LOTR Castmember Quotes
New Zealand |
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Speaker |
Topic |
Quote |
| Dom | Local Fame | Despite being unknown, after three months in Wellington people were asking for autographs and taking photographs. "That generally bounces off if you're hanging around with Elijah and they look at you and go, 'Who are you?' and I go 'I'm no one.' I lap all that up, it's good fun," Monaghan said. People notice the accent and say 'What are you doing over here?' I say 'I'm working in a job for a year or so'. If they keep asking, I say 'I'm on this Lord of the Rings film'. Then you get shrieks and hollers. I tend to just keep it quiet. The less people know, the more it will be when it comes out." |
| Elijah | Beauty | We keep talking about how great it is. I hope we don't, you know, build up the image of New Zealand so much that people go out to New Zealand and it's not nearly as good as they expected it to be, but it's beautiful. I don't think you can overhype New Zealand. It's incredible. It's one of those places in the world that is largely unspoiled by the modern world in terms of population, buildings, things like that. It's nature is kind of wild and free, particularly in the South island. So it's one of those kind of magical places that feels like it's untouched by the rest of the world. |
| Elijah | Safety | (Don't they have a shark population there?) Not in New Zealand. In Australia they do. All of the awful, kinda scary mean things live in Australia and the really beautiful kinda unharmful unpredatory things live in New Zealand. That's the difference. I won't say that extends to people though because...yeah. |
| Elijah | Wellington | Oh, I love it! It's just so beautiful, so laidback and relaxed. People are so friendly. They don't have any airs about them. There's a bit of a bohemian lifestyle in Wellington that I really dug.The locals became very used to us and brought us right into their culture. They loved us. It was great -- we had our local haunts where we went to all the time. People probably assume that the locals were bothering us all the time, but not at all. Initially they may have been in awe, but the novelty wore off. Eventually they were just like, "Oh, Lord of the Rings? Cool. How's it going?" |
| Elijah | New Zealand | My God! Middle Earth does exist! |
| Mark Ordesky | New Zealand | There is literally like one degree of separation from everybody in New Zealand to the film. Everybody's got a friend, brother, son, room-mate who's affiliated with the film to some degree. It's pretty gratifying. |
| Miranda Rivers | Weather | I think the logistics of trying to shoot with so many [camera] crews. Also New Zealand's weather is really up and down. We had all kinds of extremes. I remember one day we were in Queenstown and we were sunburned from the day before because it had been sunny and we'd all been in hats and sunscreen. And then the next day it started snowing. We were sunburned and it was snowing! |
| Orlando | Scenery | It really became my home. It was amazing, like the most beautiful parts of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales all put together on one tiny island; mountains, plains, rolling fields and shit-loads of sheep. And when you're thrown together on such a project, you have no choice but to make friends for life. |
| Sean A Official Fanclub Magazine, 2001 |
Middle Earth | Yes, and you've got to start with New Zealand itself
- two tiny islands in the middle of the South Pacific. You can't go any
further south without reaching Antarctica. So it was literally going to
another world, a world of clean air, the most crystal-clear water, and the
richest of greens in the trees. There are these huge, towering summits and
volcanoes and rivers and streams. It's like Tolkien walked across New Zealand
and then sat down to write the trilogy. Plus, we had the costumes and the props, and the sets that all seemed to seamlessly grow out of the environment. So yeah, that's exactly what it was like - it was like going to Middle-earth. |
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