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Chapter 32 ~ "The Pass of Caradhras"
FW: Ian was really funny on one of the blooper outtakes.
PB: (lacht)
FW: He emerges from behind the rock and he says, just instead of "Spies of Saruman" he says: "Spies of Star Wars".
PB: (lacht)
PJ: This is a sequence that was shot on a mountain top near Mount Aspiring, it was a real, very high remote mountain, and the helicopters flew us in, dropped us off and then they went off to park on the other side of the hill, so they weren´t in shot of the cameras.
But the helicopters were never that far away, because the weather was so difficult up there. And it can change, it´s so changeable that a storm could have suddenly swept in and stranded us on this mountain. So they were very close by in case they had to do an emergency evacuation.
FW: And for that big ring close-up shot, Pete?
PJ: That was a large ring.
FW: How, how big was it?
PJ: It, ah, that was a ring about, ahm, 6 inches in diameter, so we could get the ring close to the lens. We´ve had a much much bigger ring.
FW: This scene of course is not in the book, although Boromir´s temptation(?) is in the book -
PB: It´s Boromir´s temptation, exactly, in the book. And that particular line "that we should suffer so much, ahm, faith -
FW: "Fear and doubt".
PB: - yeah, is of course in the end one of the last things that he says in the book.
FW: Yes, yes.
PB: But it was too good not to play it this soon. We needed this, we needed this progression.
PJ: This was a shot that was almost one of the last things that we edited to film, that we wanted to, a sense of the crows returning to give their, to give the message to Saruman.
And the model of the caverns below Isengard had already been packed away, so I got them to drag the model out and set it up again, just to do this shot.
And we did the bluesceen with Christopher Lee very late as well, he flew back up to New Zealand to do that.
PB: These are all miniatures.
PJ: All miniatures, yeah. This was a huge big model that Alex Funky(?), our miniature DP shot, one of the very first miniatures ever to be shot fot the film.
FW: Yes.
This was a hellish studio shot.
PB: Ach... the worst studio.
PJ: That´s right, Fran, Fran actually directed the, one of the significant piece of this scene.
FW: Well, actually John Mahaffie did it, too.
PJ: All right, yeah.
FW: And - well, John really did it, so...
PJ: John Mahaffie, our second unit director directed quite a bit of this scene with Fran, and I think you were there too, weren´t you?
FW: I was there. There were rice-flakes flying around and polystyrene, and the rice-flakes would get wet anf turn to gluey, and -
PB: Yeah, and get everywhere.
FW: - it stick in the (?) of your shoes, and -
PB: Your handbag was full of it! Your bag -
FW: - it was horrendous! It got into everybodys underwear!
PB: (lacht) Yeah. What the hell were you doing in there?!
FW: (lacht) Oh, I don´t know. I -
PB: What were you doing?
FW: - I wasn´t personally checking it, but maybe one reported it. (Gelächter)
It was a horror. And I said to Pete: "You know, you´ve really gotta come in and shoot some of this stuff. (lacht) Cause it´s all disgusting and I don´t wanna be here any more." And he said: "No! No, I´m (?), I have to run with the olympic torch!" (Gelächter)
PB: (lacht) Yeah, that´s right, I remember that!
FW: "I don´t wanna get all that crap in my hair." And so, unfortunately, I got stuck there.
PB: The great athletic. (Gekicher)
PJ: That shot there of Legolas is actually on, in real snow. It´s weird cause most of it is fake in a studio, but there was a couple of shots that we didn´t have, and so one day we were filming on a real mountain top on a different scene, and I thought: Well, we gotta get that shot that I want of Legolas braeking through the snow.
So Orlando got to be the guy that had to do it in real snow. (lacht) We´ve burried him, we covered him over in snow and got to punch his way up.
It´s an insert for the scene, even though everybody else was in polystyrene and rice-flakes.
FW: I´m feeling sure that in that shot of Saruman on top of the tower, where he´s envoking the mountain -
PB: Hm.
FW: - that you can see his bandaged finger.
PB: Oh.
FW: Ah, I´m pretty sure, I can see a big lumpy finger there.
PB: You mean they missed it? You mean the critics, they -
FW: I don´t think the fan does that know.
PB: - the (?) of mistake-spotters missed it?
FW: No, I point it out. It´s there.
PB: The interesting thing about the spells that the 2 wizzards are contending with here with each other with is spoken in Quenyan and older elvish dialect. And what´s interesting is, that Gandalf is actually saying - as he does in the book: "Sleep". He´s asking Caradhras to go back to sleep.
And one of the things I love about Tolkien is that the idea that there is a spirit even within the mountain. And what Saruman is doing is awakening that malice, the malice of the mountain, and Gandalf is trying to make it sleep.