Anything You Can Imagine Quotes

“I’d never been on a set like it. Jackson’s homeland feeds him in ways he could probably never articulate. It’s almost symbiotic, as if he occasionally plugs his permanently windblown hair into the native trees like the blue aliens of Avatar — a film that will one day be shot here too, using all the collective brilliance that this man put in place. He’s an auteur with an entire country behind him.”
― Ian Nathan, Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth

“With the thirty-foot miniature of Helm’s Deep, complete with the Hornburg keep, Deeping Wall and polystyrene cliffsides recently constructed with Lee’s assistance, Jackson went out and bought 5,000 1/32nd scale plastic soldiers. ‘Sort of Medieval guys with pikes,’ he reports happily, having cleaned out Wellington’s toyshops. A poor soul spent two weeks laboriously gluing them down in groups of twelve to blocks of wood so the director could move formations of Uruk-hai around like Napoleon.”
― Ian Nathan, Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth

“You always have a perception of what it could be in your head when you write a script. But it gives you a chance to play around with it. I am always looking for other angles. It gives you an ability to actually explore and experiment.”
― Ian Nathan, Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth

“The Three-film Version (with New Line): ‘I will go to my grave saying that the crafting of those three screenplays was one of the most underappreciated screenwriting efforts ever undertaken,’ declares Ken Kamins proudly. ‘You are writing what is essentially a single ten-hour script, which you have to divide into three movies. You have to set up things in movie one that may not play out till movie three. And you’re burdened with having to explain the world to the neophyte.”
― Ian Nathan, Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth

“Ultimately, says Jackson, the issue of villainy would be addressed by making the Ring a character.”
― Ian Nathan, Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth

“Why would anyone want movie-goers to pay eighteen dollars when they might pay twenty-seven dollars?’ he finally asked, his face still betraying nothing. Everyone tried to process what he was saying. Why were they talking about ticket prices? Had they started their own game of riddles? ‘So I don’t get this at all,’ Shaye continued, ‘why would you make two films when there are three books?”
― Ian Nathan, Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth

“Amusingly, if only in hindsight, the Weinsteins revealed a good Harvey-bad Bob routine. Whenever Bob was out of the room, Harvey would tell them to ignore his brother, who was just crazy. Stick with his ideas. ‘But you know that is not really the truth,’ sighs Jackson. ‘You’re lulled into thinking Harvey is the one you can talk honestly with. But the real truth is he is really tight with Bob. It’s an illusion.”
― Ian Nathan, Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth

“From the very first it was clear the Weinsteins were going to subject the project to the full glare of their nervous scrutiny. The honeymoon of getting the deal sealed was over; this was now about how their money was going to be spent. Jackson had a genuine feeling that it was only now that the brothers were truly rationalizing what was involved.”
― Ian Nathan, Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth

“Out of these first sessions emerged a ninety-two-page treatment, made up of 266 sequences: the embryo of an Oscar-winning trilogy.”
― Ian Nathan, Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth

“Loading it up onto their computer they could then experiment with different road maps from Hobbiton to the Crack of Doom.”
― Ian Nathan, Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth

“While still wary of jinxing the deal by even touching a copy of The Lord of the Rings,1 Jackson and Walsh had risked taking one step in the direction of a screenplay. They asked erstwhile collaborator Costa Botes to break the book down scene-by-scene into a working précis.”
― Ian Nathan, Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth

“Universal’s change of heart wasn’t only due to the failure of The Frighteners. Disney were putting out a (as it turns out ghastly) remake of Mighty Joe Young, the King Kong copycat from 1949, and now the all-conquering Emmerich had announced that for his next trick he was planning to remake Godzilla. ‘And Universal didn’t want to do another monster movie,’ laments Jackson.”
― Ian Nathan, Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth

“They were excited by it, and, needless to say, they actually put it in their front foyer,’ he reports. Four weeks after that the film fell apart. Taylor doesn’t hide the amusement in his voice. ‘And Peter, in true Kiwi form, asked for it back. And we got it back.’ And there it sits, a warning to all-comers: you need to be resilient in this game.”
― Ian Nathan, Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth

“Yet, for a few weeks, Jackson had in front of him the chance of adapting Tolkien’s beloved bestseller, reviving Charlton Heston’s dystopian talking ape thriller, or remaking the film that had, in many ways, charted the course for his life. Which would, in fact, count as his second attempt to remake King Kong.”
― Ian Nathan, Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth

“When Weta’s visual effects proved to be on a par with ILM, Universal got excited and agreed to the July slot, and set about repositioning The Frighteners as a new visual effects extravaganza featuring Marty McFly!”
― Ian Nathan, Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth

“Was this the last time CGI was so beholden to storytelling and not its own capacity for numbing proliferation?”
― Ian Nathan, Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth