Peter Jackson as the Evil Jester at SDCC14
In a recent interview with Deadline, ‘Q&A: Peter Jackson On His Middle Earth Exit, How The Beatles And Stanley Kubrick Nearly Did LOTR, And A Disguise That Let Him Haunt Comic-Con‘, Peter Jackson talked about the way he enjoyed the last San Diego Comic Con, his journey through Middle-earth and his future projects.
As we’ve been able to see on his Facebook page, Peter Jackson attended the last San Diego Comic Con for the Hobbit panel, but he also enjoyed the convention dressed up as the Evil Jester, as his daughter, Katie, suggested him:
“Katie wanted to, and it was her birthday. She said, Dad, we’ve got to go out on that floor. It had been years since I’d done it, even though I quite like it. I brought cash and thought I would probably buy a lot of stuff, but I didn’t. I was too caught up in watching and feeling the energy of other people. I had to clear memory from my camera, sat down and this security guy comes along and says, ‘Sir, you can’t sit there…” It has been years since I’ve been rudely spoken to by a security guy, and it felt fantastic! And, my Evil Jester costume was so successful in disguising my true identity that quite a few people actually asked me to pose with them. And I did.”
Jackson took many photos with unaware people, just impressed by his costume.
“They seemed perfectly happy just with their photos of the Evil Jester. They’d come up and say, ‘You mind if I get a photograph,’ and I thought, ‘How do I answer without giving it away?’ I’d swapped my ID card with my friend Avi, because I couldn’t use my name. I didn’t know how to do an Israeli accent, so I tried South African. “Photo? No problem a’tall!” I was Avi from South Africa, the Evil Jester.”
Concerning The Hobbit trilogy, Jackson explained what’s most gratifying:
“I damn sure wasn’t going to spend five years of my life miserable, wishing somebody else had directed it. I was going to have fun and make some great movies. I had more confidence than the first time around. We shot these three more or less in sequence. I really like the third movie, I feel like we’ve gotten up a full head of steam up. I don’t want to regret anything in life, and I don’t. We made a lot of new friends. The Lord Of The Rings was this legendary experience where we bonded with so many people. I was interested to see if that could happen again, and it has. Some of The Hobbit cast are very close friends of ours, and will always be. I will walk away with a new confidence that I want to bring to new movies. I want to put everything I think I’ve learned about filmmaking and storytelling, and put it to the test in other areas.”
You can read about Peter Jackson’s filmmaking life, what he owes to Middle-earth, his opinion on what Viggo Mortensen recently said about the last two Lord Of The Rings films (which suffered by veering from the fantasy elements he loved in the first film), and more at Deadline website.
