Peter Jackson: A Film-Maker's Journey

by Brian Sibley

  It might have also damaged the industry if there had been so much fuss that the Film Commission had failed to survive.’

  A difficult child that had several times been almost cut off with out a penny, Meet the Feebles was now to be tossed out into the world as a bastard…

  It hardly mattered. From its premiere screening at Mifed in October 1988, it found plenty of people ready and willing to adopt it!

  Over the next few years, Meet the Feebles (or, as it is known in the USA, Just the Feebles) picked up various international awards: Le Prix Très Special in Paris; the Audience Prize for Most Popular Film in Madrid; and, at the Fantafestival in Rome, Best Director, Best Special Effects and (for Heidi the Hippo) Best Female Performance!

  Similarly, the Feebles have found plenty of reviewers – in many parts of the world – ready and eager to sing its praises:

  ‘Wildly original, deliriously sick stuff. Disgusting, vile, and outrageous – and we mean that lovingly…’

  ‘Monty Python meets Sesame Street…’

  ‘Perfect for mutant children of all ages…’

  ‘Take your sense of humour (and perhaps your sick-bag), and leave your delicacy (and your children) at the door…’

  ‘An adult puppet movie with something to offend everybody…’

  ‘Terribly funny, and terribly sick…’

  ‘So tasteless that it scrapes genius…’

  Years later, the man whom an Australian magazine had dubbed ‘the Scorsese of scum’ walked on stage at the seventy-sixth Academy Award Ceremony in Hollywood to receive one of his Oscars for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. In his acceptance speech he mentioned two of his earlier movies, Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles, which, he quipped, ‘were wisely overlooked by the Academy at that time.’

  For some it may be difficult to see Meet the Feebles as being a step towards The Lord of the Rings–beyond, perhaps, the obvious sharp and painful learning curve of dealing with the politics of film-making –but it was during the making of his early films that Peter first articulated the philosophy that focused his vision as a film-maker and which would, indeed, one day turn its gaze on Middle-earth. In a contemporary interview, Peter expressed what could be called the Jackson mantra:

  ‘I like doing things that are pure to film, that have no actual existence outside of cinema. That’s what I find the challenging thing– making these little daydreams look convincing and real.’

  ‘Meet the Feebles is what it is,’ says Costa Botes, by way of reassessment. ‘It is episodic with moments of brilliant invention and inspired satire, as well as moments of gross tastelessness and utter nonsense! But it was a film that was necessary for Peter, because it allowed him to see that episodic brilliance is not enough, that he actually had to have the dramatic through-line in order to make a connection to an audience. Watching Feebles, you’re sometimes up in the air and then you’re dropped and have to pick yourself up again; the storyline soars and it sags, and–despite the genius of individual sequences–it is, ultimately, an unsatisfying experience. But Peter was still developing as a talent: not exactly an immature talent, but not yet fully developed either. Peter’s progress crosses a couple of the movies following Bad Taste: they form a kind of crucible into which all these droplets go, and what comes out at the end of the process is measurably different to what went in.’

  Sitting on the plane en route to Milan in October 1989, Peter was reading a copy of Fangoria magazine that he had bought at the airport bookstall in Auckland. Founded in the United States in 1976, Fangoria was internationally regarded as the horror-gore-fantasy-sci-fi world’s official organ (pun intended) and was, and still is, one of Peter’s favourite magazines. This particular issue contained an ‘on-set diary’ with writer David J. Schow during the shooting of Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, the second follow-up to the 1974 shocker that had fired Peter Jackson’s taste for terror and which he had later spoofed in Derek’s final crazy chainsaw assault on the aliens in Bad Taste.

  Jeff Burr was directing TCM3, but to Peter’s utter astonishment the article mentioned that among the names that had been originally pitched as a possible director for the picture was…‘Peter Jackson’!

  I still felt like a kid: I had made Bad Taste and just finished Meet the Feebles, but that was all. Yet here I was reading in Fangoria that somebody had been pitching my name for Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, which, of course, I had never heard anything about! Wow! I felt quite proud, but I could hardly believe it! That was the first time that I had ever read my name in a magazine in connection with any film project.

  Had Peter but known, there was already a growing Jackson-awareness in Hollywood, and especially at New Line Cinema, the studio which was producing TCM3, where Peter had a champion in the person of Mark Ordesky. Years later, Mark would be intrinsically involved in the process of making of The Lord of the Rings.

  ‘Before I was with New Line,’ remembers Mark, ‘I was at Republic Pictures and I had a weekly ritual: I would bring home a supermarket bag full of videos I had been sent in by various companies and I would sit and watch them, looking for the odd one that might be worth buying. One of these videos was Bad Taste. I fell in love with it: I thought it was just unbelievably innovative, clever and propulsive. In fact, I tried desperately to get my bosses at Republic Pictures to let me buy it, but they–probably wisely–said, “Are you out of your mind?! You want us to buy a film about flesh-eating aliens from outer space attacking New Zealand? No way! Forget it!” So I failed at that, but the name “Peter Jackson” was logged in the memory bank.’

  One of the friends I made in LA was Mark Ordesky, who had a lowly position at New Line Cinema. I took this photo as a joke, since Mark’s job seemed to consist of being on the phone all day. Eventually he moved up the New Line hierarchy and championed The Lord of the Rings through the company. Back in 1990 we had no idea that our paths would cross again in such a dramatic way.

  Mark Ordesky moved on to New Line and, based on his response to Bad Taste, pitched Peter’s name as director of Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III while David Schow was working on the script. That suggestion didn’t get approval, but Mark continued to follow Peter’s career and, when he received a videotape of Meet the Feebles, arranged a screening in New Line’s preview theatre, which David Schow still recalls: ‘After seeing a lot of dismal movies, I saw two in the same week that literally changed my whole screenscape: John Woo’s Die xue shuang xiong (The Killer), and Pete’s Meet The Feebles. They were a turning-point.’

  ‘On seeing Meet the Feebles,’ says Mark, ‘I was further thrilled and excited and, once again, tried to buy a Peter Jackson film. But I was told, “Are you out of your mind?! You want us to buy a pornographic puppet film? No way! Forget it!” At that point I thought this man is someone I’ve got to know…’

  Someone else who recalls his response to Meet the Feebles is Peter Nelson: ‘I was shocked and surprised by that movie as anybody would be, in varying shades of blue, purple and pink!’

  It was not, however, Peter Nelson’s first awareness of Peter Jackson. He was a Los Angeles-based entertainment lawyer with a growing practice–but, he says, ‘hardly on the map in Hollywood terms’–and one of Peter N’s clients, during a visit to New Zealand, had passed his details to Peter J who had contacted the lawyer and asked if he would take a look at ‘a backyard movie’ he had been shooting. Whilst nothing immediately resulted from that contact, Peter N recalls being impressed by what he saw: ‘I thought it was excellent, very funny and the use of a driving story was promising. In fact, I thought, “This guy’s a film-maker.” That movie, of course, was Bad Taste.’

  Meet the Feebles confirmed that judgement: ‘It ratified my belief in Peter: if he could make a film peopled with crazy puppets and make it so compelling and involving, I was convinced he could direct anything he wanted.’

  The first and only time I’ve been yachting–this is with Peter Nelson, an LA entertainment lawyer who offered to help me a
fter Bad Taste and represented me for free for years.

  Peter Nelson negotiated the tricky manoeuvres to secure a distribution deal for Feebles. As an X-rated film, it wasn’t widely released, but where it was seen it made its impact: ‘Feebles branded Peter– albeit in very limited circuits–as a genius and I was personally never reticent to use that term, as I honestly felt that is what he was.’

  Describing himself at the time as Peter Jackson’s ‘beachhead in Hollywood’, Peter N would make a point whenever he was in town on his way to or from New Zealand, to introduce him to people he ought to know. One such introduction led to a proposal to create a television series in the style of Meet the Feebles for the still-new Fox network, where The Simpsons had found fame in 1990. Innovative though Fox were, they could not conceivably launch a series that was as extreme as Feebles; however, Peter’s co-writer on Feebles, Danny Mulheron, was teamed with Mark Saltzman, who had written for Sesame Street and The Jim Henson Hour, and the two men came up with a script that was funny but too groundbreaking for any television network.

  ‘The script went through various drafts,’ recalls Peter Nelson, ‘and each time it became increasingly dumbed down and homogenised. There was one hysterical scene featuring an enormous diva who wanted to reduce her weight and decided to do this by liposuction. The problem was, when she lost weight, she also lost her ability to sing, because the talent was all in the fat! The liposuction took the fat down into the gutter where it had a second life as a singer while the unfortunate diva went around without her voice! It couldn’t have ever made its way to network television, but the script retained much of the irreverent sense of humour that is a feature of the original film.’

  The contact made with Peter Nelson eventually led to his becoming Peter Jackson’s legal adviser and representative: one of several major steps in moving Peter from a niche film-maker from New Zealand to a major player in the international movie game.

  Meanwhile, Mark Ordesky was pursuing the idea of working with Peter: ‘I decided to seek out a relationship with him by writing the classic fan letter; eventually this led to our meeting up and getting to know one another. In those days, I was insistently insane and I kept

  During my visits to LA I became friends with writer David J Schow. It was a lot of fun to meet people who loved the same films I did, who were obsessed with the same monsters I was. The world was suddenly getting a whole lot smaller for me.

  talking and talking about this guy Peter Jackson in New Zealand in the hope that New Line’s Chairman and CEO, Bob Shaye, would eventually give me a chance to hire him!’ And, eventually, that chance came along…

  On one of Peter’s periodic stop-offs in Los Angeles, on this occasion in company with Feebles co-writer (and Heidi the Hippo’s alter ego) Danny Mulheron, Peter met David Schow, the man whose script for TCM3 he might, in different circumstances, have directed: ‘Peter and I had a lot in common,’ he says, ‘we were both equally interested in film-making as a process, quite apart from the yield of the finished product. Getting to that finish is a process of having two thousand headaches that you actually court and enjoy! What kind of people would do that?’

  David was also interested in the fact that Peter’s origins were not those of most young film-makers: ‘He did not spring from the thenusual well of music-video and commercial-directors who stepped up to features. Pete was a “from-the-ground-up” film-maker who would, for Bad Taste, shoot a hundred feet at a time with a handwound Bolex (so no take could run more than that limit), build AK47s out of wood and cure latex monster heads in his mum’s oven. Lacking actors, he’d shoot a fight scene with himself and make it work in the cutting. That kind of dedication-level is something you’ll only find in a person who embraces the headaches of zero-budget production because he or she simply loves movies. Seeing that quality in Pete was incredibly refreshing.’

  Another contact made was Frank Darabont, a young film-maker who had yet to direct his first feature film but who had made a short student film based on a story by Stephen King. The source material, The Woman in the Room, was not one of King’s ubiquitous tales of horror and the supernatural, but an emotional story about euthanasia. Made with King’s blessing (the author allows students and independent film-makers to adapt his short stories for a $1 fee and the promise of script approval), The Woman in the Room would, years later, result in the author approving Darabont as writer and director of two highly successful features based on his work: The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.

  One day when Frank had to visit the offices of New Line, Peter tagged along and had his first encounter with Mark Ordesky, who expressed his great enthusiasm for Bad Taste and Feebles and his desire to work with Peter. Over frequent dinners at ‘Pane Caldo’ on Beverly Boulevard, a simple bistro with a stunning view of the Hollywood Hills, Peter, Danny, David, Frank and Mark spent time talking movies and Peter showed his American friends a fantasy script he had been working on with Danny.

  Entitled Blubberhead, it has been variously and tantalisingly described by those who have read it either as a cross between Monty Python and Indiana Jones or as a fantasy set in a The Lord of the Rings-type realm of dwarves and giants…

  This was a very Monty Python style fantasy tale, which looked at the absurdities of a very particular taxation system at work in a medievalstyle fantasy township. Very Terry Gilliamesque, it would have made an interesting film. The intention was to use stop-motion animation to bring creatures to life, and I actually met up with Randy Cook in LA and spoke to him about the project in 1990. Years later, I finally worked with Randy when he became Animation Director for the Rings movies.

  Mark Ordesky recalls reading the script: ‘I loved Blubberhead but although I couldn’t get any New Line traction on it, I did convince Bob Shaye that we should hire the “crazy New Zealander” to write something else for us.’

  Released in 1984, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street introduced the world to Freddy Krueger, memorably portrayed by Robert Englund with his striped jersey, trilby hat jauntily set on a hideous burned face and a glove with knife-blade fingers; it also spawned a franchise that was to run to seven movies.

  1989 saw the release of the fifth Nightmare movie, The Dream Child, and whilst Freddy’s box-office takings remained good, the series had, as Mark Ordesky puts it, ‘begun to wane in terms of its creative innovation’. Maybe the crazy film-maker from New Zealand with his flesh-eating zombies and porno-puppets might be just the person to breathe new life into the ongoing supernatural-slasher-horror-fest.

  ‘In those days,’ says Mark, ‘we hired multiple writers, because you never knew who would come up with a great “Freddy” story that might be, if not the next film, then a future episode. So I convinced New Line to let me hire Peter for Writers Guild of America scale-pay –which, at that time, was around $20,000 US.’

  I suggested to Danny that he get involved in it and we write it together. Mark was pretty honest and up front, telling me that they were developing two scripts at the same time and that New Line would make whichever one of the two they thought best.

  If they liked my script I’d get to do the movie, but I’d have to make it in the States, which was fine by me because I felt pretty confident that I could do that. So there were no guarantees–maybe we’d make the film or maybe we wouldn’t–but, at any rate, it would be fun…

  There was no brief other than ‘Come up with a cool idea for us…’ And the idea we came up with was, I think, pretty cool!

  The Nightmare on Elm Street mythology established by Wes Craven in his original film centred not on a flesh-and-blood villain but a spectral serial killer who haunts the dreams–or nightmares–of his young victims and slays them in their sleep.

  Peter’s cool idea was set a few years on from Freddy’s last rampage, at a point when his powers appear to be losing their potency. A bunch of obnoxious local thugs meet up in Freddy’s derelict house, take drugs to put themselves into dope-induced sleep and–in a clever reversal of the usual
Elm Street premise–enter Freddy’s dream world, track him down and beat him up in what Peter describes as ‘A Clockwork Orange-type mugging’.

  A policeman is sent in to break-up the drug-ring, but in the meantime Freddy has managed to kill one of his assailants and, in doing so, become fully rejuvenated. The policeman goes to Freddy’s house, gets trapped when a fire breaks out and ends up in hospital in a coma.

  Unlike the other movies, it’s not a case of him falling asleep and having experiences, he is actually permanently trapped in Freddy’s dream world. He can’t escape; it’s him against Freddy and Freddy is out to get him…

  The script was written in New Zealand, but it was necessary for Peter to travel to Los Angeles for meetings and script discussions. ‘New Line was so cheap in those days,’ recalls Mark Ordesky, ‘that Peter’s per diem ran out almost immediately and he ended up crashing on the couch of my ratty apartment around the corner from New Line.’ Peter also remembers ‘blobbing out’ at Mark’s apartment and, in particular, learning to play the board game, Risk.

  Devised in France as La Conqueste du Monde, the game was introduced into America in 1959 under a succession of titles, including Risk: The World Strategy Game and Risk: The Game of Global Domination. Like Monopoly, Risk has been thematically repackaged and, in 2001, a new movie-inspired version appeared entitled Risk: Lord of the Rings!

  Under Mark’s tutelage, Peter became a proficient player at Risk– certainly Richard Taylor and Tania Roger remember being soundly defeated whenever they played him at the game. Describing Peter today, Richard calls him ‘an incredible strategist’, but back in 1990, Peter’s Hollywood power-play wasn’t quite as impressive.