[rescue] replacing an Ultra2

[Phil Stracchino]

Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> I waited a large part of my life for two movies:
> 
> 	Starship Troopers
> 	Lord of the Rings
> 
> I'm pretty happy with the second one, even with the compromises. The
> director's compromises don't change the story, they just deal with the
> temporal problems of a movie that complex. The DVD release version adds
> another 4 hours or so.
> 
> Just for example, the elves showing up at Helm's Deep. In the book, they
> struck in the north separately. However, the movie couldn't deal with
> both battles. Too much complexity and too much required screen time.

Right.  And, frankly, the part added in to explain it, "It is TIME that
Elves and Men stood side by side in battle against the Shadow again" ...
OK, so may be it wasn't canon, but it was *right*.  Jackson understood.

> That's an example of a director making intelligent compromise to fit the
> medium, because he really did read the story and try his best.
> 
> LotR is another movie that almost didn't make it. He had to fight to get
> it made all the way.

And he's still fighting, to get honestly paid by New Line or even just
to be shown the accounting books to prove whether what he got paid was
correct or not.  (If they have nothing to hide, the books should show
they paid him correctly, so why refuse to let him see the proof?)

I don't know if you heard, but after New Line fired him for daring to
question the accounting, and said they'd pick another director to make
The Hobbit, the individual in Germany who actually owns the rights said,
"New Line can say what they want, Peter Jackson WILL direct The Hobbit,
because the rights revert to me next year and I want Jackson to do it,
and New Line can't possibly get it done before the rights revert."  So
now New Line has had to politely ask Peter Jackson to come back, because
the rights-holder told them, "I will renew the rights lease to you for
The Hobbit if and ONLY if Peter Jackson is the director.  This is not a
negotiable condition."

-- 
 It's not the years, it's the mileage.
 Phil Stracchino              phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net
 Renaissance Man, Unix generalist, Perl hacker, Free Stater
 Landline: 603-429-0220                Mobile: 603-320-5438