The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.

      He was prompted to buy this particular volume because the cover featured tie-in art from the first – and only – part of animator Ralph Bakshi’s aborted attempt to bring Tolkien’s epic to the screen. Years later, millions of people would start reading the same story because the book carried images from the Jackson film trilogy…

      Peter had gone to see Bakshi’s film with high expectations, having seen the director’s earlier foray into the fantasy genre, Wizards, in company with Pete O’Herne and Ken Hammon. ‘It was screened at a cinema in town,’ recalls Ken, ‘and, as soon as we got out of school, we had to run to catch the train into Wellington, run to the picture house to be in time for the screening and then, afterwards, run all the way back to the station to catch the train home. It was a typical Jackson expedition!’

      Wizards was the latest animated film from the renegade director who had already outraged Seventies moviegoers with his adult-rated Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic and Coonskin. A bizarre post-apocalyptic vision set in a world of elves, dwarves and good-and-bad-wizards with strong parallels to Middle-earth, Wizards now seems like an audition for Bakshi’s ill-fated attempt at The Lord of the Rings, which was yet to come.

      I saw Bakshi’s Rings when it first came out and, at the time, I hadn’t read the book. As a result, I got pretty confused! I liked the early part – it had some quaint sequences in Hobbiton, a creepy encounter with the Black Rider on the road, and a few quite good battle scenes – but then, about half way through, the storytelling became very disjointed and disorientating and I really didn’t understand what was going on.

      However, what it did do was to make me want to read the book – if only to find out what happened!

      Sitting on the ‘Silver Fern’ train from Wellington to Auckland, he began to do just that…

      Being mad about movies and fascinated by the whole business of film-making – especially special effects – I kept saying to myself, ‘This book could make a really great movie!’ Of course, it never even occurred to me that I could make it – I didn’t even fantasise about making it! That would have been ridiculous: after all, I was just a 17-year-old, apprentice photoengraver, so there was no romantic moment that had me sitting on the train thinking, ‘One day, I will make a film of this book!’ Such a thought would have been totally crazy.

      But I did think, ‘I can’t wait for somebody to make this movie! My real fantasy would have been a Ray Harryhausen version of The Lord of the Rings – because that’s what I really want to see! Years later, a moment came when it felt like, since nobody else seemed to be going to make it, I would simply have to make it myself! But that was way off in the future…

      In fact, although people probably have this impression of me as having been a geeky Tolkien-reader as a kid, the truth is I didn’t read the book again until the idea of making the film came up – eighteen years later.

      Ken Hammon recalls that it took Peter some time to wade through the full 1,000-plus pages of Tolkien’s book: ‘We ribbed Pete about it so much that it became something of an on-going joke: ‘Have you finished reading The Lord of the Rings yet?’ we’d ask. Now, I guess the joke’s on us, because whenever I hear Pete talking about the film, he clearly knows Tolkien’s writings inside out and back to front. Not only that, but I remember telling Pete that the “unreadable book” would make an “unwatchable film”, but he sure as hell disproved that theory!’

      Meanwhile, back in 1978, Peter excelled at his studies at Auckland Technical Institute. As he was to report in a funding application to the New Zealand Film Commission, a few years later: ‘I served my three-year СКАЧАТЬ