Lord of the ringers lifts curtain

By RUSSELL BAILLIE entertainment editor

Sitting in the middle of 12 Lord of the Rings cast members during a rare media appearance, Peter Jackson looks the part.

In fact, the happily portly producer/director, with his glasses, shorts, beard and sly grin, looks more like a hobbit than the actors he hired for his multimillion-dollar adaptation of the JRR Tolkien epic.

Jackson's Bilbo-like demeanour dominates the press conference in a tent beneath the high-walled set of Minas Tirith, near Lower Hutt, as the local media receive a brief inside look at one the biggest film productions mounted in this country, or anywhere.

Questions about budget blowouts - supposedly rising from the original $US260 million ($660 million) - and shooting over-runs are swatted away, or left to American producer Barrie M. Osborne to answer in his best producer-speak.

"Normally if a picture is blowing out or having difficult it reflects in the shooting days, but we are finishing on December 22 as scheduled.

"It's a healthy three-budget film," says Osborne who admits the budget has been "enhanced."

Topics at the 40-minute session range from the difficulties of adapting the book and making three films at once, to which cafes and nightspots the stars favour. (The resulting answers sound like they have visited a few.)

The actors are having a good time.

"I thought my year in New Zealand was going to be a wonderful opportunity to go to Australia, I confess."deadpans Sir Ian McKellen, one of the oldest, and possibly the tallest, cast members, who plays the wizard Gandalf.

"And I'm not wearing my 'I love New Zealand T-shirt' on the outside but it's deep in my heart.

"I've had the most sensational year."

Even more effusive is fellow Briton John Rhys-Davies (Gimli): 'If you are looking at the benefits [to New Zealand] this is going to be the biggest film of all time.

"These three films are going to be bigger than Star Wars."

At which point Jackson interrupts: "Just control yourself, John. Give the man a pill."

Jackson, who earlier pointed to the similarly bearded but older and lined Rhys-Davies, quipping, "That will be me in a year's time," admits the project has been stressful - to the point where he is seeing hobbits in his sleep.

"Every time I make a movie I have recurring dreams that I am on the set and things are going incredibly wrong.

"I don't get any rest. You work how many ever hours a day you work, and you go home to sleep and think you are going to get some rest. But all night long I am having huge problems on the set.

"It is a relief to come to work, where the problems are a little bit smaller."

And yes, come this time next year as the hype builds to fever-pitch for the release of the first film, he will be a nervous man.

"You always are. It's like putting your baby out on the stage just hoping that everything that you have thought and tried to achieve is shared by other people ... That's the scary part."

As for life after the Rings, Jackson says he has another film planned, "a New Zealand story."

Unless a movie idea comes along that is specifically set overseas, Jackson says he will continue to work at home.

At that, Karl Urban, the only Kiwi actor present, shouts: "Woo hoo! Am I happy to hear that."

Herald Online feature: Lord of the Rings