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Peter Jackson

Born an only child in a small New Zealand town, Peter Jackson began his movie-making career when his parents bought him a super 8 mm movie camera when he was eight years old. The movies, which he made with his friends, were usually short, but they already had the trademark that would make Jackson famous: impressive special effects, made at a very low cost. After the success of his first movie in 1987 (Bad Taste), Jackson became recognized as a director of horror-movies.

Eventually, Jackson learned about author J. R. R. Tolkien, after watching the first film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, and only then did he decide to read Tolkien's books. The Lord of the Rings. Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King make up the film trilogy that Jackson shot entirely in New Zealand. The films were a huge success, earning Jackson the honor of being the first director in 20 years to win Academy Awards for producing, directing and writing in one single movie - The Return of the King.

Universal Studios signed Peter Jackson for his first film following The Lord of the Rings trilogy, a remake of the 1933 classic King Kong. He was reportedly paid a fee of twenty million dollars upfront, the highest salary ever paid to a film director in advance of production. Jackson’s next venture is to bring Tolkien’s The Hobbitt to the big screen.

“I don’t quite know what an auteur is. I’ve never quite understood that term, because filmmaking is such a huge team effort, you - I mean, I regard myself as being sort of the final filter, so everything that ends up in the movie is there, because it’s something that I’d think was cool if I saw the film that somebody else had made. I’m very much trying to make the film that I’ve enjoyed, but I’m open to ideas, I need a huge team of people to help me, everybody contributes and I try to encourage people to contribute as much as possible.”

“New Zealand is not a small country but a large village.”

“I think that’s the job of a director really, is to sort of funnel all the creative into one centralized point of view. And the marketing is sort of something that really happens with other people, it’s not something that I’m at all an expert in, and I regard my job at the end of the day as to make the best possible film I can, and that’s really where my job stops and marketing people take over after that.”

“I tried to make it as brutal as I could, ... I’ve been dying to make this movie my whole life, and I enjoyed every minute of it.”

[On The Lord of the Rings:] “This is a giant undertaking, but I consider this a personal film. It’s my film of a lifetime. I read the book when I was 18 years old and thought then, ‘I can’t wait till the movie comes out.’ Twenty years later, no one had done it - so I got impatient.”

                     

On making The Lord of the Rings: “Looking back, I think we were a bit naive. At the beginning I don’t think anybody had any idea how difficult or complicated it would be. We somehow went into it thinking we could do it. And then we’ve stumbled along just taking each day at a time.”

“The most honest form of filmmaking is to make a film for yourself. The worst type is dictated by demographics or what is hip or what kids are into. Kong isn’t driven by that. No way would a studio think this is the year that people want to see a big gorilla movie. I’ve come to realize that, as much as anything, I am making this for the 9-year-old Peter.”                    

“To get an Oscar would be an incredible moment in my career, there is no doubt about that. But the Lord of the Rings films are not made for Oscars, they are made for the audience.”

“I think that George Lucas’ Star Wars films are fantastic. What he’s done, which I admire, is he has taken all the money and profit from those films and poured it into developing digital sound and surround sound, which we are using today.”

“Pain is temporary, film is forever!”

“We made a promise to ourselves at the beginning of the process that we weren’t going to put any of our own politics, our own messages or our own themes into these movies. What we were trying to do was to analyze what was important to Tolkien and to try to honor that. In a way, we were trying to make these films for him, not for ourselves.”

“What I don’t like are pompous, pretentious movies.”

- Peter Jackson (1961- )

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