PJ and GDT talk about the Hobbit
Scans from today's Empire.
Source: some Ringer's scanner.
Guys, I'm trying to transcribe parts of this, but it will take while. I'll add it in as I go through it.
--------------------------------------------------
Empire: Where are you with the script at the moment?
Del Toro: We've been working six, seven hours every day for the last few months, at Peter's house. I raid the pantry!
Jackson: Philippa (Boyens), who co-writes with us, lives next door. She walks across the lawn, looking bleary-eyed, at about 8.30am. Fran (Walsh, Jackson's wife and co-writer) gets herself up, I'm up and Guillermo arrives, then we get going. We usually work through the morning until about 3pm. Either at that point he has to go off to me meetings with Weta, or I fall asleep.
Del Toro: Sometimes both things happen.
Jackson: I just finished six weeks of getting up at five in the morning to go on iChat with Steven Spielberg in Los Angeles while he was doing Tintin on motion capture. But we're done with Tintin now. We're also done, significantly, with the main story outline and the treatment phase of the two Hobbit films.
...
We've strictly been doing treatments and story outlines, breakdowns and structural work. So now we've got the okay from the studio to start writing the screenplays, which we'll be doing as of tomorrow, I guess. We've got people standing by to start casting very soon because we're going to start overlapping.
Del Toro: ... every day I go to Weta where we've been doing research and development of creatures. We have several sculptures Peter and I arm-wrestled for, to see who keeps the maquettes. And other than that, the design team - John Howe and Alan Lee - have been here intermittently. Now they're going to be here very soon - for a long, long time. Mike Mignola is coming, Wayne Barlowe is coming. So we're going to be full force on the design team with about six or seven new artists, starting in a few weeks from now.
Jackson: Now that the treatments have been confirmed, what that does give us is a pretty accurate cast list. We now know what characters are in which film, and armed with that, we can start some casting. We're going to do location recces because again, the treatments give us info we need for what sort of locations we're looking for. We're going to have that underway shortly. We're basically on target to start shooting March next year.
Del Toro: We've decided to have the Hobbit span the two movies, including the White Council and the comings and goings of Gandalf to Dol Guldur. Specifically, the two movies will comprise the book.
Jackson: We expanded out the universe a lot more, so that we were't just staying with Bilbo and the dwarves on their journey, as the book pretty much does. We started to expand some of what's happening to Gandalf outside of that journey...
Del Toro: A bit of the backstory...
Jackson: We do cover some of the events earlier, like Thráin, (dwarf king) Thorin's father, and we're sort of fleshing out the Hobbit and expanding it sideways, up and down. We just decided it would be a mistake to try to cram everything into one movie. The essential brief was to do The Hobbit and it allows us to make the Hobbit in a little more of the style, if you like, of the trilogy, too.
Del Toro: To make a movie of the Hobbit that didn't go over three hours.
Jackson: You would be rushing along...
Del Toro: You would be losing iconic moments. The animated version avoids Beorn, who is a great character, and some people always feel that you should lose the Spiders (of Mirkwood), or this or that. We wanted to keep every iconic moment that was in the book and give it some weight.
Jackson: ... We've taken events from the Hobbit and integrated them a little bit more into some of the broader themes that show up in The Lord Of The Rings. But we haven't made The Hobbit any less of a fun, young, fairy-tale adventure mix.
Del Toro: There is a very specific function that Gimli had in the trilogy. And technically and expressively, the dwarves in The Hobbit serve another. They have to become valiant, brave, sometimes funny - and yes, all of those were in Gimli, but there are moments in which the dwarves have to be tragic, or they have to be incredibly moving. Those dwarves, physically and dramatically, will work like three-dimensional characters that will as soon make you laugh as they will make you fear for their lives, or they will move you. Hopefully to tears, in some instances...
Jackson: We're going to choose five or six, pretty similar to the ones that Tolkien spends a bit more time on in the book, and develop some quite interesting relationships between them and Bilbo. We don't want them to be just Thorin plus 12 comedic sidekicks.
Jackson: ... We try to smooth everything out and structure the films in such a way that nothing is random and nothing comes out of the blue in such a convenient way as it does two or three times during the novel.
Del Toro: Except when, if the idiosyncrasy in the book is a very iconic moment, then we'll do our best to preserve it. We can make that fairy-tale logic work as is.
Empire: Another problem is that Bilbo is largely unconscious during the Battle of Five Armies.
Del Toro: That's one the idiosyncrasies that, from the get-go, I said, "That's one of the ones that we need to keep!" It's so unexpected. I think we're taking small tonal variations that are very beautiful. For example, unlike in the trilogy, where monsters were not often articulate, in The Hobbit, it's part of the book that trolls have very lengthy conversations. There are other idiosyncrasies that would not find themselves at home tonally in the trilogy. But we are moving the notches a little bit.
Jackson: We're developing a lot more character and personality in the villain side of the story, too. We are having to deal with Sauron a little bit more specifically in this; how exactly he manifests himself and what form he's in, and how that is ultimately going to lead into what he becomes in the trilogy - and what he has been in the ancient past. That is something we are absolutely dealing with, much more so than what's in the book. You have to. People will be expecting it. It's before Lord of the Rings, so we're going to learn a bit more about X, Y and Z... We're trying to make sure that we're delivering what they expect, but in a way that's kind of surprising.
Jackson: I forgot to mention that, before we even wrote a single word, when Guillermo first showed up in New Zealand, the very first thing we did was...
Del Toro: I was arrested.
Jackson: Yeah, but we bailed you out. The second thing we did after we got you out on bail was we got 35mm prints of the three Lord of the Rings films, the extended cuts, and we screened them. It was actually the first time that I'd seen them since the day they were released. It was a fun thing to do. I felt overwhelmed, actually, just watching them again because they were just so dense and large and complex.
Empire: So Guillermo... do you have an idea of what you've let yourself in for now?
Del Toro: I think that I have an inkling.
Jackson: (Shaking his head firmly) No.
Del Toro: (Laughs) But the beauty of this is that when Pete called me [in 2007], he and I had not spoken in a couple of years. And out of the blue, I get the call during Christmas. Essentially, the conversation was brief. He said, "We're thinking of you for The Hobbit, what do you think?" I said, "I'll do it." He said, "It's about three years of your life." "I'll do it." "Do you want to talk it over with your family?" "No, I'll do it. I want to do it."
Jackson: I'll be there trying to help. The one thing is, I do know what you'll be going through, wearing your shoes. I'll be looking after your back as much as I can.
Empire: Peter, has watching Guillermo go through this process made you sometimes wish you'd decided to direct these movies?
Jackson: Well, there are moments when I do get a pang of jealousy.
Del Toro: With the maquettes!
Jackson: Although I tell you what, I'm actually enjoying a lot of what I'm doing on this particular project. And I'm committed to trying to have these two films that Guillermo's going to make be better movies than the three movies I made. If it was me making these two, I'd feel that I'd be like, "What did I do last time? How am I going to beat that? Is this going to be different enough?" That, to me, was sort of unsatisfying, and whenever I imagine that, that's the reason I'm not directing these films.
Empire: Can you talk about the visual approach? Will it blend in with the trilogy?
Del Toro: You don't make it a point. I think if you make it a point, you'll be making the biggest mistake of your life.
Jackson: What I think everybody has to get right in their minds is that we're creating a Middle-earth that's pretty much the same as the trilogy's Middle-earth. Hobbiton is going to look like the same place. Hobbits are going to look the same. But it's another guy going in with his own filmmaking style. ..... He's not pretending to be me.
[about the possibility of 3-D]
Del Toro: We haven't had a serious discussion about it yet. It would be premature to say anything either way.
Jackson: I've got a very open mind about the Hobbit in 3-D. I'm never going to force a director to shoot with the technology when they don't necessarily want to. But also, there's something about it being shot on 35mm that makes it feel like these movies, these five movies, are going to look as if they belong...
Del Toro: Together.
....
Personally, I'm planning on doing 3-D movies - the next live-action film that I make, I definitely want to do in 3-D.
The first part of The Hobbit is out in December 2011. The second part is out in December 2012
------------------------------------------------------
That's about it, I guess, typos and all. There's also bits about Howard Shore going back to Middle-earth and Del Toro's Borat bathing suit, but you'll have to zoom in to read those without my help LOL. It's over midnight here and I have to translate some of these ~iconic moments~ for my fellow Finnish fans before I catch some sleep.
These two sound like a really great team, don't they? I have no doubt these movies will be breathtaking and record-breaking just like the LOTR trilogy was.
//ETA: It appears GDT wasn't arrested for real. Here's his post at TORn about that part. :D
//Final edit :D
I've typed out and posted the whole article at my journal.
Source: some Ringer's scanner.
Guys, I'm trying to transcribe parts of this, but it will take while. I'll add it in as I go through it.
--------------------------------------------------
Empire: Where are you with the script at the moment?
Del Toro: We've been working six, seven hours every day for the last few months, at Peter's house. I raid the pantry!
Jackson: Philippa (Boyens), who co-writes with us, lives next door. She walks across the lawn, looking bleary-eyed, at about 8.30am. Fran (Walsh, Jackson's wife and co-writer) gets herself up, I'm up and Guillermo arrives, then we get going. We usually work through the morning until about 3pm. Either at that point he has to go off to me meetings with Weta, or I fall asleep.
Del Toro: Sometimes both things happen.
Jackson: I just finished six weeks of getting up at five in the morning to go on iChat with Steven Spielberg in Los Angeles while he was doing Tintin on motion capture. But we're done with Tintin now. We're also done, significantly, with the main story outline and the treatment phase of the two Hobbit films.
...
We've strictly been doing treatments and story outlines, breakdowns and structural work. So now we've got the okay from the studio to start writing the screenplays, which we'll be doing as of tomorrow, I guess. We've got people standing by to start casting very soon because we're going to start overlapping.
Del Toro: ... every day I go to Weta where we've been doing research and development of creatures. We have several sculptures Peter and I arm-wrestled for, to see who keeps the maquettes. And other than that, the design team - John Howe and Alan Lee - have been here intermittently. Now they're going to be here very soon - for a long, long time. Mike Mignola is coming, Wayne Barlowe is coming. So we're going to be full force on the design team with about six or seven new artists, starting in a few weeks from now.
Jackson: Now that the treatments have been confirmed, what that does give us is a pretty accurate cast list. We now know what characters are in which film, and armed with that, we can start some casting. We're going to do location recces because again, the treatments give us info we need for what sort of locations we're looking for. We're going to have that underway shortly. We're basically on target to start shooting March next year.
Del Toro: We've decided to have the Hobbit span the two movies, including the White Council and the comings and goings of Gandalf to Dol Guldur. Specifically, the two movies will comprise the book.
Jackson: We expanded out the universe a lot more, so that we were't just staying with Bilbo and the dwarves on their journey, as the book pretty much does. We started to expand some of what's happening to Gandalf outside of that journey...
Del Toro: A bit of the backstory...
Jackson: We do cover some of the events earlier, like Thráin, (dwarf king) Thorin's father, and we're sort of fleshing out the Hobbit and expanding it sideways, up and down. We just decided it would be a mistake to try to cram everything into one movie. The essential brief was to do The Hobbit and it allows us to make the Hobbit in a little more of the style, if you like, of the trilogy, too.
Del Toro: To make a movie of the Hobbit that didn't go over three hours.
Jackson: You would be rushing along...
Del Toro: You would be losing iconic moments. The animated version avoids Beorn, who is a great character, and some people always feel that you should lose the Spiders (of Mirkwood), or this or that. We wanted to keep every iconic moment that was in the book and give it some weight.
Jackson: ... We've taken events from the Hobbit and integrated them a little bit more into some of the broader themes that show up in The Lord Of The Rings. But we haven't made The Hobbit any less of a fun, young, fairy-tale adventure mix.
Del Toro: There is a very specific function that Gimli had in the trilogy. And technically and expressively, the dwarves in The Hobbit serve another. They have to become valiant, brave, sometimes funny - and yes, all of those were in Gimli, but there are moments in which the dwarves have to be tragic, or they have to be incredibly moving. Those dwarves, physically and dramatically, will work like three-dimensional characters that will as soon make you laugh as they will make you fear for their lives, or they will move you. Hopefully to tears, in some instances...
Jackson: We're going to choose five or six, pretty similar to the ones that Tolkien spends a bit more time on in the book, and develop some quite interesting relationships between them and Bilbo. We don't want them to be just Thorin plus 12 comedic sidekicks.
Jackson: ... We try to smooth everything out and structure the films in such a way that nothing is random and nothing comes out of the blue in such a convenient way as it does two or three times during the novel.
Del Toro: Except when, if the idiosyncrasy in the book is a very iconic moment, then we'll do our best to preserve it. We can make that fairy-tale logic work as is.
Empire: Another problem is that Bilbo is largely unconscious during the Battle of Five Armies.
Del Toro: That's one the idiosyncrasies that, from the get-go, I said, "That's one of the ones that we need to keep!" It's so unexpected. I think we're taking small tonal variations that are very beautiful. For example, unlike in the trilogy, where monsters were not often articulate, in The Hobbit, it's part of the book that trolls have very lengthy conversations. There are other idiosyncrasies that would not find themselves at home tonally in the trilogy. But we are moving the notches a little bit.
Jackson: We're developing a lot more character and personality in the villain side of the story, too. We are having to deal with Sauron a little bit more specifically in this; how exactly he manifests himself and what form he's in, and how that is ultimately going to lead into what he becomes in the trilogy - and what he has been in the ancient past. That is something we are absolutely dealing with, much more so than what's in the book. You have to. People will be expecting it. It's before Lord of the Rings, so we're going to learn a bit more about X, Y and Z... We're trying to make sure that we're delivering what they expect, but in a way that's kind of surprising.
Jackson: I forgot to mention that, before we even wrote a single word, when Guillermo first showed up in New Zealand, the very first thing we did was...
Del Toro: I was arrested.
Jackson: Yeah, but we bailed you out. The second thing we did after we got you out on bail was we got 35mm prints of the three Lord of the Rings films, the extended cuts, and we screened them. It was actually the first time that I'd seen them since the day they were released. It was a fun thing to do. I felt overwhelmed, actually, just watching them again because they were just so dense and large and complex.
Empire: So Guillermo... do you have an idea of what you've let yourself in for now?
Del Toro: I think that I have an inkling.
Jackson: (Shaking his head firmly) No.
Del Toro: (Laughs) But the beauty of this is that when Pete called me [in 2007], he and I had not spoken in a couple of years. And out of the blue, I get the call during Christmas. Essentially, the conversation was brief. He said, "We're thinking of you for The Hobbit, what do you think?" I said, "I'll do it." He said, "It's about three years of your life." "I'll do it." "Do you want to talk it over with your family?" "No, I'll do it. I want to do it."
Jackson: I'll be there trying to help. The one thing is, I do know what you'll be going through, wearing your shoes. I'll be looking after your back as much as I can.
Empire: Peter, has watching Guillermo go through this process made you sometimes wish you'd decided to direct these movies?
Jackson: Well, there are moments when I do get a pang of jealousy.
Del Toro: With the maquettes!
Jackson: Although I tell you what, I'm actually enjoying a lot of what I'm doing on this particular project. And I'm committed to trying to have these two films that Guillermo's going to make be better movies than the three movies I made. If it was me making these two, I'd feel that I'd be like, "What did I do last time? How am I going to beat that? Is this going to be different enough?" That, to me, was sort of unsatisfying, and whenever I imagine that, that's the reason I'm not directing these films.
Empire: Can you talk about the visual approach? Will it blend in with the trilogy?
Del Toro: You don't make it a point. I think if you make it a point, you'll be making the biggest mistake of your life.
Jackson: What I think everybody has to get right in their minds is that we're creating a Middle-earth that's pretty much the same as the trilogy's Middle-earth. Hobbiton is going to look like the same place. Hobbits are going to look the same. But it's another guy going in with his own filmmaking style. ..... He's not pretending to be me.
[about the possibility of 3-D]
Del Toro: We haven't had a serious discussion about it yet. It would be premature to say anything either way.
Jackson: I've got a very open mind about the Hobbit in 3-D. I'm never going to force a director to shoot with the technology when they don't necessarily want to. But also, there's something about it being shot on 35mm that makes it feel like these movies, these five movies, are going to look as if they belong...
Del Toro: Together.
....
Personally, I'm planning on doing 3-D movies - the next live-action film that I make, I definitely want to do in 3-D.
The first part of The Hobbit is out in December 2011. The second part is out in December 2012
------------------------------------------------------
That's about it, I guess, typos and all. There's also bits about Howard Shore going back to Middle-earth and Del Toro's Borat bathing suit, but you'll have to zoom in to read those without my help LOL. It's over midnight here and I have to translate some of these ~iconic moments~ for my fellow Finnish fans before I catch some sleep.
These two sound like a really great team, don't they? I have no doubt these movies will be breathtaking and record-breaking just like the LOTR trilogy was.
//ETA: It appears GDT wasn't arrested for real. Here's his post at TORn about that part. :D
//Final edit :D
I've typed out and posted the whole article at my journal.