Sprawling and tonally uncertain, yet still underappreciated, The Frighteners tends to be forgotten in the journey between the early splatters to the coming of age with Heavenly Creatures, which is seen to segue straight into Middle-earth. If anything, it is viewed as a backwards step in the direction of the rabble-rousing days of those early horror movies.
To Jackson’s mind, here lies the true point of transition to The Lord of the Rings. Without it spans a different career, one that might have made him less global, but no less valuable; making films with more of a New Zealand spirit like Jane Campion. But Jackson’s instincts were always toward the commercial.
The project had begun life out of desperation. With Heavenly Creatures still awaiting the go-ahead, Jackson and Walsh were badly in need of some work. ‘They needed to make some money,’ clarifies Kamins.
Jackson had sounded urgent on the phone. ‘We need a writing job. What’s out there?’
Fortuitously, Kamins had been in a staff meeting where he had heard about Zemeckis’ involvement in Joel Silver’s portmanteau Tales from the Crypt movie. Different directors would provide their own segments of horror, and Zemeckis, he was told, was still in need of a screenplay. Springing into action, Jackson and Walsh worked up a two-page outline based on an idea they’d had while walking to the shops for milk, the story of a conman who is in cahoots with ghosts. Zemeckis was intrigued. At that stage, he hadn’t even realized Jackson was a director; he just figured they were these quirky writers from New Zealand.
‘I tell you what,’ said Zemeckis, ‘you go write the screenplay, I’ve got to make this movie called Forrest Gump.’
‘Well, that’s fine,’ replied Jackson, ‘because we have this movie we’re going to make called Heavenly Creatures.’ They would work on The Frighteners script while shooting their matricidal drama – the two being closer in theme than is immediately apparent.
Then fate got involved: Forrest Gump became an Oscar-winning phenomenon and Zemeckis lost his taste for a Tales from the Crypt movie. Now very much aware of Jackson as a director, Zemeckis suggested he direct it as a standalone film, which he would produce for a budget of $26 million.
‘The Frighteners matters for two key reasons,’ says Kamins. ‘Number one: it allowed for the build-up of Weta Digital conceptually, which had been a very small unit on Heavenly Creatures. The Frighteners would require over 500 visual effects shots, even at that budget, and Peter had the vision to say, “We can create a bigger visual effects company.”’
Jackson’s plan was typically practical, typically New Zealand: they would lease more computers from Silicon Graphics, then hire out-of-work animators from all over the world, people who were just sitting at home, and double their weekly salaries to come to New Zealand. The only overheads would be space. They would still be able to create visual effects shots much cheaper than ILM. And, sure enough, that’s what happened.
The Frighteners also matters, adds Kamins, because Zemeckis and his partner Steve Starkey would give Jackson and Walsh invaluable tuition on how to navigate the political waters that come with a studio project: ‘What they need to know and when; how to manage their expectations; when to get them excited about things; and when to hold back on information; how to keep them confident, but not in your hair.’
So coming full circle, as Weta were revealing their potential on the visual effects on The Frighteners, Jackson and Walsh’s thoughts turned to the future and the potential of making a fantasy film. However, one morning’s casual discussion was actually several weeks of brainstorming fantasy concepts. ‘It had been a long time since I had read The Lord of the Rings,’ admits Jackson. Fifteen years had now passed since he had waded through the Bakshi tie-in edition, and he really couldn’t remember it at all well.
Whatever ideas he came up with, Walsh and her watertight memory would shoot down: ‘No, no, no. You can’t do that — that’s just The Lord of the Rings.’
Jackson sighs. ‘You don’t want to be seen to be stealing stuff.’
His thought had been to do an original fantasy film, but at every proposal he made Walsh kept on repeating it like a mantra: ‘The Lord of the Rings … The Lord of the Rings … The Lord of the Rings.’
‘It was getting frustrating.’
When he was a teen, no more than sixteen, already displaying a rapacious hunger for filmmaking, Jackson set out to make a Super-8 Sinbad film. There was to be a scene of him fighting a stop-motion skeleton in the surf. He shot himself hip deep in Pukerua Bay swinging a homemade sword, but he never got round to putting in the skeleton. Which was down to the fact that, with the tide heading out, Jackson had dived straight onto an exposed rock. Severe bruising led to a pilonidal cyst which led to surgery. He also hadn’t quite yet figured out how to do stop-motion.
During the Bad Taste era, he had considered shooting a Conan-type film on 16mm at the weekends. ‘I never got any further than swords and monster masks,’ he admits. ‘I had never actually sat down and written a script.’
Truth be told, there was no specific, original sword ‘n’ sorcery concept he’d been yearning to make. It was simply that the genre appealed to his sensibility and offered the chance for Weta to keep expanding. So, why not The Lord of the Rings? Frodo’s enduring tale was the ne plus ultra of the genre. It was fantasy operating on an equivalent dramatic level to Heavenly Creatures.
According to prevailing Hollywood wisdom, fantasy, as a genre, was a joke. Jackson agrees. ‘I used to watch all the fantasy films. Things like Krull and Conan … Fantasy was one of those B-grade genres. No quality movies were ever made in the fantasy genre. Right from the outset The Lord of the Rings was always something different. You can’t think of Krull and The Lord of the Rings in the same sentence. While it was fantasy, in our minds it was always something quite different to that.’
And that was when they had put in the call to Kamins to find out who had the rights, and made their approach to Harvey. And even then things only grew more complicated.
The possibility of adapting Tolkien was soon to be one of three potential fantasy projects for Jackson.
For all of Harvey’s confidence in calling in a favour with Zaentz, it would take eight perilous months of negotiation for a deal to be struck. Zaentz had held the rights tight to his chest for three decades; whatever Harvey had done for him on The English Patient he wasn’t going to part with them lightly. Tribes of rival lawyers were making proposal and counterproposal, putting in calls, arranging meetings, filing memos, coming up with offers, rebuffing counteroffers, and charging by the hour. And Harvey showed zero inclination toward allowing Zaentz any active participation in his project.
Another problem was the weird, bifurcated rights situation surrounding The Hobbit. Harvey had endeavoured to go direct to MGM, which had purchased the crippled UA in the wake of Heaven’s Gate. Ironically, MGM was itself a studio in decline and in one of its many cycles of bankruptcy, reorganization and sale, nobody was about to give away one of its chief assets — even if they were only partial rights to The Hobbit.
‘The hell with it,’ cried Harvey, ‘let’s forget The Hobbit. The Lord of the Rings is a better-known title anyway. Let’s just go right to The Lord of the Rings. Two