Cuts to Rings documentaries anger director
03 July 2006
By TOM CARDY
A warts-and-all look at the making of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy is finally to be released.
But its director, Wellington film-maker Costa Botes, is disappointed that Hollywood studio New Line Cinema made several cuts and changes to his three feature-length documentaries.
New Line is to re-release the three Lord of the Rings films on DVD in August, each with one of Botes' three documentaries.
Botes, with Jackson's blessing, had unprecedented access to the making of the $600 million trilogy and shot about 800 hours of footage, starting work a year before the cameras rolled. Unlike some American documentaries that have appeared on DVD, the documentaries do not glamorise how Jackson created the films.
But, other than "grudging approval" from New Line to screen the first documentary on The Fellowship of the Ring at the Wellington and Auckland film festivals in 2004, the three have never been released.
Botes, who was paid by New Line to make the films and would not get any royalties from DVD sales, said he was pleased the documentaries would soon be out. But he was unhappy he was not consulted about cuts.
"I had no opportunity to take part in this at all. They just shut me out completely. Once they figured out what they wanted to do, there was no opportunity to argue for any of the cuts and no opportunity to correct some really silly things that were done. It would have been nice to have been consulted because I could have actually finessed those things."
Scenes cut included extras dressed as orcs singing Stand By Me. Botes said New Line's reason was it did not want to pay for the rights to use the song. It also cut parts in which music was blaring from radios at Wellington special effects company Weta.
The Lord of the Rings made $4.7 billion at the box office.
Shots showing the top of Mt Ruapehu and Mt Ngauruhoe, near where some filming took place, had also been removed. Botes said he was not aware of any agreement between New Line and iwi to not show the top of the volcanoes in his documentaries. "I can understand the Maori attitude to avoiding depiction of the peaks in the film ... but what have we come to?"
Botes said he understood why cuts had been made where cast and crew were swearing.
He said New Line owned the footage, and the changes were not significant enough to warrant his asking for his name to be taken off the credits. He was still proud of his films, but wanted audiences to remember that they were not exactly how he intended them to be.
(this one I could maybe get behind)
(ouch)
