Cracker by Damian Christie

Ohhh, the claws are out.

I was sitting down to write a nice summery post about Xmas and the spirit of the season. I had another piece ready to go about public radio, but thought it a little weighty, and anyway, the stats show that people only read this blog during office hours, so it seemed a little wasted.

Then I was alerted to a post… about me. Unusually, it wasn’t written by me, as most stuff on the topic of Damian Christie tends to be. At least then it would have been vaguely amusing, if still largely fictional.

Over the years, working in various forms of media, I’ve never quite worked out how to deal with personal attacks. Unlike true public figures, I’m not subject to them often enough to have a system all worked out. So, I take approach each on a case-by-case basis.

There are some questions you always have to ask though. Do I acknowledge it? Do I respond, or let it run its course, without adding either fuel or water to the fire. In the past I’ve tended to do the latter, rather than invoke a further response and just drag…it….out.

But, as I was just emailing someone who’d sent me feedback today, words on the Internet are about as close to etched in stone as we have these days, what with stone not really being a popular contemporary medium any more. And if someone’s going to have a big, fat, hairy fictitious go at me, then goddammit, I’m going to have my two cents worth too!

I’m not going to link to it, though. Given the huge traffic that comes through publicaddress [thanks to all of you too, ‘you’ve been a great audience’] the last thing I want to do is link to some half-arsed site and give them a whole lotta readers they haven’t done squat to deserve, other than slag me. Again, this is the Internet though, and those of you who care enough can no doubt track it down.

Which is NOT to say I’m embarrassed one jot by what has been said. So I’ll quote big chunks of it for your reading pleasure…

It all stems from my last post, in which I took a swipe at Act for being all over the place when it comes to certain socially liberal issues, such as pot and prostitution. In particular I criticised an article by Act MP Deborah Coddington. Not the done thing, apparently.

I wondered at the time whether I should have mentioned the fact I’d worked for Coddington in the past. The whole ‘declaring one’s interests’ thing. It didn’t seem especially relevant to the debate, though, and aside from calling her thinking ‘muddled’, which from time to time it demonstrably is, I didn’t want to be accused of a personal attack.

I’m also wondering how much light to shed on things now. While I’m left in no doubt from whence the bile finds its source, when the attacker is an anonymous blogger, one has to be careful. Also, certain revelations on my part, regardless of their truth, could lead me up a litigious path I have neither the money nor energy to defend. I will choose my words carefully.

If you’ve read down to here, I guess you want to see what they wrote :) Here’s the bulk of it, minus the preamble… It’s called “Why Damian Christie cannot take his medicine”

Damian Christie was madly in love/lust with Deborah Coddington.

The boy had it bad...

One observer said that he would cuddle Deborah's shawl when she'd gone home! He was sure he was going to get her to reciprocate. He even emptied the rubbish bin one day after she'd been sick into it because Lindsay Perigo ordered him to, and he asked Deborah Coddington to leave him a certain black dress when she dies.

Oh dear.

An acquaintance of both parties says Damian has got quite some nerve attacking the MP after she let him stay in her house rent free, loaned him her cars, and generally looked after him when Radio Liberty crashed.

Whatever happened to common courtesy?

“Observer”? “Acquantaince”? If nztabloid.com weren’t closed, I know that’s the first place you’d be looking for the story.

I did, indeed used to work at Radio Liberty with Deborah Coddington and Lindsay Perigo. I was their producer. Back then, even in her 40s, Deborah was bit of a looker. Although, I must add, even eight years ago she never looked as good as the photo accompanying her Liberty Belle column would have you believe. I guess that’s a woman’s prerogative.

So at age 21, a young eager recruit to the Libertarian stable, did I fancy Coddington? Sure, why not? She’s a strong, confident woman, and that’s always an attractive quality.
But am I a closet shawl cuddler? Er, no. Did I empty a bucket of rubbish bin she’d vomited in because Lindsay Perigo ordered me to? Not that I can recall, although even if that were true, Perigo was my boss, wouldn’t one file that under “following orders” rather than “has vomit fetish”? As a bar manager I’ve also bailed out flooded urinals and stuck my (gloved) hands into clogged toilets – what sort of pervo does this make me?

And yes, Deborah and I were pals for a time. I house-sat for her and her partner Alister Taylor when they were away on holiday. It’s usually considered a reciprocal arrangement, house-sitting. Hardly “stay in her house rent free”, but whatever. I had the use of her Volvo during that time too. Sue me.

What my attacker has neglected to add, when looking at the “common courtesy” I should therefore extend (presumably by never criticising an MP whose house I sat for a week eight years ago), is how our ‘relationship’ ended. Choosing my words carefully…

After Radio Liberty collapsed, I went to work for a publishing company owned by Deborah Coddington and her defacto husband Alister Taylor. The company is largely engaged in what is known as “vanity publishing”. If you’ve done something vaguely worthy of recognition (i.e. Auckland Harbourmaster, 1972-74), they’ll track you down, ask you for some biographical information so they can put you in a book of “Who’s Who”. Oh, and by the way, would you like to buy a copy?

Coddington and Taylor have been in the press lately for all the wrong reasons. This story by the Sunday Star Times’ Jonathan Milne sums up pretty nicely what’s what, as does this later story from NZPA. Allegedly, people paid for books which in many instances failed to turn up. Some people are reported to have literally died waiting.

As Milne’s piece notes, Coddington was involved in Taylor’s business as, but now is going to great lengths to distance herself from his allegedly dodgy dealings. It may seem odd to attentive readers that while the general public was alerted to Taylor’s business practices as far back as 1991 [Du Chateau, Carroll 1991a, 'Alister Taylor's back in town', Metro, Aug., pp.71-87], Coddington took nearly a decade longer to get the heads up.

Here are some of the choicest parts of the sixteen page[!] Metro article. Unfortunately it’s not available on line, but I’ll happily scan it and email it to anyone who wants to see it. It’s all a matter of public record, and as the author of The Paedophile and Sex Offenders Index, Coddington can hardly object, can she?

While he and his partner Deborah Coddington flew to the Frankfurt Book Fair, the authors of the books they were selling there were often broke.

Deborah Coddington blames Paul Greene for Taylor’s eventual downfall. Late last year lunchtime habitués of Rosini’s in High Street were entertained when Coddington approached Green and hissed ‘Are you still sending people bankrupt, Green?’ before stalking off.

Greene is furious too. ‘Taylor was capable of the most extraordinary deception,’ he says. ‘Take the Goldie books. Alister said they’d completely sold out, when there were 50 stashed away at the Old Post Office… which Deborah said were hers.’

What neither Taylor nor Coddington seemed to realise was that their lavish lifestyle looked very bad through the eyes of the hard-up writers and illustrators… [the] constant assurances about the cheque being in the mail and the book being out next week were wearing thin. Both Taylor and Coddington now drove a Mercedes.

Authors were always ringing up to find out how their books were going. The basic strategy was to butter them up and stall, stall, stall.

[After Taylor was bankrupted] How come copyrights and properties thought to belong to Alister Taylor Publishing were owned by Deborah Coddington? Hadn’t Taylor told the creditors’ meeting that “Alas, we are no longer together?

While I wasn’t exactly enamoured by some of my own experiences within the business, I’m not going to go into it, because it’s too long, too boring, and too fraught with legal minefields. However I will say that parts of the comprehensive Metro article, again written years before I came onto the scene, and more than a decade before Taylor’s recent dramas, struck a chord with me.

I will also tell you how my involvement with Coddington and Taylor came crashing down. No, I wasn’t caught sniffing Coddington’s shawl… I wouldn’t make that mistake twice.

Fairly out of the blue, Coddington confronted me one day. She accused me of dobbing Alister in to the IRD. I hadn’t - the IRD aren’t exactly my best friends either - and anyway, I wasn’t privy to the company’s financial affairs, let alone anything (allegedly) untoward. Apparently I’d also sabotaged their computers while I was housesitting. Of course, that's the sort of thing I'd do, spiteful little man that I am.

But anyway, bugger evidence, due process, or in fact any general rule of law or decency, that was me down the road. To the best of my recollection, Coddington’s exact words as she sent me packing from the business she was most certainly involved with at the time: “You’ll never work for a company I’m a director of again!”

Always one for a spot of drama, old Coddington.

So that’s what happened.

Right. Phew. Exhale.

This is SO NOT the piece I wanted to write on Xmas Eve. In fact, this is SO NOT the piece I wanted to write at all. Sure, you can now say I’ve only written this because I’m pissed off about being fired for no reason eight years ago. Wouldn’t that have been a better accusation in the first place? “Damian attacks Act because Deborah Coddington once fired him”? Doesn’t quite have the same “nice old lady” spin to it I guess…

The anonymous blogger responsible for forcing my hand might want to consider whether outing me as a scarf-sniffer was really the best response to my previous post. It’s particularly strange given the supposedly niche focus of their blog. I would have thought also that the “sources” and “acquaintances” referred to would have learnt that Pulling a Mike King is not particularly wise in terms of PR and damage-control. Again, I didn’t want to write this post, but call me a bucket o’ vomit emptier and you bring it on yourself. Dicks. I can “take my medicine”, cheers. Can you?

Oh well. Today dear readers, as we wind up for the holidays, you can honestly say you’ve learnt two things. You’ve gleaned a little bit more about Act MP Deborah Coddington’s involvement as a shareholder and director in an allegedly dodgy publishing company that she’s now trying to distance herself from. And you’ve learnt about my passion for pashmina. I hope both serve you well this holiday season.

Merry Xmas. Drive safe.

I don’t know who writes ACT MP Muriel Newman’s press releases, but they’re on to a winning formula. My favourite titles to date:

“Stop Beating Around The Child Support Bush”

“The Grinch who stole hard-working families' Christmas" [Steve Maharey, FYI]

Not to be beaten on the cliché front, Heather Roy has a nice little think-piece called “Has Political Correctness Really Gone Mad?”

And then on Tuesday, this little beauty:

“ACT New Zealand Justice Spokesman Stephen Franks today expressed a fervent hope that Santa does not slide down a chimney to deliver presents, and come face to face with one of the 242 inmates being granted early release for Christmas.”

I don’t even know where to start on that one.

I’ve been puzzling this year over the direction in which ACT has been heading, and I’m not alone. In the early days the party had some sort of cohesive direction, founded as it was on the work of Sir Roger Douglas. Its positions were clear. But it’s funny what Parliament can do. Within one term Sir Roger was rumoured to be unhappy with his acolytes, particularly with those responsible for putting together its muck-raking scandal sheet ‘The Goss’. Not the sort of thing a Knight of the Realm would expect from his chosen few.

These days the muck is left largely unraked, but the principles the party was founded on are even less visible than before. There has always been a tension inside the party between the socially liberal and the socially conservative. While some Act staffers smoked pot on the front steps of Parliament after the Voluntary Student Membership Bill passed (I was with them, but didn’t inhale), and others placed advertisements in the NORML News during the last elections, the party hasn’t come out either way on the cannabis issue.

Given the policy statement on Act’s website “That individuals are the rightful owners of their own lives and therefore have inherent freedoms and responsibilities,” you'd think their cannabis policy would be a gimme. But a search reveals nothing.

I’m not the first to have noticed the silence, either. I called Act HQ. “No firm policy” was the response. It would come down to a conscience vote, apparently. Obviously ACT’s “individual responsibility” only goes so far as to allow its MPs to make up their own minds whether you should be able to get high. Interesting huh?

The prostitution issue resulted in a similarly confusing stance. Deborah Coddington wrote in her ironically titled “Liberty Belle” column why the Prostitution Reform Bill wasn’t a good idea.

It’s fairly typical of Coddington’s muddled thinking (more on the hotly debated “Saving/Supporting Public Radio” later).

Yes, as someone who holds liberty as the ultimate value, I do believe that sex between consenting adults is private and the state should in no way intrude. But let’s deal with this issue in context. We’re talking here about prostitution and I think that’s different from the act of two adults making love to each other.

There are those who argue trading sex is the same as any other commercial transaction. I can’t agree with that. For starters, we’re not allowed to do it in public.

Correct me if I’m wrong, and you probably will, but is she arguing that because you can’t do it in public, it shouldn’t be viewed as a commercial transaction? Five things off the top of my head that you can’t do in broad daylight, but can quite legally pay for:

Stripping
Pretty much any surgery
Embalming
Mare servicing
Developing photos

Coddington goes on: “We also have good taste and decency laws governing the promotion of sex…”

So because we have laws about it, we shouldn’t decriminalise it? Did anyone say muddled?

And if selling sexual intercourse to a willing purchaser is no less moral than selling a haircut, then answer me this: Why do so many prostitutes get hooked on drugs because to try and survive mentally they must psychologically remove themselves from the reality of what they’re doing?”

I think the real question is why do so many drug users turn to prostitution? Because drugs are expensive, and prostitution can be quite lucrative. Maybe if drugs weren’t illegal? It’s a chicken and egg argument. I’ve known a lot of people in jobs involving odd working hours or huge deadline pressures, who develop speed habits in order to stay up and get the job done. What should we do about that? Ban the hospitality industry? Outlaw commercial film shoots?

And then, the compelling:

Around 70 per cent of sexworkers... were sexually abused as children, and many of them began their life on the game before they turned 16. I’m prepared to accept there are a very small number of informed, educated, emotionally stable hookers who chose their careers for fun and high financial returns. But they’re the exception and I’m concerned about the pattern.

So because a woman has been sexually abused, she should forgo the right to make her own decisions? And those that are informed and educated, and emotionally stable? Just too bad, it would seem, you’re not the majority, so your individual rights go out the door. Quite the lover of liberty, this Liberty Belle.

Perhaps Act should update its central policy statement as such:

“That individuals [other than those who have been sexually abused as children, those that are informed, educated and emotionally stable but represent the minority of any group, and anyone who wants to smoke pot] are the rightful owners of their own lives and therefore have inherent freedoms [other than those that are already prohibited by law, because they’re illegal] and responsibilities."

I was a bit wary to wade into the debate over Deborah Coddington’s Saving/Supporting Public Radio report. However, now that I’ve taken the time to read all 44 self-serving pages of it, I feel obliged to write something. Not today though. It’s Friday afternoon and all this writing is making me thirsty.
_________________

Postscript: I've since been informed that despite the above Liberty Belle article, Ms Coddington ended up voting for the prostitution reform bill. Of the Act MPs, 4 voted for, 4 against, and Richard Prebble did not vote. I think rather than proving me wrong, this only serves to underline the split and inconsistency within the "party of principle" that is ACT New Zealand. Cheers.

As promised, here's a fairly full transcript of the round table interview we did with Peter Jackson last week. I say we, as some of the questions are mine (noted with a "DC") whereas others belong to other members of the group. A few of the lamer questions have been cut out (read my previous post to learn why).

Many of PJ's responses are fairly lengthy, but I left them pretty much verbatim. This is Peter Jackson, and if anyone deserves a few Cracker column inches right now, it's him.

DC: Are you going to do The Hobbit?

PJ: We haven’t even discussed it. Everybody asks me about The Hobbit – believe me. No, I’ve never had a conversation with New Line or anybody about The Hobbit and what I do know is that the rights are fairly encumbered because United Artists, for some reason – I don’t have a clue why – since about the 70s or 80s they’ve had the distribution rights to The Hobbit in North America, so they would distribute it but they don’t have the rights to make it. And New Line bought the rights to make it as part of the package that they did with Saul Zaentz at the beginning of this, but they don’t have the rights to distribute it, and they distribute their own movies in North America. So there’d have to be some incredibly time-consuming complicated legal discussions between United Artists and New Line for it to actually happen, and I don’t know, I haven’t heard that they’ve actually taken place, I just don’t know.

DC: Would you want to?

PJ: Yes I would. Yup. Yup. I would feel really weird somebody else doing it. So I’m just waiting like you guys are, waiting to see if the phone call ever happens.

Q: Surely you can make that phone call yourself?

PJ: I’ll stay out of the legal side of it, it would be a nightmarish deal for them to do, I wouldn’t like to even think about it.

Q: Did you always have the sense that you wanted to make Lord of the Rings?

PJ: No. I read Lord of the Rings when I was 18. I was on a train to Auckland when I first read it. I was a photo engraving apprentice, and was going up there for a 12 week course at ATI. And I’d seen the Ralph Bakshi movie. I’d just seen it, it was 1978 I guess, and the Ralph Bakshi film intrigued me enough about the story. I got a bit confused by it and obviously it finished halfway through, so I bought the book at the railways station and sat on the Silver Fern and got into it on the way up to Auckland.

It never even occurred to me once that I had a desire to make it. ‘cos I was a 17 year old, photo-engraving apprentice. I didn’t sit there on the train thinking [boldly] “ONE DAY, I WILL MAKE THIS!” because it just seemed too crazy. And I didn’t read it again – people assume that I’m a geeky kinda reader, but I didn’t read it again until the idea of doing the film came up. It was 20 years later, it was 1995 and I was thinking about what we could do, I was in post production of the The Frighteners, it was November ‘95, and I was just lying in bed on a Sunday morning, – I remember the moment –lying in bed, thinking about all these computers. We had about 35 computers at Weta at that point in time, we have about 400 now [laughs], and I was really intrigued, because it was at that time that computer technology was really happening, and I was lying in bed thinking what was possible now, what sort of stuff could you do now with computers that you couldn’t do before. And the first thought that came into my head was a fantasy movie, because I loved Harryhausen’s films Sinbad and Jason and things, and I thought it’d be great to do a fantasy film now with monsters, because Jurassic Park had come out and the dinosaurs looked amazing, and I thought wow, you know, imagine what you could do with a fantasy film, and then I thought about Lord of the Rings, and I thought wow, that’s always been unfilmable and now it is filmable, and I just thought it was worth making a phone call. And I picked up the book again, and that was the second time I

read the book, it was at that point when I thought about the idea.

Q: Was there something you did to maintain enthusiasm throughout the project?

PJ: The worst thing – because people always ask what the worst thing was – was really, I had this feeling during the shooting, the 15 month shooting in ‘99/2000, which is a very, very long time to be shooting a film. And I started to feel about eight or nine months into that I was getting exhausted, but it was the mental exhaustion that was more scary, physically I could just keep on going like a tortoise, just keep plodding along, but mentally I was realising my imagination was shutting down, and some days I’d come home at the end of shooting and think ‘God, I just shot TV today’, and I felt really bad, I just did a wide shot, two-shot, singles, was all I could think about.

And I thought ‘God, I have no imagination anymore’, and it was actually quite scary, quite frightening, and I lost the ability to think of two or three things at the same time. I actually thought at one stage, ‘this must be what it’s like to be 85 years old’, it actually felt like my mind was just narrowing down. So what I started to do was on Sundays – because I had Sundays off – I’d sit at home on Sunday afternoons and put movies on, movies that I felt where the directors had really used the medium of film making in imaginative ways. And they were all films I’d seen before, like JFK, Goodfellas, Casino, Saving Private Ryan, and I just watched these movies on Sundays, and it would be stimulating. It would just be like this is what good filmmaking really is, this is people who are imaginative, who are using the camera, and it would kind of get me excited and reinvigorate me and get my brain a bit more focused on it.

Q: It’s quite a D-Day moment when the orcs land out of those boats…

PJ: Yes it is, that is Saving Private Ryan. I know, I should have had an orc throwing up over the side of the boat on the way in. [laughs]

DC: What is your favourite scene out of the whole thing now, one scene where you feel you nailed it?

PJ: My mind is mainly on this most recent movie for obvious reasons. My favourite scenes in Return of the King: I like the scene where Theoden arrives at the top of the hill and rallies his guys, his Rohirrim before they do that big charge, and he does that speech, and it was Bernard’s idea actually to go running along with the sword along all those spears, it was something he came up with, we were down in Twizel, and he said to me, we had all these horses, about 300 horses there, and Bernard said “I’ve been working something out with the horse guys, you want to have a look” and he demonstrated it to me and I thought it was really cool, and I like the speech and I like the music from that bit, it sort of does it for me all round there. I love stuff on the volcano with Frodo and Sam, my favourite bit of music is the bit where Frodo is crawling up the mountain and Howard has this wonderful pan pipe bit playing on the soundtrack. My favourite other scenes, I’ve always been very, very fond of the Mines of Moria scene from Fellowship of the Ring. Actually I was in England doing the music of this movie about two months ago and I was flicking around TV and The Fellowship was on and it was right at the Moria scene, I hadn’t seen the movie for a couple of years, and I watched that Moria thing with the bloody rock and the guys on it, and I thought it was pretty cool.

DC: I read that Palmerston North is celebrating the premiere with a floral tribute representing the evil essence of Lord Sauron, the eye, in Palmerston North Square…

PJ: Yes, flowers make total sense, don’t they?

DC: …possibly the first time it’s been represented in floral form. Are you surprised or impressed at the way NZ has got behind this film? It’s like the All Blacks, LOTR is our film, no other film maker would have this – Scarface wouldn’t have had Florida putting on a parade.

PJ: [Laughs] That’s funny. Yeah, I think New Zealanders have got every right to be proud because it is an achievement that in many ways has spanned the length and breadth of the country. I couldn’t possibly imagine how many kiwis have actually worked on these films but it does go quite deeply, from the army – because we obviously had incredible cooperation from the army for this film in particular, this is the one that the defence force is, all that stuff at the Black Gates, all that stuff when Viggo’s on the horse doing the speech to the soldiers, they’re all kiwi soldiers, we were shooting it on that live firing area up by Ruapehu, it was the only place in New Zealand we could find flat desert terrain, we needed that sandy desert, but we found it, the army let us on their land in Wairouru, you know, the land that you’re never allowed to go on, and we found this perfect bloody spot which was all just flat. And they said well, this is full of unexploded bombs. This is our live firing area, we’ve used this for 40 years, since WWII and there’s so much unexploded munitions there, and we couldn’t find anywhere else, and so the Govt ordered the army to go in and clear it all out for us, and they did all this minesweeping of this whole big area, and they just took away all this unexploded ordinance, old rusty old bloody bombs, and then we had a big lecture on the day that we arrived there, the army had a table out, and they had all these bombs on the table, and they said listen, these are all things that we’ve recovered from this area, so if you see any of

these, don’t move, just put up your hand and one of our bomb disposal guys will come over, and that was pretty surreal!

But they were great, the army were fantastic, the soldiers were great. But its gone down to the to the people making furniture – everything in the film had to be made, nothing was rented, or bought or hired, and the amount of New Zealand craftsmen, glassblowers, weavers, people doing the leather, making shoes, it’s just gone right the way through the country. And so New Zealand does have every right to be proud of it, it’s not just a pat yourself on the back, a lot of these people never worked on a film in their lives before but they just stepped up to it, and did what they needed to do to help us, and so they absolutely deserve to be proud.

I spoke to Winston Peters on my show yesterday about the racist pamphlet issue.

It seemed only fair to give him some air time, after Noelle McCarthy had spoken to the disgruntled posties the day before. It amused me that for someone so quick to bury interviews in statistics (he's only second to John Banks in that regard), there was one important figure he wasn’t so sharp on…

DC: How much did you say Ahmed Zaoui has cost?

WP: Well Zaoui was $100,000 about three months ago, that figure does not include the cost of maximum security, which is $68,000 a year, before we even look at legal aid and everything else.

DC: How much did your pamphlets cost, 500,000 of them?

WP: I don’t know the exact figure of that, but it…

DC: Why not?

WP: Well…

DC: Wouldn’t you do a costing exercise before you sent out half a million pamphlets?

WP: Yes, yes, we did a costing exercise but to tell you what the exact figure is…

DC: Ballpark.

WP: Well I can’t give you the ballpark figure either.

He then went on to complain, inter alia, about the lack of time he gets in the media. Which is probably true, for the most part. But I can’t blame the media as a whole. No-one really wants to interview a politician who is generally belligerent and/or cantankerous, not to mention often downright rude. Hey, we’re people too...

DC: So if we gave you more time, you might refrain from such expensive exercises?

WP: It’s not an expensive exercise.

DC: Well you just told me you don’t know how much it cost.

WP: Well it’s not, well I know that we would never contemplate an expensive exercise.

DC: Was it half a million dollars?

WP: Well of course it wasn’t half a million dollars.

DC: Including postage?

WP: No it’s dramatically less than that.

So he didn’t know the figure, but he knew what it wasn’t. Convenient, huh?

Amongst the ever increasing pile in my in-tray…

From the office of Tony Ryall, National Police Spokesman

20 November 2003: Private prison ban costs taxpayers millions

21 November 2003: NZ decides its justice laws, not UN

25 November 2003: Another speed camera scam

28 November 2003: Beef up police powers to tackle gangs

30 November 2003: Call for rethink on age of criminal responsibility

1 December 2003: ‘P’ epidemic – why can’t Hawkins see it?

2 December 2003: Justice delayed is justice denied

4 December 2003: Meth Lab Cases Facing Even Longer Delays

From the office of Hon George Hawkins - Minister of Police.

27 November 2003: Minister to attend Wing 214 graduation.

Now of course opposition politicians are always putting out press releases, unlike Ministers they don’t have a real job. But I’m still allowed to have my doubts about exactly what it is the Minister does. You’re welcome to draw your own conclusions.

Huge response to my Lord of the Rings post this week – cheers. Snippets of interviews and some more photos will be appearing over the weekend. You wanna know exactly how stoopid Ms Tyler really is? What about Orlando Bloom, the closet un-co? Stay tuned… oh okay, here’s another few pics from the After Party to keep you hanging on. Have a great weekend.

*Nudeness may vary according to region.

So I saw the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

Unlike Russell Baillie, who seems genuinely torn between his duty to let the people know what’s going on, and sticking to his contractual obligations not to, I have no such dilemma. I’m not embargoed.

Sure, I signed the forms, but what New Line Cinema don’t know, I was drunk at the time. I’ve been doing these sorts of reviews for a while now, I know how they work. “Registration, 8.45 – 9.15” is all about signing waivers, disclaimers and so forth. So, I ordered a wake up call for 6.15, a bottle of CC from room service, and set to work. Sure enough, come 8.45, and I was legally incapacitated from entering into binding contractual obligations. I also have a rather heinous photo on my press pass, but that’s the price you pay for media freedom. Best thing, it's all tax deductible.

What was it like, you ask? Pretty damn fantastic. I’m not going to go into details though, who does what to whom etc. Not because I’m not allowed, mind (because I am), but because it's just no fun. Suffice to say, every dial is turned up to 11, and it is stirring stuff. Chills up the spine.

Some advice though: It’s long. Christ it’s long. Go to the toilet beforehand, and only drink the barest amount of liquid necessary. Otherwise you’ll have the dilemma of choosing between possibly missing something great, or crossing your legs, rocking and slowly sobbing in pain. Still, you drink a bottle of CC first thing in the morning, these things are going to happen.

Second piece of advice, take a cushion and a jacket. You won’t need a cushion if you go to the Embassy though, huge big plush seats, leather (or some simulacrum thereof) in the middle section. And the toilets? Worth the price of entry alone. But yes, and a jacket. Why must it always be so cold in cinemas?

And why must it be so damned hot when I’m interviewing Hollywood starlets? There was something decidedly Adaptation-esque about sitting in a stuffy little hotel room, the sun streaming in, wearing wool, beads of sweat forming on the brow as Liv Tyler enters the room. “Oh, it’s a bit whiffy in here,” first thing she says. Ah-yup.

It wasn’t necessarily my fault though. The print and radio journos were thrown together into groups of ten or so for “round table” question and answer sessions. We stayed put in a small, poorly venitlated hotel room, while the cast and crew came in for 10-15 minutes each, and we tried to get as much out of them as we could in that time.

Or at least, most of us did. I’ve never done much press conference work before – most interviews are generally one-on-one – and I’m not used to sharing the talent. You have to jostle a bit for question time. You have to predict when the interviewee is about to stop talking so you can be first in. Get it wrong, and you’ve just rudely interrupted Peter Jackson. Well done.

Because each journo has their own angle, the interview has absolutely no flow. The discussion can go from recalling favourite moments, to the poor state of the New Zealand screenwriting industry in one question. And then you get the Excellent Questions from Wacky Radio Jocks and Gossip Rags. “Who’s your favourite character?” asked at every…single…fucking…interview over a seven hour period by a young woman from New Weekly was inspired. What’s the best answer you can hope for? “Orlando Bloom in Gollum appreciation scandal”? And when you don’t get it – after ten goes – you think you might change tack?

“I’m off to have a one-on-one with Billy Boyd, what questions should I ask?” she asked.

I couldn’t help myself. “I don’t know, how about ‘who’s your favourite character’?”

“Oh don’t be meeeeeean” she replied, “I’m doing a box, you know?”

In which case I stand corrected. Be sure to buy the next issue of NW to find out who your favourite actor’s favourite character is…

AND Anyway, these are actors. Their favourite character is always themselves. Even for the also-rans. One gentleman, whose character shall remain nameless, but has a sum total of around five minutes in the entire trilogy answered “I like my character best. I think [%$@$] is actually the most complex and most difficult character to play in the whole film.” Yes, those five lines must have been a real bitch.

But enough cynicism. I’ve had a wonderful few days. Wellington’s amazing at the moment. It looks great, the weather is outstanding. The city is alive with tourists, Tolkein fans, star stalkers and the media. It’s difficult not to get caught up in all the hype, to try and remain objective, oh bugger it, who am I kidding? I love the Lord of the Rings.

Yesterday outside the Intercontinental Hotel was Something Else. Hundreds of screaming fans, predominately young girls with the odd elf here and there, waited for each actor to emerge. When none did for a while they started screaming at random stuff. “Oh, there’s a, a, A SPARROW OVER THERE AAAAAAHHHHHH!” My ears were quite literally sore afterwards.

A moment that should have been on Holmes, but wasn’t: As Sir Ian McKellen emerged to shake hands, kiss babies and the like, he approached a man with a toddler on his shoulders. “Does he know why he’s here?” Sir Ian inquired kindly of his father. Right on cue the wee lad smiles, claps his hands and shouts out “Gandalf!” Great stuff.

I can and will write a lot more on this when I’m back over the next few days. I’ve got interviews to transcribe up the wazzo, and many of these will also be played on bFM over the next week or two. Click the Gallery link below for a few pics snapped in Wellington.