The Two Towers Premiere in Wellington, New Zealand
In Auckland, I fretted for a while about whether or not to go to Wellington to hang out around the premiere of the film The Two Towers. I decided to go, since if I didn't, as a fan of the Lord of the Rings books and movies both, I'd feel like I'd missed something. So, on the 18th of December, 2002, I caught an early flight from Auckland to Wellington.
The airport was plastered with Air New Zealand posters saying "Flying to Middle-Earth? Give us a ring." The TV in the airport cafe kept zipping to shots of Wellington preparing for the premeire. On the plane, the free airline magazine had Peter Jackson on the cover. I sighed, feeling a touch brainwashed.
I arrived in Wellington to blowsy, rainy weather, at about 9 AM. As we came off our plane, we were greeted by patient-looking people carrying TV cameras, waiting for the LOTR film stars. After I'd gone downtown and checked into my backpackers, I trotted off to check out the Embassy Theater, ten minutes away.
Three forlorn fangirls were huddled against the wind, the theatre had three large plastic-wrapped pieces of statuary on top. The theatre security were even more threatening than the weather, promising storms to anyone who lingered. Nothing was happening yet, so I went to the Te Papa Museum, which was going to be hosting a display of LOTR props and costumes, opening on the 19th of December. I walked smack into the official Media preview of the exhibit and wound up milling around in the lobby with about 50 variably chic reporters. They all had huge tags that said MEDIA around their necks, so I wasn't going to be able to pass myself off as one of them. However, I did get to buy an exhibit ticket in advance. Cheered up by this, I went back to Get Ready in costume.By the time I was done, it was about 1. I arrived down at the Embassy Theatre at around 1:30 to a very different scene.
Several blocks were closed off to traffic. Along one street, leading up to the theatre, two blocks had a fenced-in pathway, with a red carpet running along one block. Fans were congregating along the fence. I was hailed by a party of people dressed in costume; we took pictures and chatted, and I moved along, trying to find the Wellington "The One Ring" website line party. Which was elusive. I never did find it. I wound up passing by the costumed group again and they invited me to join them. Some of them lived in Wellington and some of them had come over from Melbourne. We all entertained each other in the long, cold, tedious 3.5 hour wait that followed.
By about 3, the crowd had doubled. It was raining periodically and a freezing wind was whistling through my velvet costume. Brrrr! At 4, entertainers began to walk the red carpet to divert the ever-increasing crowd. At 4:30, a very good band, Fur Patrol, played for us from a nearby building, while the entertainers did their thing. These entertainers included; drag queens, drag kings, Cirque du Soleil style clowns, juggling stiltwalkers, people dressed in bizarre costumes (beast-men, huge neon butterflies, a wierd Dr. Frankenstein type hawking new body parts). The crowd grew and grew and pressed in. Costumers dressed like Gandalf, Arwen, Galadriel, and hobbits joined the throng.
A local phone company handed out big pieces of cardboard that said "Autographs" on one side and Phone Company Name on the other. I was contemptuous; how did we know we'd get any autographs? I succumbed and took a sheet, muttering about pervasive advertising.
At 5:30, the Mayoress of Wellington appeared; she was driven up half the fenced walkway and walked the red carpet the rest of the way. She then unveiled the statues on the top of the theater, an arrangement of Gollum's head and hands reaching for a One Ring. Very nice. And very large. (The picture below was taken the following day, when it was sunny.) Then began the walk of all the people formally attending the premiere. Two people were picked at random out of the crowd to go in with the celebrities. I saw Ngila Dickson and Lee Tamahori pass by - our group was against the fence right where The Walkers began.
Then, a silver car zipped up the walkway half - and Elijah Wood popped out. The crowd went mad. I was jammed up against the fence right across from him. I flopped my long sleeves over the fence, autograph stuff in hand, and said, "Elijah!" beseechingly. And he came over to me first! I got his autograph. He was just illuminated with happiness to be in NZ, you could see it, and he proceeded to walk back and forth signing autographs for all and sundry. Next to appear was Karl Urban.
Pictures, left to right: Karl Urban, Peter Jackson, Dominic Monaghan, Billy Boyd hugging Lawrence Maokare.
May I say that Karl Urban's appeal does not come through 100% in photographs. When I repeated what had worked so well with Elijah, and he sauntered over to me, sleek, far taller than I had expected, sharper and darker - I admit my heart heeled half-seas over and I had a fangirl moment. And I got his autograph, too. Then he, too, went to work the crowd, while his lovely wife waited patiently.Next out were Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, then came Peter Jackson. The massive crowd went progressively madder for each one of them and I was by now immobilized against the fence. I was lucky enough to ALSO get Dominic's autograph. What's more, he even took a moment to chat with me. "You're American? What are you doing here?" We traded a couple of sentences. Frankly, I was amazed he took the time to do so with a crowd screeching for autographs all around us.
In the meantime, another film actor made a more subtle appearance; the strikingly handsome Lawrence Maokare, who embodied Lurtz in the FOTR movie and who will play the Witch-King in ROTK. He was not as widely recognized by the crowd, and he spent a lot of time with some male fans dressed as hobbits. The main actors all recognized him and came up to say affectionate hellos. No amount of sleeve-waving on my part managed to get his attention and he went up the walkway without turning back. Missing Maokare's autograph was about the only disappointing thing for me the entire day.
Now, a going-crazy New Zealand crowd is still pretty restrained. Nobody grabbed at the stars, everyone said "Thank you!" I can't imagine the hobbit actors and Peter Jackson subjecting themselves to a fevered crowd of fans in Japan or Los Angeles like this. This may be why we later got the announcement that Wellington will be the location of next year's world premiere of ROTK. The crowd went wild...in its well-mannered way! By the time they went inside to the premiere, the main stars had spent an hour with the crowd.
Things were a little bit of a blur after this. The Nice People invited me over to their house for dinner and lots of wonderful conversation. It turned out we were all going to the midnight show at the Embassy theatre, so we went together.
The Embassy theatre is one of those gracious 1920s/30s theatres gone slightly to seed. It's in the middle of a renovation- half the seats in the theater are new, for example. We milled around in the lovely lobby before the film started. I was complimented many times on my costume, and every costumer spied from afar in the crowd earlier seemed to have booked for this viewing. I talked to the beautiful Arwen costumer who had come down from Canada to be in NZ for the premiere days. I also talked to an extra who had been a Rider of Rohan: he was wearing his "Two Towers Crew" T-shirt, which had a tarot card-like piece of art on it, very nice and understated. He was the sort of guy quite happy to talk about being a Rider of Rohan, and he told me all about what hell the Helm's Deep set was, what Viggo was like to work with, and that one of the dwarf extras in either Rivendell or the Rings sequence had been a woman. So there's female dwarves in the film! I was interviewed at length by the local news, asked what I was looking forwards to in the film, etc.
Then we went in to our seats. The crowd was very reactive while watching the film, cheering when the titles appeared, cheering when Legolas and Gandalf appeared, applauding at other moments. (This day was my first experience of the insane fervor some young girls have for Legolas; I witnessed several 12-year-olds declaring they want to marry him and will love him forever.) It was all very thrilling. Afterwards, the reporters snagged me again and asked me for my reactions of the finished film, which I gave, and this wound up on the news the next night.The next day, the word on the streets of Wellington was...that last year's premiere for Fellowship of the Ring had been better. More stars, said the locals, more excitement, the pre-premiere entertainment had included an excellent haka (Maori war chant) that was very much missed this year. People were already talking about how next year's premiere for ROTK, being the world premiere, would be even better than the FOTR one. But I'm glad to have gone to the one in the middle. I get the feeling that next year, the day after, the word on the street might be, "So much security...such crowds...bloody tourists...it wasn't as intimate." This was.
The next day I went to the Te Papa Museum exhibit for the Lord of the Rings prop and costume exhibit, which you can read about here.
