There and Back Again - A Hobbit Lovers Tale, part 4

Today was a pretty long day of driving from one place to the next. Julie entertained us by playing Fellowship of the Rings on the coach, and there was a fair amount of sleeping going on. We learned more about the volcanic eruptions in NZ. It was Mordor and Mt. Doom that last erupted in 1995, and there is a crater lake on the top of the mountain. Right now the eruption risk in NZ from her many volcanoes is Level 1, meaning minor unrest. We haven’t felt any earthquakes, but we are told that small movements are fairly common here. We also learned that NZ has more favorable trade agreements with China than either the US or the EU. They are hoping that the recent break with Brexit will resolve some of that.

As we drove along, the landscape changed from farming fields to tussocks, mountains and field grass. The NZ Army trains in the area we are driving through. They do get snow in the winter here and the roads often close. The area reminds me of Yellowstone National Park. Chris, our coach driver, told us that the NZ Air Force also trains here, but mentioned that the NZ Air Force ‘doesn’t amount to much, really,’ making us all laugh. He said their mascot is the Kiwi, a bird that can’t fly!

Our destination today was to the secret entrance to Erebor! This is where the Dwarves and Bilbo had to wait until the moon runes exposed the keyhole to the inside of the mountain. And to Smaug! The mountain pass is at 5,200 feet and Chris, our coach driver, navigated the winding mountain roads with ease. Luckily the traffic was almost nonexistent. When we arrived, we all piled out of the coach to take our photos and Bob and I were near the front so got off pretty quick. Good thing too! Within minutes of our arrival a massive cloud came down and made visibility impossible. By now, our Fellowship has loads of traffic on our web page so those of us who got the pics can share with the others.

We then made our way back down for several hundred feet to Gollum’s Fishing Pool. This is where Faragorn and the Rohirrim captured Frodo and Sam and found Gollum fishing in their secret pool. Frodo pled for Gollum’s life and good thing. We all know Frodo might not have been able to throw the Ring into the Cracks of Doom without Gollum. Bob had brought his Gollum mask to this stop for the purpose of reenacting the fishing scene. Julie had a mask as well, but Bob was the only one who brought his own. The fishing pool is just a few dozen feet from a big waterfall so I was a bit apprehensive about Bob climbing into the water to do his scene but it all worked out after Julie and I yelled at him not to go too far. The water was cold and Bob put a serious beating on Julie’s prop fish. After Bob did his thing, another member of our Fellowship put on his own show and pretty much demolished the poor fish altogether. It was great fun and everyone is getting to know each other.

Our stop tomorrow is in Wellington, which is the capital of NZ. Wellington sits on a major shipping port, the Cook Strait. It is NZ’s second largest city, Auckland being first. It is also the world’s windiest city by average wind speed. Wellington is also known as Wellywood, and Peter Jackson and Richard Taylor have really put NZ on the map with their filming. Jackson, of course, made all 6 Hobbit movies, and Taylor is the founder of the Weta Workshop, our main destination for tomorrow.

We checked into our hotel in Wellington, called the Copthorne, for the next three nights. It is always a relief to have a few days where we don’t have to drag all our luggage to the coach in the early am. The Copthorne is a beautiful hotel and we had a large room overlooking the Bay and having access to restaurants and walking areas. As usual, we passed out almost as soon as we entered our room.

We arrived early the next day at the Weta Workshop, just a few km from our hotel. What an astonishing place! If you are a talented techie, and you love the idea of creating monsters, and have a penchant for incredible detail, this is a dream place to work. We started with some young folks as leaders who allowed us to take pictures in one area, then swore us to no pics and secrecy in another. Weta has built some of the most amazing cinematic creative and technical props (and I hate to call them that) because they are unbelievably lifelike. Weta has created not only the LOTR and Hobbit characters, but the Chronicles of Narnia, King Kong, Avatar, and a host of other creations. This was where I came to realize that we had geeks way beyond the Hobbit in our Fellowship. We had big fans of District 9, which I had never heard of, and a movie called Black Sheep, in which they answer the question, ‘What would happen if the millions of sheep in NZ became Zombies!’ After we ooo’ed and ah’ed over their private viewing, we were herded into a room where we had the chance to create our own leather designs (mine was terrible, Bob’s much better), learn to make chain mail, (I made a bracelet), and fashion aluminum foil into our own creations. It was great fun. Being a Disney fan, I couldn’t help but notice that Weta takes Disney attention to detail to the next level. The gorilla for King Kong had every hair (and there had to be millions) hand stabbed into the monkey to insure a reaslistic vision. Their techniques for creating the orcs and wargs in LOTR were full of mathematic perfection and detail. They were clearly proud of their efforts and they should be. We continue to be impressed at all the work and background detail that went into making our beloved movies.

We climbed back on the coach to go to the Roxy Cinema and Coco Restaurant, where we had a Fellowship lunch. The Roxy was restored by Sir Richard Taylor and is where the LOTR and Hobbit movies were opened in NZ. The theater is beautiful, and the movie room has rows and rows of very plush seating. You can just imagine how cool it would have been to see these movies opening there. We heard a story about how Virgo Mortenson was arrested for practicing his sword moves on the streets and how the movie openings there allowed the fans to get close enough to the stars to give high fives. Lunch was delicious, and we walked around the streets near the Roxy to throw off a few of the calories.

After lunch, we went to the nearby Weta Cave. This is where all the available merchandise from Weta is sold, and there were some big bucks dropped here. Bob and I kept it pretty tight, bought a shirt and a Christmas present. We are saving our money for tomorrow’s adventure, which is truly one of a kind and sounds awesome.

We ended the day by driving up into the mountains around Wellington for the Get Off the Road reenactment. This is where Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin first encounter a Ringwraith and hide under the roots of a tree. This was a long trek down a steep hill, and the tree roots were even a steeper climb. I know my limitations so I stayed in a safe spot and had the chance to be the ‘director,’ yelling Quiet on the Set and Action. Bob played one of the Hobbits and hid under the roots. The Ring Wraiths screams were a riot. We then went further down the trail to an area where Frodo and Sam encounter Elves on their way to the Sundering Seas. This is the scene where Frodo and Sam are quietly smoking their pipes in a tree when the Elves come by singing. This was so far down into a gully that a few of our hardy young men had to sting ropes that would allow people to climb down and back up without risk of injury. I again, stayed up top, giving me a chance to be the photographer for the many takes of Elves marching and singing. Since none of our Fellowship speak Elvish, the singing elves improvised with songs from the Little Mermaid, Snow White and Seven Dwarves, and finally Queen’s We will Rock You. It was hilarious and made it hard for the Hobbits to keep straight faces.

Returning to the hotel, Bob and I walked over to a restaurant nearby that had great food. It was clear that they lacked staff, as the restaurant was not full but they began turning people away, feeling that they couldn’t serve any more. Bob and I have found a brand of seltzer water in NZ called Antipodes that we love so we bought a bottle and went back to the room. Passed out again.

Next day, Saturday, November 19th for us, (the18th for most of my readers) was spent at the hotel with Daniel Reeve. That name probably means nothing to you—it didn’t to me, but I’m sure you know his work. Daniel became the calligrapher for the LOTR, the Hobbit, and a host of other movies and productions. Almost any art work that you see that wasn’t created by Weta was created by Daniel. And this guy is a Tolkien-level artist. One of the things we in our Fellowship love about Tolkien is that he is not only a storyteller. He is a universe creator. And so is Daniel. Tolkien built entire languages into his works. And not just one. One for every group. Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Orcs all have their own language. And Daniel Reeve developed the fonts and language structures for each of these worlds. He treated us to a presentation that went over 90 minutes but felt like seconds, as he showed us the legion of art work and calligraphy he developed. His story is that he was a computer programmer in a bank in Wellington, when he learned that Jackson was planning to make the LOTR. He reached out to Jackson, offering his services as a calligrapher by creating some writings out of the book language. They contacted him immediately and the rest became history. He was eventually able to become a full-time artist for many productions.

The thing that so impressed me about Daniel was that he is both strongly right and left brained. Creative and whimsical in his art and calligraphy, yet logical and organized in keeping version after version straight over movies that constantly required rewrites and copies. And his copies are all hand drawn. No copying machines for this guy. If something needed to be changed, he redid the whole thing. And made the numerous copies himself. You may remember that in The Hobbit, Bilbo is asked to sign a very complex contract with the Dwarves. The Tolkien books give a few ideas about the wording in that contract, but the final version is multiple stressed parchment pages sewn together haphazardly that fly in the wind as Bilbo runs to catch up with the Dwarves to begin his adventure. Daniel invented every one of those words, wrote them in Bilbo’s specific calligraphy, stressed the parchment himself, and stitched the whole thing together. Then made dozens of copies by hand. A perfectionist extraordinaire.

And as though all this information and demonstration wasn’t enough, he brought along hand drawn art and calligraphy for sale and made himself available for hours to sign and write personal messages on each. All thirty-eight of us had multiple things we wanted him to personalize and that took hours. While he painstakingly made art on the fly for us, we had lunch and tried to give him respectful breaks. And that still wasn’t all. After personalizing the pieces he brought, he then allowed us to ask for our own ideas to be created. For some, it was to create sayings out of the books that we especially loved. For others it was to ask him to commission things to send us that would take longer than the day allowed. Bob and I asked him to make us a copy of the Bilbo contract and he graciously agreed. It will probably cost more to frame it than he charged us, but it will be a great piece to remember this talented artist who is now world renowned.

The rest of the day was ours, and we needed to get some laundry done. I’d like to say we wandered around Wellington, but we were exhausted so we rested for the remainder of the day. A couple of folks in the Fellowship were leaving the tour next day, so we shared a dinner table, and said goodbye to Devin and Eric. Next day would be a very early morning, packing up once again to head for the Interisland Ferry and a trip to the South Island of NZ. Every day so far has been fascinating and given us terrific access to LOTR and Hobbit information, ideas and back stories. We are having a blast!