The stop-motion animated sequences alone were a triumph and demonstrated not just a high degree of skill but also a determination to master one of the most time-consuming, concentration-intensive of all the film arts. Peter’s mother, recalling her son’s dedication, commented that he had ‘oodles of patience’ and that acute singularity of focus would remain one of the qualities to mark out his later professional productions.
Years later and just days after the exhausting final haul of delivering the final cut of The Return of the King, Peter spoke of his belief that it was always possible to ‘somehow figure something out’…
If I say ‘we’ll figure it out’, then I mean it; I’ve logged the problem in my mind and will take my share of responsibility. With each part of The Lord of the Rings there would always come a point in the year, usually the second half, when the studio began to think that they might possibly not have a movie to release. I always knew that such a situation would be a complete disaster and, therefore, could never happen.
You may have problems to solve but for every problem there is always a solution. It’s a positive-and-negative thing: you can’t have a problem without there being a solution.
There always is. Your job is to find it…
Despite not winning the Spot On competition, extracts from The Valley were screened on television – including the harpy carrying off Ian Middleton (complete with Ken Hammon’s expletive) and the fight with the Cyclops – and earned the makers a degree of notoriety among their schoolfellows. After all, to have got a violent, bloody action sequence (albeit with a mythical creature) and a four-letter word (albeit silently spoken) screened on national television was no mean achievement!
The success of The Valley was endorsed when (with an added soundtrack borrowed from Max Steiner’s score to King Kong) it went on to win a prize of $100 in a competition sponsored by the local newspaper, the Kapiti Observer.
For Peter Jackson, the real reward for having made The Valley would come many years later, when as an established film-maker he finally met his childhood hero, Ray Harryhausen, for the first time. There is an appropriate and satisfying synchronicity about a friendship between the man who worked with Willis O’Brien on a sequel to King Kong and the man who seems to have been destined to remake the original for a new generation of moviegoers.
When we first met, I found myself saying, ‘Ray, I want to thank you, because seeing The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts when I was a kid inspired me to make films, to be a stop-motion animator, to keep making my little Super 8 experiments. So, thank you…’
I sometimes think to myself how amazing it would be if, one day, somebody were to say something like that to me…
Perhaps it is already happening and in twenty years time, when I’m a 60 year old, some young film-maker will come up to me and say, ‘I saw The Lord of the Rings when I was 8 and it made me want to make films. Thank you…’
To feel that what I had done had made a significant difference to somebody’s life to the extent of inspiring that person to take up a career would really mean a lot to me…
For the 17-year-old Peter Jackson the thought of one day meeting his hero Ray Harryhausen, would have been a dream; the notion that he might eventually have a similarly inspiring influence on another generation of aspiring film-makers, unimaginable.
Nevertheless, in 1978, The Valley made an impact and not just among the pupils of Kapiti College but also with the principal. Towards the end of the school year, Peter Jackson and Ken Hammon were summoned to the principal’s office and offered a potential film commission: if the boys decided to return for a further year, it was suggested, there might be an opportunity for them to make an official film about the school.
My bed, where I slept the first twenty-six years of my life. My bedroom become my workshop and model-making room. Most of the time it was a lot more untidy than this!
‘The prospect really scared the hell out of us!’ recalls Ken, who hated college, ‘I felt it was like being asked to make a propaganda film about a concentration camp. So we just listened, said we’d give it our consideration and then got the hell out of there, as quick as we could!’ Peter also recalls the proposition:
On the one hand it was exciting, because someone was interested in our doing something as a result of seeing this film that had been on TV; on the other it didn’t fit in with my plans as I had already decided to leave at the end of that year. I didn’t want to be in school, I had passed my School Certificate and although I was University Entrance accredited, I had no interest in going to further education and, fortunately, my parents didn’t try to force me into doing so.
Responding to this comment by Peter, Fran Walsh remarks, ‘He says “fortunately” he didn’t have to go to university. I think, in some ways, it’s a shame he didn’t go; he’s very bright – one of the brightest people I’ve ever met – and would have been good at university and, had he gone there, might well have loved what it had to offer. As it was, he took another road, another path…Pete went to his own university; he went to his own film school; taught himself everything. It’s not everyone who can do that.’
It’s a view shared by friend and colleague, Costa Botes (with whom Peter would later make Forgotten Silver): ‘Peter would have done fine at university, but what he did, instead, was to immerse himself in his enthusiasms and, as a result, gave his talent a bit more of a run. Ultimately, if your destiny is to be a film-maker, then – regardless of your academic learning or your theoretical knowledge of film studies – you should always be trying to get in touch with your own innate talent and to follow that. It’s possible that university might have helped Peter get to where he is now a bit quicker, but he would have lacked the wisdom and experience he gained from just getting on and doing it.’
Moreover, says Costa Botes, university might have changed Peter Jackson as a person: ‘Intellectual success has made many a young man arrogant and insufferable. Instead, Peter has humbleness and a self-defensive sense of humour, which gives him more empathy, makes him a better human being. So I’m not going to argue with that one!’
Whilst Peter’s parents may not have sought to exert any pressure over his career choices, they nevertheless still entertained ambitions for their son.
Mum and Dad always hoped that I might get a job as an architect: at school I had been top of my form at technical drawing, I was good at it and passed my exams in it, but it wasn’t what I wanted to make my career. My parents probably hoped I’d pursue architecture as being something that I could fall back on if I didn’t make it in the movie business. I think they always thought that’s where I’d end up, but they never pushed me into it and always did everything that they could to support my film-making ambitions – it wasn’t their world, but I think they felt that if somebody has a passion to do something, then you try to encourage them not dissuade them.
Ultimately, I knew that I wanted to try and get a job in the film industry – to be a film-maker – and since I had this feeling that I was going to go on making films, I wanted to be able to afford better film equipment – a 16 mm rather than a 8 mm camera – but that was going to cost a few thousand dollars and I wasn’t going to be able to afford it unless I could