There and Back Again (27 page)

I got to watch and learn and be patient and suffer. I read dozens of books on filmmaking, even while sitting off to the side of the set waiting to be called in. I wanted Peter to see me reading, giving myself the kind of education that he clearly gave himself as a devotee of cinema. But his learning was purer than mine. He genuinely loves everything about movies. While I do, too, I'm trying to share a different driving force in my personality. I wanted to understand how the power I could behold in Peter and Barrie and the studio heads was born and nurtured and built. I wanted to earn Peter's respect and admiration as a contemporary and as a thinker. It was so stupid—all I really needed to do was focus on my acting, and everything else would naturally have flowed from that, the way Elijah or Andy Serkis or Billy Boyd did. But I couldn't. I had too much of a certain kind of experience as an actor. The very reason it was good for the production that I played the part of Sam—namely, that I didn't need too many technical things explained to me—was the root of a lot of discontent for me. Peter and others didn't have to get me comfortable with the language of filmmaking the way they might have if they hired a less experienced person to play the part. I knew pretty readily what I needed to do for Sam, and it didn't take up too much of my time to be ready. I didn't have too much control over the direction of my character, in the sense that it was clear that the right thing to do was just be ready to give Peter whatever he might want for the part. But I couldn't help it. Ambition burned in my belly, and professionalism and courtesy and survival compelled me to swallow my silly pride and twitch with the knowledge that,
Man, if only I could be let loose in this arena, I could accomplish extraordinary things!
I would watch as thousands of extras assembled, or listened as people communicated somewhat inefficiently, because the protocol mandated waiting for access to Peter before moving ahead. Suffice it to say that for me this kind of patience is nearly unbearable.

But getting back to my first night at Peter's house …

The question about who was “right” for Gandalf was irrelevant. Ian McKellen had arrived in Wellington. He
was
Gandalf, and that was that. On this night and afterward, envy and insecurity often permeated my interactions with Ian. I found him at once inspiring and intimidating. I wondered why I wasn't smart enough to know what he knows, like how to create a character: deciding on the size and shape of the nose, the length of the hair, the beard, the ears, and turning to Alan Lee's illustrations not just for enjoyment but for guidance and meaning and inspiration. 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. It would be hard to argue that my approach makes more sense than Ian's, given the caliber of his work and the plaudits that have been heaped on him over the course of a long and distinguished career. And, yes, I know it may seem insulting for me to compare my style with his. But I want to share the way that I felt. Certainly I know, deep in my bones, that Ian has probably forgotten more about acting than I'll ever know.

But there we were, watching the animatic together, with Peter sitting right behind us. This, for me, was an important experience. I had always wanted to be in that environment, where you're at the house of the filmmaker, getting into his head, having conversations at a place close enough to the source of the Nile that you might affect how the river will be shaped at the other end; where there is the real possibility of having a substantive impact on your character or even the film itself. Acting is more fun when you feel like your ideas matter. You feel valuable, and you have a greater investment in what you're doing. So to be in Peter Jackson's house, just a couple of weeks before shooting was scheduled to begin, sharing dinner and conversation with Ian McKellen, well, that was like Christmas coming early for me.

Sort of.

I had seen and admired Ian in several films, most notably
Gods and Monsters
. By anyone even remotely knowledgeable about movies, he was considered a very important actor. So 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; that I was right for the part; and that while I could learn from somebody who was a little bit older, somebody who had succeeded so completely in his craft, I wasn't exactly chopped liver. I wanted to absorb the conversations around me while communicating ideas of my own, but I knew I was swimming in deep creative and intellectual waters.

Much of the conversation centered on the animatic. I found it hard to concentrate on the actual story because I was so intrigued and inspired by the thought and technology behind it. To help shape the movie experience for his actors, the studio, and the crew, Peter had gone to the trouble of spotting the soundtrack or choosing musical accompaniment from
Braveheart
and other movies. I know what it takes to put together coherent storyboards, and the animatic was essentially storyboards set in motion. So much energy had been expended, so much time. The way it was photographed, the way the camera panned across the images—I was as intrigued as much by that as by the story.

Not that the animatic wasn't a valuable tool. It was, for it helped illuminate and clarify certain things in terms of rhythm and pacing, and pivotal moments. I had finished
The Fellowship of the Ring
by this point, and I had read the beginning four or five times. And yet I remained confused. That whole bit about
Three rings and the Elvin kings under the sky
. I didn't really get. I got it on a poetic level, that it set the tone in terms of language and style, but as far as the story, I just couldn't comprehend it. Why were there this many rings or that many rings? The animatic, however, contained the prologue that was more or less used in the movie, and seeing that helped me understand the books. To his credit, Peter had allowed for the fact that some people hadn't read the books, and for that I was grateful. As a serious, interested, and invested party who had engaged the books and failed to grasp their meaning, I felt frustrated. Peter's sense of composition and story, combined with the work of the artists, helped me see the story. That, in turn, made me more excited about reading the books. I was determined to have finished the full trilogy before we started principal photography. I missed my deadline by a couple of weeks, but I did finally complete the books, which is a good thing, because I'm sure my performance would have suffered if I hadn't. Moreover, I would have felt like an idiot and a slacker.

There was one thing about the animatic that I found frankly terrifying: the realization that in assembling the presentation, Peter and Fran had clearly allowed other actors to read the screenplay. After all, someone had to read the lines, right? So there was someone playing Frodo, someone else playing Aragorn, someone playing Bilbo and Merry and Pippin and Legolas—and someone playing Sam. My role! More than anything else, this stirred within me a feeling of competitiveness, as if I were getting ready to play a baseball game. Granted, I already had the part, and it was perfectly reasonable and even kind of cool that Peter had such a community of friends in drama that he could just pull them together and do the equivalent of a table reading. But there was something else. The way the actor read the lines for Sam in the animatic, the way the character was portrayed in the Ralph Bakshi cartoon and the BBC audio version—all three were similarly deficient in portraying Sam as the heroic character I wanted him to be. Not one of them lived up to my expectations. The feeling that maybe the book lent itself to a particular type of reading concerned me because I had committed a year and a half to the project. If it turned out to be just a show for kids or for fans of the genre, and not something that I would want to see, then that just wouldn't be acceptable to me. I had faith in Peter and the process, but something happened in my skin when I was sitting there watching the animatic. Afterward, I tried to demonstrate for my boss that I was respectful and had the requisite amount of inspiration. At the same time, I didn't want to fake it.

Ian, as far as I could tell, experienced no such inner turmoil. On the drive back to the hotel afterward, he said, “Isn't it great to be working for a couple of hippies who have the business so wired?” That was it! He'd put his finger right on it. There is such a quality of whimsy and ease and confidence surrounding Peter and Fran. This movie, this trilogy, was going to consume their lives—it already
had
consumed their lives—and yet on some level they didn't take it too seriously. It was, after all, just a movie.

Yeah, the biggest movie in history …

Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, Peter would display a preternatural grace. I became exasperated at times, just as almost everyone did. But I never saw Peter panic. I never even saw him get angry. Not really. I've since come to the conclusion that his is a rare type of confidence, the kind that can only be possessed by someone who knows exactly what he's doing, and how it's going to turn out.

I think Ian figured that out before anyone else. He knew how to exploit Peter's generally laid-back nature, and how to communicate with him on an intellectual and creative level. He'd done his homework. He knew who Peter was as an artist and a filmmaker, and he used that knowledge, in conjunction with his own status as a beloved icon of the British stage, to get deep inside Peter's head. Ian's portrayal of Gandalf was enhanced as a result.

Not that Peter was blind to the machinations. There is no chance of that. I think Peter genuinely respected Ian's intelligence and dramatic sense, but I was awash in awe and envy and frustration that Ian was so clever at understanding the issues, and idea, not just within the movie and the story, but behind the scenes as well. He brought to the project and to the role a breadth of experience and a depth of knowledge unmatched by any other actor. He was a decorated Shakespearean stage actor; he'd costarred in the Hollywood blockbuster
X-Men
; he'd compiled an impressive and eclectic body of work in contemporary cinema. In short, he had gravitas. He had power, and he leveraged that power in negotiating with the studio, and in communicating with Peter and Fran and Philippa, so that their rewrites affected how his character appeared on the page, and subsequently on the screen. I was smart enough to recognize all of this, but not smart enough to figure out how to mimic Ian's style in the best interest of my career or in the development of Samwise Gamgee.

More to the point, I wasn't sure I wanted to follow his lead. My relationship with Ian was then, and remains to this day, somewhat of a disappointment. That's my responsibility as much as his.

Ian is a brilliant man and obviously a serious actor, but he has a great sense of humor, too, which he'll act on once in a while. There's some great footage tucked away somewhere of Ian doing wardrobe tests, where he's dressed as the venerable Gandalf the Grey in his long gray cloak, and suddenly he snaps out of character and launches into this little raunchy catwalk, with a glimpse of underwear, a flash of thigh—just a flamboyant gay guy having fun. And he did it fully aware that what made the performance amusing was that the star was
Sir
Ian McKellen, one of the greatest actors of our time.

Ian is complicated, though. He was perpetually annoyed at having to share a makeup bus with the boys. Elijah is the most passionate music lover you'll ever want to meet, and our long days on the set usually began in the makeup trailer at 4:30 in the morning, with the ritual of Elijah taking out his CD binder and deciding what everyone would hear. Sometimes he'd take the temperature of the room and entertain suggestions from the other hobbits, and sometimes he wouldn't. Many mornings I just wanted to read—I brought thirty-seven books with me to New Zealand, and used my three hours in the makeup chair to digest each and every one of them—but there were times when the choice of music made it difficult to concentrate. I just endured it quietly, because I knew it was important to Elijah and the other guys to get in the right frame of mind.

But Ian was less tolerant. He actually had himself removed to a different makeup station because he couldn't take it anymore. The music, he said, was giving him a terrific headache. Ian had no problem registering his dissatisfaction with what he considered to be absolute rudeness on the part of the other actors. How did he do this? Well, when you entered the truck from the back, you'd see four makeup stations, then a door (almost a partition, really), and then a fifth station. Ian took this last station, and whenever he needed privacy, he would simply close the door.

I love and respect Ian. I think he's an incredibly brave and articulate advocate for gay rights. I recognize his talent and his success for what it is. That said, I also know he can be selfish and self-centered. For example, I could write an entire chapter in this book called “Sir Ian McKellen Stole My Makeup Artist!” Because he's
Sir
Ian McKellen, and because he's smarter and funnier than I am, and because he's farther ahead of the curve on most decisions than I am, Ian figured out how to work the politics of the corporation so that he could poach at will someone with whom I had developed a long working relationship. He didn't ask for my opinion or permission; he just made sure that he was taken care of. Frankly, of course, he was entitled to this sort of treatment, and I got over it, but it was painful for a while. Now, changing makeup artists may not sound like a big deal, but when you're spending three hours a day in a chair, you do develop a certain rapport with the person assisting in your transformation. One of my three makeup artists was a gifted, world-class craftsman named Jeremy Woodhead. We became good friends, hung out a lot, played tennis. But when Ian's makeup artist quit to take another job, Jeremy greeted me one morning with the news that he was being reassigned. “I'm going to be working with Ian,” he said matter-of-factly. There was no debate, no negotiation.