| "Lord of the Rings," a little something missing | |
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My objective is to disseminate this page as widely as possible with the goal of informing the Hollywood community that, despite the 13 Oscar nominations "The Lord of the Rings" has received and the movie's eventual four Oscar wins, not everyone supports the casting choices made by director Peter Jackson that eliminated qualified actors of short stature from "The Fellowship of the Rings Trilogy" as being choices worthy or deserving of positive recognition.
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| Feb. 14th, 2002 I wrote a letter to the Los Angels Times that has gone unpublished. Apparently the editors didn't find the subject matter important enough to print. Considering that Los Angeles is a community with an economy driven, in good part, by the fine work of our resident actors I can't help but think that the ethical treatment of the actors should be considered a very important topic of interest to all. | |
| My letter goes like this: |
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Dear Calendar staff, So “The Lord of the Rings” was nominated for thirteen Oscars. When I first learned that the movie was going to be made I was rather excited. It’s a wonderful tale full of magic, wonder and perseverance. Later I learned that the director, Peter Jackson, would not be casting from the community of little people but instead would use only adults of average height in all speaking roles. Now, I just an average sized viewer of the movie and don’t speak for The Little People of America or any of the many fine short statured actors I’ve seen, but I think that's simply a cheat to the audience, of which I'm one and to community of all actors. . While J.R.R. Tolkien’s physical descriptions of both the Hobbits and the dwarfs clearly calls to ones mind different forms of dwarfism, the director of this movie has chosen to cast these leading roles with men and women of average height, bearing little resemblance to the characters they represent. For example; the character of Frodo, the hobbit in the movie, was described by Tolkien as a creaturet who eats six meals a day, who tends to be a bit on chunky side and who was in his early 40’s when he left the Shire. How Jackson can give the faithful readers and fans of "The Hobbit" and "The Fellowships of The Rings" a skinny teenybopper rather than the older, chunkier character Tolkien described as Frodo with a straight face is beyond me. In times past white actors used to go on stage wearing black grease-paint to mimic black minstrels in order to entertain all white audiences. Blackface is no longer legal because it is offensive and because it diminishes the ability of the black entertainer to work. The average height men and women in The Lord of the Rings” are digitalized to mimic their smaller counterparts of real world dwarfs. How can we see this as anything more than a high tech form of blackface aimed at robbing the dignity of the small statured actor and depriving him or her of work they should have been doing in “The Lord of the Rings?” Should a movie, even a good one like “The Lord of the Rings,” be eligible for an Oscar when it was cast in this way? Will Peter Jackson take pride in his Oscar should he win for best director knowing that he robbed deserving short statured actors of parts tailor made for them? What about the special effects artists who applied the digital blackface or the actors who actually wore it on screen? Marty _______________________________________________________________________________
Here is a letter from one of the actors who was involved in the audition process for Gimli, Brian Kline, posted with his kind permission. When you follow the link you'll find a quote from Peter Jackson saying that little people didn't fit the description of Hobbits as well as "normal people" yet Jackson's Frodo doesn't even come close to Tolkien's description of Frodo from the book. Pete, you can't have it both ways, you're rationalizing, bud. Marty, To the contrary, an interview I gave that was published quoted me blasting the actions of Jackson, the casting director, and New Line Cinema. Here’s a link: http://www.dwarfism.org/dwarfstar/noparts.php . In my humble opinion, your article is articulated intelligently and with great consideration. I did not perceive it to be a rant. I enjoy a certain amount of immunity these days from casting directors in that we now get involved at the development stage!!! Fuck em if they can’t take a joke. In Love And Service, Brian D. Kline, aka DwarfStar _____________________________________________________________________ Michael Gogin was another seasoned actor who was heavily involved in the auditions for LOTR. While Michael was auditioned for the part of Gimli as well, I can think of no one better to play Frodo, the lead. I firmly believe that Peter Jackson and the casting people ripped all the LP talent people-off. It is a fact, that all the veteran actors like myself were also taped for review even during the executive meetings I had with Peter Jackson. It is also fair to assume that he used our likeness for CGI use. Perhaps I am at fault, for not being more vocal about the bullshit we go through to get a quality role. I guarantee, I have turned down more work than you could ever imagine just because of the content. I am not proud of the industry standard of roles for the seasoned actor like myself. And of course, the lack of meaningful roles for the short statured actors. The truth of this matter is only based on how much money the producer(s) can earn. Chances are they were right by hiring "star" caliber people. So in essence, the one with the money gets the honey. Sincerely, Michael Lee Gogin _______________________________________________________________________________ This post is from an experienced actress working in the UK. I am a TV/film extra and over the years have realized that 'Little people' rarely get the opportunity to appear in 'normal' everyday roles. We are usually seen in costume as fantasy creatures or in comedy sketches. I run a group for LP actors with 117 members to date. Here we discuss how we feel we are portrayed by the media, our latest roles and experiences etc. I am trying to help get LPs into normal everyday roles, especially 'background' roles. I have written several articles regarding this, some of which have been published on the internet and some in the papers. It is even more worrying that just recently "The Lord of the Rings" used average sized people for the roles of hobbits and 'shrunk' them using computer technology. I believe that the hobbits were about 4ft tall and quite stocky. The hobbits in the film were not at all like this. If this is to continue, then there is even less opportunities for LPs in the future. Lisa Osmond _____________________________________________________________________ Shame on the Academy 2002 The Academy Awards were amazing this year. They were amazing because of the sudden wealth of awards handed out to well deserving minority actors juxtaposed with the Academy’s hearty unwitting endorsement of another type of bigotry all in the same night and, at one point, almost in the same collective breath. I can imagine the Hollywood movers and shakers are patting themselves on the back this week, just busting their buttons with pride at their victory over the specter of racism and bigotry that haunted the “old” Hollywood, thinking, “Now we’ve moved past all that and we don’t need to think about that any longer.” Really? This year the Academy awarded four Oscars to “The Lord of the Rings,” a movie centered around a race of heroic little people in which not a single little person was cast in any speaking role. One is at loss to find a truly meaningful justification for a casting decision such as this. The Oscar for achievement in visual effects was awarded to the team from “The Lord of the Rings,” the very team that made it possible to cast digitally resized actors of average height in place of the little people called for in Tolkien’s books, cheating both actors and audiences out of what might have been truer more insightful performances. Hollywood endorsed, with its Oscar, Peter Jackson’s choice to replace talented short statured actors, well suited to the roles, with those unsuited to the Hobbit roles based on the weak excuse that the audience would not accept characters differently abled with the same zeal that they would the poorly suited resized replacements. Hard upon, within little more than a breath of time, Arthur Hiller was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his career achievements which included casting the first black man in a role written for a man of color and casting a wheelchair bound actress in a part that fit that very description. The question immediately comes to mind, "How Arthur Hiller would have cast these roles?" With little or no imagination the answer is readily apparent. Somehow the irony of the immediate juxtaposition of these two awards, one rewarding a blatant act of bigotry the other rewarding tolerance and integrity, was completely lost on all the creative minds that make up the watch works of our Hollywood movie machine. Those minds have lived too long with the notion that a little person (LP) actor is nothing more than a prop easily replaced with any other LP actor or, as in this case, a shrunken digital image. They’ve failed to do their homework. They haven’t taken the time to see the clips of the many fine LP actors working today and they missed the lessons they should have learned from overwhelming body of work done by the multitalented and altruistic Billy Barty or the greatly talented Michael Dunn when the 3 foot 10 inch actor was nominated for an Oscar in 1966 for his role in “A Ship of Fools.” In the 1920’s Hollywood replaced black actors with men like Al Jolson because the the cigar chomping men in charge at that time determined, form thier smoke filled rooms, that audiences weren’t ready to have "those" people on the big screen in anything other than the most menial roles. In the 30’s and through the late 40’s Charlie Chan was played by a white man, again because Hollywood had determined that we, the audience, were not ready to see a real Asian in a leading role. Even as late as the 1970’s TV audiences were protected form an Asian lead when David Carradine was cast in the role of Kwai Chang Caine instead of Bruce Lee who was up for the part and who helped develop the series. Even with these shameful bits of history to look back on, Hollywood fails to learn from the mistakes of the past. Marty
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