Sunday, November 30, 2003

Happy LOTR Day!! (1 of 2)

Are you getting coverage of this?  Tell me you're seeing this.

I just spent two hours in my hotel room watching the "red carpet" thing from Wellington.  (I was going to stop after the first hour, but then I realized the second channel was showing exclusive snippets of the movie every few minutes and, y'know, I'm only human.)

Just in case you're not getting this, let me throw a few facts at you that I've picked up from watching two hours of coverage:  1.  They approximated 100,000 people lining the parade route.  2.  Yes, there was a parade.  3.  Followed by a red carpet that ran all the way down the street.  Sixty meters.  (4.  Shit!  That's what 60 meters is?  That's how far the free-fall was on the Swing.  Damn.)  5.  The mayor of Wellington was there.  6.  So was the Prime Minister of New Zealand.  7.  She wore chain mail.  8.  Yeah, our President wears army fatigues; their Prime Minister wears a jacket made to look like chain mail.  9.  They had to shut down many of the city streets for the parade.  And bus route stops.  Signs said busses were cancelled for "Lord of the Rings Festivities."  10.  Apparently, postage stamps were issued.  (11.  NOTE TO SELF:  Hmmm.  Postage stamps.  Pack flat.  Inexpensive.  Ideal souvenir.  Must look into finding a post office.)  12.  I mean, you'd think they never had a movie premiere here before.  13.  Apparently, they HAVEN'T.  This explains much.  14.  They said 23,000 (or 26,000 -- I've heard different numbers) Kiwis were involved in making the pictures -- either as extras or just working on them.  15.  Included the mother of my funyak guide.  16.  He'd said everyone showed up at the "audition" and they were just like, "Yeah, blonde headed people to the left; brunettes to the right," and costumed 'em up.  17.  The premiere is actually happening in one 750-seat theater, with simultaneous showings at 10 other theaters.  18.  Which means, when you get right down to it, less than 10% of the crowd that was there for the premiere actually gets to see the movie.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Too bad you're missing Wellington because that is a great city. There was a huge Legolas arrow plunged into the side of a pub building that was tres cool. Someone had the foresight/sense of humor to place a large banner announcing Legolas' stamp across the street. Aragorn is a buck something and Legolas is like, 35cents. It's good to be King, I guess.