Just a couple of notes before we get started:
For the most part, I'd say 98% of it, this is word-for-word, exactly what is said on the cast commentary track. There are two minor exceptions. The four Hobbits recorded their commentary together, and occasionally [although rarely] mumble, and sometimes have a tendency to speak over top one another, making it difficult at times to make out what they're saying. I've done my best.
The second [and most nerve rattling] exception is Mr. Orlando Bloom. Lord love the man, but a pretty face does not an eloquent speaker make. It might not have been so bad if he were not being distracted by the film while speaking [although that sort of defeats the purpose of a commentary now doesn't it?] but he has a tendency to ramble in more than one direction at a time, to cut himself off with new thoughts, repeat himself countless times in one breath, and even just stop in the middle of sentences. I attempted to transcribe him verbatim, as you can see in the first few entries, and then finally, for the sake of my sanity [and my grammar check] I gave up and cut out all of his 'you know', 'I remember...' 'it's like', 'I mean', etc. and just tried to make coherent thoughts out of what he was saying. [The same goes for Mr. Sean Bean on occasion. Tendency to ramble. Wicked thick accent.]
And while I must say that I have nothing but love for everyone involved in this project, I did not transcribe everyone. [For the sake of my carpal tunnel.] What I did transcribe: Everything from the Hobbits. They're funny. Doesn't matter who or what they're talking about, it's entertaining. Everything [to a degree] from Orlando Bloom. Cause he's entertaining [mostly], and evidently at one point or another during filming he fell in love with each and every other cast member. The man can certainly gush. I transcribed the more entertaining bits of Ian McKellen, Christopher Lee and John Rhys-Davies commentaries. The humorous bits, and if they were referencing other actors performances, mostly because I like to know what people think of one another. And all of Sean Bean. Just cause he laughs through most of his, so even if it isn't funny, it sounds funny. The only person who I did not transcribe [and please no one take this personally] was Liv Tyler. Two reasons mostly: I think that the Aragorn/Arwen bits are not particularly important to the forward momentum of the plot [of this film], and secondly, because Liv really didn't have that much to say, and what she did say wasn't particularly entertaining.
Now lastly, a guide to what follows below. As I said, the Hobbits recorded their commentary together. Everyone else did theirs on their own. Some things are edited in such a way that it sounds like the Hobbits and Orlando are reacting to one another's comments, but that's just damned good editing. Secondly, this is the extended version of the film, so for those people who do not have it [most likely the people reading this] if it's necessary, I do reference what is being talked about.
Lastly, I do have a few editorial comments, because what's the fun in something like this if you can't be the peanut gallery, but they are kept to a minimum.
Enjoy.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
Cast Commentary [From the Extended Edition DVD]

ELIJAH WOOD: FRODO
IAN MCKELLEN: GANDALF
LIV TYLER: ARWEN
SEAN ASTIN: SAMWISE
JOHN RHYS-DAVIES: GIMLI
BILLY BOYD: PIPPIN
DOMINIC MONAGHAN: MERRY
ORLANDO BLOOM: LEGOLAS
CHRISTOPHER LEE: SARUMAN
SEAN BEAN: BOROMIR

1. PROLOGUE: ONE RING TO RULE THEM ALL

IAN MCKELLEN: Hello, this is Ian McKellen. Welcoming you to the cast audio commentary of The Fellowship of The Ring.

ELIJAH WOOD: Welcome to the DVD.
DOMINIC MONAGHAN: Welcome.

IAN M: For the next three and a half hours we will be remembering what it was like to film and contribute to PETER JACKSON's movie.

DOM: Strap yourself in. It's gonna be a long ride, but I tell you what, it's gonna be enjoyable.
BILLY: It'll be bumpy.
DOM: [laughs]
ELIJAH: It's pretty captivating when it's a completely black screen.
DOM: Black screen yeah. [You'll notice the Hobbits have a habit of echoing one another, or just pointing out stuff they think is cool. Not much fun to transcribe, but it's nice to hear how much they love this film.]

IAN M: I like it that it doesn't say a PETER JACKSON film. And I think it's a point of some pride from Peter that he doesn't put his name right up at the top. it's Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

CHRISTOPHER LEE: A lot of people don't realise that the Lord of the Rings is Sauron. Who else could it be? He didn't make all the rings. He made the One Ring personally which rules all the others. The ones that were given to the Dwarves, to the Elves, mortal men and so on, but he made the One Ring.

IAN M: There was one point, when Gandalf's voice was going to be telling the story, and I made a plea for that. I think I was told 'Oh Ian, you've got enough to do in this movie without doing the prologue as well', but I'm not sure when you watch it whether you could guess that this was Galadriel, or you might recognise it as CATE BLANCHETT. Which was not at this point quite the same thing.

ELIJAH: There was some question whether it was actually going to be as long as it is in the film, as well. I'm glad they kept it at this length.
DOM: Yeah it's essential isn't it? You have to show how important that ring is. And lacing it with the map is just...great.
ELIJAH: Brilliant.
ELIJAH: It's one of the things that I was actually looking forward to the most was just seeing that map onscreen.
DOM: Here we go, HUGO's coming up now. HUGO WEAVING. HUGO's well versed in battle now.
ELIJAH: He sure it isn't he? [laughs]
DOM: The Matrix.
ELIJAH: He's had some practise.
DOM: Yeah. Brilliant.
SEAN ASTIN: Well I remember when we got to New Zealand and during the prep stuff and PETER showed us the animatic, the sort of story boards that were made as a little film and he had hired actors to do the voices and there's music on it and everything, and finally, I mean I'd read the prologue to the book like four times and the screenplay three times and it just, I don't know for some reason, it's like my brain doesn't work. I just didn't understand it. When I saw it visually, it was the first time that it sorta, the world made sense to me.
BILLY: Yeah. [I have to laugh at this point every time I listen. Let's clear this right up. I love Sean Astin. Love him. Toy Soldiers is one of my favourite movies of all times. But I'm totally with Billy on this one. I wonder if there were times on set when someone just began beating about the head with a magazine when he'd go off on a tangent about something. About anything. Cause he does. I love you Sean, but please, learn to be more concise!]

IAN M: Just as you're beginning to be reminded of Monty Python epics, you know, the semi-religious language, of Tolkien, and the sense that actors are impersonating the fate of the world, suddenly PETER pulls out a shot. It might be a close up or it might be a MASSIVE shot of soldiers meeting their doom; and what's happening is PETER is defying you to mock, and is gently in that way of his grabbing hold of the audiences attention as you might take hold of someone's wrist and say 'Oh come on, come on, trust me it's going to be worth it', that's why I like the prologue. By the end of it, you are within the world and you want it explained better, and more deeply. Then of course, your emotions are going to be involved and of course, once a director has got an audience's emotion, then he's got their attention.

ELIJAH: This narration- which is actually hard to speak over 'cause it's so brilliant, but it was originally written for Frodo to do, and I'm so glad that they changed it for CATE, because in some ways it's so much more relevant.
BILLY: Well yeah cause she's--
SEAN A: For an Elf that's been around for thousands of years--
ELIJAH: For thousands of years she would have known all this.
DOM: She was there when all of this was happening, yes absolutely.
SEAN A: It would have ruined it if you had done it, because then there's no jeopardy, it's like Frodo clearly makes it, because he's going to talk about the history of it afterwards.
ELIJAH: It makes no sense.
ELIJAH: Absolutely.
SEAN A: Once he's gone through it.

CHRISTOPHER: Just because you write about something, or you read about something, you don't necessarily have to show it. in fact, very often what you don't see, is far more effective, frightening, suggestive, erotic than what you do see. Sometimes it's vital. You talk about the ring, slipping off Isildur's hand. Goes down into the water. That lovely shot of the hand coming down, you don't know who's hand it is, it would take to long to explain, that it's found by the two Hobbits; Gollum of course is a Hobbit. But it's Deagol that finds it. Gollum says to him "what's that?" he says "I found that. I wants it. I wants it. My birthday present. I wants it" and he kills him.

DOM: Ah look at that shot [off shot of Gollum in cave] That's so great.
ELIJAH: That is straight from The Hobbit.
DOM: Yeah
ELIJAH: Riddles in the dark.
DOM: When he turns and his hair catches the light there.
BILLY: Hmm
DOM: It's just...attention to detail.

ORLANDO BLOOM: I think Gollum looks amazing in this sequence. I mean, I remember reading the book, for the first time, reading The Hobbit when I was about fourteen or something, but I remember this Gollum is perfect. Y'know, I mean when I saw that, I thought, y'know that was just a tiny taste of it , it was just a tease, the perfect tease for it, 'cause he's such a sort of wretched and withering and sorrow...sorrow-filled kind of being. I remember seeing that and thinking 'no way' and also ANDY SERKIS, what an incredible job he did. I remember thinking, talking of Gollum, I remember seeing ANDY SERKIS cough up the ring like as Gollum, it was kind of, it was just unbelievable, the transformation that the guy made to like [ORLANDO doing Gollum voice] "I'm Gollum". he did this whole retching sound for Gollum. [Are you seeing what I'm saying yet?]

BILLY: Just that there, I remember when they filmed that. [off Bilbo finding the ring] IAN HOLM had that kind of face lift. They taped his face back.
ELIJAH: That's right.
BILLY: To make him look younger.
DOM: That was great.
BILLY: He looked great.

2. CONCERNING HOBBITS

ELIJAH: Oh is this an extra added map bit that wasn't in here.
SEAN A: I love it. I absolutely love it. I love anything with the maps.
ELIJAH: Oh, it's in three dimensions as well.
SEAN A: Yeah, it's cool.
ELIJAH: Ah, fantastic.
BILLY: Hobbiton.
DOM: The Shire. See it kinda shows how big Middle Earth is.
BILLY: Yeah.
ELIJAH: That's actually really smart to kinda do a bit an--
DOM: It's good.
BILLY: And how big the Shire is, it's not just a village.
SEAN A: Yeah, that's one thing in the film when you saw it without some of that stuff, the Shire was just as big as--
BILLY: As Hobbiton.
ELIJAH: Interesting the original title for Fellowship was over the map and ah--
BILLY: Oh yeah.
DOM: Nice. Dot dot dot. Three dots.
ALL FOUR crack up.
SEAN A: And there's Bilbo.
DOM: Is he drawing? Writing there?
SEAN A: "There and Back Again".
DOM: Remember ELIJAH was taught calligraphy there for a while in New Zealand.
ELIJAH: That's right.
DOM: You really came on leaps and bounds man.
ELIJAH: Thank you man.
DOM: I was really very impressed.
SEAN A: Oh that was cool. Did you see the shot of the Hobbits? In relation to the oxen?
DOM: Yeah. Yeah.
SEAN A: Oh I wonder if they put the shot back in of Sam gardening. I was so-- really wanted a shot of Sam gardening.
BILLY: Oh yeah?
SEAN A: And we didn't do it originally. But when we went back to do re-shoots, sorta, six months later, they added one shot in. I bet-- I bet it's in here.
ELIJAH: Oh that's uh--
DOM: Ah, Percy the Pig, he stayed in my hotel room. Really nice guy.
BILLY: Oh, he's the lighting guy.
SEAN A: Yeah.
BILLY: That's right. [Oh yeah, and these four almost never complete a single thought among them, so get used to not being quite sure who's talking about what.]

ORLANDO: I think IAN HOLM was just the perfect choice for Bilbo Baggins. I can't think of anyone better.

DOM: There's Zo. Zo.
SEAN A: Yeah.
DOM: One of the people that were helping us out. [Clears that right up huh?]
SEAN A: She set the tone for the work ethic for everybody on the movie.
ELIJAH: I don't know that man's name that she was talking to, but he was the quintessential Hobbit.
BILLY: Yeah.
ELIJAH: For all of the Hobbit sequences that we had. Unbelievable.
IAN M: And of course at this point the audience is introduced to the idea of that blue sky and the bright colours here that each episode in the story is, has it's own colour. Here are bright and green and yellow and sunny.

SEAN A: "Hobbits like fresh turned earth."
DOM: This is in Hamilton, which is probably one of the most special times that I had doing the movie. Just look at the place. It's paradise. We stayed at the... Do you remember the name of the hotel we stayed at?
ELIJAH: I don't remember the name of it. But that was my favourite place that we ever stayed.
DOM: My favourite hotel. I wish I knew. We should give them a plug. We should find out.
BILLY: Although it did have a lot of mosquitoes. Remember that?
DOM: Yeah.
ELIJAH: Did you end up moving out?
SEAN A: Are you talking about that bed and breakfast?
BILLY: IAN did because of the mosquitoes and I ended up in IAN's room.

3. THE SHIRE

DOM: Hang on. Here we go. Here's the money shot [on Frodo under the tree]
ELIJAH: Who's that?
DOM: Who is this shady character? Wait a minute, he's up!
SEAN A: He was in Deep Impact.
BILLY: Are you sure?
DOM: Yeah, he was.

IAN M: You can't tell from this, but there was a wind blowing and that hat was a bit of a problem.

ORLANDO: Having been a part of the production, and yet not really been a part of Hobbiton, I just, when I first saw this, I just was like, isn't this just the place everybody wants to have grown up? I remember thinking this is such a beautifully safe and happy environment. Very much like New Zealand. I have to say, when I return to New Zealand now, I kinda feel like you're returning to Hobbiton.

DOM: Goosy Goosy Gandy?
BILLY: What a great introduction, that character.
ELIJAH: That's fantastic.
DOM: I think IAN had a great time in Hamilton as well. Just hanging around the Hobbits and him being the only wizard.
BILLY: There's a bit in the shot that I don't know how they did it though. Were you see both of you together there just before that shot.
ELIJAH: Really? That's a forced perspective shot.
DOM: How far behind are you?
ELIJAH: Umm-- I'm about two feet behind and the size of the pole, of the cart was different from my side that it was for his.
BILLY: Weird.
DOM: Look at that. That's stunning.

IAN M: Now you can't tell from this that there was an idea of Fran Walsh, or was it PHILLIPA BOYENS, that Gandalf should just have given up smoking and I think they were a little bit worried that New Line or the censors, or people who don't like smokers were going to object to the number of characters who smoke in the movie, and of course Gandalf is a principle one, and we're not altogether certain what 'weed' it is he's putting into his pipe. In the '60s it was quite clear that it was some hallucinogenic weed. And so Gandalf had just given up smoking and all the scenes on the cart involved him not smoking, but sucking toffees. [Makes sound like sucking candies] All his dialogue came through sucking caramel candy. [resumes normal voice] And then I think we did another version with the pipe and then that was the version that went through. I rather liked that idea. It was a little bit cheeky, it was acknowledging that the world's moved on a little bit since the books were written. And there was a nice point when, sitting with Bilbo the night before the party, Gandalf gives in and has his first pipe for a long time. And then the council of Elrond the bag made a reappearance because that was an occasion that clearly Rivendell was a non-smoking establishment so Gandalf had to go back to his toffees.

ELIJAH: Those mouth movements that he has...
SEAN A: Are great.
ELIJAH: Unbelievable.
SEAN A: I remember feeling like we were a circus when we showed up here. Four thirty, five in the morning, just as the sun was about to start coming up. That sort of pre-dawn light and we show up on the set, and just beyond the hills of what you can see in the Shire there were fifty trucks and huge tents up where these little Hobbits kids were getting their feet put on early in the morning and you just sorta thought 'wow, man' it's like a big travelling circus.

ORLANDO: This little guy with his face, as he reacts to seeing the fireworks bust out of the back, y'know, the kids, this is just so PETER and FRAN, this moment for me. This is like, only they could have brought this in, y'know, it's just isn't that fantastic? It just warms your heart that bit. And this guy loving it and they, look, I love that. [Excuse me a moment, I think my comma key is stuck.]

ELIJAH: Those colours. I remember they were doing the digital grading and I walked I and they were still for ages trying to figure out the green...
SEAN A: How green, how yellow, yeah.
ELIJAH: They could not find the right green.
SEAN A: Because they wanted it to look real, but also brilliant.
ELIJAH: But it started to go all brown and they couldn't figure it out. Amazing.
SEAN A: I remember feeling really passionate that they had to get-- I want-- I needed them to get that right.
ELIJAH: Oh absolutely.
SEAN A: Just as an audience member. Like the Shire has got to be so lush, and so green, but so real.
ELIJAH: Cause the first passes were really brown.
SEAN A: Well, but also, it looked fantasy, and to me I didn't want it to be a fantasy, I wanted it to be a history and so, y'know, the Shire I wanted it to just be natural.
ELIJAH: Totally.

4. VERY OLD FRIENDS

IAN M: Working with IAN HOLM this couple for this couple of days whether we were together or not was two of the happiest days of my professional life. I've been an admirer of his since I saw him play Henry V at Stratford Upon Avon when we were both young. I certainly marked him down as the greatest actor of his generation on stage. Against all the odds you know. A noticeably small man, and these things matter in the theatre but his inner strength was so huge that his physicality was irrelevant. I think this is one of IAN HOLM's great film performances you know. It's a very daring performance. It risks being thought a bit melodramatic in that he shows an awful lot on his face and draws attention to the fact that it's an impersonation of a character. This isn't a documentary. This is a bit of storytelling and IAN sets the tone for that. IAN will tell you himself and I was privileged to hear it during the course of these working with him, his approach to acting. He makes every take, and there may be many takes of any scene, makes every take different, not wilfully, he just goes with it and feels it in the moment; this is why he always looks so fresh, presents the whole kaleidoscope in detail of the character and lets the director choose what he wants. And so an IAN HOLM performance doesn't exist until a director has decided what it should be. It's a very, very generous way of acting and takes enormous risks of course. Because you risk making a fool of yourself. I'm a little bit more careful.
DOM: It's great. He's so outrageous, IAN HOLM. I love what he did with Bilbo.
ELIJAH: And one of the quietest, most gentle men you'll ever meet in your life.
SEAN A: I remember begging him, not begging him, but asking him to autograph my book.
ELIJAH: You begged, stop it, you did.
SEAN A: Pleading, sort of shamelessly guilting him into signing my book. He wrote something great like y'know "Sean, at last we've finally met."
ELIJAH: You didn't hear about mine.
SEAN A: What did he say?
ELIJAH: I gave him my book, left it in the trailer, and evidently he didn't know it was mine so I got my book back and it said "All the best -IAN HOLM"
SEAN A: He left you Bag End, he leaves you wealth and riches, what else do you want?
ELIJAH: So I had him sign it again. I was actually really nervous to ask CATE BLANCHETT. It was you and me DOM, remember?
DOM: Yeah, yeah yeah, I remember. I don't think I was as nervous. I just ran in. "SIGN IT!" [laughing]
ELIJAH: Stop.
DOM: You know my dad's been confused for IAN HOLM twice. Two separate occasions on holiday.
BILLY: I can see that
ELIJAH: I can see that. A much younger version.
DOM: Yeah.
BILLY: Just amazing how quickly he changes. Kinda mood and emotion and stuff.
SEAN A: I like what IAN [MCKELLEN] is doing with his body language, his posture. I mean he's really like this big giant wizard in this room. And that's so not his real body frame when you see him. He's a delicate guy.
BILLY: I love this line.
DOM: So do I. It's one of my favourites. "Butter scraped over too much bread."
SEAN A: Toast.
DOM: Toast.
[LAUGHTER]
BILLY: I'll have some toast.
ELIJAH: I think it was bread actually.
DOM: A toast? Are we?
SEAN A: Is it time for elevensies?
DOM: Here's to The Shire.
BILLY: The Shire.

ORLANDO: This scene. One of my favourite moments from the whole movie. It's like the quiet before the storm. That complete bliss of just enjoying a smoke after a meal. And then Gandalf blowing a huge ship through that ring is just fantastic.

IAN M: Such a wonderful idea, straight from Tolkien, and so delicately managed. All these pyrotechnics and smoking are so believable that you know you are in very, very safe hands for the telling of this story.

5. A LONG EXPECTED PARTY

IAN M: Now I think that's what's ingenious about this, about these Hobbiton scenes is that you know it's going to be all right, there's a storyteller here that's going to use every device of modern film making and is going to put it at the disposal of telling a story which is increasingly more fascinating.

ELIJAH: There's a few notes about this scene by the way for anyone
SEAN A: Yeah like they made us do a week of dance rehearsals and they didn't put it in the movie.
DOM: BILLY was playing an instrument.
ELIJAH: Yeah and BILLY and DOM also change spots throughout the scene and various times.
DOM: Now could you see you there playing?
BILLY: I was playing in the band, yeah, I think.

ORLANDO: Isn't that just like the best firework display in the world? [I've figured it out. Orlando's high.]

DOM: Very cool.
ELIJAH: And you're-there's a shot of you carrying the cake?
DOM: Yep.
ELIJAH: Dom? And then suddenly you're on stage.
DOM: Yep
ELIJAH: Were you on stage before?
DOM: Yep. Pete loves all that stuff.

ORLANDO: Oh there's Katie and Billy. [scene of Bilbo telling a story to the children] I just think these kids, if they ever wanted to grow up as actors, they're just-look at that face! She's so in the moment. She's like...

ELIJAH: Those kids are absolute magic.

IAN: I adore these two.

DOM: Now hang on. This is the entrance to end all entrances. Oh my god.
BILLY: There we are.
DOM: If that is not two movie stars.
SEAN A: Cheeky.
DOM: We really look like Hobbits there.
ELIJAH: Yeah.
DOM: The whole reaction thing. Very cool. Pete allowed me to do this. I went for it, I said let me bite the apple at the end.
ELIJAH: You love the apples.
DOM: Yeah, I just thought, I always wanted Merry to keep eating and eating and eating.
BILLY: Do you remember that one take where I ran past and caught my neck on that rope?
DOM: [laughing] Oh yeah.
BILLY: [laughing] I don't think the camera was running.
ELIJAH: Ah this is the Sackville-Baggins bit that was cut out between IAN and I.
DOM: His ears twitch when they're around. Very cool.

ORLANDO: I flew over from London with BILLY and I met him-I met him at the foreign exchange-one of the foreign exchange counters and there were numerous within Heathrow, but we'd passed through the check-in and I'd met him at the foreign exchange counter. I was like, I walked up to the counter and said "Could I get some New Zealand dollars?" and BILLY was just walking past and he just turned to me and he said "You must be an elf." I was like "BILLY BOYD!" And we just had this massive hug. Never met him before, had no idea what he looked like and it was just amazing. So I flew over with BILLY and it was a great introduction. We sat on the plane and learnt the ring poem at the beginning of the book together. And it was like, it was just great.

DOM: That noise is BILLY shrieking--.
SEAN A: Screaming like a girl.
DOM: --like a girl because he thought his pants were on fire.
ELIJAH: Was that really? They put that on the soundtrack?
BILLY: Nobody told us that it was actually going to blow up y'know. I thought we were just gonna do that, then we'd do the blowing up bit later.
LAUGHTER
BILLY: So, it did blow up, I shrieked, wet myself
DOM: Yeah, I kind of laughed
BILLY: He laughed.
DOM: And they kept the take so-
BILLY: And he has called me "pissy legs" since.
ELIJAH GIGGLES
DOM: This is great. This next shot of us guys coming up after the fireworks. It took them about forty minutes to change our looks.

ORLANDO: Look at those faces!

DOM: And we came out singing "Chim Chimney" from Mary Poppins and looking like chimney sweeps.
BILLY: That was a laugh that day wasn't it?
DOM: We had really good fun.
BILLY: It was a riot that day.
ELIJAH: I still have pictures of you guys like that.
BILLY: This is all forced perspective as well.
DOM: Yeah.
BILLY: Where this table's all a different shape. D'you remember? It was on different levels so that-
SEAN A: Bigger on the front where IAN is, and smaller in the back where you are.
DOM: I was about two feet behind IAN.

DOM: I was always nervous as to how they were going to have the Ringbearer disappear.
ELIJAH: Me as well.
DOM: If they were going to do a kinda Star War-sy thing y'know? It's very selective kinda.
BILLY: See for the reaction shots of the Hobbits, did you not read this? Was IAN there? DOM?
DOM: Uhh...
BILLY: Did you not read it one time for-
DOM: That's right. Yeah, they had me like doing a jack-of-all-trades. I read this speech for the crowd and then also, when IAN finds the Ring at the very start when Gollum says "My Precious."
ELIJAH: Yeah? You were Gollum?
DOM: ANDY SERKIS wasn't there, so I was Gollum for a day, which is great because it's the only scene I ever did with just IAN HOLM.
ELIJAH: That's so cool.
SEAN A: That's why it was like a student film, a big budget student film. [Laughs] You know, because depending on where you were, out on an abandoned location or something, I mean, lots of times I'd help carry like batteries up to a set or location or something like that. It was all for the good of the movie, it was the mentality.
BILLY: Yeah, exactly.
SEAN A: I love that sound effect. [Bilbo vanishes]

6. FAREWELL DEAR BILBO

DOM: [cackles] You know they actually had IAN HOLM in this scene and they took him out digitally. Very clever. There he is. I can just see him. Can you still make him out? There he is. There. No, he's gone.
BILLY: I think it's you.
DOM: There he is. Very good. Can you guys not see him?
SEAN A: I can see him.
DOM: There he is.
BILLY: Ah yeah. [Bilbo reappears]
DOM: He was there all the time for me though.
IAN: We were not doing this together, this was filmed on separate occasions, so IAN was looking up into space and so am I looking down into it and the eye line wasn't quite accurate though.

ELIJAH: "None of them should be used lightly"
SEAN A: The cinematography in this scene is awesome.
ELIJAH: Unbelievable.
DOM: The effect that they do on IAN where he just starts to go all dark.
SEAN A: "Don't take me for a conjurer of cheap tricks." That's when he becomes a wizard. That's when you're sorta like 'oh, so he's a WIZARD.'
DOM: And I love it here where you see IAN get-IAN HOLM get taken over by the Ring and become quite nasty and spiteful.
ELIJAH: That little punch he does is unbelievable.
DOM: "You want it for yourself!"
ELIJAH: One of my favourite moments in the movie.

ORLANDO: You know somebody who I think just needs mentioning as well, when I first saw it what Howard Shore did with the music, it's so mind-blowing. I just think the subtlety, his ability to sort of layer it in there like it's a perfect compliment to the film. And it's almost like it's not there. Y'know, it's like it just, the subtlety and the way it adds to the tension and the drama of the moment. It's just, I was so impressed at every level, at every stage of the journey, and of the film. The way the music underscores it so subtly I think that's the talent, right there. [I'm telling you. Totally high.]

SEAN A: Just as an actor, watching him work the different camera angles with his face, he's just such a genus.
ELIJAH: It's hard to talk during this. It's so captivating. I've seen it far too many times to mention but...

IAN: It's big acting but it's worth it isn't it? Because you know some big thing's at stake.
ELIJAH: Ah! Fantastic. [Bilbo's transformation]
SEAN A: The sound of the wood creaking in the background.
DOM: It's as if Bag End is stretching.

ORLANDO: It's so sweet, Gandalf, I think IAN MCKELLAN does such a fantastic job in this sequence, in these scenes with the Hobbits.

DOM: Child like Hobbits.

ORLANDO: But he's like the granddaddy of the whole film. He's like the kind of-he is the wise old grey wizard that we turn to but it just speaks for his-for the way he portrayed the role.

DOM: I think we were all quite worried about the scale issue, but it just worked so well.
SEAN A: Yeah, I was worried. I mean some of the early footage we saw using the scale doubles and stuff, it was just so obvious to me, that it wasn't-
DOM: You.
SEAN A: Me or you or you know. But it's amazing.
ELIJAH: Like this next shot of him walking away is KIRAN right?
DOM: Yep. Also, when he drops the Ring onto the floor, they had a magnetic floor.
SEAN A: Did they?
DOM: Yeah. So the Ring wouldn't bounce as it hit the floor, it sticks by magnet. To the other side of the floor.
ELIJAH: Oh, that's fantastic.
DOM: Isn't that great?
BILLY: How did you know that?
DOM: I'm clever man. There you go. [Ring drops]
ELIJAH: The weight of the One Ring.
DOM: Exactly
BILLY: That's great. I didn't know that.
DOM: You need to just kind of learn.
BILLY: I suppose if I watch the DVD I'll get that.
DOM: There you go.
ELIJAH: Now that exterior, the shot just before that was actually on the set. Cause they did have the exterior of the opening to Bag End on the stage.
SEAN A: It's one of the things that you-that took a long time for me to get used to the idea of having trust and faith in was PETER's complete confidence in that a shot inside the set here, and just a quick reverse that's actually outside in Hamilton where you see what's going on in the shot...I mean it's so seamless and they were done-shots were done, this shot was done, maybe five months later than the shot two shots previous.

7. KEEP IT SECRET KEEP IT SAFE

ELIJAH: It's all of these little bits I think all of us had to get used to.
SEAN A: Like right there, that's on the set in Wellington and the shot just before that was in Hamilton about 400 miles away.
ELIJAH: And that was probably an insert shot not even done on that day. Like the Ring, know what I mean? Like the Richard Bluck unit.
SEAN A: But it just goes to show you...Wow, I love the Eye.
DOM: That scared the bejesus out of me the first time I saw it in the cinema. Really made me jump.

DOM: I have a stamp. I have a wax stamp with a 'D' on it.
SEAN A: Do you really? That's the coolest thing in the world.
ELIJAH: I have a wax stamp with the Japanese letters for Frodo.
DOM: That's right, I got mine in Japan as well.
BILLY: Well I'll look forward to having correspondence with you.
DOM: I will never send you a letter. No.
BILLY: Well thank you very much.
ELIJAH: I'll send you one BILLY.
BILLY: Thank you. Thank you ELIJAH.
DOM: Just to let everybody know, IAN does not have a nose like that. It's a prosthetic piece. I wouldn't like the people to think that he had a kind of beak. Put your eye out. [Do you sometimes get the feeling these guys are five?]

8. THE ACCOUNT OF ISILDUR

SEAN A: These shots to me with the combination of the miniatures that's just the coolest.
ELIJAH: It's a lot of elements
SEAN A: It's all these different digital elements, scenic-it's just awesome.
ELIJAH: That right there, I mean, is an actual building.
SEAN A: That's a model. That's a miniature. And the guys spent a year, building it and crafting it.
ELIJAH: All those tiny little candles.
SEAN A: Those are digital.
ELIJAH: I know.
DOM: Here they come. [shot of Black Riders] Awesome shot. Doors open. Here come the boys.

IAN: A shot like that reminds you of a western. And yet you're in a landscape you've never seen before.

SEAN A: That's awesome. And the sound just makes it work so great.
ELIJAH: A little taste of Minas Tirith. To be seen at a later date in full.
SEAN A: It's funny. It's technically a miniature because it's not the size of a real city, but it's huge when you walk into the building. To me that's like a thing, after seeing the movie five, six, seven times.
ELIJAH: They're bigatures.
SEAN A: They're bigatures.
ELIJAH: [amused] They're bigatures.
SEAN A: [laughing] Makes me sound like I'm racially insensitive.
BILLY: That scene there two seconds ago when IAN was walking up the street must have been in the real Minas Tirith, which was only built in the last three months or something.
ELIJAH: Isn't that incredible?
DOM: There's a great scene from the gag reel where he's rifling through papers and he comes across script pages.
ELIJAH: And rips them apart.
SEAN A: Yeah, everyday-that's something people watching the DVD probably don't know-everyday they were constantly rewriting. Polishing, adjusting, writing scenes for the sets that were almost finished being built that we were going to be shooting on 48 hours later. [Everything Sean mentions that people watching might not know is always something we've all heard a million times. You get used to it.]
ELIJAH: Also I think in an attempt to get closer to Tolkien.
SEAN A: While sort of straddling that fine line between the antiquated language that might not resonate with a contemporary audience, but being true to it at the same time. They did it. They did a phenomenal job.
DOM: Eh, you're not so tough doggie.
ELIJAH: Well here's one question that someone asked, is do Hobbits have dogs? Like that?
DOM: This guy does.
[Laughter]
SEAN A: Not for long.
DOM: He reminds me of you BILL. I think he's a Took.
BILLY: You think he is? He does look somewhat like a Took.
SEAN A: That Hobbits hole is just a facade right? Just a front little faceplate of a Hobbits hole.

9. THE GREEN DRAGON

DOM: Oh, here we go.
ELIJAH: Yes!
DOM: The Green Dragon.
SEAN A: Finally.
DOM: This was something that we really, really fought to get in the film and unfortunately didn't make it.
SEAN A: Devastating that it wasn't in the film.
ELIJAH: It's such a Hobbits moment.
DOM: We're drunk. Not in-[laughs] not in real life.
SEAN A: You guys owned that song. It was so gold.
DOM: That was a long nerve-wracking day. Singing in front of all those people.
ELIJAH: It was. We did fight for that. Mainly because it establishes the relationship between us, which is awesome, and you also get a sense of the sweeter, happier moments before the journey.
DOM: You seldom see Hobbits behaving as they really should do.
BILLY: A nice moment with Sam there as well too.
ELIJAH: Oh that was a fantastic shot of BK just there doing his drunken Sam walk.

10. THE SHADOW OF THE PAST

SEAN A: For people out there who don't know, BK is 3 foot 4 in reality and he's from India, he's a gorgeous man, an incredible chess player...
ELIJAH: [doing a BK impression] I love red wine.
SEAN A: ...and had a very interesting sort of head jiggle.
ELIJAH: Very characteristic of Indian people.
SEAN A: Yeah it was sort of confidence.
DOM: To say yes, they sort of shake their head.

ORLANDO: I can't believe ELIJAH was eighteen when he started filming this, I cannot believe the guy was eighteen and he assumed the responsibility of pretty much leading this band of merry-of this Fellowship of merry races and individuals. He's such a courageous young man. At that age and he's sort of worldly wise anyway, a wisdom that somebody who's been well brought up and who's experienced life on many different levels through work, I would imagine as well, but he did and incredible job. I'm thinking now of something that will be seen in the third movie, in the end of the third movie, right at the end and I remember seeing a shot in the fire of Mount Doom, I remember seeing some rushes from that which'll be coming out in the third movie obviously and I just thought 'My god, the guy, he just transformed'. He went on this journey as a Hobbit and as a young Hobbit leaving the Shire and becoming this kind of warrior Hobbits and human. As a Hobbit and as a human, ELIJAH grew immensely over this whole production, and I'm constantly amazed at his sensitivity and his look and his sort of handle on the character and the dialogue. I know as an actor to try and do an accent is just not an easy thing to do, it can really block you, and yet he just embraced it and went with it. Very talented young guy. [He's totally in love with Elijah. And rambling. Again.]

SEAN A: I've had several people ask me, in all sincerity, if your eyes were digitally enhanced.
ELIJAH: I know. I've been asked the same question by far too many people.
SEAN A: And I keep saying, no, no they're not.
ELIJAH: The thing that always gets me is, they're like "do you wear contacts?" I'll say "yes, I do." "AHA!"
DOM: Coloured contacts.
SEAN A: Busted! No. Clear contacts.
ELIJAH: They're clear. I'm-bad vision.
SEAN A: But not just for the colour, people want to know if your eyes are made bigger on screen.
ELIJAH: Yeah. [Said in this long suffering voice.]
DOM: They did have to mess around with your eyes a little bit though, cause you are quite cross-eyed in real life aren't you?
ELIJAH: Yeah.
BILLY: Which is nice, cause that's not very movie star like. You need to look straight, y'know.
ELIJAH: I know, I've got my own digital enhancer that travels with me wherever I go.
SEAN A: I remember the first day my daughter met you it was like-
ELIJAH: I fell in love.
SEAN A: Well she fell in love. She looked at your eyes and it was like you two mind melded. It was amazing.
ELIJAH: Aw, she's wonderful.
DOM: Mind melded. That's great SEAN. Mind melded. I'm gonna write that down.

IAN: I was lucky not to-to be basically using my own voice and my own accent. You forget, don't you that ELIJAH WOOD is not. He's always speaking with a foreign accent effortlessly but nevertheless you had to pronounce MoRdoR and you had to get those resonant 'R's.

ELIJAH: That was my first blue screen shot [on Frodo's "We'll put it away"]
BILLY: Oh yeah? That's great.
ELIJAH: Walking on a blue board.
SEAN A: God do you remember when they used this shot in every trailer?
ELIJAH: Yeah. I got kinda sick of it myself.
SEAN A: I was in a movie theatre and it was later in the sort of half life of that trailer and everybody was saying the line along with you out loud.
ELIJAH: NO!
SEAN A: Yes they were.
ELIJAH: Oh my god.
SEAN A: It was awesome.
ELIJAH: This is an awesome shot [the Orcs torturing Gollum].
SEAN A: These are my favourite shots in the movie. The anvils and the iron. Aw, poor Gollum, look at him.
ELIJAH: Some of the most incredible CG.
DOM: There's something very adorable about Gollum, even though he kind of is, y'know, quite a snidey little character. I hate to see him get tortured is all.

ORLANDO: Man, the Black Riders, are they not like, do they not just embody evil and fear? I mean they're fantastic. I was shaken up because the Black Riders were just so scary and stuff. And I always ask kids, actually when I meet them and they talk to me about Rings, I'm always, "so did you find the Black Riders scary?" And a lot of them try to put on a brave face, but I reckon the Black Riders, they just embody fear. And what's great is that they're ghosts, they're shadows of who they were. It's like if you don't confront your fear you become it. [Completely, utterly stoned.]

IAN: That's one of the moments when Gandalf realises despite his age, despite his experience, despite his knowledge, he doesn't have the resource for success in this venture as this little angelic looking Hobbits.

BILLY: It's great that you try all those things to get to not take it though. Really Hobbity.
ELIJAH: What's that?
BILLY: Y'know, not to be a hero, not to say "what should I do?" straightaway, you do all the other options first, y'know, "you take it" or "somebody else take it."
DOM: "We'll bury it."
ELIJAH: "It can't stay here."

ORLANDO: IAN was really, I remember when he first arrived in New Zealand, I kinda couldn't take my eyes off him for a couple of months in a way. It's like even when his back was turned, he just sort of draws you in. It's like he's constantly switched on or something. It's just his presence is very kind of mesmerising and interesting. This is an opportunity to work with the likes of Mr. MCKELLEN and Mr. HOLM and Mr. LEE. I mean, they're in the history books in terms of life achievement in acting and what they're done for characters and how they've brought them to like so I couldn't have been more privileged and proud to be working with them.

DOM: Where do you imagine he hits you SEAN? Right on the top of your head?
SEAN A: Shoulder.

ORLANDO: It was amazing when I saw this and I just saw SEAN, he was so funny, he was just so sensitive, sweet and funny. I was pleasantly surprised at the kind of-the way he portrayed Sam. When I was working with the Hobbits I was normally working with their doubles. I hung out with the Hobbits all the time off set and stuff, but I really didn't see a lot of what was going on and he was just so charming and brave as that character. I love that sequence when he's thrown over the table. [Okay, stop it Orlando, you're gushing all over my keyboard.]

SEAN A: Oh I remember this day. [Sam and Frodo walking] This was fun.
DOM: Yeah that looks really cool.
ELIJAH: That was when we didn't have anything to shoot up on the mountain.
SEAN A: It's the northern Mount Owen.
ELIJAH: Remember when we were waiting? All those days of playing Cup?
DOM: Oh, Cup. Fantastic game.
BILLY: Cup by the way, is when you take a paper cup-
SEAN A: Dixie cup.
BILLY: A Dixie cup if you're American.
DOM: Or a paper cup if you speak English.
[laughter]
BILLY: And you keep it up just by passing it to each other. Which sounds quite boring but if you're waiting for a helicopter for four days it becomes the main way you pass the day.
DOM: I would just like to say that it's an original DOMINIC MONAGHAN game, available online at my website, and you can use different cups, but if you want you can log onto my website and get an official Cup cup.
BILLY: [announcer voice] DOMINICMONAGHAN'scrazygames.com
DOM: Another game called Nudge, which BILLY is a huge fan of, so if anyone wants me to get involved with game making, I'm available. [I wonder how many times Billy smacked the crap out of him; like brothers in the backseat of the car. "Stop touching me!!]

11. THE PASSING OF THE ELVES

ELIJAH: Speaking of game making, what was the name of the fake game that y'all tried to get me into?
SEAN A: [laughing]
BILLY: Oh! Tig.
DOM: Tig? Tag?
ELIJAH: Tig.
SEAN A: That was good.
ELIJAH: Oh my god.
BILLY: Tig. I was when we were filming Weathertop. And myself and DOM just started tigging each other y'know, touching each other going, "Tig. Tig." Just like, for no reason. And then SEAN came over-
SEAN A: Slightly different from Tag.
BILLY: And he came over and started doing it as well. And then we'd say "Tig-tig. Tig-tag." Like for no reason.
DOM: Tog-tig.
BILLY: And then ELIJAH came over and said "What are you guys doing?" said, "Oh, we're playing a game called Tig." He says how do you play? And then we spent like the next two hours making up rules.
ELIJAH: And they're trying to teach me, and of course I was getting everything wrong because they were making it up as they went along.
SEAN A: He couldn't follow the game as the three of us were forever frustrated that he wasn't following these new rules that we were continuing to make up.
DOM: So we would play. The three of us were constantly getting it right. Every time. ELIJAH tried a new way of tigging someone, we'd say "No ELIJAH, you can't tig on a tog" "You can't tag on a tig" "You have to do an elephant impression if you're gonna tig BILLY" [SEAN A cracking up] "And if BILLY's going to tig you back you have to get on your knees and take your trousers down."
BILLY: How many times ELIJAH you can't double tig a tag. [Laughter]
DOM: And for like three weeks he was saying how much he enjoyed playing Tig-
SEAN A: He wanted to get the rulebook didn't he?
BILLY: But do you remember we forgot to say it was a wind up? And it was like a year later he says, "Why do we never play Tig?"
{Laughter]
ELIJAH: Then they finally let the cat out of the bag. My whole world came shattering down on me when they told me that was a lie. Cause for a whole year I believed that that was a real game and then they told me. [Elijah Wood is the most gullible creature on earth.]
BILLY and DOM: Sorry ELIJAH.
ELIJAH: What else was not true? That's what I was asking.
SEAN A: It undermines the integrity of the entire relationship, I agree.
ELIJAH: That's what I think.
DOM: It was part of the whole bonding experience.
BILLY: Yeah, although me and DOM are actually just lies.
SEAN A giggles.
DOM: Yeah, big bag of lies
SEAN A: Not that big a bag.

12. SAURUMAN THE WHITE

DOM: CHRISTOPHER LEE was very keen to play Gandalf at one point wasn't he? Just to be involved in the movie in any way.
ELIJAH: He's a massive fan of the books.
SEAN A: He knew the sort of sacred importance of the text to the people who've loved them for so long
SEAN A: Yeah, I definitely got nervous when he came around because I wanted to make sure that any pronunciations were as correct as they could be.
ELIJAH: He had trouble getting around in his clothes I remember. They're long and flowy. At one point he said, "These clothes really are a menace."
DOM: He has such a fantastic way of talking. "Can't get up these goddamned stairs PETER." [laughs]

IAN: I was pleased we were nominated by MTV as the best fight of the year.

13. A SHORT CUT TO MUSHROOMS

SEAN A: This is when I knew DOM didn't like me, 'cause he hit me so hard when he came out of the cornfield.
ELIJAH: Wasn't it my birthday this day?
DOM: It was close to it. I was in a really bad mood this day because being in a field surrounded by plants and things, I've just got really bad hay fever. I was just sneezing and my skin was going crazy. I was in a very bad mood.
BILLY: This shot here.
DOM: Stupid Sam.
SEAN A: I wasn't the one who stopped in the middle of the road.
DOM: Well we could have stayed up if you hadn't banged into us.
SEAN A: This is the first shot we every filmed on the movie right?
DOM: First day of filming. Yeah, ELIJAH let out a little tommy squeaker.
SEAN A: And that's a true story.
ELIJAH: That's a very true story.
SEAN A: ELIJAH had gas. And let out a great--
ELIJAH: Pressure gas.
SEAN A: It was pressure gas?
ELIJAH: Yeah.
SEAN A: You mean it wouldn't have come out if DOM hadn't landed on you?
ELIJAH: Yeah exactly.
SEAN A: But you, I didn't even hear it, I was too busy sort of--
DOM: Concentrating on the scene.
BILLY: I heard it. I swear it blew a parting in my hair.
SEAN A: The translation there, it blew a "part" in his hair. [laughs]
BILLY: Parting. A parting. Part isn't funny.
ELIJAH giggles
DOM: There's a nice reference to a chapter in the movie called a shortcut to mushrooms where I say "It was just a shortcut," and Sam says, "A shortcut to what?" and them BILLY says "mushrooms."
SEAN A: That's when I knew that PETER was really committed to making sure that the audience, that he put things in there that fans of the book would be able to latch on to as a fun connection. Cause when would a chapter title be said? And to work it into the lines of the movie...
Oh, this was the first shot we did wasn't it?
DOM: No, I thought falling down was.
ELIJAH: No, falling down was the first thing we did.
SEAN A: Was it? I thought it was coming up over--
ELIJAH: No we did that later in the day. This is still the first day of shooting.
Did you notice the boo-boo with the horse, how it sort of magically comes out of the tree?
SEAN A: You mean he doesn't pass from the other side?
ELIJAH: No. He comes from out-- out of the centre.
DOM: I don't know what's happening in the moment here, but I look really handsome.
[LAUGHTER]
SEAN A: Those insert shots of the worms coming out were done months and months and months later where they had the stage with the Lothlorian...
ELIJAH: That's right, they did that on the side
SEAN A: Coming out on the other side. We were like, what are you doing with these? It was like some sort of National Geographic.
ELIJAH: They had a weta there as well.
DOM: I don't know why they've not included more of the spider, because the spider goes over my shoulder and I then put him on my hand and then put him on a log and I don't know why they didn't include that.
SEAN A: It was uncomfortable under there wasn't it? We were all sort of elbowing each other for space.
BILLY: It was quite cold as well. I remember because it was the first day. Did we, we didn't have feet on that day I don't think, did we?
DOM: Did we?
ELIJAH: Yeah we did.
BILLY: No we didn't, because I remember you took your boots off SEAN. To get the kind of feeling...
SEAN A: Oh that's right.

14. BUCKLEBERRY FERRY

BILLY: Then I think we all thought, we're Hobbits, we'd better take our boots off. I was really cold.
SEAN A: I think your feet were colder than anybody's for the duration of the shoot.
ELIJAH: But for the shot of us jumping over we had feet.
BILLY: Yeah, so it must have been--
ELIJAH: The next day when we--
DOM: Do you remember this? [Hobbits running down the hill in the dark] The ground was so slippery that we were falling over. SEAN you fell on your face a couple times.
ELIJAH: It was raining here yeah?
SEAN A: It was raining and we had slippery feet.
DOM: Our shoes were flying off.
BILLY: Remember once we got to the end of the run and we couldn't actually get back up the hill to get to the start again. People had to carry us up and stuff.
ELIJAH: That's right.
No traction whatsoever.
DOM: I love that little bit there. The first real interaction between Frodo and Merry. I always liked that.
ELIJAH: Day for night. Shot that in the day.
DOM: Here we go. Best line in the movie. Right now.
[Merry: "Buckleberry Ferry. Follow me."]
ELIJAH: Oh, that was magical.
DOM: That was breathtaking.
SEAN A: It was Harrison Ford basically.
DOM: This was kind of scary, hey guys?
SEAN A: They had the horse up on that little dance floor they had built in the forest. The coolest was the Buckleberry Ferry though.
DOM: I acquired a very, very painful splinter when we did the Buckleberry Ferry thing.
ELIJAH: Did you?
DOM: Yeah, I was nearly hospitalised.
BILLY: I remember that. [smirking, you can hear it]
DOM: Just here.
BILLY: He was in tears, he was sweating, he almost fainted. And it was about the size of a --
DOM: A house.
BILLY: [laughs] it was like half the size of a matchstick.
DOM: Yeah, but I think it was made of platinum or something.
BILLY: Good jump. Good jump.
ELIJAH: Ah thank you.
DOM: That was the second take cause the first take he actually jumped right over the barge and landed in the water.
ELIJAH: But I did a fantastic swan dive.
DOM: Yeah, it was great. 8.5.
SEAN A: It was a belly flop.
BILLY: I remember the ferry kept sinking as well.
SEAN A: And nobody could figure out how to put it together, and then Barrie Osborne, our producer, who was like a military guy, an army guy in the Korean War or something, he comes out with his Army manual and he's like "Okay, let's figure it out." Barrie single-handedly repaired Buckleberry Ferry.
Oh, and the horse fell in the water with the--
ELIJAH: No!
SEAN A: Yeah, the horse was drowning. It was like kicking and everything else. He helped him out.
ELIJAH: That's a new addition to the story. [how did he miss that? Are they making this stuff up now??]

15. AT THE SIGN OF THE PRANCING PONY

SEAN A: Very wet and cold this day.
DOM: I remember this day [laughing]
ELIJAH: This is a fantastic shot. Tell him the story behind that.
SEAN A: My idea.
ELIJAH: Well tell them, it's fantastic! [laughing]
DOM: I just thought of something else where BILLY and I had turned up a couple hours earlier, and it wasn't dark yet, we were waiting for the light to dim and there was all these golf balls in the ground.
BILLY LAUGHS
DOM: In the ground that were there to map out certain peoples movements and all this kind of stuff. And I turned around to BILL and said, "Look, there's some golf balls over there, but I'm gonna have one." I just went over, picked up a golf ball and walked off. BILLY was saying "Put it back, they're there for a reason DOM." [ELIJAH is tittering. Literally.]
BILLY: What people don't understand is Merry and Pippin are completely changed 'round, it's like a mirror image in real life, DOM and me, I'm like Merry and he's Pippin. [I wanted to know what ELIJAH was trying to get SEAN to explain.]
LAUGHTER
SEAN A: Hey did we miss PETER's cameo?
DOM: Yeah, we just did. This is in the studio in Wellington.
SEAN A: With the Big Rigs, which they didn't ultimately use very much.
ELIJAH: Very effective.
BILLY: Tall Paul. A guy called Paul who doubled for virtually everyone.
ELIJAH: Including LIV.
BILLY: He was like 7 foot 4 or something?
SEAN: "Good evening, little masters, " he says. Now this guy walking by us is actually a five foot tall female gymnast on stilts dressed as a man.
DOM: Called Becky. REBECCA FITZGERALD.
BILLY: She was also the front of the horse in some scenes when we used the pantomime horse when--remember that?
ELIJAH: That's right.
BILLY: For Bill the Pony.
ELIJAH: Bill the Pomy. Pomy?
BILLY: Pomy.
SEAN A: Pomy.
DOM: This guy was an interesting guy. This was all shot in Wellington.
SEAN A: "Pointy hat? Haven't seen him in years."
DOM: Oh SEAN.
SEAN A: Sorry.
ELIJAH: How many times have you seen this?
DOM: This always looks weird to me, this bit. Why do we all lean in at the same time?
BILLY: We're concerned.
ELIJAH: I'm completely blocking you with my shadow as well.
SEAN A: Cause we're little Hobbits out of our element and we're huddling for a conference.
ELIJAH: What is it about cheese and bread that Hobbits love so much?
SEAN A: I don't know, it's good though. I liked that cheese and bread.
DOM: Great faces in this part. Once again, I don't know what's happening, but BILLY and I look really handsome. Some strange cinematography going on there.
ELIJAH: May have been the digital grading.
SEAN A: Did they just add a shot of a cat in there?
DOM: Yeah--no, that was in.
SEAN A: That was in the movie?
BILLY: Yep.

DOM: Great introduction of VIGGO here.

ORLANDO: I think this is possibly one of the coolest entrances to movie ever. [Not the last time you'll hear him say that.]

DOM: He wasn't here when he did this right?
ELIJAH: No. Blue screen.
BILLY: This was quite early in the shoot wasn't it?

ORLANDO: VIGGO. He's like a hero of mine now. Such a generous actor, such a fantastic guy to work with. Y'know, he's so brilliant, his attention to detail, his focus and his work ethic, the way he kind of puts everything he's got into his role. He was great, cause this was my first experience on a film and he was just a fantastic guide y'know. [In love. With everyone. I'm just sayin'.]

IAN: Those shot's of Frodo's hands, revealing that he bites his nails are very touching. Brave of ELIJAH to reveal that he bites his nails right down to the quick. I said to him one day, "Do you not mind people knowing you bite your nails?" "Nope." He just smiled.

SEAN A: Those Ringwraiths screeching, it's just like, wow. Actually when PETER, who would act out all the different parts and all the different monsters and everything else to try and get us to have a sense of what it was we were supposed to be afraid of, would do that screeching sound, and I always sort of wondered what the actual sound would sound like when it was finally done because he had such a specific " ". And it sounded exactly like it actually. Just y'know, more.

IAN: I wonder if audiences asked who's the oldest of the four Hobbits. Whether they would guess it was BILLY BOYD, that very, very youthful looking man in his early thirties convincingly playing against ELIJAH who celebrated his eighteenth birthday during the shooting.
ELIJAH: One of the few scenes that we actually did rehearse. There were only a few that we actually went through.
BILLY: And this is in Stone Street Studios, yeah?
ELIJAH: Studio B?
BILLY: That's right yeah.
SEAN A: I was so terrifying in this scene that VIGGO was really genuinely nervous.
DOM: He was.
BILLY: Are you sure that's true?
SEAN A LAUGHS

16. THE NAZGUL

ELIJAH: And right outside this room, cause that's the smaller sized room, was the bigger sized little portion.
BILLY: That's right, yeah.
ELIJAH: For the Hobbits.
BILLY: For the Hobbits to be in.
DOM: These guys had a terrible time trying to get these horses through the mud.
SEAN A: The mud was really thick.
DOM: This is a great shot. [The Nazgul enter the Inn] I love the way evil just follows them around, y'know, everything's colder, everything's dark. Very cool.
SEAN A: That's an attractive shot of you DOM.
DOM: Yeah, well I had my mouth open. There's a separate take of me sucking my thumb--
ELIJAH: Which is coming up.
DOM: --PETE just wouldn't put in.
ELIJAH: I wonder if he took it out?
DOM: I think he did.
ELIJAH: Why? I thought that was such a great little addition.
DOM: Maybe it was a bit too over the top. I don't know if Merry would really suck his thumb.
SEAN A: I never understood why they wouldn't just go across the street to get us.
DOM: They don't know we're on the other side of the street.

ORLANDO: You see them stabbing the pillows and you really thing "Oh my god, they've got them."

DOM: They're probably saying to each other, "Oh, the Hobbits are just pillows. They're just pillows."
LAUGHTER
BILLY: "They become feathers when you stab them."
DOM: "How can he carry a Ring if he's just made of feathers?" I remember having a slight laughing fit when we did this scene cause I was so close to you, sort of leaning further and further into you.
ELIJAH: Did you notice at the beginning of that shot you can actually see me move back into frame? Cause remember I had to start out--
BILLY: Cause the camera
ELIJAH: To make room for the camera
BILLY: To pass so close in front of you.
DOM: Works though, it works.
ELIJAH: It does work.
SEAN A: Your eye, it's too quick unless you stop and look at it, your eye doesn't catch it.
ELIJAH: I've seen it too many times, I pick it up every time there.
SEAN A: And you were there when you did it.
ELIJAH: This is true. [laughs] Well so were you. [Idiots. Really.]
DOM: This is quite late on right?
SEAN A: The horse stepped on my prosthetic foot and ripped off my toes that day.
ELIJAH: I stepped on glass that day and didn't know it until the end cause my foot was so numb.
DOM: It's great this kind of division with the Hobbits and Aragorn, or Strider at the moment, still don't know whether they should trust him, but they have no choice.
SEAN A: I remember in the marshes scene that's coming up I was leading Bill the Pony through the marshes but they couldn't put the horse in the marshes because I was hard enough for us to get out of it and they didn't want the horse to get stuck. Well look, there it is. [LAUGHTER] Fake horse. So in one of the close ups, I have the rope leading it and just behind me, just out of frame is another guy holding the rope up, so I was sort of leading one of the grips.
DOM: Now this we could talk about forever. The snow.
ELIJAH: This is actually the day we got snowed out.
SEAN A: We showed up in the morning, no snow on the ground, the clouds were just starting to form. By three hours into it, it was the biggest snowstorm I've ever seen.
ELIJAH:I believe this is actually the day after.
SEAN A: What's in here is the day after we started filming it without the snow. We actually filmed in the snow with the biggest snowflakes I've ever seen. One flake would lay over your whole hand.
BILLY: I actually thought they were scale snowflakes because of the Hobbits.
SEAN A: That must have hurt. [Pippin hit with the apple]
BILLY: Well that was about the fifteenth.

17. THE MIDGEWATER MARSHES

SEAN A Laughs.
BILLY: It was starting to hurt then yeah. And VIGGO was actually throwing the apples.
SEAN A: Hard.
BILLY: And he seemed to be really really enjoying it I thought.
DOM: Oh, Midgewater Marshes.
SEAN A: Oh we got stuck in here. I'm glad they put the marshes back in.
DOM: So am I. It was just hell, d'you remember?
DOM and BILLY: Mmmhmm.
ELIJAH: Was that an "mmhmm" in unison?
SEAN A: laughs
BILLY: It was horrible wasn't it?
DOM: Aw BILLY.
SEAN A: And your prosthetic feet start to get ripped off.
DOM: Look at this, this is outrageous.
BILLY: SEAN Actually pushed me when I fell into the water. [Sam will kill him if he tries anything. TM CassieClaire]
SEAN A: I was trying to help you.
BILLY: He says he was trying to help me. I don't think so.
DOM: He pushed you right down.
BILLY: Pushed me.
ELIJAH: I think the thing I want to get across to people most about VIGGO, that I think is important for people to know. Because it's something that astonished me to no end, was he was cast on this movie so fast like, there was a whole controversy with another actor cast as Aragorn. And it didn't work out and he was let go within the first couple days of filming. Within that first week of filming, our schedule called for Aragorn. We didn't have an Aragorn. It was a decision that was made to call VIGGO and get VIGGO. And it was one of those things where it wasn't like, let's try him out, that he will be perfect king of thing. It was amazing how it worked out. He got the call, talked to them on the phone for hours, and agreed to do it. Apparently from what he says, greatly due to his son pushing him to do it cause his son was a big fan of Lord of the Rings.

18. THE SPOILING OF ISENGARD

DOM: I like what CHRISTOPHER LEE's doing with his fingers.
ELIJAH: They look inhuman. On that particular day, CHRISTOPHER had hurt his hand about three or four days previous, stuck in a door
SEAN A: Closed in a door, yeah.
ELIJAH: He had to go to the hospital and get skin grafts and all the like and that's why he had to cover his hand for that particular shot
DOM: It' looks good.

SEAN A: I love the whole theme of the way the industrialists are tearing apart the earth for their own kind of y'know, just totally heartless and uncaring way. A cautionary tale of industrialism for it's own end. I just love that it comes through strong.
DOM: Really does. [Scene of Gandalf atop Isengard] Cold up there.

19. A KNIFE IN THE DARK

DOM: This was all blue screen. [Weathertop]
SEAN A: Not all blue screen.
DOM: Well that shot of
SEAN A: Just the bit on the top that wasn't so rounded.
ELIJAH: I wonder what shots are mattes as well, cause there are lots of matte paintings in the film and no one's really pointed that out to me.
DOM: That's my favourite line i the movie as he throws me the sword I go "Hup!"
SEAN A: Is that a line?
DOM: It's a suggestion towards a line. Hup!
SEAN A: It's an utterance.
ELIJAH: I remember I had to redo this in looping because it was so American.
DOM: Really?
ELIJAH: I actually literally said, "What are you doing?" [Very very American]
SEAN A: I had one like that back in the forest when we're running, ROISIN CARTY our number two dialect coach came up to me. My line was "Get down." and Sam is supposed to say, y'know, "Frodo, get down!" and she came up to me and said, "SEAN that was lovely, that one went a little 'Giddown!'."
ELIJAH: The shot previously where the Hobbits pulled out all the swords and turn around is actually, the rehearsals are responsible for one of the funniest things I've ever seen DOM do. I swear to god.
SEAN A: [giggling] If they're not gonna see, there's no- [Why is there no gag reel?]
ELIJAH: Well it's all right to make reference. We replayed that thing how many times? Thirty times?
DOM: And they were really mad with us because we were crying with laughter.
SEAN A: We were taking too long.
BILLY: And it was just DOM forgetting to do his exit and then when he does remember, he does this double take which is so funny.
SEAN: It's a moment of realization, "Oh my god, it's my turn, I'm supposed to be going."
ELIJAH: The use of slow motion in this movie is beautiful.
BILLY: Now you have to remember, between these shots we were teaching ELIJAH how to play Tig.
ELIJAH: That's right. [SEAN laughs] Keep that in the back of your mind. The lie.
DOM: This was very early on in the shooting.
SEAN A: That hurt by the way. That landing on the rock.
ELIJAH: A lot of practise for sword fighting for me for this sequence and I don't think there's any sword fighting.
SEAN A: You dropped the sword the first time you got a chance to use it.
ELIJAH: I swear, there were weeks and weeks of practise.
SEAN A: With BOB ANDERSON the world class swords master. Taught Errol Flynn and Darth Vader.
DOM: Now that's pathetic ELIJAH, why couldn't you just get up and go?
SEAN A: Well there's this bit where he's gotta put the Ring on. [I love that comment. How many times have you been watching something with a friend and they go "Why didn't they just..." Um, cause it's in the script??]I remember all the descriptions of what the Wraith world would be like when you put the Ring on, and I couldn't wait to see the movie to see how they do it and it's just awesome.
ELIJAH: Well they were still really trying to figure out what it was themselves. And the Eye as well. The Eye was one of the last things to be designed.
SEAN A: You knew PETER had a clear vision of what he wanted, and sort of faith that ultimately it'd get there, but it was tedious. Over months and months and months and you're like 'wow, what's it really going to look like? How are they going to do it?'
DOM: Oh, nice reaction on that. [Frodo being stabbed]
ELIJAH: Thanks.
DOM: This is the first time we ever interacted with VIGGO.
SEAN A: In the filming.
DOM: Yeah. I think it was the first time I'd ever met VIGGO. I met him on set in Weathertop.

ORLANDO: You know that was VIGGO's first day on set, that sequence at Weathertop there. It was like he got off a plane and within two days was to get in and start doing this fight sequence stuff, defending the Hobbits up there. Great. He taught me so much, just in being around him and seeing him work, how to-- y'know, it's like your job as an actor to know exactly-- y'know we would shoot a scene from the movie and at the end of that scene, say VIGGO would end up with his hand on his sword, like looking out in the distance. At the end of that shot that would be his last stance. A week later we might have shot the following sequence. At the beginning of that sequence VIGGO would be standing there with is hand on his sword. Y'know he'd be like, 'So hang on a minute, where were we last? We were there, okay, this is what I was doing.' So what that allows PETE to be able to do, is use all of that moment, y'know for some actors maybe they'd come out the next scene they'd shoot it, they'd just have their hand there. or their sword out, know what I mean. But he'd allow PETE to be able to use every moment. It was just brilliant. [So pretty and yet so...]

20. THE CAVERNS OF ISENGARD

ORLANDO: Yeah, the miniature sets, they're just a credit aren't they? Look at this. It's not only what they did with the miniatures, but it's the way that they filmed it as well. It's as if they just literally dropped a camera in sometimes. They really used it amazingly.

ELIJAH: I didn't actually--
SEAN A: [mumbles?] miniatures.
ELIJAH: Remember we visited in pickups. All that time I had never gone anywhere--
SEAN A: I knew what they were doing and I had talked about going to look at it, but we were so busy, so when we finally went back we were able to see what they were accomplishing. Everybody always talks about how great the computer effects are, and they are, but the miniatures are just these sort of, the unsung brilliant components of this movie that I think make it work.
ELIJAH: I agree.
SEAN A: RICHARD TAYLOR, who runs WETA, the special effects company, the sheer volume of special effects that they turned out, I think they said something like WETA, the company, was the single largest orderer, or purchaser of foam latex in the world for creating all these masks and different props and everything else.
DOM: This is great.
SEAN A: Now I didn't get it when I was reading it that they said, it goes by quickly, he's crossing orcs and goblins.
BILLY: Moria goblins.
SEAN A: And I was like what does that mean 'crossing'? He's literally crossbreeding.

ORLANDO: It's like the first thing he does is he's born and he kills. Isn't that incredible? And Saruman just says, no, let him kill him. It's the first thing he does as he comes out of that sleep and kills.

DOMANIC: Look at the look on CHRISTOPHER LEE's face, he just adores this character. It's brilliant. It's like his child.

21. FLIGHT TO THE FORD

ELIJAH: Ah this is um--
SEAN A: They put it back in with the cave trolls.
ELIJAH: Bilbo's trolls.
SEAN A: A great homage to The Hobbit. I think when we were filming that I had just read The Hobbit for the first time and knew what it was that we were seeing.
ELIJAH: That fantastic sequence where...
SEAN A: Yeah, where Gandalf tricks the trolls into arguing with each other until sunrise instead of eating the Dwarves and Bilbo and they turn to stone. And there they are, so we're like passing through. I love this.
[Sam: "Kingsfoot, aye, it's a weed.]
ELIJAH: I bet it is a weed.
SEAN A: Mmmhmm.
SEAN A: It's no Buckleberry Ferry shot, but that's a pretty cool shot, c'mon.
ELIJAH: I love what LIV's done to her voice.
DOM: She sounds a lot older.
ELIJAH: It's very elven.

ORLANDO: A pretty phenomenal entrance to a movie as well, is it not? [Aren't they all?]

SEAN A: It's amazing, when she got off the plane she was glowing like that. I sorta thought 'wow, that's commitment.'
DOM: This is the point in the film where all the men kind of go, "Oh wait, hang on, hang on, sit up straight, concentrate."

DOM: Incredible horse riding by the way.
ELIJAH: Amazing.
DOM: Very brace horsewoman, what was her name again? Jane...
ELIJAH: JANE ABBOTT.
DOM: I love what LIV's doing here as well.
SEAN A: You mean conjuring a herd of horses out of the water?
DOM: Just her performance is so...[sigh]...good.

22. RIVENDELL

IAN: I begged to keep that line straight from Tolkien, so precise, and I also begged to keep him smoking, in what is actually a hospital bedroom. You really shouldn't do that. That's what Tolkien had Gandalf doing in the book, so he's doing it in the movie.


23. MANY MEETINGS

DOM: Eagles, Tolkien's obsession with eagles. Eagles always seem to save the day, y'know, in The Hobbit, here, eagles are very, very prominent.

IAN: When I suggested to SEAN that he took ELIJAH's hand it was because I thought anyone who knew the book would care about the deep friendship often of an innocently physical nature, and that might e missed by two resolutely heterosexual actors who mightn't appreciate that gay people like myself saw in a touch something perhaps more meaningful than others might, so to persuade him to touch ELIJAH, I'd say "Well look, it's in the book."

SEAN A: IAN brought the book to me right before we shot it and he said, "Now look here, it says that Sam runs over and grabs Frodo's hand," he said. "The fans of the book are going to want to see that." I sort of, --I believed it, and I got a fan letter the other day that a neighbour friend handed to me, and it said how much it meant to her that Sam holds Frodo's hand at that moment because it was something that she--it was one of the most important moments to her in the book.
ELIJAH: Oh, that's fantastic. It's those subtle little nuances man.
SEAN A: So thank you IAN.
ELIJAH: That's unbelievable.

IAN: You can't fake the friendship that is self-evident amongst those four young actors. They were just a team.

ORLANDO: Isn't it just incredible, literally, the transformation he's made from that young Bilbo Hobbits to this incredibly sort of aged and weathered Hobbits who now no longer possesses the Ring. He's a magical actor. We had a barbeque--we always had barbeques and all sorts of get togethers--at BILLY's house and I kind of met IAN for the first time there, and he said, "You're here for eighteen months, what are you going to do when this is over? And you have to go back to reality?" and I said, "Well what's reality?" and he said "Yeah, I suppose so." He was like, it's wherever you are and stuff. He's such a sort of beautifully eccentric kind of man and he's got so many kind of words--pearls of wisdom. It was great to talk about the surreal reality that we were living in out there.

ELIJAH: Frodo deciding to let go of his responsibility of the Ring, which I think is really important. It just makes that moment where he takes it at the council back much stronger. Frodo and Sam realise that they miss the Shire, they want to go home, and Frodo realises that his time with the Ring could be over and he realises he wants to give it up and go back to the Shire.

24. THE FATE OF THE RING

SEAN A: It does a couple of things for me. It shows that Sam is so enamoured with the idea of the Elves when he first hears about them from Gandalf's stories and when Frodo expands on that so the idea that he's actually in an elf paradise is extraordinary for him, especially once Frodo's healed and they can really just enjoy what it's like to be among the Elves, walking among them and talking to them and wearing their clothes, but to see that Sam is sort of, that's all well and good, but it's time to go home now. It just shows that it must, the journeys really started to take it's toll and for Frodo too, it also shows what a huge decision it is when you step in, when you intervene in the council and they're all bickering among themselves.
ELIJAH: Makes that a bit heavier and much more profound when he decides to take the responsibility and take the ring again. Because you see clearly that it is something that he does want to let go.
I love how Rivendell is in a constant autumn as well. As sort of the passing of the golden age of the Elves. Their time is coming to an end.
DOM: Oh, here he comes.
ELIJAH: Hey.

SEAN BEAN: It was quite strange really because we came together as a group of individuals who didn't know anything, or knew very little about each other and we began to y'know, form a trust and friendship between each other, similar to what happened in the film with the Fellowship. At first people are slightly suspicious of each others motives, Boromir is certainly suspicious and doubtful of this sort of motley crew and he learns throughout the film, he goes on a quite fascinating learning curve, and then learns to trust these people and realise that you've got to accept and respect their cultures and ideologies.
ORLANDO: My entrance to the film, that first shot, I had to sort of glide off the horse, y'know, talking about the physicality, I really wanted to just pop off the horse as if I'd done it a million times before and then we tried a few different looks of like, looking like, really as I look around at Rivendell, looking at it with joy and as if it's home from home, and then with steely kind of fear about what was, y'know, what I was here to talk about and it was--yeah, I remember. [Let's let that thought just trail off 'kay? Good.]

25. THE SWORD THAT WAS BROKEN

SEAN B: This is the first time that Aragorn and Boromir meet and there's a certain tension in the scene. A little testing each other out and there's a lot of respect for each other I think, even at this point, but two similar men in certain ways, courageous, heroic, and compassionate.
I forgot about that [laughs--added scene with Aragorn]
I think he's slightly, it unsettles him when it falls to the ground and he stops and he's unsure weather to go back and pick it up and give it the respect it deserves, but he's very dubious, very doubtful about the whole thing anyway. It's a quite interesting moment when it does fall to the ground, it sort of says something, y'know.


27. THE COUNCIL OF ELROND

DOM: Ah. The Council of Elrond.
ELIJAH: The scene that took five days to shoot.
DOM: Yep. That was a long shoot.
ELIJAH: Oh man.
DOM: Very stressful. Lots of Dwarfs in costume. Five and a half hours of makeup.

SEAN B: We all knew each others lines by the end of it because we did it I don't know how many times.

ORLANDO: I think he must have said those lines like 500 times over or something. Or more. It was something ridiculous.

SEAN A: Narrative challenge to introduce all these new characters and explain what's going on and deal with...
BILLY: Even in the book, it's a difficult chapter I think.

SEAN B: I think this is the point where Boromir realises that this Ring has got a great pull on him. It's the first time he's seen it, as have we all, but even here he can't resist it. I think Boromir is suspicious, I think his nature is quite suspicious of other races, other cultures, of people because he's had to--him and his family, his father, have had to be in the forefront of war and they've had to be realistic about things, so I think Boromir at the beginning is slightly cynical about all these special powers. I think he feels it's something that could be used as a weapon. There's this power there, if this power is used wisely then this could solve these problems that we're having and the last thing he wants is to see it destroyed. He believes, as I think we all believe, we can manage the Ring, we can overcome it's powers; but you can't, it just sort of creeps up on you, very subtle, and corrupts you.

SEAN A: Y'know, I don't know if they, I'm sure the audience appreciates it, but all of the background in this, the sort of stone carvings and everything and any part of any frame you sort of analyse it, you freeze it and look at it, the level of detail and artistry in the set design, the costumes and props is unbelievable.
ELIJAH: If you were only able to, with something like this, able to magnify the image so that you could actually see close up of those details.

JOHN RHYS-DAVIES: Council of Elrond is the first time you actually see Gimli. Basically he's come, partly because he's been summoned and partly because he's been sent. He comes very suspicious of the intentions of particularly of the Elves. And the Dwarves are paranoid to a certain extent, hostile to a great extent, xenophobic as well. They're there because they don't wish to give the Elves and advantage rather than because they perceive a great threat of Mordor. And I think as far as Gimli's concerned, it's the moment he encounters the Ring with his axe that he begins to have some idea that he's up against something that is desperately powerful, because he may be a Dwarf, but when he swings that axe, it could cleave an orc in two. It's a powerful weapon, powerfully swung, and that it actually has not the slightest effect on the Ring really shakes him.

ORLANDO: I like the way he says, "One of you must do this." Well why don't you do it mate?" [laughs]. [Quite possibly my favourite line in the commentary. Priceless.]

SEAN B: This page and a half of dialogue was given to me on the day [laughs] on the morning that we actually start filming it, so I was just trying to remember these weird names so I sort of managed to get it in the end, it was certainly a struggle, but then again, it gave it--it gives it some sort of spontaneity. I think it's good not to know something too well because it can easily become sound familiar and predictable. It's good to have a little uncertainty. And I wasn't certain. [chuckles]

ORLANDO: Yeah, the argument scene was a bit, it was strange, because I really didn't feel like an Elf, like Legolas, would drop himself to a base level of arguing with these other races, and yet we needed to get something across, and so then I had this thing of just sticking my hands out as if to sort of relax my fellow Elves. Yeah, you needed that kind of conflict to be able to make this moment play right here with Frodo, which is so great.

SEAN A: Frodo's agreeing to be the Ringbearer.
BILLY: Big moment.
DOM: Here we go, here's the forging of the Fellowship.

SEAN B: It's great now they form up as a Fellowship. It's really heroic.

ORLANDO: [laughing] That moment of just like, "Oh god, not the Dwarf."

JOHN: I thought that the one way we could keep the tension between the elf and the Dwarf for as long as possible was for me to be a slight bit standoffish with him, so that he wouldn't fall into that trap of young actors, --and old actors-- frequently do, because you like the actor you're playing with, you actually play with a little less tension sometimes, or a little less of a dagger to the throat. Actually in truth it wasn't necessary, he grew so much as an actor as he went through the piece, and it was a joy to behold it.

ORLANDO: You know, it's funny, cause people always talk about "Oh, you must have formed a great relationship with JOHN RHYS-DAVIES and everything," and I did, yeah, I love JOHN, he's a great guy, but really I did most of my work with BRET BEATTY because of the scale issue. JOHN's about three inches taller than I am. [Does anyone else picture JOHN and ORLANDO's relationship something like the old Kibbles n' Bits commercial with the little annoying dog jumping back and forth over top of the bulldog?]

[DISC TWO]
28. GILRAEN'S MEMORIAL

ELIJAH: Welcome back.
DOM: Welcome to the second disc.

SEAN B: It was great working with VIGGO, he gives you so much as an actor, he's always seeking the truth in a situation, and he won't do it unless he believes it's true. He's that sort of guy. A lot of integrity, really soulful quality about him as a person as well as an actor and I was just pleased to have him around whenever I was doing certain scenes like the death scene. You really feel you're in there with him, you really feel it's real.

JOHN: If you cast right, you've really done about 80% of your work with the actors, because there are so many other technical demands, and the demands of the schedule and the demands of your time and things like that. It's a sign of a very experienced and very accomplished director. And though I'm told that FRAN did an awful lot of the casting, and all I can say is spot on. And PETER was certainly right to trust her instincts.

29. BILBO'S GIFTS

ELIJAH: This moment coming up freaks so many people out.
SEAN A: Its such a great thing.
ELIJAH: Isn't it?
SEAN A: Seamless blend of just great acting and special effects.
ELIJAH: It was just laying in two shots, cause they did-- they shot IAN there and then they shot the puppet that they had made.
SEAN A: Sort of morph it.
ELIJAH: They morphed it together.
DOM: I love the way his eyes bulge. What did IAN actually do in the take? Did he just do that?
ELIJAH: He did the kind of "AACH" as much as he could.
DOM: Very, very, very cool.
BILLY: Yeah, cause I remember when that puppet was around, when they were still working on it and I was saying, what is that for? I couldn't think where in the script it would be in, and when they told me and they said it would probably be on screen for like less than a second and they'd been working on it for months. The detail is incredible.
ELIJAH: It's a beautiful puppet.

30. THE DEPARTURE OF THE FELLOWSHIP

SEAN B: I don't know how they did that, cause I wasn't there when they shot this, I was at home in England. [laughs] I don't know how I got in that scene. There's quite a few moments where you see yourself and I knew for a fact I was home, I wasn't in New Zealand. I was at home doing something else. You see these sort of digitally formed Boromirs running around.

31. THE RING GOES SOUTH

DOM: There was talk very early on in kind of, as a joke, of Elvish women weeping because Merry and Pippin were leaving, because we've been kind of their sugar daddies for the last few weeks we've been hanging around.
BILLY: And we liked the idea that some of them might be pregnant and stuff.
DOM: Yeah, holding onto their tummies going "don't go. don't go." It's okay, we'll try and be back in nine months time.
BILLY: For some reason PETE never went for that. [Oh dear, I can't think why not.]

IAN: We got to this location by helicopter.

ELIJAH: This was the setting of another safety issue with SEAN.
DOM: Oh goodness.
ELIJAH: Remember?
SEAN A: Yeah, well we were on top of this mountain and they send the helicopter--well you go head. Go ahead and tell how silly I was.
ELIJAH: Well, I think, DOM you were there as well.
DOM: Mmm, yeah. SEAN just, y'know, he's very safety conscious and while we were just hanging around relaxing and taking it easy, SEAN spent about an hour directing helicopters.
SEAN A: No.[Laughing] No I didn't.
BILLY: And I'd just like to say that they all landed safely, so he did a good job. I remember once SEAN, me and you went to see a rugby game, remember that? We were just sitting watching the rugby game and I can see SEAN looking around, and I turn to him and said, "You're actually looking for ways out in case there's a disaster aren't you?" and he said, "Yeah, yeah I am." All eventualities covered.
SEAN A: I had absorbed Sam's sort of pragmatism into my soul at that point.
ELIJAH giggles.

ORLANDO: It was important to me and I always said to PETE as well, y'know, Legolas aught to be the first to see these things. The first to name it, or see it, or be aware of these things, so he sort of moves off and stares into the distance because I think my role as Legolas in the Fellowship really becomes the eyes and ears of the Fellowship. He's like the first to be aware of danger around him. With his elven qualities he can come into his consciousness before the others. [And Captain Obvious is born. TM Lemonlye.]

32. THE PASS OF CARADHRAS

ORLANDO: The thing is, is that Elves don't feel the cold, so I'd be in all these locations with just everything, all the same gear I had on in every shot, and every location. But I can't show that because he's an Elf, he doesn't feel the extremities, feel the cold.

JOHN: SEAN's performance is so interesting because he's normally such, he is such a lean, mean killing machine. He's such a positive strong character normally and there's sort of a shames face deceitfulness in some of this character as he plays it. A man not wholly happy with himself, and then actually quite corrupted. And yet a man who ultimately redeems himself.

SEAN B: That's what I found interesting about playing Boromir. This inner struggle. He's a warrior, and he's valiant, he's strong, physically, but the battle that he can't really face is the battle with himself. That's what he can't fight. And you see his soul sort of decaying. This fine man he sort of takes away his soul and I suppose by the end he comes to realise that he's been on a hell of a learning curve and that the only way he could possibly redeem himself is in battle. Which he throws himself into.

ORLANDO: You know, there's little moments like that just show, like as he [Aragorn] releases the tension as he takes his hand off the sword, because it's that attention to detail. And look at this shot, isn't it amazing how it just drops into the miniatures and just pulls right up onto CHRISTOPHER LEE, Saruman here, I just remember seeing that in the cinema and it just feels like you're on a roller coaster ride really going through the location through the sets.

IAN: This was filmed inside the studio, and the snow was made up of polystyrene balls which got everywhere, into every single orifice, and it was extremely unpleasant. It was a mixture of polystyrene and real snow, which was created in the refrigerator and then dumped onto the ledge.

ORLANDO: It was disgusting. It was blasted in my eyes, but the thing is, being the Elf, he doesn't feel the cold, so I had to act as if it wasn't affecting me. I had to be staring out and seeing and nothing was affecting me, and yet it was so uncomfortable. I can't even tell you. It was just dirty man, the whole atmosphere, because this stuff was being blasted around and this weird dust stuff and it was...uck.

ELIJAH: And it kind of melted didn't it?
BILLY: Well myself and Dom were on set the whole day, but they never got to our shot.
DOM: Three days.
BILLY: Yeah. End up they had to do our shot later on in real snow.
DOM: In real snow, up a mountain, and when we were finished we were both given a shovel each and sat on the shovel and sled all the way down to the bottom of the mountain.
BILLY: That was fast.
ELIJAH: How far down did you guys sled?
DOM: 7000 foot something like that.
BILLY: It was more than that. It was great fun though.
ELIJAH: That sounds brilliant.
DOM: It was really good fun.

ORLANDO: That shot there, [Legolas digging out of the snow] was actually filmed in the snow for me, so I was buried under a ski slope, they dug out a hole, it was on a ski field, it was hilarious, it was a Sunday, so the fields were closed and we just dug a hole and got in there and bust--literally bust my way out with my head.

SEAN B: Yeah, yeah, buried us in the snow. We were buried in polystyrene up to your head, then the cover, the top of your head with snow, so y'know you're really warm down the bottom and your head's freezing on top. We just did it again and again and again.

33. MORIA

ELIJAH: Poor JOHN. I think it was after every day of makeup that he had, he had to have at least four days off to recover in terms of his face and what that would do.
SEAN A: Cause the prosthetics and the glue and the plastics and stuff was really eating into his skin and his face.
DOM: Must have been very miserable. Now in the book, it's Merry that solves the riddle, in the film they gave it to Frodo. Lunatics.
BILLY: Is it? I can't remember.
DOM: Yeah, it's Merry that works it out.
ELIJAH: He does have that kind of mind Merry, actually. It's funny that you say that.
DOM: I remember being a little bit miffed.
ELIJAH: Were you a little miffed?
DOM: I was.
ELIJAH: You didn't express that to me at all.
DOM: No, well I wouldn't express it to you ELIJAH, it wasn't your concern.
ELIJAH: I'm sorry.
BILLY: Did you go straight to the top?
DOM: I spoke to the filmmakers and I said "Why? Why is this happening?" And they said, "We want more of ELIJAH and less of you."
LAUGHTER
DOM: So y'know, it made sense.
SEAN A: they said the same thing to me.

SEAN B: This was hard work, it was really cold in there. It was winter, and me and VIGGO were in the night shooting as well, absolutely freezing. And we were just fighting thin air, just somebody dangling a ball y'know, at you and you start slashing at it. All this wasn't there, it was put in afterward. We were just slashing at thin air, chopping off imaginary tentacles.

ORLANDO: That's the first time you see me shoot a bow I think. I trained for about two months, not specifically on archery, but predominantly, and also, horse riding and sword play as well. Obviously, he's an Elf, so whatever he picks up in terms of weapons he can use and make play in an incredible way, so I wanted to make it real and believable.

SEAN B: We all got quite used to our arms and weapons, we were all quite good at the end with them. Quite skilful. But they were beautiful weapons. All well made and all different. Different styles of fighting and combat. There was individuality to the style of it.

34. A JOURNEY IN THE DARK

ELIJAH: SEAN BEAN wasn't present for a lot of these, a lot of the Moria sequences. Remember he had to leave for a little while.
BILLY: Oh yeah, of course.
ELIJAH: We had his double there.

SEAN B: But you know, I was there for most of the time, flew home a couple of times and it's very difficult to fly home cause your head is still back in New Zealand. You're still thinking about that. You work in a job for this long you get very involved with it. And we got involved with each other. We made some good friends and we still see each other a lot now, cause we're always bumping into each other at various functions and premieres. But it did help strenghten that Fellowship, the bond that we created. Our own lives helped us to create this bond that the Fellowship have. It's almost real. Cause that's what was happening to us at the time. In time we really thought a lot about each other.


JOHN: The younger members of the company bonded together so wonderfully well. They went out together. They were good together and were very naughty together. And they had such a wonderful time. It really helped to create that wonderful camaraderie that should exist. And it was very interesting to see SEAN and VIGGO. They would quite frequently go out to dinner or go out together because they're of the same sort of age and have the same sort of interests.

ELIJAH: It really encapsulates the whole story.
SEAN A: The wizard teaching the Hobbits about the value of life.

JOHN: Tolkien basically said this was an English myth he was writing, and we wanted to try and give each of the different races a different part of England where they came from. We decided the Shire folk should have that slight Somerset-cum-Longshire kind of accent; the Elvish, which Tolkien talks about a couple of times, I think there are almost two forms of Elvish, one of which he thought was very akin to the Welsh, and so there is a lot, a certain amount of the Welsh lilt in Elvish talk. I felt that the soul of contentiousness and bloody mindedness of the Dwarves needed a slightly truculent sort of accent and for better or worse, I picked on a sort of Scottish accent, which seemed to work. But it heightens the difference between the different races on the Earth at the time.

35. BALIN'S TOMB

ORLANDO: This was like in the last six months of filming I think we shot this sequence in Balin's tomb. It was a dusty, dirty kind of set that got very hot and sweaty cause of all the fight sequences that had to go on in there. It was a real undertaking. I remember thinking PETE got us all together for a chat about the sequence because it was so involved with the cave troll which was this new beast that we were to encounter. He was to be completely CGI, kind of special effect. It needed a lot of very close attention to detail of movement, so there was sort of a floor mat for the cave troll which it would move around. And RANDY KIRK was great, this was really his area. He really came into his own here, and kinda had to sort of direct parts of what was going on so we were aware of when the cave troll attacks me and he has his anvil and chain and whip and stuff, I would duck down and spring up and stuff, and RANDY would be like "No, no, no, you've got to go lower cause we've got to show the chain going across and otherwise it'll take your head off" sort of thing. It was quite an intimidating prospect filming this one, this sequence because there was so much involved. It was such a big set up.

SEAN A: I'll never forget the Saturday morning, and we were all to meet at the stage and PETER JACKSON sort of arrived a little bit later than the rest of us, but all the actors were there from the Fellowship, all the stunt doubles were there, all the scale doubles were there, all the digital technicians were there, and we all show up and then PETER walks in and just describes and acts out. You could see him adopt the mannerisms of each member of the Fellowship and of the cave troll while he was acting it out.
ELIJAH: It was incredible.
SEAN A: It was awesome. And then he basically went on to direct other stuff and one of the biggest achievements in the movie is that other people, JEFF MURPHY, JOHN MAHAFFY, were left to direct and capture the vision he laid out on that Saturday while Peter was off directing other stuff and it's extraordinary.
DOM: I love what happens here, the Fellowship really starts coming to their own y'know. Everyone gets their swords out.
SEAN A: It's just the most adventurous, exciting
DOM: I think the audience don't know whether the Hobbits are going to fight or not. But in that shot right there.
SEAN A: That was the coolest.
DOM: They are so involved. They don't mind dying for this cause.

SEAN B: This is quite a scary moment cause you just don't know what's gonna come through the door do you?

ORLANDO: This is great. For the first time you see the Fellowship fighting as the Fellowship together. I love this moment in the film.

SEAN A: ORLANDO BLOOM. The single coolest archer in the history of cinema.
DOM: Yeah.
ELIJAH: He worked really hard at all of that as well, and he became really good at, I think particularly the knife work that he had to do.
DOM: Yeah.
ELIJAH: The spinning of the knives and he really kinda took on that whole assassin roll which is wicked.
SEAN A: The level of jealousy I feel towards ORLANDO BLOOM for how good looking he is, and how swift he is with all his weaponries exists on many levels. [Poor SEAN. Do you think ORLANDO caused him to develop a bit of a complex?]
ELIJAH: Hey, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
ELIJAH and SEAN A: [Unintelligible mumbling over top one another]
DOM: You look pretty sexy here yourself SEAN, when you run out.

SEAN B: I think everybody got--we all got knocks and cuts and stuff like that. But it was very well choreographed by a great fight director. BOB ANDERSON and GREG POWELL and the stunt team, the girls and the guys were fantastic.
Just throw themselves into it. Very professional. Very precise. So we were in good company there.

SEAN A: We did so much choreography with the stunt guys and it seemed like we're not going to get a chance to do any of it then we got into this thing and they really let us just go.

ORLANDO: They had these plastic explosives in the walls all around me, so that they would blow up to show as the whip came across you'd see there's a little line of explosions going off, so I was standing there and I had this stuff just blasting in my ace and there was the sequence when I run up over the cave troll, they had scaffolding. So they did me running up over this scaffolding and then I had my legs between this big box. They CG'd my legs in, so they had my upper body moving up from this scaffolding thing, but they had my legs which they put in and then when I was standing on top of the cave troll it was like my legs, they weren't my legs, they were like some CG thing and the upper body was me standing on top of this scaffolding thing, so the visual effects and the special effects team just came together to make a fantastic sequence. [I'm sorry, I missed that, could you repeat it?]

SEAN B: PETER showed us like a graphic, gave us sort of an idea of what it would look like on the computer, the outline of the cave troll, so you sort of could figure out what you were supposed to be fighting. Imagine what you were fighting, but they just used a big long stick with a ping pong ball on the end and that was your focus of attention. And that's what we were fighting really. Till it all gets put together and you think, thank god, it looks like we're really fighting something. Because you just have to pretend, we're pretending so much of the time against these creatures, but it was always really clear, PETER, he makes it, visualizes it for you. And any given time he could talk about a character or anything to do with the story, it was like amazing. He knew how each character was feeling and what they're thinking and he's always very clear and very humorous as well. I think we all respected him very much, so you're never really left in the dark, always had an idea of what you were fighting even though it was thin air.

SEAN A: As mean and bad as the cave troll is, there's something in his eyes and expression and how the digital artists rendered him, he just looks so sad. He's just as much a victim as anyone else.
ELIJAH: I always feel really bad for him when he dies at the end.
SEAN A: He just has that look, that sort of surprised, kind of when Legolas gets him through the mouth, y'know. He just kinda 'What? What happened?' and he falls.
DOM: He's been tortured by the other guys for so long.
SEAN A: The orcs that had him?
DOM: Yeah, he just doesn't know what's going on.
ELIJAH: Poor guy, he's overwhelmed, it's all these people running around with swords and bright shiny things.
SEAN A: I mean he's scary, but he's sad.

ORLANDO: I never thought of it like that, but I suppose it is kinda sad, he's kind of just a slave.

ELIJAH: Um, a secret about the mithril vest, it was a bit of a cheat because, for some reason they didn't make, they made one full one, but I think for costume reasons and not wanting to mess up the full chain mail, they had like a tight t-shirt and they grafted the front of the chain mail into the t-shirt, so I never actually wore a full mithril vest.

36. THE BRIDGE OF KHAZAD-DUM

BILLY: I think the wide shots when we're all running there is fantastic how well the motion capture works because everyone's running completely-- like it looks like ELIJAH running.
SEAN A: You mean like the stride lengths.
BILLY: Y'know it's not like nine kind of similar characters. Everyone has their own motion.
SEAN A: Relative to their size.

ORLANDO: Well there you go, you see, they managed to find moments that could come directly from the book, make them play in the movie and they found enough of them to really make readers of the book feel like they weren't being cheated. Y'know, which they weren't. Obviously this is a movie, you couldn't have all the information. But it was well though out, there were enough of those moments that came directly from the book that made you really feel like you were watching the book come to life.

SEAN B: What I was doing, the floor was there, so I was to pretend that I was falling into a really big chasm there, you think, what would I do in this situation, if I was on the edge of a precipice. How would my arms go to balance myself up?

ORLANDO: I had to keep saving SEAN BEAN in that shot, yeah. I had to keep running up behind him and grabbing him and he'd just fall back on to me and I had such a bruised backside and legs after that, cause he kept just falling back on me and I was like a nice soft pillow for him to land on as I grabbed him and pulled him back. I gave him a few beatings for that I can tell you. [Do you think ORLANDO talked this much as a result of only having a handful of lines in the film? Maybe SEAN B was torturing him on purpose?]

ELIJAH: Initially they were going to try and photograph, and they did actually, shots of real fire against black, but during the--because of the length of time that it took to make these movies, during the production, a guy actually wrote the program for CG flame.
BILLY: Alright. Oh. So they had and idea of doing that and then they changed it because the technology--
ELIJAH: Some guy made the program for CG flame. Isn't that amazing? [ELIJAH saying the word "flame" is the cutest thing I've ever heard. No really. *squee*]
SEAN A: Wrote the code. They had like 200 guys writing their own code that was not available on the market for people to just buy. And they're continuing to innovate it now, even for two and three. The technology is getting even better and smarter.
ELIJAH: There's actually quite a lot of innovation associated with this movie. The MASSIVE engine is incredibly innovative in terms of the AI for the wide shots of armies running around.
DOM: Here it comes.


SEAN A: His flaming bullwhip is the coolest thing.
BILLY: Do you think when Tolkien wrote all this he knew how difficult it was going to be to film?
LAUGHTER
DOM: Probably.
SEAN A: Well if i could sit down with the man, I'd ask him about why they had to be big furry feet.
BILLY: Exactly.

BILLY: I think the loss of Gandalf was like losing a parent. It felt like as long as Gandalf was there nothing too bad could go wrong. Because he knows everything, and it's like when you're a kid and your dad's there, you think nothing too bad can go wrong, no matter what's happening. He's kind of all knowing or whatever. And I think Pippin feels that way and when Gandalf goes, that's a real kind of moment.

ORLANDO: I remember I was saying to PETE, for the first time, Legolas witnesses death, or what death does to the beings around him. He doesn't understand that. It's not part of his comprehension. He's an Elf. Elves don't die. They're immortal and so he's sort of, I wanted to try and portray in that moment this utter confusion and bewilderment at Gandalf not being with us, and where could he have gone. This is what death means. [Oh nevermind.]

SEAN A: I love the look in ORLANDO's eyes. He's like, 'wow, look at their feelings.'
ELIJAH: Such confusion in his eyes. I love that.
SEAN A: Remember the original line for him [Aragorn] was "Pretty soon the hills with be fair teeming with Orcs."
ELIJAH: Fair teeming.
SEAN A: Fair teeming.
BILLY: Was it yeah?
SEAN A: Yeah.

SEAN B: I think Aragorn knows that we've got to carry on. I just wanted to have time to rest. It's a real blow.
I didn't really want to go on the helicopter to this particular location, and I asked PETER if it was okay if I got there by other means. So I walked for quite a long way about half an hour and y'know, the ski lift thing where you sit in a car and they take you up with a pulley, then I got off that and walked for about another half hour up mountainsides. It was like mountaineering. And the helicopter came over at one point I think, and they all saw me climbing, in my Boromir costume, climbing up this mountain to get to the set cause I was terrified of going in the helicopter. It must have been quite a sight.

37. LOTHLORIEN

ORLANDO: We were trying to get the look right for Legolas, and I'd been working with Nyla on the costume and we'd been discussing colours and the great thing about working on this project is that it was a collaborative effort and you really felt like you had a part in the process which was great. So this first outfit was like, you can imagine, the beginning of filming, there's so many characters to establish and so many different costumes that it kind of got down to the last minute and we hadn't quite locked down what exactly what I was going to wear, the look of it. So it's quite amusing to see this scene back in the film because this costume was just not what I was wearing for the rest of the whole movie. I had one day in it and we decided to go for a more tailored look, more put together in that way, this just didn't work.
ORLANDO: [On JOHN RHYS-DAVIES line in Dwarvish] That was so funny. That moment. JOHN couldn't remember the line, he couldn't pronounce it. It was like "You know what this Dwarf says to that? Is ga--what does he say?" And "You know what the Dwarf says to that? Hosh-- Oh bollocks!" He was hilarious. [The way he tells it, it actually does sound hilarious.]

ELIJAH: And there was a different makeup thing for Gimli, which was an early--
SEAN A: You're talking about the evolution of Gimli's look.
ELIJAH: Yeah, well there was an evolution, they'd done this thing with regular latex prosthetics and saw how it looked in dailies and weren't happy with it so they decided to go for gelatin.

38. CARAS GALADHON

SEAN A: And also, you could see JOHN's face. JOHN RHYS-DAVIES' face. He was losing his individual bone structure and stuff and they wanted to keep it.
ELIJAH: So that was a little bit of a work in progress. That was the first scene with JOHN I think, wasn't it?
SEAN A: I love to tease JOHN. Everytime I'd walk on the set I was like, "Indy, they're digging in the wrong place." "Asps, very dangerous, you go first." And I remember one day he said to me, "You know SEAN, you could border on parody." I sorta went, 'uh-oh, okay, sorry JOHN.'

SEAN A: Remember the special "Galad-y" light they used?
ELIJAH: Yes.
SEAN A: I love it. Its such a cool. The Galad-y light was this circular for these different lights that they used and when they would hold it up, it would just, it generated light in a very specific and particular way that when Galadriel was around this was how--when we're first introduced to her, she kind of emanates this sort of mystic energy and light and so they would hold the light up to us and it was amazing, because you'd be standing there and you'd see what it looked like on playback without it, and then they'd hold it up and it just completely created this feeling, this energy and this look that was so cool. CATE BLANCHETT, she is Galadriel. She is an Elf.
ELIJAH: There is something quite powerful and --
SEAN A: Timeless and sophisticated and pure and--
ELIJAH: But there is a real strength and--
SEAN A: Intense.
ELIJAH: Yeah, and intensity and a real power to her.

ORLANDO: Working with CATE BLANCHETT was amazing. She had such incredible poise and focus and posture and her presence for Galadriel was just perfect. [Uh-huh]

ELIJAH: I was kind of...really nervous to work with her actually. Cause I have had the utmost respect for her and she's got this kind of energy but I'm also just--she's so beautiful.
ORLANDO: So feminine. The idea is that Galadriel can read our minds, our thoughts. So she goes through the Fellowship and takes from their minds what is going on, their feelings, their relationship to the Ring and how they are coping with the journey of the Fellowship, it's almost like it's pre-empting in a way. Because Boromir is the first to really be taken by the Ring and she kind of sees, it's like a warning sign. She kind of predicts what's happening.

SEAN B: I think it's some sort of release for Boromir that she can see right into his soul, and he knows that and the potential for evil is still lingering there and he can't hide it from her, she can see that. She can see that he could be a danger to the Fellowship and I think it's just a release of the tension that Boromir's been feeling, it just comes out cause he knows that she's seen this thing in him. Which makes it easier to discuss with Aragorn this situation with Gondor and my people. But it is a very scary moment for Boromir. I think when someone really looks into you and they know, a scary feeling.

ELIJAH: I like how he's turned this into kind of an ominous, almost dark place. Y'know, you're safe, but you're not completely safe, it's slightly ambiguous.
SEAN A: Well it's physically safe, but it's psychologically unsettling. You can't get comfortable somewhere in your soul. When I read this sequence in the book, it's an Elf paradise that they're so grateful it's like the jeopardy is completely taken away and they're able to relax and be nourished and comforted and I just remember PETER describing that he though that in the movie it would totally undermine the kind of conflict and the drama of the story, so he wanted it to be a totally,-- he wanted to push into a different kind of intensity, what the Rivendell Elf experience was for 'em. I didn't really understand, I didn't really get what he was going for, it seemed--until I saw it and I think it's an awesome--it just shows his vision as a filmmaker and his sense of the audience and their experiencing of a movie.

SEAN B: What's good is everyone gets their moments of intimacy and stillness, which PETER was great with, because he's got all the action stuff which is fantastic, but he still allowed the characters to breathe and to have these moments of intimacy which tells you a hellova lot about these guys.

SEAN A: I remember when we got our first tour of WETA and were looking at some of the illustrations of how they were going to be creating the different places and we saw ALAN LEE's first illustration of Lothlorian and then they showed us the miniatures they had created for Lothlorian and it absolutely took my breath away, it was the most imaginative, most spectacular looking place I've ever seen.

SEAN B: It's quite a good moment because it gives him a chance to get something out of his head, off his chest, and Aragorn's someone who he can talk to, he couldn't really talk to this about with anyone else. Aragorn's a great listener and I think he wants to tell him that there is goodness in man, y'know, the power of man, we've corrupted things, we are corruptible, and we've caused a lot of trouble in this world, but there's also some good things. There's a lot of history to him, and he brings that with him. He's very proud of where he's from and the people he represents and that's why he can be a little obstinate occasionally. He really can't come to terms with other peoples ideas and cultures. He believes so strongly in his own because as a warrior in a city that's been under siege, he's learned to become practical, realistic and very straight-forward, so this is all very new to him and slightly disturbing.

39. THE MIRROR OF GALADRIEL

ORLANDO: She's really incredible, just the posture and the poise, it's funny. I worked for an incredibly long time on the physicality for Legolas to have that kind of Elven poise and posture and strength, with a sort of focused strength and movement with that sort of lightness, and y'know, she was on set for like eight days and there she is, just pulled it off straight away.
Elves can communicate without speech, that's one of the qualities they have, it's portrayed really well through the scenes Galadriel because obviously she's the High Elf, Queen Elf. She can really portray that.

DOM: Close up shot on the feet. That would have been maybe two hours in feet instead of just your normal hour and a half.
SEAN A: They look great.
BILLY: And touch ups all day long.
ELIJAH: Yep, which was always a pain in the ass. It was often times they would call for close ups at the last minute as well, like late in the day, 'oh, by the way...'. Those poor girls.
BILLY: When ELIJAH's sweaty feet had got too work
SEAN A: Yeah, important fact for people listening to the DVD commentary that ELIJAH has the sweatiest of all Hobbit feet.
ELIJAH: It's true. The glue would come loose by lunchtime generally. Sometimes I had to have my feet reapplied at lunch.
SEAN A: It was an amazing thing that our bodies and minds went through over the course of fifteen months. And it wasn't like a traditional acting experience, you're going on four hours sleep, you're jumping in and out of a van going doing a scene from this thing and back and forth and new stuff coming at you, so i don't think you should feel bad about it.
ELIJAH giggles.
ELIJAH: I was definitely nervous this day. There's actually a horribly embarrassing back story to the end of this. There's a moment where, that I was supposed to get emotional and PETE wanted a tear to come out, and for the love of god I couldn't get a tear and I was, y'know, it was so near crying and nothing would come out and of course I'm embarrassed because CATE BLANCHETT's in front of me kind of being very patient and wonderful and waiting for me. It was terrible. I felt awful.

ORLANDO: It just shows how powerful the Ring is, that scene with Galadriel where she has that transformation as she gets lured in by the Ring and then manages to resist it at the last minute, it really shows the power that the Ring has over even the highest of Elves. It shows the strength that Frodo has to be able to wear it around his neck.

ELIJAH: That's right. They cut out the bit actually showing her ring, that she's a Ringbearer as well, which is something I really loved about this scene. That she too is alone. That connection that we share, we're both Ringbearers. Which I think gives him confidence to move on. That this powerful Elf is in the same situation to a certain degree.
BILLY: Another small fact that just came to me there while I was thinking how good the hair was looking; I think everyone wears a wig in this don't they? [Mention on the Writer/Director track: the only person on the film who didn't wear a wig was BILLY JACKSON. Evidently he had "the perfect hobbit hair."
ELIJAH: [laughs] yeah, it's true.
SEAN A: They're all wigs. PETER OWEN and PETER KING designed them using real human hair from Russia. Found out that these Russian women had been cutting their hair off and trying to sell it to make money for food so they started importing it.
DOM: It's the strongest hair as well is it not?

40. THE FIGHTING URUK-HAI

ELIJAH: I believe he just said Elves, so I think they are Orcs and Elves.
BILLY: Well Orcs actually came from Elves who had been captured by Saruman and tortured to the point that they became Orcs.
ELIJAH: Okay.
BILLY: And then he's mixed Orcs and Goblins.
ELIJAH: So that's what he's done.
BILLY: To become Uruk-hai.
ELIJAH: Oh, I see. [Seems to me I just read somewhere that ELIJAH's not done reading the books yet. Bad ELIJAH.]
SEAN A: I think it's so--I think it's a critically important scene to put in there to show why they--what their motivation is, who are these things. So it's not just random baddies in a movie.
BILLY: They're there for a purpose.
SEAN A: Yeah, and they have to get psyched up for war just like other--y'know. And that war paint is so cool.
BILLY: Does anyone know for a fact exactly how long he was in makeup to become Lurtz?
SEAN A: Eight or nine P.M. call the night before.
ELIJAH: No, he had like an eleven, twelve midnight call I think.
SEAN A: And then seven A.M. set call.
BILLY: So they were putting makeup on all through the night yeah?
SEAN A: And he couldn't go to the bathroom after so many hours.
ELIJAH: That's right.
BILLY: That's incredible.

41. FAREWELL TO LORIEN

BILLY: Oh, we're getting gifts.
SEAN A: Oh the gift scenes are back in.
BILLY: Me and DOM tried very hard to kiss some of these girls.
DOM: Yeah we did. They wouldn't have it.
BILLY: Nope.
DOM: Oh, Lembas bread.
ELIJAH: I love Lembas.
DOM: Here we go. Great scene.

ORLANDO: I used to call that my Lembas commercial. "Lembas, one small bite is enough to fill the stomach of a full grown man." [Second best line in the commentary. Actually caused me to crack up during TTT when Sam is showing Frodo what's left of their food.]

DOM: Obviously Merry and Pippin have filled their stomachs with Lembas bread and I think they've both come to the realization that they think their stomachs are just going to explode within the next hour or so, the last hour of their life. Very, very funny. And the great thing about that scene is that we filmed it that way and then PETE just said, "What do you think's funny?" and we just did like three different versions.

ORLANDO: BILLY and DOM have this great comic timing that they can pull off. I think it worked better there. We actually shot it again later on the river cause we wanted to try and make it work later, but it wasn't going to play--those two--it's just so Hobbity.

BILLY: That's great about PETE, isn't it? Once he gets what he wants he'll let you kinda...
ELIJAH: A lot of freedom.
BILLY: A lot of fun to work on that.

ORLANDO: I remember reading this moment in the book and it was like, man, he gets this new bow, a new Lothlorian bow, which means it's longer and more deadly, more accurate. And for Legolas it must be like when you're a kid and wake up on Christmas morning and you've got a bicycle. I wanted to try to get that feeling across to this moment.

SEAN A: I guess that's one thing that people who watch the DVD will have an advantage over people who don't watch the DVD and listen to the commentary, scenes like that. And I guess if you read the books you know. The rope, for example, becomes a critical tool in helping Sam and Frodo.
DOM: Very important this scene.

DOM: It's kind of the change in Gimli, he starts to see that there are other breeds of people out there that can be influential in his life.
BILLY: Great theme that gets through the story doesn't it?
SEAN A: Racial tolerance?
BILLY: Yeah.
SEAN A: Yeah it is. The Legolas/Gimli--
BILLY: Oh yeah, two races that couldn't hate each other more and how they can become the greatest of friends.
DOM: And become an example to their people that it can happen.
SEAN A: It's like Tolkien single-handedly shows people how they can develop better relationships with each other.

42. THE GREAT RIVER

DOM: So all those months of kayak training and we don't even get given an oar. SEAN BEAN drove our boat.
BILLY: But it was a laugh in the training though.
DOM: Ah, it was great.

SEAN B: We had some canoeing lessons. Once you got the hang of it, it was quite good, cause we had to look as though we were really in command, we can row. Me and ORLANDO, we used to have a bit of a laugh. We used to try and push the oar out; and try and move his boat so he went in the wrong direction, he'd be trying to push mine in the wrong direction, all that.

ORLANDO: Part of the kind of bonding process, we had paddle training and I did archery and horse riding and everything else, but the paddle training was great. We did that as a fellowship, it was all of us in the boats messing around on the river.

SEAN B: I think somebody went under, I don't know who it was, one of the boats capsized.

SEAN A: Didn't ORLANDO accidentally fall out on the Quar River?

JOHN: It is true that in our first canoeing exercise, the Elf and the Dwarf sank, much to the amusement of everyone else.

DOM: ORLANDO was a terrible kayaker.
LAUGHTER
SEAN A: What can you say about the guy who can do everything? Well, he couldn't kayak.
ELIJAH: Way back from when we rehearsed it in kayaking with JOHN RHYS-DAVIES in the boat and ORLANDO looked at us and yelled out so we could see his 'special move'. [HeeHee]
SEAN A: How well he was doing it, and then JOHN leaned to the left and that was all she wrote for them. Capsized.
ELIJAH: Out.
BILLY: [in a JOHN RHYS-DAVIES voice] Don't row into the wind boys!
ELIJAH: The look on his face of just resigning to the fact he was going down was--
SEAN A: And the two of them. It made the two of them feel sort of antagonistic to each other for about three weeks, which was perfect for their characters.

SEAN B: It was good. We looked quite professional I think. [laughs]

SEAN A: My mother refuses to let me tell her how anything about how things were done. Someone'll be near us and say, "How did you make it look small?" and she'll just put her hands over her ears and go, "No, no, no, no, it's real, it's real, I want to believe."

ORLANDO: I love it as you close in on these, you see the birds flying around the eyes as if they're nesting in there. There's little details within this movie that I think really make this movie so special and spectacular, the attention to detail.

43. PARTH GALEN

ORLANDO: That location was phenomenally beautiful by the lake there, the only annoying thing about it was the sand flies, these horrible insects, sand flies in New Zealand. My god, they draw blood when they bite you and you get a huge thing so we were constantly covered in insect repellent. [Poncy Elf.]


DOM: At this point BILLY and I were filming on a separate unit with BARRIE OSBOURNE. There was lots of Merry and Pippin chasing and fooling with the Uruk-hai and running in different directions which was really fun wasn't it?
BILLY: Yeah, it was good fun.
DOM: Very physical stuff.
SEAN A: One of the facts of filming the movie that I don't think would be really clearly understood by anybody who wasn't there, but there's a huge--well, it couldn't have been without it, but at any given time there were up to six crews filming at any one time. I think they had 24 motion picture cameras, and two 2nd unit directors and insert unit director and a model photographer and PETER would bounce around, helping shape and guide the direction each unit was going in. One of his biggest accomplishments was helping direct all of these sub-directors.
BILLY: Yeah, he had a monitor for each unit and he'd be sitting there in front of all these monitors watching shots.
SEAN A: They were being satellite transmitted, he'd get on the cell phone and call somebody down on the south island and say "listen, can you have them move a little to the left?"
BILLY: Yeah, amazing.
ELIJAH: Interesting how there's no scale trick with that shot.
BILLY: Yeah, but it works.
ELIJAH: Yeah, it does, and I love it. After this PETER would say cut, and SEAN would go back into being very quiet and kind of composed, soft spoken and suddenly into this raging kind of emotional scene. It was amazing to watch him click on and off.

SEAN A: Pretty cool for you, ELIJAH, that you get to--you interact with every major performer who comes there and at some certain point you get to go and film a scene individually with them. It's amazing all the different kind of emotional levels you strike with each different person. It's cool.
BILLY: And technically how different all those performances are.
ELIJAH: It was just a pleasure for me to be able to have individual scenes with those people as well. My god, what a treat.

JOHN: I loved working with him. He's such a natural talent and such a wonderful energy and his instincts are excellent and all that wonderful self belief and assurance that young actors must have if they're going to be good.

DOM: This is great. This is VIGGO really coming into his own here.
SEAN A: VIGGO is such a committed actor. He just went there with his whole body and soul everyday.
ELIJAH: I love that the ring actually speaks to VIGGO and tempts us. "Bless us." That's amazing. I didn't pick that up until the third time I saw the movie. [I was actually under the impression that it said "Elessar" like it says in the captioning.]
SEAN A: It's cool how you're with each person that has an interaction with the Ring when it's in your possession, you're just sort of witness of the Ring's power.
ELIJAH: On other people. It's effect on other people. that does slowly change though, or quickly change throughout...
SEAN A: The longer you have the ring?
ELIJAH: Yeah.
SEAN A: I say that to fans at like book signings and stuff, they come up and they've got a ring hanging around their neck while you're signing, I'm like "Careful, don't hold onto that for too long."

44. THE BREAKING OF THE FELLOWSHIP

DOM: I like the little nuance that VIGGO does where he sort of blesses the sword against his forehead before starting the battle. It's kind of that if he does this little motion here he'll not come to any harm.
SEAN A: That little glimmer, that shine in his eye just there when he came around the corner in slow motion and you just get the sense like, 'okay, here we go.' Now that's what I can say about VIGGO that's great. Now what we could say about him that might be slightly more critical, is that the stunt guys were terribly afraid of him because he was so into it he would occasionally hurt them with his swordplay. Knocking out their teeth, he got his own tooth knocked out.

SEAN B: I wouldn't like to fight him in real life. Maniac.

ORLANDO: That was a sequence I had to drag the arrow out, stabbing him in the face and then pulling it out to shoot the guy behind and I just had that idea to, I was trying to think of cool things to do, cause the bow is great, for long range and it looks really cool but I wanted to get something that worked in close combat, I thought I how could I use an arrow as a weapon just as an arrow. I couldn't believe it when it made the movie.

SEAN A: He's the coolest. I'm so jealous. I wish I could do that with a bow and arrow.
ELIJAH: This is one of my favourite moments between...
SEAN A: Merry and Pippin.
ELIJAH: Aw man, I love this.
DOM: This is great. This kind of came out of improvising.
SEAN A: Well cause they hadn't really dealt in the screenplay adaptation with what happens to you two at the end of it.
ELIJAH: This ending of the film would not really be the same without this.
DOM: They hadn't addressed the fact to a certain extent that Merry and Pippin make that decision for Frodo, say to Frodo, you go, we'll distract the Uruk-hai for you, which was a really great touch I think.
ELIJAH: Well it keeps our connection alive in some ways that was forgotten about to a certain degree.
DOM: This was great fun wasn't it BILLY?
BILLY: Although slightly scary.
DOM: Running away from all our stunt guys friends.

ORLANDO: We'd choreograph each scene, each fight scene and then really it would just adapt itself.

SEAN B: BOB ANDERSON was the stunt guy, the main one that was responsible for the choreography and the moves, and he was just great to work with. As everyone--the stunt guys and stunt girls, they were fantastic, they were so precise, so committed and professional about how they did everything. And it was great fun y'know, we had some good times. Nothing's more exciting than getting a sword and a shield and being told to go out and fight some Orcs.

ELIJAH: Unbelievable. And Orli actually did all that himself. That was unbelievable.
DOM: Well, I don't think he did that himself.
ELIJAH: Just trying to make him look good guys.
SEAN A: He looks good, he looks good.
BILLY: He couldn't look any better. [motion seconded.]
SEAN A: He couldn't. A source of great annoyance to me.
DOM laughs.
ELIJAH: Maybe we shouldn't talk about the outtakes with him at Helm's Deep.
SEAN A: [laughing] See, now, I wasn't gonna go there.
ELIJAH: Sorry. [That sooo better be on the extended Two Towers DVD]
SEAN A: Finally the horn.
DOM: Here's new Aragorn stuff. Nice work VIGGO. Just continuing running, running, running.
BILLY: Good stuff.
ELIJAH: Oh sweet VIGGO.
DOM: Now here I think there's going to be stuff of--yeah Merry and Pippin really get involved.
SEAN A: Nice. Cause this is --this could have been their final stunt.
BILLY: Actually, Richard, who was a cameraman on that day, everyone had to wear hard hats, because the stones weren't real but they had to have a stone in the middle of the sponge and as I was throwing them with DOM he was saying, throw them a bit closer to the camera, and I threw it so close to the camera it hit him right in the bridge of his nose.
DOM: Broke his nose.
BILLY: I bought him a bottle of whisky for that.

SEAN B: With the arrows, nobody ever fired any, we just put them in on action I just reacted to the arrows and then-- they're horrible aren't they? Big lump of wood with hairy tips and very brutal.

ORLANDO: This walk down the hill it's just this arrogance this kind of the evil of him just oozes out as he sort of strides down the hill and kills our hero. It's pretty powerful. And then SEAN BEAN--what a death scene.

SEAN B: I think at this point he feels as though he's let them down, Merry and Pippin and sort of gives it one last go.

ELIJAH: Brilliant.
DOM: It was great doing this sequence with SEAN BEAN, he's amazing.
BILLY: And how he keeps fighting is incredible.
SEAN A: I just love the slow motion and the way the soundtrack emotionally draws you in.

SEAN B: In this sort of silence, all this battle and then all the sudden there's this silence that you can almost feel.

ORLANDO: Their faces, these two Hobbits, it just sums it up really. The way they just scream off.

BILLY: It's great how they just all ignore him there.

SEAN B: As an actor you couldn't wish for a better ending and the way that it's shot, and the sort of weight that he gave it is fantastic, and it makes an impact. That's what I'm trying to say, he doesn't just, he dies nobly, he dies tragically.

DOM: I remember VIGGO and LAWRENCE had a huge physical fight here and didn't really pull too many punches. VIGGO was--well both of them were covered in bruises and I think LAWRENCE actually does connect when he head buts VIGGO. May have smacked him there as well. But he definitely caught him there.
SEAN A: Yeah cause he couldn't tell depth perception cause his eyes are totally obscured by the prosthetics and--
ELIJAH: Oh! [Lurtz licking Aragorn's blood off the knife]
SEAN A: That is so gnarly. [Aragorn beheads Lurtz]

ORLANDO: In every time I've seen this in the cinema with all the audiences, there's a cheer.

ELIJAH: Fantastic.
SEAN B: We did this quite early on, maybe a third of the way through, or half way through, but y'know I was doing my death scene and I've got about another seven months to shoot on the film, so it's one of the first scenes we had together and we were working on it well into the night, the night before with PHILLIPA and FRAN and all the rewrites, trying to get it right and get the balance right and so it was very fresh in our minds when we played the scene and you're improvising to some extent, but it seemed to come over well. He's a great guy to have by your side in a scene like this.

BILLY: I think it's great to see sort of so-called action heroes with this sort of depth isn't it?
ELIJAH: I think that's what sets this apart and why it's not simply a fantasy movie.
BILLY: That's what PETE's always said right from the start, it's all about being real. Everything's got to be real.
ELIJAH: It's funny, no matter how many times you see this, it's still heartbreaking.
SEAN A: VIGGO, the pathos in VIGGO's soul is so pure. Here's ORLANDO with this incredible look in his eyes.
DOM: Like on [????] the Elves can't really understand grief or death cause they don't die.
SEAN A: They're immortal.
DOM: Boromir goes full circle. He pledges allegiance to Aragorn at the very end.

SEAN B: Well he's become a victor over his addiction hasn't he. Finally defeated it. He's paid a heavy price, but it's almost as though the badness has left him. As though it's left his body and he's back to who he was more imaginative, more learned in other peoples way of life, other cultures. He's become a better man, and it's unfortunate that he's not going to be able to prove that anymore.
SEAN A: I love JOHN RHYS-DAVIES too, because he's, it's in Moria when he's sort of crying because of the death of his forefathers or whatever or right there with the Dwarves, they've battled, they've lost, they're all at the other end of the spectrum from the Elves and that sort of, that resigned sense of knowing that we've lost another good soul fighting the good fight.

46. THE ROAD GOES EVER ON...

SEAN A: Do you remember when they showed us this scene for the first time? There was so much of the time when PETE, y'know, I don't know when he ate dinner, or if he ate dinner or slept or whatever, but this night he's like, okay, we're all going out to dinner together; PETE and FRAN and PHILLIPA and you and me and we sat in this little thin, we had a glass of red wine, we had some pasta or whatever and FRAN and PHILLIPA pulled out these two pages and they handed a copy to you and a copy to me, PETE had already approved it or whatever, and this was after a year of filming and I was so gratified. I was so grateful cause it was exactly what you intuitively wanted to see, but hadn't realized yet. It was almost like they needed to go through the whole film making process and really chart what happens with Gandalf and Frodo and--
ELIJAH: It just shows you what a difficult task it its, these books and keeping the story straight, the themes straight and you know.
SEAN A: The water. Just describe how cold the water was. The coldest. When you're in the water a minute, thirty seconds and you feel like you're--everything goes numb.
ELIJAH: Everything goes numb. Took me about an hour to warm up. Probably longer for you. Cause you were in longer.
SEAN A: I got to the point where--
DOM: How did they do that? Did you go under and they said action and you came back up?
SEAN A: Yeah and it was hard to submerge yourself. Your body was so cold that when I was trying to .............. my body literally stopped. My brain was going, 'go, run in, they said action, it's time to do it' and my body refused to do what my brain was telling it because of sense memory from the last half hour of knowing how cold it was going to be. Trying to fully submerge my body.
ELIJAH: My heart went out to you. That was so hard man. It's kind of cool as well that the underwater sequence of you was--
SEAN A: Dry for wet.
ELIJAH: Yeah, dry for wet.
SEAN A: On a stage.
ELIJAH: Against a blue screen.
SEAN A: No water involved, standing straight up, miming that you're drowning with fans
ELIJAH: And slow motion.
SEAN A: So hard to do.
DOM: And computer generated bubbles coming out of your mouth.
SEAN A: I was so terrified that it would look crummy. They did a good job.
DOM: They really did. I didn't even know that it was computer generated until someone told me about three movies in.

ORLANDO: I kind of was it as a PETER and FRAN moment because of their sensibility and there whole family thing as well with KATIE and BILLY. It's almost like how I see them in a way. We've all always said how PETE's this Hobbit. He's got the heart of a Hobbit. But that moment, they're such a great team PETER and FRAN, it's a family thing. When we'd go round for script meetings or whatever, there'd be PETE and FRAN and BILLY and KATIE it was just, I dunno, a moment.

DOM: That's a nice touch that you don't really see. That Aragorn takes Boromir's gauntlets.

SEAN B: This is where he puts my gloves on. Something to remember me by, I don't think many people really notice it, but it's there. It was VIGGO's idea. It's a nice touch. I think he wears them for much of the other films. It's almost as though we passed something on to him, I am a victor in some ways. I've let it go. I've passed a baton, the torch to Aragorn and they'll go on.

SEAN A: It's such a hard thing for them to do to come up with an ending that is satisfying, that makes people in the audience feel like they've seen a whole movie.
ELIJAH: But yet continues.
SEAN A: But lets you know it's to be continued. I love though, that so many people have come up to me and they're like, 'I was so bummed when it was over. It was three hours but I wanted it to keep going.'
ELIJAH: But there is a cap. The cap is the end of the Fellowship. They will go on. They will find Merry and Pippin. And Frodo and Sam will go off on their own and there's that knowledge that that will take place.

ORLANDO: [goes on for days about absolutely nothing and at this point i really couldn't take his blathering another moment and i didn't transcribe this bit, cause it really really wasn't important. sorry.]

ELIJAH: It's funny you're told your whole life not to talk during movies.
BILLY: Yeah, I know, it's very difficult, especially in kind of emotional parts.
ELIJAH: Isn't it weird?
BILLY: Where is this filmed guys?
ELIJAH: That was in a parking lot on Mount Rue Pao [hopefully spelled that right?] and when it comes around for that it was a blue screen on a stage in Wellington.
BILLY: A year and a half later.
ELIJAH: Yeah, I think it was quite a ways later.
BILLY: Incredible isn't it?
ELIJAH: Pieces, little pieces to the puzzle.
BILLY: Look at that bag that SEAN had to carry everyday.
SEAN A: It was so horrible.
ELIJAH: You finally did get rid of it but not for a very long time.
SEAN A: That whole movie.

CREDITS

ELIJAH: I don't think I've ever seen credits as long as this. [And he didn't even stick around for the LOTR Fan Club credits.]
SEAN A: It's a global effort. In a lot of ways, it's a project of national identity for New Zealand, but it's a British story and there's British actors and American actors and American talent and Australian talent and New Zealand talent and Indian, French Canadian people from all over, South African, there's, it represents-- what I felt like when we were making the movie is what I imagine the people were making the pyramids...[And herein Joe College goes on for what feels like hours in a long soliloquy about how the people who built the pyramids weren't actually slaves based on a thesis by his Egyptology proffessor and if you really really care, email me and maybe I'll listen to that bit again.]
BILLY: Thanks very much for listening to us while we spoke about the movie for what feels like a few days. Was it? [Felt like it.]
ELIJAH: Yeah, that was an extended version of the movie. [laughs] That's long.
BILLY: As ELIJAH said, you're always told never to speak during movies, and I hate being in the theatre, so it's very hard to speak about it, but it's been really good fun actually.
DOM: Yeah, I hope we've been entertaining enough, not too annoying and we'll be back next year to do commentary for the Two Towers.
ELIJAH: As a note this is actually, sorry to interrupt, but this is three of us, our first time doing commentary. Mr. ASTIN has done commentary before, this is a pretty special moment.
SEAN A: Knowing for the audience to know that you ELIJAH and DOM and BILLY are such huge fans of DVDs and DVD commentary.
DOM: DVD freaks.
SEAN A: And now you've been baptized into the culture and people want to know about how we feel. I didn't know whether we should be talking more about acting, or the experience or whatever, but hopefully I think this was sort of an honest--
BILLY: I think the thing is like hopeful, whatever you think about the movie, it's an honest telling as far as we're concerned and he just had an honest four hours, four friends talking about the movie.
DOM: If you have any opinions you should send them over to--where?
SEAN A: ORLANDOBLOOMland.com [laughs]
DOM: www.lordoftherings.net That's the official one.
SEAN A: And y'know, any apologies for any crimes against Tolkien during our session.
BILLY: I think we all know the book quite well, so.
DOM: Any inaccuracies was probably due to copious amounts of alcohol.
ELIJAH: I was just going to say that I wanted to send a shout out to Tom Bombadil, cause he was not included.
SEAN A: We love you Tom. Thanks for taking care of us.
BILLY: And to all the guys who are making the DVD, thanks very much. Although, is it really, really necessary for us to be naked during this? I'm quite cold. [I have no words left.]
SEAN A: Thank you!








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