There and Back Again (22 page)

Not until
The Lord of the Rings
did I comprehend the depth of people's work and passion. I'm embarrassed and disappointed in myself for not getting there sooner, for not really appreciating the genius of a man like Peter Owen, and the conversations he must have had with Peter Jackson. What foresight and drive they must have had, what intelligence and sheer artistry! Sure, I admired that Peter found this franchise and devised a way to bring it to the screen, but I didn't appreciate or understand its roots. The success of
The Lord of the Rings
is in a very real sense born out of Peter Jackson's love for making models as a kid. Peter and all these other people who brought the films to life, with their genuine passion and love of interfacing with
stuff
on their own terms. I'd always sort of understood it, but now I was getting it on a big scale. Doing a movie like
Rudy
, the skill set was different. I've always known how to memorize my lines and hit my mark, how to muster the right kind of emotion for the right kind of scene, and how to be comfortable with the director and the other actors. But this realm—
fantasy
—I never had a lot of respect for it. It always seemed hokey to me. Now, though, I realized I was embarking on something where the mission was to make it
not
hokey.

One of the great things about working on
The Goonies
was that Dick Donner and Steven Spielberg made both the set and the experience so real. It was a fantasy, with pirates and treasure, but it didn't feel like a fantasy. It felt like an adventure. Dick and Steven were incredible engines, with different strengths. There was a time when I thought Dick didn't get it, that he didn't understand the real poetry and mystery of the story. In retrospect, of course, I know I was wrong. He did get it. It's just that he was something of a drill sergeant: “Get over here, kid! Hit your mark! Say your line! Now get out of the way.” He was a bombastic leader on the set, and I didn't realize that the bravado masked his true sense of the magical. Steven was different. The tenor and the ambience when he was directing scenes (and they really were like codirectors) was much gentler, more whimsical. They're both extraordinary directors, of course, but as a kid I presumed that Steven had a more natural appreciation for the spirit of adventure. I'm not so sure that's accurate. As a wrap gift, Dick presented me with a leather-bound collection of books, adventure classics by Herman Melville, John Steinbeck, Arthur Conan Doyle, Isaac Asimov, and others. He knew.

Unfortunately, it's part of my personality to miss things on the first pass, so when I started reading
The Lord of the Rings
, I barely noticed the hobbits' feet. There's an excuse for that, I suppose: feet aren't a big issue in
The Lord of the Rings
, having been explained and detailed rather thoroughly in
The Hobbit
. But I hadn't read that, either. When they started applying the feet prosthetics, however, it sort of dawned on me: Hey! Feet are of special significance to hobbits! Sounds ridiculous, but that's the way it was. Something about placing my feet in a gelatinous goop caused an awakening, and I thought,
I'll bet Peter and Fran realize how special the feet are, and I'll bet Tolkien gave it an immense amount of consideration
. That was the first moment when I appreciated the tenderness and the sense of humor and the twinkle in the eye of the author. (By the way, when I arrived in New Zealand, I found it immensely amusing that some folks seemed to have little use for shoes, including Peter, who routinely showed up on the set barefoot and bedraggled, much like a hobbit.)

My ignorance of such things, things that are so familiar to fans and devoted readers of Tolkien, might seem incomprehensible, even offensive, but I had only my particular vantage point. I was looking at the role as an actor for hire, so in the beginning at least, I didn't immerse myself in research. That's not meant to be an excuse, merely an explanation. I can recall my stepmother, Val, who had been corresponding with Fran and Peter off and on for years, sending me pictures of the hobbits and of Gandalf via e-mail. She understood the importance of feet in Tolkien's world. And I'm sure my father did, too.

You see, John Astin actually auditioned for a major role in
The Lord of the Rings
. While I was fighting for the part of Sam, he was asked to audition for the role of Gandalf. Ian McKellen now owns the role, of course, and it will forever be hard to imagine anyone else in his place. But my father was in contention for that part, and I wanted in the worst way for him to get it. There had been talk of Sean Connery playing Gandalf, and Ian, of course, was involved in the process from the very beginning. Those two actors are heavyweights, and while on the surface it might seem that any sensible director would prefer either of them to John Astin, that isn't necessarily the case. My father is a classically trained Shakespearean actor. Yes, he's most famous for starring in
The Addams Family
and
Night Court,
for doing the Killer Tomato movies, for being this goofy goober of a guy. And he's good at that sort of thing. But he's a serious man who has given extraordinary and powerful performances. Ultimately, I think I was probably more innately right for Sam than my dad was for Gandalf, although I've totally muted this thought in my interactions with him.

My dad was ambivalent at the time because he was gearing up for his one-man show about Edgar Allen Poe. He is also always fielding offers for TV shows, theater parts, and films. But he knows Peter and Fran, and he respects them immensely. To that end, he was more than willing to prepare an audition for them. I'm a little fuzzy on what took place in the actual room, but according to my dad, Peter gave him a note that represented a real challenging adjustment given the research he'd done and his first take on the character. Peter once said to me that my father was great in the audition. Dad told me that he considered shooting a videotape of himself as Gandalf once he was able to reconcile what he knew of the character with what Peter had wanted. If memory serves, time was short and there was a lot going on. I think it's fair to say that my dad didn't want to complicate matters for me with Peter, because he knew how much I wanted the part and what it would mean for my career. I think he also knew better than I did just how all-consuming an endeavor it would be, and he was reluctant to give up all that he'd been working on. The point of the story is simply this: it is possible for thoughtful, talented people to work and thrive in a complex emotional or “political” environment.

I felt a little awkward when my dad came to my house to congratulate me and celebrate, because I wasn't sure if he was more disappointed than he was letting on. To be sure, he was extraordinarily proud of me, happy for me, and excited for the adventure we were certain to have. If I sensed a little hint of disappointment, perhaps I was projecting my own guilt at having gotten a golden part in a charmed project when he had not. It may seem like a confusing contradiction, but I can also say that I sensed a little relief in him that he didn't get the part. Did Dad know something I didn't know? Something about how grueling an experience it was going to be? Seriously though, I never would have gotten the chance to play Sam if it wasn't for my father—and for the contributions of a lot of other people. But if I had to pick the single most influential person outside of the project, the individual most responsible for my being prepared and capable of doing the job, it would have to be my father.

Dad has spent the better part of the last decade steeped in the richness of an extraordinarily artistic life. He has returned to his roots at Johns Hopkins and the city of Baltimore, where he spent much time in his youth. Now he is a guest lecturer at that hallowed institution. He has a condo near the campus (bicoastal, you know), and he thrives on the energy of his students. He travels with his one-man show,
Once Upon a Midnight: An Evening with Edgar Allen Poe
, and performs in many other plays. I think he is deservedly enjoying one of the most fulfilling and exciting chapters in his life. I'm not sure all of that would have been true if Peter had offered him the part of Gandalf, and he had spent the better part of five years focused on
The Lord of the Rings
. Regardless, I will be forever grateful to him for all that he has done for me and given me, and what is more, I'm probably more proud of him than he could ever be of me.

If you, the reader, learn anything about me in this book, I'll be happy. But I'm sure that my father would prefer that I spend my time developing myself as an actor and not pouring through the subtleties of deal making, money issues, and the mechanics of building a career for the sake of a book. He is a purist when it comes to craft, and in that respect he is wiser than I ever will be. He is my inspiration and my conscience; in a sense, he is my own personal Gandalf.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I arrived with my family in New Zealand on the last day of August 1999, and along with the other actors portraying members of the Fellowship, immediately began an intensive training period. With war movies it's not unusual for actors to be subjected to a ten-day boot camp; our boot camp for
The Lord of the Rings
consisted of six weeks of training, from dialect coaching to fight training with Bob Anderson, one of the great sword masters of Hollywood (he tutored Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks, among others). Then there were canoe training, weight training, and organized bonding sessions with the cast. It was baptism by fire, inculcation into a regimentation, watching Peter and his crew learn how to organize a vast movie machine.

From the second I got off the plane, I knew making this movie was going to be unlike anything I'd ever experienced. Usually if you travel halfway around the world to film on location, you're given time to adjust, to get comfortable. There's a welcome basket and a meeting, maybe a massage or a nap. You talk about stuff and just sort of sit around for a while. You get the movie-star treatment. Not on
The Lord of the Rings
. Basically, we got off the plane in Wellington and were whisked away to an industrial part of town. You would think that with a $270 million trilogy, filming would take place on something that at least looked like a Hollywood sound set. Uh-uh. There were no wrought-iron gates, no Warner Brothers water tower, no Hollywood sign, nothing. New Zealand, especially in less developed areas, is a breathtakingly beautiful place, but Wellington is a city, and like any city, it has its industrial side. And that, mixed with a nearby quaint neighborhood, is where we set up shop. Specifically, in an old abandoned paint factory.

Peter was there on the day we arrived, and the atmosphere was a little reminiscent of Willy Wonka. There was all this ambient energy and nervousness about the arrival of Peter. “Peter is going to be here now, and his schedule is very tight, so don't expect too much.” When he came in, bounding around the corner in bare feet and mangy hair and a rumpled T-shirt, looking like a mad scientist who sort of giggles his way through life, I couldn't help but be amused—and impressed. We shook hands or hugged, and he gave us a quick tour.

A few words about hugging. I was raised in a family and in a culture where everyone hugs—a lot! As a greeting, a parting salutation, or a simple expression of goodwill, hugs have been a big part of my life. I have even used hugs as a way to ask for forgiveness or as an act of reconciliation. As far as Peter Jackson is concerned, I think I chose to hug him more readily and more frequently than he may have been initially comfortable with. But I'm proud to say that over the five years of our working relationship and friendship, he has been willing to enjoy more than a few good hugs!

Peter was the proud papa of an extraordinary display of creativity, and every second I was with him, whether I wanted to or not, I found myself studying him. Not just the way he handled the technical aspects of directing a $270 million production, but how he interacted with people, what it was about his personality that prompted people to be drawn to him, what it was in his decision-making process that made him so much smarter than I was. From the moment I met Peter, I thought,
If I can earn the respect of this cat, if I can get him to see me as an equal, I will have achieved what I really want to achieve on this movie
. That he was disappointed in me, or frustrated with me, or not willing to use what I had to offer the process, was at times mortally frustrating to me. But that's more my shortcoming than his. It's funny: as smart as I sometimes think I am, it's amazing how stupid I can be when it comes to the way I perceive other people.

As I see it, Peter Jackson's brilliance, at least as it pertains to filmmaking, stems primarily from his cleverness and his relationship to power, and the way he can exert his power comfortably and with aplomb. I wasn't in certain rooms with him when critical decisions were being made. I didn't see how he built the consortium or how he would build consensus, or how he would strategically machinate toward achieving a particular thing at a particular moment. But I did see some things, and I did hear stories. I know at one point, when he was $11 million into the Miramax deal, he found out that Miramax had misgivings about the way the production would be handled.
The Lord of the Rings
was originally to be divided into two segments, not three, and the studio was questioning the wisdom of that choice; maybe one movie would be enough. So somehow Peter took the project to New Line, which not only agreed to support more than a single film, but a trilogy!

Over time these types of stories become somewhat apocryphal or mythologized, and getting at the truth of them is best left to journalists, film students, or the primaries themselves. Suffice it to say that anyone who could pull off such a miraculous feat had to know something I didn't know. Probably a lot I didn't know. There is an idiosyncratic part of my personality, a flaw in my attitude, that has informed a lot of interactions I have had with extraordinary people. For some reason, when I was a kid hanging around movie sets or sound stages, I wanted to be in charge of everything. I wanted to feel as though I could, to some extent, control the environment. Of course, I couldn't actually compel people to do things, but I developed a knack for being persuasive. People used to say I could sell ice to the Eskimos. I'm not sure where this unctuousness came from, but to a greater or lesser extent, it's been a component part of my life. I used to joke that I suffered from a rare disease called “proximity to scope.” Because I grew up in such close proximity to filmmakers who routinely achieved greatness in their work, I naturally assumed that I was capable of doing equal or even better work. Imagine Patton inhabiting the body of a ten-year-old Hollywood brat and you're getting close. Now picture me in New Zealand being exposed for the first time to the brain trust and nerve center of Peter Jackson's outfit. I was in awe and had to admit to myself that I was at least momentarily out of my depth. Then and there, I resolved to learn everything I possibly could about every aspect of this phenomenal enterprise.