puff 584 Friday 10th

Way to go Noam!
Chomsky is supporting the Aussies re Assange!
Grasping the Hobbit
Grasping exactly what was going on with The Hobbit in October 2010 was always difficult. If anything it gets more rather than less opaque as time goes by. Some attempt at analysis though seems appropriate.
One way forward might be to take a Point of View approach. The first port of call would be Tolkien and his executors. So far there has not been a strong opinion from them about where the The Hobbit should be made or if there has been it has not registered in New Zealand.
The second port of call would have to be the actors and their union. What happened? A good representation of what the POV of the actors was came from Wheelers Corner in early October;
For the first time in the so-called mainstream media we could actually read a balanced account about the Hobbit/Warner Brothers episode without the hysteria and anti-union bashing that has flooded our front pages over the last few weeks. It was in the Manawatu Standard but it wasn’t written by one of their reporters.
The Media with its conspiracy theories about big bad unions have had a field day. For a while I thought I was back in the days of the 1951 waterfront strike [I was 11 at the time].
I have been awaiting early morning terrorism style raids by the SIS and Police Special Forces like those carried out in 2007 against the Tühoe to be used to restrain the actors union.
Dr. Richard Swainson under the headline, “Must economics trump principle” wrote a absolutely stunning column comparing a movie, ‘Made in Dagenham’ to the behaviour of the Government, Warner Brothers and Sir Peter Jackson over the Hobbit non-issue. Back in 1968 in the UK women were paid much less than their male counterparts, those women went on strike for equal pay. The US Ford Motor Company then a multi-million dollar outfit met the British Government and said break the strike or we will pull out from manufacturing our cars here. Barbara Castle brokered a deal that took female wages to 92% of males and just a short time later got a law passed outlawing sexual discrimination in the work place. Richard wrote, “The sovereignty of the United Kingdom was not for sale”. He later asked the question if Roman Polanski wanted to make a movie here, would we change our sex laws. [Polanski is banned from entering the US because of his relationship with a 14 year old girl]

Richard asks other questions that need answers, but will we get even the questions from our main stream media, I doubt it.
This is just a taste of what Richard wrote, “Whatever our ideological positions on the proposed actors’ boycott that initiated the Warner Brothers threats, or whether we read such threats as merely a negotiating tactic to win greater concessions out of the NZ taxpayer, we should be collectively shamed by out government’s willingness to change the laws of this land at the behest of a Hollywood studio”. Richard went on to say, “It’s an act with about as much morality as the sending of Maori-less All Black teams to apartheid South Africa, a betrayal of some of the basic tenants of the society to accommodate the emotive needs of a noisy, self-centred sector indifferent to the wider ethical picture”.

The next question would have to be about Peter Jaclson himself. A great deal of what happened had to do with sheer personal pull. That was an influence that went in all directions with the possible exception of the unions.
And then there was the government, the saga ending with a sit down whereby the people from Warner Brothers flew in from Los Angeles and sat down with Prime Minister John Key’s people and then with the consummate dealmaker, the smiling assassin, Key himself.
From Warner Bros’ POV there are a variety of perspectives some of which are obscure. Were they on the verge of bankruptcy? What did that mean? Did they really need the tax break? Was this really about union matters?
The Government’s point of view is extraordinary. They have been prepared to change the law for business purposes on the grounds that this is in the national interest. There was a considerable PR benefit especially for the Prime Minister who was seen as a deal maker and the saviour of the New Zealand Film Industry and the New Zealand Economy.
All sorts of people got a place in the media sun over the Hobbit, 2010. The organization of local actors, thehead of the local union movement, one or two local actors and media entrepreneurs were given space with a variety of effects.

But perhaps most curious were those who did not appear in the media. The Australian and American unions steadily refused to appear or so the local media told us and yet their input could have been critical.

Similarly there was no face to put to Warner Bros. Their executives flew in, talked to New Zealand Parliamentarians. Occasionally we caught a whiff of the story from the Los Angeles based entertainment reporters on breakfast television but basically there was a closed, machine like attitude from the studios. Again, any kind of investigative journalism on what the studios really wanted and why would have been welcome.

An extraordinary story…

Coming to Jackson it seems appropriate to say how much Peter Jackson has done and how important he is as a film person in the world and in New Zealand. There are no ifs and buts here, no qualifications of the claim that he is a great talent.

One of his biographers, Brian Sibley suggests Jackson is as much a movie star as a director. He has a look about him and always has had.

Brian Sibley has also written about the Reverend W. Awdry of Thomas the Tank Engine fame and C. S. Lewis. He has also written about Tolkien's work.

Sibley works hard and gets the result of a mass of detail and indeed a mass of insights about Peter Jackson. Sibley's Jackson is one where The Lord of the Rings is central. Heavenly Creatures and Forgotten Silver and for that matter Meet the Feebles are not considered to anything like the same extent.

The latter is true of how Jackson was treated in the Hobbit affair of October 2010. People forgot about his other films. No-one spoke about the prospect of rebuilding the film industry in New Zealand starting with one of Jackson’s earlier work as a reference point. It was all about saving the Hobbit.

Sibley’s book came out just in time for King Kong but hot on the heels of the Rings films and Sibley's own expertise in the world of Tolkien combine to accentuate this side of Jackson's work. It may be that the book was meant to help push the Rings films.

This emphasis can be daunting. You actually have to be conversant with the books, and the films and indeed a lot of the clutter now around Tolkien to get through the main chunk of the book. It is as if someone set out to tell the story of Hillary and finished up telling about Everest.

The book does have its curiosities. Using direct quotes from your subject, your sources, is something that most researchers do sparingly, if at all. In this book it seems to happen on every second page. It may be a stylistic feature, a way of staying with the plot. It may have been, who knows, a condition of the book that Jackson told the story in his own words as much as possible. It may tie in with the fact that both Sibley and Jackson have copyright over the book.

And it may be a sign of a small group keeping things tight, A metaphor for Jackson himself who, no question, proceeds on an inner circle basis. People are drawn close and some like Fran Walsh stay that way. Others like Stephen Sinclair come and go as though they have entry and exit rights.

It is also a metaphor for the way things work in Wellington and in New Zealand. Small groups keeping the world at bay. Tight Fives. Jackson is a creature of his culture. Or is he?

The obvious danger with tight groups is that mistakes are not seen or at least not acknowledged and mistakes continue and, possibly compound. But its a New Zealand trait best seen with Muldoon and his crew and Think Big. Tunnel vision.

The films often , mostly in fact, involved very tight, small groups of advisors. With Heavenly Creatures the advisory group seemed quite broad. The work is balanced, human in the face of the inhuman situation described.

The and mid nineties saw things coming together well in New Zealand film and Heavenly Creatures and Forgotten Silver seem to show that. The latter is breathtaking in its audacity, in the hoodwinking of a country. 'Leonard Maltin said...' The October 2010 affair of the Hobbit echoes Maltin’s works in some ways.

A lot of the other films are one dimensional and, in a word, driven. At least Jackson seems driven. In Rings the characters stay flat, Feebles is excessive etc.

We could be critical and suggest that Jackson, like Muldoon and after him, possibly Clark, is let down or blown up by his or her own group, their own culture, their own petard disguised as a support group or set of mates.

But in some ways Jackson has shown he understands how a small group working in secrecy can confuse and outwit The Others. The most notable example is Forgotten Silver which involved duping a nation, including its historians about its history. There are also other examples in the book of secret shoots, dummy endings and so on.

Its not that Jackson is dumb enough to take risks, or at least, not just that. Jackson is smart enough to take people with him who deal, in a specialised way, with the risks taken.

In the case of the Hobbit 20101 Jackson did not have a union person travelling with him and this is curious. He has not had problems of a union kind before and the reasons for the lack of an expert in his circle seem obscure.

There are sound and convincing reasons for the 'our gang' approach. Some of these involve a damning critique of the New Zealand education system. Jackson was not only invisible at Kapiti College, he was not allowed into the Film Club! In a book full of photos there are none of Peter at school.

Small wonder that he escaped with his little group of mates into a funny little film world. In some respects this is the story of the nerd the world over. The problem with that is that you get the idea that at Kapiti College Jackson and co did not even register as nerds, they were the unseen people of the lower sixth, never acknowledged, never speaking.

Its actually a bit of a scary read this part of the book, and well done by the author as a outsider. Very sobering reading for anyone involved in teaching anywhere but especially in Godzone, the so-called Kiwi paradise. You get the feeling that Sibley is on tiptoe here, as though this could have all been something quite awful of a Monday morning instead of just plain miserable and boring for Peter and his chums, the school ghosts.

It might be argued that Jackson's development from films he was working on while at school to Forgotten Silver is an extended revenge of the nerds.

But there are other ways to come at the small group issue. One forgets how tight things are in America and in Hollywood. How tight things are in the arts anywhere. The distance between New Zealand and Hollywood works as a kind of a cutout for Jackson. He works outside of the Hollywood Loop by, as it were, setting up his own reflective circle, his own Famous Five, Mark Ordesky being the Hollywood Link.

It is here as well that one can see the shape of Jackson's development. Low attention to actors, high attention to special effects. Or at least this is how it might seem at first. On beginning to read Sibley's book my impression was that the acting was interesting in Heavenly Creatures and the ability to convince shown in Forgotten Silver was better than interesting. The rest of Jackson's work did not hit me with the idea that I had seen actors excelling themselves.

At the time I thought that Heavenly Creatures was a project not unlike the piano with tortured female characters in centre stage. This was distinct from the tortured male found in Jake the Muss. The Feebles were in part of the local landscape, the Warriors were in another and Women in yet another. Each one was, I suppose, a way of coping with another or with the other two combined.

Jackson was jumping quite a fence with Heavenly Creatures.

And good on him. But we might ask what has happened since in New Zealand. Weta? Rings? Kong?

Jackson, Jackson and more Jackson...Wellywood/Jacksonwood.

Reading Sibley’s book involves reconsidering what actors do in films and this is a tribute to both Sibley and Jackson. Sibley takes a lot of time talking about the writing process. Jackson is very hands on in this area and it is clear that he and his writing team are writing for actors, constantly trying to nail down what an actor is to do in a given take. At the same time Jackson manages to allow actors creative leeway. In other words Peter Jackson knows what he is doing with actors. It makes sense that if the role is well figured out then freedoms might be allowed.

There is a kind of a parable in the book about directors and acting. Ian Hulme insists on doing things differently each time, Ian McKellen does things to the same 'T' each time. Only one of these Knights of the realm remain in the Jackson camp and it is the latter.

At the same time the book shows that Jackson plans meticulously for actors and cares for them.

It may be that Jackson understands better than most what actors are meant to do in movies.

So where it might have been thought that Jackson knew what he was doing with special effects and that is what he was good at the book causes a rethinking of this. The book has the effect of forcing a long, hard think about small group management, power and control.

Sibley’s book leabes the reader with more questions than answers about outfits like Weta.

What do they do at Weta that you can't do with a souped up PC? Is there a spotty fourteen year old at Kapiti College, unnoticed at school except by his also unnoticed mates, who could learn it and spoof it?

From here as well one might begin to consider the weight that Peter Jackson has had to carry, the river to be waded, the sludging to be perpetually wiped from the windows as he dealt with the silly little school, Kapiti College and then the silly little state of New Zealand. And then the silly politics of Hollywood. Always looking otherworldly but never actually being so he seems always to be able to cut through the crap and not to be trapped by or in it.

And it is in this cutting through the crap that Jackson excels. He may be driven, he may be focused beyond what is reasonable. He may even be a secret squirrel, hiding away endings from his funders and so on. But he cuts through the dross, rises above his surroundings and sorts out what he wants in ways that command attention and respect.

In fact the Kapiti College story is interesting and possibly salutary in that Jackson did the 'who are you and what do you want and why should I be involved?' thing with them when, towards the end of his time there they actually asked him to make a film. In saying no Jackson seemed to be saying why on earth should I be involved?

In other words he knew, at an early stage when the crap was being stacked too high.

Same-same later on with the New Zealand Film Unit. At least to begin with. But then there was the eventual takeover/buyout or whatever of the Film Unit by Jackson once he'd made it.

And if you are a local this is all very interesting and surprisingly well done by the author who is an outsider.

After reading this book one comes away with the impression that Jackson knows when to use and when to lose the small group. He is not like a Beatle, lost after the breakup of the group. The Peter Jackson Group is constantly being changed if you look at it closely over time. The High School mates are replaced one by one, the Heavenly Creatures set come and go quite quickly. He marries Fran so that's that. The New Liners are used accordingly. There are fallback people with their own networks. Costa Botes in Wellington. Mark Ordesky in Hollywood.

There is even a way to look at this going back over the whole book. Jackson has an inner circle of specialists. Fran for females and the art world, Ordesky for film politics, Costa Botes for the Wellington scene, Stephen Sinclair where cultural bridges are concerned. Its tight and its effective, the members of the unit, and it is a film unit, know and trust one another.

And it really is a Famous Five even if Peter is best known. Movies bring fame, we all know that. But the Jackson story is something else again and, short of refrigerated ships in the nineteenth century nothing else compares in terms of taking New Zealand to the world and bringing the world to New Zealand.

And so he knows how to use people. And up until October 2010 it could have been said that he knows how to do this without making enemies.

And so too he knows how to make art with other people. Given the closeness of Sibley and Jackson in this book we can say he has made a step further with writing here but, of course, most of Jackson's work so far has been to do with making films.

By doing The Hobbit Jackson is doing the Rings again. As is the New Zealand Film Industry. October 2010 offered the chance for a reinvention of the film industry here, a chance not taken. In Jackson's case his art might have gone further than film. Into games, into science fiction scenarios, into fantasies beyond films? Peter Jackson does talk about the appeal of games towards the end of the book. Jackson and comics?

Grasping the Hobbit as the October 2010 episode unfolded or even now, a short time later is difficult. Did Jackson need to be so offside with the unions? Why did we have a parade of people who were not representative if major unions or major studios on television or radio or in other parts of the media? What was the government trying to achieve?

And just as grasping the Hobbit in Ocober 2010 in New Zealand was difficult so are other things. Grasping the nature of the New Zealand Film Industry without the Hobbit is impossible. To say that the Hobbit is the elephant in the room is to minimize things. Grasping the next moves of the unions is also difficult. Calling New Zealand actors Mexicans with cellphones is a cute kind of putdown but would Mexico have changed its labour laws for Hollywood studios? The unions are left with a rebel state to deal with, a Rumania with competent English speakers in the Pacific, a studio friendly government.

Coming back to the government how much attention is given to Jackson and how much to the industry? What happens if Jackson goes?

Bibliography

Sibley Brian 2006 A Film-maker's journey HarperCollins Publishers Copyright Brian Sibley and Peter Jackson

Swainson Richard, 2010 Must economics trump principle? Manawatu Standard Oct 10

Wheeler, Peter, October 2010 Wheelers Corner ejournal

Health Tip
Krill Oil aka aokiami in Japan. Its really good for you.


Maori Unpacked continued
45

Where shall we put the causative?

Whaka-

haere, go

whakahaere, cause to go

The causative whaka is used to turn a stative into a universal verb.

So, for example, you can take he word mau

and make it whakamau

and then add a passive ending

and say

Ka whakamautia te rakau e au.
The stick is grabbed by me..

I suppose we could put it somewhere in the centre of things...

Make up a box with Whaka- on it.

Make Mobiles with different uses of Whaka- such as Whakahaere, Whakatuu and the like.

Make a Mind Map with clouds, each with an example of Whaka- and one with an example of Whaka- that is a passive.