Rendez vous with Peter Jackson © Jean-Louis Hupe
Rendez-vous with (the brilliant) Peter Jackson
From Bad Taste to King Kong and Heavenly Creatures, Peter Jackson has had a truly unique career. And that was all before revolutionizing the blockbuster with The Lord of the Rings trilogy. At Cannes to receive an honorary Palme d’or, the director looks back on his career, his doubts, the making of his films and his unfaltering love for cinema.
Rendez-vous with (the brilliant) Peter Jackson.
On his beginnings…and his first experience at Cannes
I was filming Bad Taste on the weekend when I was a photoengraver. And then, suddenly, I went from photoengraver to Cannes. I didn’t have any experience in the film industry. All of a sudden, I was here and it was incredibly exciting. I felt like I was entering into a world I had always dreamed of.
On the Palme d’or…which he never imagined he would receive
There are some things you don’t dare to dream about. I’ve never thought, “it would be amazing to have a Palme d’or one day”, because I just felt that I would never make those types of films.
On the screening of King Kong that changed his life
I was eight or nine years old. I saw that there was a film on tv at home: King Kong. “Cool, a giant ape”, I thought. But that night completely changed my life. That was the exact moment that I said to myself, “I want to make films”.
On Heavenly Creatures
We worked like investigators. We met the police officers, the lawyers, the families, the two young girls. Everything in the film is based on facts. Even the fantasy scenes came directly from Pauline Parker’s private journal.
On the birth of The Lord of the Rings trilogy
After The Frighteners, we had created a whole special effects infrastructure. We were looking for a project so that we could continue working with our teams. And every time we had a new idea, someone would say, “they already did that in The Lord of the Rings”. So in the end, we thought, “Why not just try to adapt The Lord of the Rings”?
On what makes J. R. R. Tolkien’s work timeless
It’s not a classic quest. They don’t go off looking for something, they leave to destroy something. It’s kind of an anti-quest.
On the making of The Lord of the Rings
266 days of filming. I’ll never forget it, never… If we’d really known what was in store for us we probably wouldn’t have done it. It was such a massive undertaking. But we were naïve and that naivety absolutely saved us.
On the worries of a director
I would sometimes drive alone to set saying to myself, “I have to shoot this scene today…but I have no idea how I’m going to go about it”. And then I would arrive on set and pretend I knew exactly what I was doing. The whole team expects you to be a leader.
On Elijah Wood (who was also in the room)
Elijah had such amazing, positive energy. Even when I was panicking, he would always come to set with enthusiasm and say, “It’ll work out”.
On artificial intelligence and cinema
I’m not worried about AI. In my opinion, it’s just a new special effects tool. The most important thing is consent. We should never reproduce an actor’s likeness or use their image without their consent.
On Oscars night for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
When Steven Spielberg opened the envelope for Best Film he said, “It’s a clean sweep”. My son Billy thought that the winning film was called Clean Sweep… and he started crying because he thought we’d lost. Spielberg was mortified when I told him that after the ceremony.
