There and Back Again (35 page)

“What do you mean, a real one? That's my performance!”

Even though no disrespect was intended (everyone admired Andy's work, as well as his work ethic), I felt for him. He acted his heart out. It was a challenging and unique situation: I wanted to honor my fellow performer, this guy who was crawling around on the floor in his green Lycra bodysuit, trashing his voice, screaming and crying and emoting, giving it his all on every take—but it was almost distracting at times. I wanted to recognize and applaud Andy's work, but it was difficult to throw myself into the scene, to not hold anything back, when I knew I'd have to do it again for “real” a few minutes later. Virtually every word uttered by Gollum was recorded by Andy off camera, or added later during looping sessions (or both). It's fair to point out, however, that an enormous percentage of the dialogue in
The Lord of the Rings
was looped—probably as much as ninety percent. On a normal film, that figure is closer to ten percent. On any project there is an eternal battle between the sound mixer saying, “Hey you don't have a clean track,” and the director saying, “Well, I want the performances to be natural and organic, so let them go and we'll overlap later.” Bits and pieces from different tracks are eventually spliced together and layered, until something close to perfection is achieved. It's a painstaking process, complicated even further on this production because of the presence of Gollum.

I don't know if Elijah would agree with this, but over time I found myself trying to conserve my energy during both rehearsals and first few takes, so that I could give it my all on the reference passes, not so much for the animators, because they weren't going to be animating me, but simply out of respect for Andy. It was a point my mother drove home when I was just eight years old and working as a professional actor for the first time, on an Afterschool Special called
Please Don't Hit Me, Mom.
My mother was the star of that movie, and at one point she became infuriated with me for relaxing a bit too much during another actor's close-up. I didn't know any better at the time. My job, I thought, was to sit there quietly, out of frame, and listen to the other actor. No big deal. Mom thought otherwise.

“You should be better off-screen than you are on-screen, do you understand me?” she admonished. “That's your responsibility to your fellow performer.”

She taught me at that moment that you give just as much, if not more, when you're off-camera, and to this day I'm always better off camera than on. I don't know why, whether it's because I don't have to worry about how I look, or whether it's just a point of pride. I do know that something happens on camera; if you're sophisticated and aware of the camera, you want to be good at that and lose yourself in the part. It's highly egocentric. When you're not on camera, and you really emote and play the part, it's just the opposite: it's all about the other actor. The degree to which you are willing to open an emotional vein in support of the other actor is directly related to the amount of respect you have for him or her. I felt like I needed to be there for Andy, to honor the energy he emitted—and by the way, it was a level of intensity that was about five thousand degrees hotter than anything I'd ever experienced. White hot. I don't doubt for a second that Andy's strength and focus, his seriousness of purpose, improved the performances of everyone who worked with him.

I hear people talk about intensity all the time within the context of sports. There are very few athletes capable of peak intensity every day. Some days, it just isn't there. They're still professional, they still do the work, but they're just not quite as intense. Well, it's the same thing in acting. There were days when Elijah and I—I point to him only because I did just about every scene with him, and we both did an enormous amount of work with Andy—lacked intensity. Not merely because of the extended length of the production, but also because of the way our characters were approached, the way certain shots were designed. It was clear that we were doing a lot more work than would end up on the screen, and even though we wanted to do our utmost for Peter and the movie, it was impossible not to slow down and take a deep breath once in a while.

When Andy showed up, though, it was like,
Holy shit! Who is this guy?
Peter, in particular, wanted to reward Andy for his commitment, for his unflagging approach to the character of Gollum. Unlike Ian McKellen, who was so clever in his ability to encourage Fran and Peter and Philippa to bend the story based on his ideas, and unlike Viggo, who would just engage in creative trench warfare by continually coming at them with suggestions until he whittled them down, Andy was the sturdiest and most loyal of soldiers. He was willing to do whatever was asked of him, so long as everyone understood that he was not just providing the voice of Gollum. He was a real actor. He was an artist.

Fran loved writing for Andy, especially the schizophrenic stuff, and Peter liked having fun with that. He liked it for all the reasons the audience likes it: the arguing back and forth, the humor and the pathos. But it didn't come easily to Andy, regardless of how effortless it might appear to be on the screen. He suffered perhaps more than anyone else on the film (with the possible exception of John Rhys-Davies), and he did so willingly. I think Peter loved that about Andy, and I can't say that I blame him. Billy Boyd and Andy Serkis have something in common: they're both serious actors, and they're both really happy practicing their craft. There is something unique about the way they approach acting—and their lives. There is a selflessness about them that I envy. Andy is honest about when he's feeling competitive, or when he needs to assert himself. He's never sneaky or underhanded, and he's thoroughly devoted to doing the best work he can possibly do, and to helping everyone else rise to the occasion.

Billy has a similar attitude and drive, although it feels different to be around him, probably because he's slightly less intense, at least on the outside. In both cases, though, there is an admirable and palpable commitment to acting, and it was clear that Peter liked and respected it (as almost any director would), and wanted them to shine in the movie because of it. I think Peter recognized my talent and honestly knew that I wanted to do well, but I also think my level of awareness about how movies are made and the politics behind the making of movies prompted him to view me in a different light. That's a roundabout way of saying that at times I was a pain in the ass, which isn't quite as worthy a thing to honor.

My two favorite characters, as written by Tolkien, are Treebeard and Gollum; in the movies, they're showy parts that provide almost limitless options. But to be the other guy in the scenes with those characters, well, that's a challenge, too. When Fran and Philippa started writing for the complexity of the emotional triangle between Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, when they started fleshing that out, it felt good. But sometimes we'd do scenes that were basically excuses for Gollum to perform a monologue, and that required patience on the part of the other actors. Most of the time I didn't mind, and in fact wanted to do whatever I could to assist Andy, to make his seemingly thankless on-set task easier. I must admit, however, that there were other times, when I was feeling downtrodden and underappreciated (and fat, too, really fat, which exacerbated my mood swings) because my character was getting short shrift, that I suffered from a dose of Gollum envy.

There is, for example, a scene in
The Two Towers
in which Gollum stops Sam and Frodo as they're about to try to sneak through the Black Gates of Mordor and says, “There's a better way. We'll take the stairs.”

Well, Andy is a strong guy, and he's also a littler bigger than I am, so when we'd do fight scenes it wasn't unusual for him to inflict actual pain. Even apparently benign scenes, such as this one, held the potential for discomfort. As Andy grabbed me by the collar and pulled me back, he caught a fistful of hair and yanked my wig off. Now, this was not an easy thing to do. This was not a “hairpiece”; it was an anchored wig. The makeup artists would slick back our hair and glue the wiglace on. They'd twist the real hair on the top and in back, and tie it off with rubber bands. Then they'd put a wig on top and insert pins through the wiglace and anchor those into the rubber bands. The end result was a wig that wouldn't move in a hurricane.

But there I was, sitting on my fat butt in front of the stunned cast and crew, wigless and white and wounded, looking and feeling suddenly like a star from the silent-movie era (“I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille!”). What I should have done was laugh it off. I should have given Andy a pat on the back and said, “No hard feelings” or “Dude, lay off the caffeine!” I mean, it didn't hurt that bad. It was just embarrassing. But I was tired and frustrated, so I got up and, without saying a word to anyone, walked off the set and headed for the makeup area. In truth, it was the most efficient way to get back to working, but I did walk off in a bit of a huff, which was pretty silly, considering Andy hadn't done anything wrong. He was
supposed
to grab me hard; I
wanted
him to grab me hard. It wasn't his fault that my wig came off, and I should have said so. I didn't, though, and my lack of courtesy really pissed him off.

“Sorry, man,” he snapped. “It wasn't on purpose, you know?”

I did know, and I told Andy as much when I returned, with a new wig and a better attitude firmly in place.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

As the production slogged along, and days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months finally gave way to years, it became apparent that we were, of course, in good hands after all. We realized that Peter had a vast sprawling image in his mind, and somehow he had the talent and ambition to transfer it to the screen in a way that would make sense to audiences, even Tolkien purists. Moreover, I began to get the feeling that the patience Peter had requested would be rewarded, and that Samwise Gamgee would have his moment (or moments) to shine.

Not that I understood the entire story; I don't think any of the actors, even those most familiar with the books, had a clear grasp of Peter's adaptation. I couldn't tell from reading the scripts how the first movie was going to end or how the second movie was going to begin, and I wasn't terribly concerned with figuring it out; that wasn't my job. My job was to trust Peter and Fran and Philippa, to have faith that they knew exactly where they were going and how they were going to get there. It wasn't until the premiere of the first film, in which a complicated story unfolded so eloquently, that I truly appreciated the depth of their genius. But there were signposts along the way.

For example, take the Bridge of Khazad-Dum, where Gandalf fights heroically before falling to his (apparent) death, and the grieving of the Fellowship that followed. That scene felt pitch perfect even as we filmed it. We took a chopper to the top of Mount Nelson on the south island, where the view was nothing short of spectacular. Being up there in this pristine, rocky place, unaccessible to most people, felt fresh, exhilarating. It was one of those days when the work came easily, not because it wasn't difficult, but because it just felt right. I remember nailing the crying scene, and hoping that it wouldn't be lost in translation. And it wasn't. A few months later Peter screened a small amount of footage for some of the cast and crew, as well as for an executive who had been invited. This wasn't something I'd seen Peter often do, but obviously he felt pretty good about the material. With good reason. The scene was the aftermath of Khazad-Dum, and it was absolutely breathtaking. The swirling slow-motion footage captured the beauty and majesty of the setting, as well as the emotional power of the scene. I still think it's one of the most evocative scenes in the entire trilogy, and even when viewed out of context, as it was in this case, it gave me confidence. I felt very proud of the work. For perhaps the first time since I'd been in New Zealand, I felt like I had been nurtured—encouraged to soar and allowed to flourish—and it felt permanent, unmistakable, and just plain great!

The roller coaster continued afterward, and at times I felt adrift and frustrated, but always I knew Khazad-Dum was in the can, and that gave me strength. I only hoped there would be similar opportunities to come.

Which there were. The first involved the ending to
The Fellowship of the Ring,
which depicts the splitting of the Fellowship at Amon Hen. We made several trips to the Mavora Lakes region to shoot this and other sequences. At one point John Mahaffey, the second unit director, filmed a scene in which Frodo and Sam paddle away together, only to be attacked by uruk-hai, who rise out of the water. I don't even recall the nature of the relationship between that fight and the escape from Boromir that preceded it. I just know it was one of a couple of endings written for the first film, and that it felt a little awkward and clunky. As always seemed to happen, however, the scene was revisited and rethought and ultimately improved to an astonishing degree. There was no room for complacency on this film, no settling for just okay.

Elijah and I were introduced to what turned out to be the final version—the definitive ending of the first film—during dinner with Peter and Fran and Philippa. They had invited us to an Italian restaurant, and although no reason was given for the meeting, I knew it had to be important; they didn't often extend such invitations, not because they weren't gracious or accommodating, but simply because there was far too much work to be done. If a meal was scheduled, there usually was a reason for it. On this occasion, the reason was made clear before the appetizers had even arrived, when Fran presented us with two typewritten pages on which were printed the final scene of
The Fellowship of the Ring,
in which Sam, loyal to the end, marches into the lake and very nearly drowns in an attempt to prevent Frodo from going off on his own.