Peter Jackson

Interview By: Mike Jackson
MikeJackson@TheCinemaSource.com

We recently sat down with Peter Jackson to discuss the epic filmmaker's gigantic remake of King Kong. A film that has been on the director's mind ever since one fateful Friday night decades ago, 'I saw it when I was nine years old and started to experiment with stop motion the day after I saw it. On Saturday I got made a dinosaur and tried to animate it frame by frame.' He then went onto share that he actually had tried to remake the film when he was only twelve but, 'didn't get very far before I realized it was a bit ambitious.' That ambition would finally pay off when in 1996 the film was given the go ahead by Universal. However it wasn't too far along when it ran into a 'monstrous' problem. 'They pulled the plug when Mighty Joe Young and Godzilla were coming out because they didn't want to be the third place in the monster movie race.'

Surprisingly it would take another epic film he had wanted to make to finally allow Jackson to get back to the project he had dreamed of getting to do since childhood, Lord of the Rings.

After the almost eight year journey that was the Rings saga, Jackson literally started production on Kong the day after he won the Oscars for Return of the King. 'We were in a Kong production meeting the following day. We had a Universal script meeting the day after and the day after that, I got on a plane and flew to New York and met with Fay Wray.'

Fay Wray of course was the woman who had portrayed the Ann Darrow character in the 1933 original. It was an especially emotional meeting for Jackson because, 'As a life long Kong fan, she was somebody that I had always wanted to meet and it was this film that created the opportunity to meet her. I actually cried when I met her. It was unbelievable to me that I could actually shake the hand of somebody who was actually involved in the 1933 King Kong.' He then adds with a laugh, 'I was actually more excited about meeting Fay Wray than I was about the Oscars honestly.' Jackson actually had wanted Wray to say the iconic last lines about what really killed the beast at the end of the film. However Wray was hesitant to do so, 'She said, 'Nope, absolutely not!' which was a little disappointing. Then I explained to her what we were doing and our ideas about the film and she was warming up to the idea until she unfortunately passed away.'

When asked if making this version has influenced the way he looks at the old film he explains, 'I actually watched the original about two weeks ago and really enjoyed it. It strangely hasn't changed my perception of the original film at all. To me the original stands there as a great classic film and I can certainly enjoy it and really have no particular connection that we just made our film. I just sat there as a Kong fan.'

Many people have of course asked why he didn't simply make an updated version of the film rather than keep it in the year 1933. To this he quickly replies, 'It was always important to us to set the movie in 1933 because that's the year the original is set. To me it's so symbolic with King Kong, the fact that he climbs the Empire State Building and is attacked by bi-planes.' He then adds, 'Also I think the 1930's setting gives it a suspension of disbelief, that you can believe that there's an island with dinosaurs and a giant ape that hasn't been discovered yet.'

Setting the film in the 1930's and depicting New York in that time period presented a set of unique issues; Most of them stemming from the fact that the look of New York at that time no longer exists today. This presented a huge challenge to the filmmaker's who then had to recreate it in various sets and digitally in the computer. 'We wanted big vistas, huge shots that show blocks and blocks and blocks of streets and avenues, hundreds of period vehicles, and thousands of people walking the streets. The newsreels from back then show the streets as surprisingly crowded, more so than today. The only way we could really achieve that was for everything to be faked.' The job of recreating most of those vistas comes from the artistic ability of the computer artists who built the city literally from the ground up. 'We studied New York period photos and as many plans and maps as we could. We built the entire island of Manhattan in the computer. If someone wants to see what the skyline was like in the 1930's this movie shows it to you. And I think that element of reality is important for the fantasy aspect to work, one balances the other.'

Reality helping to make the fantasy of Jackson's films more believable is something the director has always prided himself on as it has helped to transport audiences first to Middle Earth and now to Skull Island. Keeping with the theme of making all the locations and characters as realistic as possible, we are given a new look for the savages that inhabit the mysterious island. When asked where the look of the savages comes from Jackson explains, 'We wanted to try to make them as realistic as we could so we studied the cultures and the way people look in that area of the world. The ruins and the jungle were based on a kind of Mayan architecture.'

Characters also find themselves influenced by actual people from the time period. The character played by Jack Black, a mad director of a film that goes on location to Skull Island, is a specific example, 'We based a lot of it on a young Orson Wells. We were thinking what film makers were around in the 1930's and found a real life prototype. It's not a hundred percent Orson Wells but we did like his rebellious nature and the way that he thumbed his nose at the movie industry.'

Jumping behind the scenes for a moment, we focus on the music of the film which made quite a bit of news on its own. Howard Shore was originally supposed to score the film only to be replaced by James Newton Howard. When asked about the sudden change of composers Jackson replies, 'Howard Shore is a very close friend of mine and we have a really great rapport with one another. Really it was just a case of two friends who didn't have the same sensibility for the film so rather then go down a road that we didn't feel was the best way to go we just decided to change composers.'

While the film is large in its attention to detail and realism, it is also large in running time. Over three hours. Jackson is quick to add that several large sequences were shot but then ultimately cut to trim the film down to its current running time. When asked about the possibility of an extended edition of Kong, much like what happened with the Rings trilogy, Jackson is hesitant to respond saying, 'I don't know. I don't think Universal will make up their minds about that until the film comes out and they see how it does.'

Speaking of seeing how things go, we asked how he feels about this film having a high quality of Oscar buzz around it. To this he timidly responds, 'I don't know whether that is the case. We never really thought of it as an Oscar type movie while we were making it, and I don't know whether it is. I mean it's not the type of film that's typically up for Oscars.'

Then, looking even farther into the future, when we asked what he plans to do next he paused for a moment, smiled and then simply said, 'A long rest. We're just going to take a long quiet time for a year or two.'

And a long rest is well deserved after what has been ten continuous years filled with two epic motion picture productions made virtually back to back.

As to whether or not this film will generate as many awards as his previous endeavors have remains to be seen, but Peter Jackson, unlike his giant ape Kong, will unlikely fall from the top of the world anytime soon.