The Fellowship of the Cast - Documentary on Filming The Fellowship of the Ring

Beginning Chapter:

PJ: One of the most nervous aspects of the cast coming together was the fact that they'd never met each other before.  We'd gone around the world and we'd picked the best people for each of these roles individually, met them, auditioned them, offered them the role, they'd accepted.  We were happy, but none of them had worked together before.  Most of them had never met each other before.  There was a very nervous moment when suddenly we're in New Zealand six weeks out from the shoot and everyone starts getting off the plane. 

BB: When I was getting ready to go out, they said, "When you get to Heathrow you'll be travelin with someone called Orlando Bloom."

OB: I just left my family behind, and my friends and my life.  And I was, like, feeling a little teary at the idea of leaving everything behind, and my dog and that.

BB: I see this guy, and I thought, "He looks Elf-like."

OB: This wee fellow walked over and he said...

BB: "You wouldn't be Orlando Bloom, would you?"  And he said, "Billy!"

OB: And I was like, "My God, you're a Hobbit."  And we just had this huge embrace.

BB: And it was my birthday as well.  I had just turned 30 that day.  So we had champagne on the flight.  Then, when we go to L.A. because of the time difference. it was my birthday again, so we had more champagne, because it's the 28th again.

DM: Pete had done something very intelligent, whereby at the start of filming, it was just us four Hobbits for about two months.  Just us, no one else.

PJ: I really hoped that those four guys would bond, because the 15 month would go quicker if everybody was friendly and got along.  Also, for the film I knew that having the Hobbits feeling like they were connecting was important for the movie.

EW: I didn't know anyone.  There's always that fear of going to a new place and uncharted territory.

IM: I was there for a year.  So it was my life for a year, totally away from home, making new friends.

SB: It's such an adventure.  Everybody's trying to find their feet and to react and be sociable.  And that's when these formed with the unlikeliest of people.

DM: It was a real Boy Scouts kind of, you know, year and a half.  It was men together.  Every so often, Liv would be there and Cate Blanchett would be there, which is amazing thing because you've got these two gorgeous women who got so much attention from us guys because we adored them so much.

LT: I remember being really nervous because the emphasis, because it was the boys was on them meeting me in a way, and I was so nervous to meet them.  When I think about how I saw them, it's different to how I see them now.  They're all so cute.

EW: It was this amazing coming together.  Here we are.  We're all here, almost all of us, and we're gonna set out on this journey.  And it was this incredible excitement and anticipation for what we were about to do together.

SA: I sort of appointed myself as his kind of, minder.  I wanted to make sure he was okay.

EW: Sean was very much Sam for me.  Always looking after me, being there for me.

SA: He kept locking his keys in his apartment.  I was like, "Don't worry.  I'll take care of it."  I would arrange to have a locksmith brought out and get his keys so he could go about having what fun he was having, or talking to who he was talking to.  And 45 minutes late, I'd bring him his keys. "Elijah here's your keys."  And he was like, "Wow.  Thanks, thanks for taking care of it."  I saw the need for life to imitate art.  Sam need to look after Frodo as his sort of primary identity.  As the Fellowship coalesced, that was the job I carved out for myself.

BB: Sean Astin is just a very cool man.  He had a different experience than the rest of us Hobbits, because he's got a family, of course.  He was there with his wife Christine and his beautiful daughter Ally, who we were all uncles to her at the end.

BB: I was probably closest to Dom because we had so much stuff together.

PJ: We had a hiccup in the casting process because another actor was cast as Aragorn.  And we just came to the realization that we had cast the role too young.  It caused us a lot of headaches because we were now shooting.  We couldn't stop shooting, and we had a limited number of days that we could shoot without Aragorn.

VM: I got a phone call at home saying, "You want to get on a plane tomorrow for New Zealand?"  And I said, "What for?"  They said, "The Lord of the Rings."

PJ: I knew this was a very important conversation.  He'd never met me before.  He didn't know who I was was.  He had never been to New Zealand or read The Lord of the Rings.

VM: I just said, "Can I think about it?"  He said, "Not very long.  You have until this afternoon."

PJ: Then we somehow had to try and persuade him to take this role, because we thought he would be great.  We badly wanted him now in our movie.  I mean, we were in a real bind.

VM: And I hung up the phone, and my son was with me there.  He says, "Was that Lord of the Rings?"  I said, "Yeah, they're making a movie."  And he knew the story.  I didn't.

PJ: And I know the person we really have to thank for persuading Viggo was his sone, Henry, because Henry was about 11 or 12 years old at that time and he was a huge fan of The Lord of the RIngs and absolutely beside himself when he thought his dad could play Aragorn.

VM: So it was nice to have his blessing.

LT: Because it was a brilliant collage of memories and moments.

BB: I think Liv Tyler said, "This is just the weirdest set in the world.  Because there's monsters walking around, and wizards and also, you know, very small people and very tall people."  And that was quite a weird thing at first, I suppose.  But it became natural.  It was your place of work.

End Chapter:

EW: We lived, you know, most of it -- Not together, but we lived in the same city for 15, 16 months, traveling together, late nights together, long hours together, cold weather, everything, all of these elements and we were doing it together as a force.  And in that way, the Fellowship became a reality.

DM: And it just completely change who I was as a person and where I was going, you know.  Simply for that fact alone, it's been the most rewarding experience of my life.

SA: You get to, you know, see and touch and smell and feel the energy of at least a hundred people but more like 800 people, over the course of 15 months, in a way, you know, in most human life, you don't have that kind of closeness with people.

VM: People got crabby.  There were bad days for everyone and bad periods.  But there was always a kind of support system, you know.  Mostly unspoken.  It was just there.

DM: Lifelong friends.  There's not one member of the Fellowship, that I don't think I'll know for the rest of my life.

EW: Those friendships that are so important to the story as well were a reality, and a reality because of what we had to go through together.

Don't forget Tig and the golf ball explanation.

Aragorn character:

No official reason was given for Townsend's exit, except the usual "creative differences" with director Peter Jackson.

Later said in DVD: They cast the role too young.  And he is young.

Audition process according to Miranda Otto:

In landing the only other principal female role in the remaining Rings chapters, Otto recalls "it was an easy audition in that I only auditioned for it once. Pete wasn't even there as he had already begun shooting in New Zealand, so I went in, put it down on tape and had a quick scene to do. I had to audition with both an American and English accent which was weird, and that was that."

Parts of an AOL chat with Elijah Wood:

LIVEJessicaMae: I saw you earlier on 'TRL.' It looked like you and the rest of the cast were having a blast!

Elijah Wood: It was really good fun! We're all incredible friends, so it's always a real treat when we can do press things together. We can take over the show and display how well we get along. 'TRL' was great too! Lots of crazy Hobbit behavior

Question: Which of your co-stars was your favorite to work with?

Elijah Wood: That's a very good question. I don't know if I do have a favorite. I did look forward to working with the four Hobbits the most. We started out within the first six weeks of preparation, spending our time together. Whenever we filmed together, it was the best. We had a great time. We brought a lot of atmosphere to the set.

Question: I've heard that the fellowship all got matching tattoos. Where are they located, and what's the meaning behind them?

Elijah Wood: The tattoos are in various places. Some are on people's shoulders or arms. I have one just below my waist. Orlando has one on his wrist. We all got them as a function of our passion for working on this project. It was such a profound life experience, we wanted to mark it with an emblem or a symbol. It's a symbol that stands for nine. We were all holding each other's hands, it hurt so much.

Question: I'm sure that your press schedule must be insane. What's the best and worst part of promoting a movie?

Elijah Wood: This is certainly a breath of fresh air! The worst part is constantly on... within a whole day dealing with the same questions. You start losing the ability to answer the questions. There's only so many times you can answer the same question different ways. It's just difficult to get the energy to answer over and over again. The best is definitely traveling. We just went to London. It's also great to have a reunion with the cast members. It makes it a lot easier to get by with them there.

Question: Elijah, is it true that you kept the actual ring from the movie?

Elijah Wood: I did. I was given the ring by Peter and his partner Fran when I went to say goodbye to them at the airport leaving New Zealand. They said they had a gift for me, handed me the box, and there was a little pouch with the ring inside it. It was very sweet

Elijah Wood: I learned how to surf, which was great fun. Us Hobbits took up the art of surfing. I got a surfboard and a wetsuit. There was many a surfing trip. It was a great way to enjoy the beauty of New Zealand. There were a few kind of vacation-vacations. We went to Sydney for a week, some bars and restaurants. A few people did some bungee jumping. I didn't do it -- I wish I would have.

Several questions and answers from Talking about Tolkien:

What motivated Tolkien to write The Lord of the Rings?
The creation of The Lord of the Rings was due to the welcoming popularity of The Hobbit. When Tolkien's publishers asked for a sequel of more hobbits, Tolkien was at first confused, becuase he thought he had no more ideas. But after some discussion with his family and friends, he took up his pen and started what was to last 12 years of writing.

The book was completed in 1949, but why waited until 1954 to publish it?
Tolkien originally insisted that The Silmarillion must be published with The Lord of the Rings together, but both publishing companies had no confidence in The Silmarillion then. As a result, the whole plan was halted for years, until the summer of 1952 that Tolkien had somewhat modified his views; too much time was wasted, and Tolkien could wait no longer. Therefore, he agreed to first publish The Lord of the Rings. On July 29, 1954, the first volume finally saw the light.

Did the World Wars have influence on The Lord of the Rings?
In general, the answer is no. No significant influence. Tolkien said, however, that some landscapes were probably influenced by the battle fields more or less, such as the Dead Marshes and Morannon.

Part of an article from Lure of the Rings:

Before coming to the land of “The Lord of the Rings,” you’d heard two things over and over, the first of which concerned the landscape: as Liv Tyler put it, “It literally looks like somebody laid a velvet blanket down on New Zealand.” It’s hard not to feel moved as the helicopter flies between mountaintops filmed for the trilogy—even when you start throwing up in the back seat and the pilot has to make an emergency landing on a deserted beach. After you wash your face in the sea, you walk back toward the whirring helicopter and notice that everyone’s gesturing emphatically for you to stay down, stay down because they don’t want you to get decapitated. That’s the other thing you’d heard about New Zealand: everybody’s really nice.

In truth, you didn’t come to the Southern Hemisphere because of the landscape, but because a director named Peter Jackson has suddenly altered it. He’s brought to his native New Zealand, which has a tiny film industry, the most expensive and manifestly ambitious movie project in history: a trilogy of fantasy films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels shot simultaneously for a combined cost of at least $270 million.

The changes from the book is found here.

The earliest notice of Peter Jackson being interested in making a film on Lord of the Rings is 25 May 1997.  Site

• What was it like not all being together for Two Towers?  They were all in the same city most of the time though.