Ian McKellen in Wellington, 2011 - Photo by Keith Stern
Ian McKellen has posted a new blog that highlights various locations he has visited as he travels around New Zealand with the cast and crew of The Hobbit. As he explains, “Five hundred of us travel with the efficiency of an army or a circus on the move,” and since hotels are rare in their exotic filming locations, he spends many a night with his own “feather-filled pillow” in a bed and breakfast.
Since they are currently filming outside, the daily question on set is, “What’s the forecast?” The main worry is heavy rain that would suspend filming until it passed. Luckily, the weather as held, and according to McKellen, “So far we are on schedule.”
His assistant is Steve Thomas, whom he met on The Lord of the Rings. Steve is a local and offers McKellen a custom tour of the beautiful countryside. “Our route is along rural roads over farmland and through the bush, not at all busy, and affording wondrous views,” he says. The volcanic peak, Taranaki, momentarily peered out of the mist, and lambs and calves graze on new spring grass. McKellen likens the landscape to the Lake District in England, but remarks that New Zealand has been less tamed. “In New Zealand, you can go for miles without sign of a human occupation, yet it often looks familiar, as if the props department had given a make-over to the Lakeland fells, the Welsh hills or the Scottish lowlands.”
Stratford Glockenspiel with Taranaki
Being a prolific Shakespearean performer, McKellen insisted on a stop in the town of Stratford, where many of the streets are named for The Bard’s famous characters. He ponders the significance of Regan Street, wondering “if the locals realise or care that King Lear’s middle daughter was a psychopathic torturer and murderer.” He and Steve took a turn around the glockenspiel clock tower in Prospero Place, but couldn’t stay to see the Romeo and Juliet figures emerge from the “mock-Tudor tower.”
McKellen’s first bit of location work was, appropriately, filming Hobbiton in Matamata. He said, “it was nostalgic to clamber up the path that leads to Bag End where this time Martin Freeman’s Bilbo will be surprised by Gandalf.”
Since The Lord of the Rings, tourists have flocked to the site to see the hollowed-out hobbit holes that were all that was left from the films. Future visitors will be in for a treat, as McKellen explains, “We filmed there for less than a week, this time leaving everything behind, so future visitors do not have to guess at but actually see Hobbiton in its glory. They will even be able to get a snack at the Green Dragon. Peter Jackson, who likes a laugh, suggested I take up residence as a tour guide in my blue pointy hat. I’m thinking about it.”
