Jack M., a Wellingtonian who guides LOTR tours, writes on his blog that the ship used for King Kong is apparently soon to be disposed of. Rumor has it that the ship will be sunk in February, somewhere off the coast for the entertainment of divers.

For most people, that ship has nothing to do with the film trilogy. For me there are connections. On my first research visit to Wellington when I was preparing The Frodo Franchise, I arrived on Sunday, September 28, 2003, and on Tuesday, the 30th, took a taxi from downtown out to the Three Foot Six offices on the Miramar peninsula. There I had an appointment to do my very first interview. Cobham Drive, the road out to the peninsula, runs along the southern edge of Evans Bay, and across the water I could see a small green ship moored at the Miramar Wharf. (Cobham Drive and Evans Bay are on the map of the area that appears on p. 292 of the book; the wharf is there as well, north of the Three Foot Six building, though not named.) My driver informed me that it was a ship purchased for King Kong. I gather this was supposedly a secret, though obviously not a very well-kept one. more »

I must confess that I keep posting off-topic announcements about Ian McKellen. I was a fan long before he donned Gandalf’s beard and pointy hat. It started way back in 1984, when my husband had a Fulbright research grant to live in Brussels for the autumn semester. I had a grant as well, so there we were, with a little apartment off the Avenue Louise, a 20-minute walk from the Royal Film Archive of Belgium. more »

Over on Observations on film art and Film Art, I’ve just posted an entry about LOTR producer Barrie Osborne’s upcoming children’s fantasy, The Water Horse (being released on Christmas Day). I got to watch some of the sound mixing at Peter Jackson’s post-production facility Park Road Post during my visit to New Zealand this past May. In the entry, I talk about that and reminisce about watching sound mixing on Return of the King.

Naturally the settlement of Peter’s lawsuit against New Line Cinema and the news that he will be producing The Hobbit had to come while I was out of the country! I was in Italy, giving a paper at a conference and visiting Pompeii and Herculaneum. Exciting stuff, but it meant I didn’t have time to digest all the news coverage and write about the new situation.

That digestion got set back even more when on our way home my husband and I were delayed 24 hours by the big snow-rain-fog storm that has snarled air traffic in the Midwest this weekend. We got bussed from Minneapolis to Madison last night and arrived at 2 am. As soon as jet-lag and holiday activities permit, I’ll be posting a summary of the recent Hobbit-related events.

In the meantime, I notice that people are checking out my older entries about the Hobbit project and the New Line lawsuit. Some of the entries in the Hobbit Project category provide background information that might aid an understanding of what the lawsuit was all about.

Now the The Frodo Franchise is out, I’ve been doing some radio and print interviews. These sometimes allow me to talk a little about my three visits to New Zealand during 2003 and 2004, when I was conducting interviews for the book. I also got to tour most of the filmmaking facilities created by Peter Jackson and his colleagues. Overall I spent about ten weeks there in Queenstown, Auckland, and mostly Wellington.

I have a lot of exciting memories from those days, of course. I’d like at intervals to share some of those with you on this blog. My interviewees were also extraordinarily helpful, and I was not able to use nearly all the information they provided me. I’m hoping that, with their permission, I can transcribe some sections of those interviews (a big task, since originally I just took notes on them) and post them here. more »