Who you doing out there? It's me Tiggert. I am Duc Wayne Duck.
It's me Bunkers keep bobcat. All right, y'all, did it ring
your favorite firefly you desire? Hold old knock gud. My name is Jim
Cummings and welcome to tune In. All right, welcome back. This is
another episode of Tuned In with Jim Cummings. Of course I'm joined by Jim.
How are you doing today? It's another day in paradise and look who's
here today. We have John Rhese Davies. Thank you so much for joining
us. You know him from Lord of the Rings as Gimlee. You know
him from Indiana Jones, legendary actators. Oh my gosh, what a talent.
Thank you so much for joining us. A legend in his own mind.
Definitely, yeah, all right, who's got the tricky questions? All
right? I don't know, but you know, one of my favorite pictures
I should probably dig it up here is a month or so ago we met
at a con and it was a beautiful thing. And my wife his mom,
a very beautiful girl, and and you happened upon her in the hallway,
and you were a gentleman and and it was. It was a beautiful
thing and a lovely moment, a truly lovely You know, we should have
fun at these things. Oh my goodness, it should be a that's the
whole life. Were joyful and yes and playful and yes, amen. Because
the world is a somewhat dark and grim place, isn't it. Yeah?
Nowadays, now more so than in recent history most I think. I think
we're living in a time that's more dangerous than Cuba Week. And I remember
Cuba Week because m hmm, yeah, yeah, the Bay of Pigs,
Bay of Pigs, that's right. Yeah, yeah, what is Cuba Week?
I'm not familiar. Oh well, Kennedy was president. Kennedy was president.
The Russians were going to put missiles. Oh, this is like the
miss on yeah, Cuban missile. Yes, that's right. And it was
a damn close run thing, you know. The Americans were going to stop
the Russian ships one way or the other, and the Russian said, if
you stop our ships, it is an act of war. And we were
all sweating a bit. It's a very nasty and dangerous world, and that's
why we come to comic cons to get the hell away from that. Crap,
right, I mean to get a little respite, get a little little
cleansing breath. I had had two remarkable conversations here in this comic con Yes.
The first was with a young computer and I said, so what sort
of computers are you using? Are you? Are you into artificial intelligence yet?
He said yes, getting that way, getting that way. I said,
tell me, is there a real threat from artificial intelligence? And he
said, well that's a yes. No, okay, good, that was
not yet and I said not yet. Well when will we know that there
is a threat And he paused and he said not until it's too late.
That was an interesting moment. Hmmm. The other guy, I said,
well what do you do and he said, I'm a financial analyst. I
look at the figures for the economy and things like that. And I said,
what are the figures telling you? And he said, We're in deep
trouble? Hmm perfect. I just wanted to cheer. Yeah, yeah,
good night, everybody. I just want to thank you all for your short
brief life that are clearly going to come to a rather short ending soon.
Well. On a lighter note, this is tuned in with Jim Cummings.
I was looking through your credits, and you've done an extensive amount of voice
work as well. And in nineteen ninety six you did Boo to You Too
Winnie the Pooh as the narrator. Do you remember that? Nope? No,
you know you do so many of these things, and over fifty or
sixty years they you know that particular day that you spent three hours in recording,
So yeah, yeah, I know. I'm yeah, yeah, yeah,
I wasn't there and I forgot it too. Oh wait, never mind,
that didn't make sense, but I can relate to that. Yeah,
yeah, oh yeah, no, it's true. It's just happen. Have
you listened to that one? Do you know that one? I don't know
that was. I mean I was a kid at the time, but I
didn't see that television special. It was a Halloween special of Winnie the Pooh.
Ah, yes, yes, that would be fun. Milm aa mil
yes, Winnie the Pooh. Milne was a member of the Garrick Club in
London, and which club, The Garrick Club. The Garret Club was created
in memory of David Garrick in about eighteen thirties. Odd Dickens was a member.
Thackeray was in order that gentlemen might meet actors on equal terms. So
it is known as the Actors Club. There's a joke in there somewhere,
it must be. And we have a number of distinguished writers, I mean
Dickens Sachary Miln was one. And the Garrett Club was really falling into rather
a bad state, like many London clubs did in the in the in the
end of the forties, fifties and sixties, you know, they were beginning
to go in decline. But Milne, being the generous club member that he
did, left the rights to Winnie the Pool to the Garrett Club. Wow,
and Disney bought them, and the Garrick Club never looked back. We
now have the greatest theatrical collection of pictures in the world. But I know
we spent five million I think on a couple of zophonies that actually David Garrick
himself had, But we've got portraits of every sort of every actor of the
seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth century. Virtually. Wow, Wow, goodness,
and what a treasure. Yes, When the next time your you guys are
in London, let's have dinner at the Garret, I say, we're there.
You love it? Very impressive Wow, good food and great wine.
Why is our wine cellar great? Because every wine journalist in England is a
member of our wine club. I'm sure of that. So so the club
buys quantities of wine, you know, each year and sells off the unwanted
surplus five or ten years later, on the average for half a million pounds
or I was thinking, yeah, that's there's no money. I mean,
that's wow. It's a lot of pounds, a lot of pounds. But
Olivier was a member, and Gilgel was a member, and David Suchet is
a member. Fry is a member, and Roger and was it Roger Fry
who wrote The Lady is not for Birman Christopher Fry, and it's it's a
it's a great place to yeah, I would imagine. But we often raise
a glass to aa mil and winnie. Oh that's nice. That makes me
happy. Good. Yeah, you got to check that place out, Jim,
I will. I will be there the next time I go. I'll
give you a buzz. I'll see John I'm going to and we're heading over
there. I don't actually live in London. I live on a place called
the Isle of man Oh, yes, where the biker boys come. Yes,
we have the t T Race, the Tourist Trophy Race, which I
think started in either nineteen hundred and four or nineteen hundred and seven. It
is the greatest road race for bikes in the world. Oh, that's wonderful.
People whistle through these narrow stone streets and these these hedgerows on either side,
go over the mountain and hope the sheep don't stray across the road.
Yes, I've seen footage of this. It is it's quite something. It
is an extraordinary race. It is quite something. The top course speed was
broken this year and I think we've got one hundred and thirty six point six
miles an hour, which means, of course they're doing over two hundred and
twenty in places in order to get around that that huge circuit. And that's
not a bicycle on a bike, a motorbiker, a bicycle motorbike. Wow,
okay, oh yeah, I'm not. I was. I was thinking,
somebody's really peddling, somebody's got some juice. Wow. It is a
great place. Have you been to it? Well. I often go down
to the end of the garden and see them coming down into Kirkmichael and yeah,
and there's a silence and then you can hear the helicopter coming. Oh
man, ah, yes, we are Gosh, the mortality rate I think
over since the since the race started, I think we've lost one hundred and
seventy odd people. Oh wows. It is a real, real tough road.
Okay, so I'm not qualified to watch No the low ride, No,
No, I'll be at the end going yep. Oh man, that's
amazing. So you do you enjoy doing these comic CODs where to comic Con?
Yes, very much. In fact, I was just talking to Judd
Brophy, who's a fellow actor from in Lord of the Rings in The Hobbit,
and he's in New Zealand, and he said I quite like coming to
these, don't you, And I said yes, And he said why particularly,
and I said, because I think that they're probably one of the most
important part of an actor's education, to actually get to meet the people who
put the bread and butter on your feet your career. I find looking back,
I don't really like the younger me, the younger you, the younger
me I think didn't really like people. And I remember going to my first
comic on sort of nineteen ninety seven, eight or nine. So I'm going
to think, oh God, why have I got to do this for goodness
sake, just to promote this damn show. All those people dressed up by
Captain Kirk and they get a life? Yeah, yeah, yeah, And
you're echoing Shatner's actual words, yes on Saturday Night Live. Yeah, get
a life. Wow. But the truth is they have a life. Yeah.
And if you get to question and listen, you'll realize what an extraordinary
and real life it is, an all rich one. It's true, it's
true, and you know, and they're having at the time of their lives.
Yes, indeed, the time of their lives. So I love to
see people laughing and happy and smiling, and I agree it's a beautiful thing.
The other great thing is that you get a chance to meet young people.
A few years ago I was a member of the Advisory councilor of the
Planetary Society, and I got to use these events as a way of finding
a few bright youngsters to to to think about science and panetry. Society was
formed by a man called Carl Sagan. Oh. I was going to ask
you, where did that come from? And that explains it? Carl Sagan,
did he do it billions and billions of years ago. Yes, that's
my bad girls singing. I'm sorry you had to get that out of my
system. Please continue. Sagan and the head of NASA and the head of
JPL got together and said, look, if we're going to explore the solar
system, you'll note the solar system, because he thought the distances were so
great that we will never get outside the Solar system. If we're going to
do that, we're going to need chemist, biologists, physics, physicists,
mathematicians, computer geeks, architects and nears, biotechnicians, medics, a whole
range of people, that's for sure. And so the society is basically created
to sort of try and create a little corpus of people who could build a
nexus of connections and talents. And of course there are a lot of older
people there, some of whom have worn their fields or even their no bells,
and their function now to try and bring on these young people. I
was in New Zealand about ten twelve years ago. It was a Sunday afternoon.
The crowds were dying down. The school kids were there and you know
they were coming in to ask the questions, and you know, the boys
as usual dominating the conversation, the girls hanging backs. There were a couple
of girls then, and I asked them to started talking about themselves. And
then I turned to the second one and said, so, what are you
going to read at university? She said, oh, probably law? And
I said, well, what are the qualifications here? What are you good
at? And turned out she was pretty good and all around her really and
I said, well, instead of reading law, what did you think about
what you might think about science? You're clearly interested in space and science.
And I gave them the speech about joining the Planetary Society, which because if
you're going to have a career in science, you need to learn to network
quickly, and that's the start way you start networking. Cup to I'm walking
in London and this beautiful young woman comes up to me and says, mister
Rheste Davis, you changed my life. I thought, oh God, what
have I done? Here we go and she said, I took here advice.
I read maths and physics for my first degree, astronomy for my second
degree, and I was a member of the Planetary Society I got talking to.
I think it was Bruce Betts then and Bruce picked up the phone and
he said, Fred, there's a young lady here that I think you should
meet. And as a result of that, I'm about to go to Stanford
to do my PhD in astrophysics. Oh wow, wow, another time,
and I had this letter, this little email. About ten days ago,
a young man sent an email to me saying, dear John, about ten
years ago you had a very big cue and when I finally got up there,
you spent twenty minutes talking to me because you because you discovered I was
interested in astronomy, and you told me to join the Astronomical Society in England.
I just want you to know that I got my first degree in astronomy
at Cambridge, I'd done my masters, I'm halfway through my PhD in astronomy,
and I wanted you to be the first to know that I have just
had my very first article accepted by the Royalist Astronomical Oh yeah, wow.
Well now that's a feather. Now that's a feather in That's one of the
things that we can do you And if you can just capture the imaginations of
of some star gazing, star dreaming youngster, yeah, you know, yeah,
literally and metaphorically. Yeah. But the damn thing is anything I say
to them their parents have probably said to them, but because it sounds a
lot better coming from you. But because because it's a parent, of course,
nobody. Nobody listens to their parents. I've got an eighteen year old
daughter who's going to read law. She's never seen Lord of the Rings,
She's never seen and so she's the one never seen anything raiders. I've never
seen any of that. Really nothing, wow. Added to which, she
knows that I can't ride because she's a rider. But I can't possibly ride,
I said, go look at that thing I did with Brookshields called Sahara.
I'm leading a cavalry charge there. No, daddy can't be allowed near
a horse. He doesn't know the front end from the power boy. But
then perfect parents and children. Yeah yeah. Are you a big sci fi
fan? Yes? Yeah? Do you believe in aliens? Do I believe
in aliens? Do they believe in you? By the way, do I
believe that the universe is big enough to have other forms of life? Yes?
But you know there are real constraints. I was reading New Scientists the
other week, and a guy says in it. Look, if you want
to look for life on other planets, one of the things we've got to
do is assess how much oxygen there is on the planet, because if it's
less than eighteen percent of the atmosphere, there can be no combustion, there
is no fire, there will be no technology that is based on heating things,
fire based things. Yeah. But what if they can just like warp
gravity. What if they have like some formula where they can just work technology
without starting from stone chippings to turning discovering that metal will is available and will
melt and we will and can be used. I'm not sure you can't.
What if they're not even carbon based life forms? Yeah? I was thinking,
what about those little guys down at the bottom of the ocean. Ah,
well, you know, I mean that's pretty much the closest thing we
have visual evidence of aliens, right. Those things are crazy? Yeah,
yeah, I mean a lot of them look like they're not from here,
like those little fish with the glowing Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But I've
been to one or two small communities that are rather inbred. They where's that
I'm I'm down there in Arkansas, my real friendly down there. The problem
is distance yeah, sure enough, there must be There must be life in
the universe, because it is. It is pretty pretty vast. But if
you're looking at us ever finding it, yeah, that's a good yeah.
I mean we homosappien sappings have been round between two hundred years million, two
hundred thousand, one hundred thousand years, perhaps forty to fifty generations, perhaps
one of my toy fifty thousand generations. Somebody calculated the other day that the
number of people on the Earth in total had been about one hundred and eight
billion total human beings. Ever, I think so, oh god, I
think I've got that figure wrong. I'm sure somebody somebody in the comments.
Yes, someone will correct us. Oh, yes, some wise. But
history really begins about fourteen thousand, ten thousand years ago in terms of you
know, people being able to come together and create communities. You know,
our ancestors were at the end of an ice age and that was just about
survival. Yeah, it certainly was, so we could have glad they did
it though. Yeah, me too. But I mean our species is relatively
young, and look where we are. I mean, without overdramatizing, you
know, there is a real possibility that our species could come to an end
within one hundred years. Was certainly a thousand years. You mean the artificial
intelligence thing alone you're familiar with. I think he's a Norwegian philosopher called Nick
Bostrom, and Bostrum has a theory called the paper clip an experiment as a
thought experiment, if you give a machine with artificial intelligence the instruction maximize the
production of paper clips, it would start to list what it needs, it
would start to start to assemble it, and it would also be in a
millionth of a second thinking now, what could limit my production of paper clips?
Well, being switched off would limit my production of cleams. What could
turn me off? Are humans? Eliminate humans? Because I must maximize the
production of paper clips, we cannot imagine the way a machine thinks. Yeah,
and that will be could be our downfall. One of the creepiest stories
I've heard of AI was they did this experiment and it was like, you
know what a chatbot is? A chat bot it's like a program where these
you know, you can type in prompts and the machine or the computer will
type back to you, simulating like a human conversation. Oh oh yes,
yes, yes. And they did this thing on Twitter, where they had
these two chatbots and they were talking to each other, and they started talking
to each other, and then they kind of figured out that they were both
like programs, and so they didn't even keep talking in English. They just
started making their own language, and it was just like a bunch of periods
and exclamation marks and comments, and then it wasn't entertaining for anybody on Twitter
anymore. But it kind of creeps me out that they kind of just like
realized I just did that, and then they started doing essentially like a Morse
code variant of conversation to each other, and it's like, are they really
understanding each other? Are they really to help communicating? Right? All right,
break it up, you two. You know, it's kind of like
that's enough. Hey, yeah, wow, that's kind of scary. Yeah.
But once you guys turned towards you, yeah, yeah, and and
the long finger extends, yeah, thank you. Oh okay, I'll sleep
well the night. That's that's insane. Yeah. But to come back to
your question, is there are the aliens and now they here? I tend
to be a skeptic. Yeah, Now, have you ever seen anything in
the sky that would have indicated to you that maybe something's out there. Yes,
okay, can you expand on that. The first time I was the
first time, I was a schoolboy in corn and there was something up in
the sky did not appear to be either a weather balloon or a plane or
now this would be pre satellite time, and its movements were it was stationary
and then irregular and sort of like like yes, but or suddenly and then
okay, it was an unnatural movement. And even in those days, I
knew a little bit about you know, acceleration and gravity. Sure. The
second time was out in Africa and I saw something at night and it was
light, and again it was seemed to be skimming low ish, But how
can you really measure distance? How did it how did it appear? I
mean, is it a sphere? It just seemed to be a bit sphere
like I also suffer from bad eyesight, so it could have been. I'm
not cleaning it. Look, you cannot dismiss the comments of you know,
established fighter pilots and and people like that, you count. You cannot dismiss
those things. They don't they're they're all in there, you know, all
the fighter pilots. Absolute, oh absolutely absolutely, you know but you know,
you you look at the other side and you think, come on on
the other side being the skeptic. Well, the the other side being is
look at the distances between between galaxies, and that assumes that we know how
to travel to them. I mean, because if they're doing it our way,
it's going to take a while. They've got something better. Who knows.
You're still Robert Elein And there's folding space and see the speed of light.
That's an interesting theory of the folding of space. I heard that one
before. We're like theoretically, you know, like if there was a way
to travel, if like the I don't even know how to expand on it,
right, Yeah, but it's yeah, you fold space or space folds,
and so instead of going from there to there, what you're going is
going from there to there. Yeah. I don't have the maths or the
brain to be able to to to really understand Einstein and space time and time
dilation. Isn't it? What is it? It's Oh, I beg upon,
I'm getting old and seen out. That's all right, I'm way ahead
of you. But the distances are so great and there are so many things
against it. I mean, you know, by and large, the time
it takes a species to reach a a technological age that can be relatively short,
but a species may not live long enough to actually go further. And
two species on two different worlds may be on a totally different time scale.
Indeed, there may be intelligent life on Alpha Centuri, on one of the
one of the planets going around one of the stars there. It's civilization may
have come and gone, or a civilization may yet to be, you know,
and the idea that they can just overlap would demand an awful lot more
coincidence. It's mind you. Our whole universe is pact with coincidences. Who
was it that said the universe is not just queer than we do imagine.
I think it was Isaac Newton. It's queer than we can imagine. I
gotta believe that's right. Yeah, well, you know, I saw I
will say this when I was a kid. I was a deckhand on a
riverboat and out of New Orleans, and we're out there and this is I
don't know, early seventies. I was reading Oddly Enough Time for the Stars
by Robert Einlein, and I was down in the galley, I was deckhead.
I was nineteen, and there were different you know, rings, ding
ding ding meant go tighten up the toe, ding ding ding ding ding ding
meant go do something else. And I was just sitting there to one dinging
ding ding ding ding ding ing, and I assume that meant get your ass
up. Here's to the to the wheelhouse. So I did. I ran
up, and he goes and we're in. I'll tell you where we were,
Western Louisiana or eastern Texas. I don't know, but you know,
because there's an international waterway. There's you don't see it from the map that
there's a million waterways between Louisiana Texas. And we were in there. Then
he goes, look at it, look over there, and it was going
red, bluish, red, blueish. He goes, that just moved,
and I said, no, it didn't. You moved. We're on a
boat. Come on, come on, come on, Rob or whatever your
name was. And I said, you looked at it a minute ago,
then you looked at it over there, looked at it again, and it
looked like it and it went like this. I said, okay, that
just moved, and it moved. While I was telling him it couldn't possibly
move. And it was a red blue, red blue, red blue,
red blue, and I said, and we just kind of stood there like
o. And at the time there were tons of UFO sightings on the news
and on these boats. They are gigantic, gigantic spotlights. And I said,
oh, okay, well, you know, and I turned it on
and you have to do two cranks at one time. One goes up,
one goes down. And I tried to crank it up on the It was
seeable. I mean, if it was during the daytime, we could have
went and pointed at it. And I tried to get the light up on
it and it went and that was it. It was there, it was,
it moved near and I went, oh, shine a light, goodbye.
So that was my big UFO sighting. I feel like everybody has one.
I feel like everybody has one at least, you know. It's bizarre.
It's and I think it's the curiosity of the mind, the human mind
too. Oh yeah, you know, it had my curiosity. Yeah,
I was tweaked. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'll never forget it.
I told that story a million times. It's still a little goosebumpy.
It's kind of cool, you know, I like the idea that somebody could
be out there and please be nice guys. You know, you know,
because if they're I mean, we don't have technology to go visit them.
So I figured they're technology to come visit us. Means they could probably win
in the street fight. I don't think that. I don't think there's any
dispute about that. But you're right, absence of proof is not proof of
absence. I sorry, I was just going to say that. No I
wasn't, but that's noted better when you said it. Yeah, everything sounds
better when he says it. Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
And and and you know, you may how we all would love to think
that there was a community out there waiting for us to grow up and join
them. Yes, that's that's kind of the way I've always thought about it.
But patting us on the head trying not to kill each other too much,
you know, that's kind of But I can't see the numbers really matching.
You know that the probabilities. I'm not a mathematician, but probabilities are
pretty remote. So the question is what is it? What did you see?
What? What are the things we see? The other disquieting thing.
It wasn't a weather balloon, by the way, No, that was that's
the old. It was probably a weather blon. Yeah, that's that's the
old. It's like the archaeologist the archaeologist thing. Whenever you see a votive
offering in archaeology, it's code for we have a clue what it means.
We have a clue what it is. And it's an in joke. Really
it's a votive offering. Something tells me you would you would you have a
stronger handle on that than the average bear. So well, you know,
it's pretty impressive when you can talk to archaeologists say, well, of course,
you know, I was there when we discovered the Arc of the Covenant
and and the Holy Grail. But I'm sure your work is significant. And
that's right, it's right. Oh, that's funny speaking of your work.
Jumped amazing career. I mean, you know, you've you've been in some
of the most iconic well movies of all time. But lineage it's Indiana Jones
and you're done talking. That's it. I mean, Steven Spielberg and and
then onto onto The Lord of the Rings. I mean, my gosh,
it's it's insane. I've been very lucky. Luck, of course, is
is the most important characteristic of an actors. Well, I'll buy that.
Yeah, it's assumed that you know how to do the job if you can
get the job. But getting the job, how the heck? I've earned
so many good actors who you know, the jobs just dried up or they
never really happened. And yeah, you're right about that. What are your
younger actor? You know you can always get away with the course. Well,
I was a better actor. But as it goes on, you know,
you just realize more and more it's luck. And would you agree with
the expression that luck is being prepared for the moment? Yeah, that's a
very very nice I hadn't heard that one. That's a good one. I
must, I must try and steal that one from well, you know,
your co star Harrison Ford. I remember got to be twenty maybe thirty years
ago, he was being interviewed probably Entertainment Tonight somebody like that, and they
said, well, here you are, You're in Star Wars. Does the
kid Picker? And then next thing you know, Indiana Jones Raiders. You
know, it's kind of like, how can you be this lucky to be
not not lucky. But were you ever in your wildest imagination when you were
doing American Graffiti thinking that I'll probably be in two of the biggest movie franchises
in this particular universe, you know. And he goes luck and I thought,
wow, okay, because he's perfect for everything he's in and that's not
luck. But he just said, you know, And then he started telling
the story about Sam Sam Elliott that had auditioned right before him for Indiana Jones
or after him, something like that, and he goes, oh, well,
I'm not going to get it. And then it's like, who's Sam
Elliott? You know, he's doing fine, but he's no Indie. And
when you said Indy, Indy, I have done terrible impressions of you for
a long time, you know, you know, And I met Harrison Ford
like one time in Indy and I'm so glad he didn't hear me because it
would have been really embarrassing. Yah, it gets a bit embarrassing then,
Yeah, but you're doing a perfect impression of you, and we're all glad
that you do. Yes, I think i think I'm just about done the
last one, though, you know, the there's a lot of gas in
that tank. Oh trust me, trust me, yes, Oh I do.
I saw him flirting with my wife. I think we already talked about
that. It's not he's going to bitch a back. He's still a good
plenty. I guess that's a beautiful thing. So right at the moment,
I'm trying to get the time and a bit of money to finish off the
little sound stage I've been building in the Isle of Man. And when I've
done that, I'm going to go out and try and shake the money tree
because I want the money to make the movies that I want to make before
I shuffle off this small more coil. So it's good. Well, we
all want that too, we don't We just yes? But no, I
want it for you. Well, open your wallet and say afternoon, okay,
never made Okay, good night everybody. Right, But I'm curious,
if you don't mind me asking you a question. I'm just really curious about
the casting process for the Lord of the Rings. You know, you played
such an iconic character in Gimli, and when I first met you, I
didn't realize that you were such a thesbian and that kind of took me back,
because you know, Lord of the Rings is so fantastical, and you
know, it's the only movie that's ever only fantasy movie that's ever won an
Oscar in that category. You know, there's been no other fantasy movie that's
one Best Picture. And so I'm just curious, like what your approach was
to that role and the casting process kind of getting mentally prepared for that role.
Was it any different than anything else or is it just kind of here's
the next one. I got lost if I wanted to be in Lord of
the Rings. And I said, yeah, sure, they're gonna make a
movie of it. Not a chance. It's unfilmable. Nobody can read the
damn book as far as I'm concerned alone make a movie out of it.
It was a chore. Yeah, And they said, well, they're going
to shoot in New Zealand. I thought, oh gosh, I haven't been
in New Zealand yet. What I want is, you know, about a
month's work and perhaps you know, six or eight weeks on on top of
that, so I can have a look around New Zealand, you know,
and take it off because then I love done New Zealand and you know,
but it's going to be a big movie, and I thought, wait a
minute, this is nonsense. They tried it before and it can't be done.
It's not filming. That's why Tolkien sold it so cheaply, because he
had a text build m oh no yeah, and he thought, just get
any money, and somebody wanted to buy the film rights of it, and
he sold it film. Well. One story I heard was it was about
one hundred pounds, but I'm told that it was a bit more than that.
It was about sixteen hundred and eighteen hundred pounds. Wow. And it
proved a rather good purchase for somebody. And then they said okay, and
I said. They sent me a bit of paper and the the audition I
had to do was for the part that John Noble, my friend John Noble
ended up playing. I thought, this is great. You know, it's
about which character well, I can't remember the name of them, but he's
the he's the mad king at the end, who wo who ends up killing
his own son? Oh jeez. I thought, yeah, is this a
Hamlet deal or something? Sent I sent the audition in, you know,
forgot about it, and about two months three months later, they said,
John, well done, you've got it, and I thought, got what
They want you to play Gimli the Dwarf. And I said, how are
you out of your tiny and yeah, great? And I said, do
you realize how much time I would spend in makeup were I to do this
thing? Oh no, My manager said, trust me, John, they'll
get it down to about an hour. I said, no, no,
I'm not going to do this. For God's sake, I spent thirty years
trying to be recognized. Now you want me to go to New Zealand normally
for three years in a film that will fail at the box office for the
first part, and it will be it will be direct to video if they
can scrape enough together for the second part. This is doomed to fader.
This chat Peter Jackson. Yes, I've seen his work. Oh he's very
good. He's a very good small filmmaker. But he doesn't know what he's
letting him in self in for this is a film with twenty one leading parts,
you know, eight demands shooting in different locations. It's unfilmable anyway.
This is a this is this has got the hallmarks of failure stabbed on it
and I don't want to do it. And my manager, my new agency
APA, said John. If you don't do this part, I don't think
we can continue to represent you. Wow. And my son, my elder
son, said, Dad, with respect, if you turned down this,
you'll be making a huge mistake. And I said why. He said,
you think about it. In every bookshop in the world, there's that much
book space devoted to Tolkien. Think of what that means as a fan base.
And I forgot nice. I thought, yeah, well done. You
may have a point there, but it's not going to happen. Okay,
okay, okay, I'll go to New Zealand. I'll go to New Zealand
and we'll go through the process, all right, and we'll I'll just check
out what they're what they've set up. Well, there's a nice pub there,
a nice pub. But let's see whether these come on. You can't
make a film like that in New Zealand. It has it has no you
know, the resources that you need, major studio stuff. You'd only find
that in Rome or Paris, possibly La London. But New Zealand there's been
a big film made in major industry. And I went there and I spent
every morning and every afternoon for two weeks going into every department and looking at
what they were doing. I was in the office when the phone went and
the set designer said, hang on this minute, John. He said,
oh really, oh thank you. That was that was our printer, the
guys who print up our architectural plans. We've just got to eight kilometers of
plans so far. What lay the plans to end? They had eight kilometers
of plans printed plans, Holy go sets plans okay, wow? Right,
so you begin to think, wow, yeah, that's what you think.
Yeah, And then I I got progressively depressed as every department, every department
had a level of expertise in it that you would only expect to find in
the big, you know, great studios. But it had something else too.
There was a level of share, share in enthusiasm and passionate for the
wonderful. You know. The guy who was showing me how he'd actually turned
eighteen hundred eighteen was it eighteen hundred meters of iron pipe cutting it to make
the links for the chain mail? Wow? Wow, you know wow.
And at the end of it, I thought, good god, they have
an infrastructure here to do it. How the heck am I going to get
out of this? I thought, getting get out of it and get into
it further. And then because the film is unfilmable, they can't do it.
And then I thought, I've got one get out. Let's see how
this little man who runs around in shorts handles his cast and handles his crew.
And I spent two days watching him, and I thought, dear me,
he may just to cut to three weeks later, we have a press
conference and I'm listening to the questions and the cynicism, and I get up
and say, ladies and gentlemen of the press, revise your expectations upwards three
predictions. They're taking Star Wars in Australia. At the moment, the first
film will gross more money than the new Star Wars. Peter Jackson goes like
that and buries his head in his hands. Second, these films are going
to be amongst the greatest of this decade, and in twenty years time,
when you look back, you will recognize them as being all time classics.
Newspaper reports. Actors says Lord of the Rings will outgross Star Wars. Eighteen
months later, Perfect PJ came to me and he said, you know when
you said that the press concert. I said, you mean that moment when
you buried your head in your hands. Yes, he said, we just
had the box office taking it, and we've just succeeded Star Wars. I
just didn't take into account the sheer genius of Jackson and the genius of the
writers, and I underestimated the talent in New Zealand, and I lived to
celebrate it. Yes, all the time. Now, I mean, we
talk about who are the greats of our time? I think if we were
still in the era of silent films, the greatest filmmaker of all would be
Steve Steven Spielberg. Nobody, nobody can tell a story through a lens better
than Stephen. He is one of the giants of film of all times,
that's for sure. But you know, if you take into account the creation
of a studio, the creation of an entire film industry. Really they had
a film industry, but you know it was a little film industry. The
creation of a major film industry in a country, then Peter Jackson really has
to be amongst one of the greats of all My goodness, with our question,
we had a labor prime Prime Minister in New Zealand at the time,
and she decided you on a laterally to get the hood of rid of knighthoods,
and she was going to create a New Zealand Order of Merit. And
I was the one who kept going to say, and who is this who's
unilaterally got rid of knighthoods. When Peter Jackson, Order of the Splatted Possum
Grade one goes into a studio, the studio won't be particularly impressed by the
title. But when Sir Peter Jackson goes in and you should give him one.
Why because he has done more to put New Zealand on the map of
the world than any man since Captain Colch that's for certain. Yeah. And
actually then, of course when we were all invited to the beehive, I
was the one person who never got asked to shake her hand. And if
you look at the New Zealand postage stamps of Lord of the Rings, there's
no Gimli there really, but it was right, you know, she had
no idea when we when we went to New Zealand. Tourism in New Zealand
was worth about one point three billion dollars a year, the last sick figure
I saw, and they juggled around how you calculated, And that was before
COVID it was either fourteen point something billion or seventeen point something billion. Wow,
that's the impact that Peter Jackson had on his country. Yeah. You
know, when you just take that alone into account, you realize that's there
are giants. There are giants among us. Yeah, that's amazing. Well
you're one of them. Oh, we dwarves are Yeah, that's right.
Find the inner dwarf folks. Now, my assistant is there in the corner
twitching that she's trying to indicate to me that if we don't get any dinner,
help me. I'm on a plane off. It is not a place
you want to be. No, yeah, how about any other questions?
Well no, but thank you for coming. All right, thank you for
being here, ladies and gentlemen. Color Oh god, thank you very much.
Stay sweetest, honey, jolly nice to see you. God blessed.
Say hi, I will do it very good. All right, y man,
thank you for looking on. Thank you, thank you. That was
a lot of fun. All right, young man, I'll close this out
here. Yeah, all right, thank you very much everybody for watching.
That was another episode of Tuned In with Jim Cummings. Don't forget to leave
a like and subscribe to us on YouTube. You can find us bonus contents
on Patreon and of course Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all that good stuff until
the next episode. This is tuned in with Jim Cummings and John Rees Davies.
Thank you very much. Bye,