Europanya
I am your shadow...
Registered: Jun 2003
Location: Orange County, Sourthern CA
Posts: 36 |
My day with the hobbit lads! Backstage at the New Line demo at Comic Con!
Just got back from Comic Con San Diego 2002, and had what will probably remain the most incredible experience of my entire life. At least for a rabid LOTR fan, that is. I could go on and on about how COOL the New Line booth was and the Sideshow WETA booth and the awesome "Don't Make Me Get My Ring" T-shirts, but you all want to hear about how I came to be backstage alone with Elijah, Sean and Dom, so let's get on with that.
I have a good friend who works for New Line. She called me up one night about a month ago saying that her Comic Con promo team manager was co-ordinating a WETA make-up demo and needed somebody to volunteer most of Saturday at the con to be turned into a hobbit by the WETA team and then led up on stage as part of the two-hour New Line presentation in the main ballroom on Saturday. Did I want to be that person? Inside I said "hell yes!" But I had a second reason for being at Comic-Con in that I was going there to film a documentary of One Ring Circus (ORC), a master-class costuming team of 12 individuals who dress up as the Fellowship and do a full floor show. So I knew I couldn't direct this film AND be a hobbit. So I turned them down. Then my friend realized they had already met one of the girls in ORC before at a New Line DVD costume contest the previous year and they wanted her because they knew she was a dedicated costumer and would not bitch and moan throughout the make-up application as the year's previous volunteers had?!?
So it was done. Leah (Samwise from ORC) was their hobbit and I was determined to film it. Lots of phone calls and begging later it was decided by New Line that I would not be permitted to film the make-up event, but I could perhaps follow her backstage and take photos on her digital camera, but that I would be asked to leave before the presentation began. Because these events "sell out" very quickly, I was worried I was trading an afternoon with WETA for the opportunity of watching the New Line show. But, hell, who cares. I can wait for the DVD, I thought and chose "stay with Leah for as long as possible until I get kicked out."
So my day began on Saturday 10AM meeting up with Leah at the New Line booth on the main floor. The "boss" of the New Line event was the one who kept telling me I might not be able to go up with Leah after all, but my luck turned when she was not available to take us up and my friend had to do it instead!! Cool, because she had no problems taking me upstairs at all. Whew! On the way up she gets a call on her radio.
"Oh, shoot. I need to go get Sean's bodyguard and take him up, too. Can you guys wait right here?"
Uh, yeah. My friend takes off and Leah and I grasp one another and jump up and down in utter glee because until that moment there was still some debate as to whether Sean Astin was going to be able to make it that day or not. We had heard Dom was going to be there and perhaps Elijah, but Sean as of the eve before was "out." So glee glee glee, we soon met Sean's bodyguard, Jim. Jim's this veritable mountain of a man who was very nice and Leah and I chatted him up as we were led around and around through the maze of rooms.
Leah asked him if he worked with Sean a lot and he said yeah whenever he was in Southern CA and that Sean was easily the nicest most generous client he'd ever worked for in Hollywood. Leah mentioned she had a gift for Sean, and would he deliver it for her, and Jim said he'd be happy to, but then Leah decided she'd wait in the offhand chance we'd meet Sean backstage at some point. So she held on to it for the time being. (More on this later...).
We finally arrive in the hallways behind the closed backstage doors of Ballroom 20. They had curtained off the entire wide hallway for the purpose of readying the volunteers for the demo. We were led up to the curtain, but stopped by the New Line "boss" 'because' she whispers to us, keeping a wary eye on the small crowd of fans gathered just across the walkway eyeing that curtain, 'Sean and Dom and Elijah are inside interviewing with Kevin Smith.'
Holy craaaap! My dream lads are on the otherside of this curtain and the boss won't let us in!!!! Aaaaaagh! So Leah and I get as close to the curtain as possible, trying to peek in, frantic with need to catch even a glimpse. I can hear Elijah's voice at this point and my squeeage level is at about its containment limit. MUST. GET. BEHIND. CURTAIN.
Finally the boss realizes we're making more of a stir by being outside the curtain then behind it, so she relents and let's us in, telling me once again, that 'I probably won't be able to stay very long.' Yeah, whatever, SQUEEEEEE!
So we slip in and there's our trio standing about six feet away under a camera crew filming the interview. And my god these lads are beautiful in the flesh. Sean looked positively stunning, fit and handsome as all get-out in a white brimmed hat, T-shirt and baggy khaki shorts, Dom was a little scruffier in his good-natured charming way, T-shirt and jeans, and Elijah, oh lord help me, but he's beautiful, in tight jeans and a fitting white striped short sleeved shirt--all eyes and cropped hair and trim little line of facial fuzz. They all have their arms about each other and Kevin and the interview is wrapping up and Elijah is saying, "Hey, I want copies of these photos!"
The crew begins to break up and Elijah looks over at Dom and gets this little minx grin and says "I'm going for it!" And to everyone's shock leaps out of the curtain and sprints down the convention concourse as fast as his little legs can carry him (which is damn fast) whooping with glee while three security guards all in black race after him followed by the entire line of screaming fans. Meanwhile, the New Line people are standing there in shock, mouths agape, mumbling "Where is he going?! Where is he going?!? Security!! Security!!"
Leah and I were bent over with laughter, it was the funniest thing we'd ever seen. I guess, later we found out, that Elijah being the game player geek he is, was dying to get out on that floor and had decided to make a break for it despite New Line's assertion that doing so would create a security problem of Con-wide proportions. Which it evidently did, getting New Line folks into very hot water with the Con security people. Not that they could do anything about it. Elijah, essentially escaped. I heard later that he was mobbed of course although he managed to claw his way to the ROTK gaming booth to play a few minutes of the demo they had running there next to the main New Line booth and tower of Orthanc. Somehow Dom also got down there, but their adventure was short lived as hoards of fans were tearing down the walls to get at them. Very funny to me, but not so funny to New Line who were plainly freaked out. They later told Elijah he could go out on the floor if he agreed to wear a full masked costume like half the attendees, but I never heard if he did that or not.
Meanwhile, Leah and I are still behind that little curtain laughing and giggling as Sean and Dom are led away into the backstage doors. Bye for now. So now for the WETA part of my tale. We spent the next four hours sequestered in this curtained corner with Richard Taylor, Sala Baker (Lurtz), six guys from WETA, and the three demo volunteers. Some security people, stage hands who came in and out, and occasional New Line folks, still shaking from the 'great Elijah escape,' the wife of the Rohan volunteer and of course little ol' me, trying to be as invisible as possible so I don't get my ass kicked out. At this point we had no idea what was going to happen. We didn't know if the actors would be coming back, or if Leah would get to interact with them prior to going on stage or what. Nada. Zip. All a mystery.
Richard Taylor spent the first few hours working on Lurtz. I'll explain that makeup process because it was fascinating to watch. Sala wears a full thin body stocking that goes from low shoulders to feet covering his toes. Then they apply the prosthetic head pieces of which I believe there were three, a back of the head skull and neck and shoulder piece followed by a forehead and lower jaw and shoulder piece so all that shows are his eyes and lips. Then he's fitted into what looks a lot like a full wet suit one piece that zips up the back covering his feet and the rest of his body, leaving only his hands free. The seams are latexed and airbrushed by Ben of WETA who was the second cutest thing I've ever laid eyes on. (Elijah still maintains a narrow lead over Ben.) Lurtz then gets armor, gloves, contacts, teeth, hair and the chain mail g-string. <g> He looked exactly as he appears in Fellowship and was positively ferocious to look at. A HUGE guy. Watching this heavy-looking armored thing eating pizza and trying to sip a soda was pretty darn surreal. New Line had sodas, water, ice and pizza catered in, and it was good pizza, too. Yummy. Lots of veggie pizza since a bunch of the Kiwi's and myself don't do meat. So yeah, I had "lunch" with the WETA team.
While Lurtz was being prepared the Rohan and Elf warrior volunteers were having their costumes fitted and assembled. I got a really close look at both and it's amazing how real looking every part of the costume armor is although a lot of it is made from light weight plastics and shiny materials. Neither were getting makeup done because they were going to be helmed, but the elf girl was getting combat training lessons from the swordsman of the WETA team, I forget his name, but he comes back in this story later. Once dressed, the elf and Rohan dude took the armour off and waited around eating pizza until their curtain call when they would be redressed on stage.
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"You're really asking for it now, sir."
Frodo sighed. "Sam, I've been asking for it for ages."
--Ghyste, 'A Gardener's Plot'
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07-20-2003 08:03 PM
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Any suggestions? (I do already have the hobbit.)
Too bad I was too young to be a Haremite. . . .
