Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Hi Harry and TORn!
Longtime reader, first time blah-blah. I was at a charity showing of The Two Towers this evening, which featured a special appearance by Sean Astin, who also showed his short film, "The Long and the Short of it." The showing was a charity for Reading is Fundamental, and the entire ticket price went to it. Sean Astin was originally going to be in town helping with Project Elanor, which was going to convert an old parking lot into a reading garden for children. Since he was going to be in town, this charity screening was also arranged. BTW, I'm not involved with Project Elanor at all, but I figured it needed an explanation.
Before I get into the evening's events, though, I have to get this off my chest. Regal Cinemas was originally going to have this charity event in a theater that seated only 300 people. A massive email-writing campaign then occurred where we all wrote to Regal to say that we were sure we could get 700 people to fill the larger, much better theater across the street. Apparently, Regal received over 900 emails. They naturally switched it to the big theater. But then it seemed like little more than half of the people actually showed up! I could tell the theater manager was disappointed, even though he said they had raised $3,000 for the charity, we all knew that it was supposed to be a packed house, and that it should have raised $5,600 ($8 per ticket X 700 seats, and Regal didn't take any cut of it, either). Anyway, that aspect was awfully disappointing.
Anyway, on to the stuff. Sorry if this is a bit abbreviated, but it's 1 AM, and my brain usually shuts down around 10 PM.
There was a short intro by the theater manager, and then Sean arrived, walking down from the back of the theater. He's definitely lost all the Sam-fat, and is looking a bit on the buff side.
One of the first things he did was lead the entire theater in a Happy Birthday song to a young girl in the audience (I think she was involved with Project Elanor as well, but I'm not sure).
He made a few opening remarks, but seemed eager to show the short film first. I won't go over the short film, as most people have probably seen it on the internet already, but there was one interesting note he made. He said that he had been somewhat taken with the wombats in Australia, and was wondering how he could combine wombats with the face of one of the gaffers on LOTR (sorry, don't remember the name). Well, of course, there aren't any wombats in his film, but the large poster that the three people are putting up in the film is a fake advertisement for an automobile dubbed "The Wombat."
A tidbit about the short film: "The Long and the Short of it" will make it onto one of the Two Towers DVD's coming out (I think on the theatrical version), along with an 8-10 minute "Making Of" special!
What was his favorite film to work on? Either THE GOONIES (filmed here in Oregon, out at Astoria and Cannon Beach), or RUDY.
What characteristics of his co-stars most surprised him? He had a couple, but the only one I remember was that "Christopher Lee is really funny."
What is his favorite moment in the films? I don't remember the exact answer, but he did append "I can't wait to fight a spider!" to it.
What is his favorite film in the LOTR trilogy? Of course he said he hasn't seen ROTK yet, but he expects that one to be his favorite of the three. And we will definitely see the Grey Havens. Frankly, I'm surprised people keep asking about it, because its easy enough to find the footage where Peter Jackson explains that it is his favorite part!
He was asked by one young girl if she could get a hug. This was kinda funny to watch, because of course he wants to give us whatever we want, but then he'd have to hug everyone in the theater. So instead he offered to hug three "ambassadors" from the audience (one from each section of the theater, one of whom was the birthday girl). He ended up hugging a fourth person in the front row.
He was asked about his involvement in Project Elanor, to which he gave a rather lengthy explanation that roughly sums up to "I would like to do whatever I can, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant to make this world a better place for us and our children."
He was extremely gracious, almost to a fault, in that he was really trying to answer everyone's questions, but of course, people's hands just kept popping up, and he couldn't answer them all. He wasn't going to stay for the Two Towers, as he was going to take his wife and daughter out to dinner. He stayed for a long time, though, answering questions (sometimes the same questions). At one point his cel phone went off, and he explained that it was his wife, and he was going to have to wrap things up soon, and then he kept answering peoples questions! Finally, his wife and daughter actually showed up at the theater to drag him away! It was pretty cute, because his daughter ran right up to him in front of everybody, and did the "impatient child waiting for her parent" kind of dance, sometimes running in circles around Sean. At this point he had been talking for almost an hour, and he finally closed the questions, gave the three "ambassadors" hugs, and left the theater to a standing ovation.
So then the Two Towers started up. Now you have to understand that this crowd seemed to be made up of approximated 75% women/young girls, and about 25% men/young boys. The result was that pretty much anytime any of the central male characters showed up on screen, they were greeted by short Beatle-esque screams and cheers. The largest cheer was expected to be for Sam, of course, when he showed up for the first time, but I actually think Merry and Pippin got the biggest cheers of the evening. They actually cheered pretty much everything when it showed up. There was even a cheer for the first shot of the Eye of Sauron. There was also a cheer for the statue of Helm Hammerhand at Helm's Deep!
The only time I'd ever seen this level of audience enthusiasm and involvement was actually at a sneak preview screening of THE ROCKETEER, of all things. That audience was made up largely of older men who had obviously loved the comic and series when they were kids, and loved seeing it get the big special effects treatment. But I digress...
The cheering was kind of fun initially, but it wore thin pretty quick, especially when they KEPT cheering for characters, even when they had already been introduced. One guy finally yelled "SHUT-UP!!!" which worked for about 5 minutes.
The other thing that started happening was that people started to yell back at the screen, of which I remember two instances:
ARAGORN to EOWYN: "What do you fear, my lady?"
AUDIENCE: "CLOWNS!!!"
(I'm not sure if Miranda Otto has ever played a clown-phobic character before, or if this was just an oddball comment).
THEODEN: "Saruman's arm will have grown long indeed if he thinks he can reach us here."
AUDIENCE: "NEVER SAY THINGS LIKE THAT!"
Like I said, this all got old pretty quick, and about halfway through the movie, they stopped the movie and the lights came up. There was a pause before the theater manager came out and first thanked everyone for the attendance and the enthusiasm, but also to quiet down, as there were some people here who had not yet seen the movie, himself included. How you are a theater manager and somehow miss a movie like this, I'm not sure. Anyway, he told us this was not "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and that we should just quietly enjoy the movie. The audience was pretty good after that, though it made Galadriel be the only character who didn't get a cheer. That may also have been because she turned into Jennifer Lopez for a minute in the last movie (you know, the part where Frodo offers her the ring). Oh well.
Anyway, the rest of the evening passed with little news, other than the occasional scream/cheer/yelp from various parts of the audience.
PS: I wanted to tell Sean to tell PJ that he should listen to Bob Newhart's KING KONG comedy routine. I'd laugh my ass off I saw this clueless security guard at the Empire State Building in the movie!
Just a couple extra tidbits I just remembered:
Sean thinks Andy Serkis really should have won an Oscar, not only for the performance, but for his complete lack of ego throughout the whole thing. "Here's a guy that worked harder than most of us, turning in a fantastic performance, and his face will never be seen onscreen." That's paraphrased, of course, but that was the gist of it.
The gaffer whose face had originally inspired the short film had died before Sean came back to do pickup shots for TTT. Because the lighting and cinematography were so entwined, Andrew Lesnie stepped up to the plate to play the painter, out of respect to the gaffer (Jeez, I feel so bad I can't remember his name! I'm sure Harry can fill it in, though).
GOONIES 2: Sean said Spielberg and Donner are still interested, and say it will happen, but nobody knows any more about it. In a nod to the Oregon audience, he said "Of course it'll be filmed in Astoria!"
PJ's special appearance in the short film of course drew loud screams and appluase.
A couple more places where there were loud screams of approval during TTT: Smeagol telling Gollum to go away, and almost every line in the rabbit-stew sequence.
Well, that's it. If you decide to use this at all, call me CattyWhompus.
Here’s another reader’s take on things, with a very interesting proposition that Astin raised at the event:
Hello there Harry,
Long time listener, first time caller. I'm stationed in Portland, OR. Yesterday, Sean Astin was in town yesterday, for a charity called Bit of Earth. Aparantly they're turning a parking lot into a garden or something along those lines. So he was at a local theatre, the Loydd Cinemas doing the Q&A, showing The Long and The Short of it, and playing The Two Towers, much like the review of the thing he did in Austin, so I won't bore you with details you already know about him. He's very cool, very playful.
I was freaking out about seeing him, it's the first celebrity I've ever seen in the flesh, and I'm a huge Rings Geek. He said he's doing some Adam Sandler comedy with Drew Barrymore [EDITOR’S NOTE – That would be 50 FIRST KISSES. “M”]. I can't stand Adam Sandler, but hey, whatever keeps Astin in a job is fine by me. He briefly mentioned his disaster film, emphasized again and again how he loves directing, and gave away three digits of Orlando Blooms phone number. He also mentioned how Return of the King is going to be the best Lord of the Rings movie, but we all knew that anyway. He said that the Hobbit was by far his favorite Tolkein book. Then someone asked him about there ever being a movie based on The Hobbit, and he gave a most intriguing answer. He said that there's a bit of an issue over rights to the material, but that should be worked out eventually, and he went on to say, and I quote,
"AND IF PETER JACKSON DOESN'T WANT TO DIRECT IT, I WILL."
Thought you might find that of interest. Alright, if anything else arises in the land of port, I'll keep you posted.
-Duffy
Thanks, everybody. Nice work.
"Moriarty" out.
