Or the Summing Up of Much in A Short Time…
Finished shooting for the Swiss-Swedish documentary, at least all my bits are done except for sound bites.
After filming the Howe in his natural environment, we headed off to Strasbourg where we shot on and around the cathedral. Notre-Dame of Strasbourg is a sandstone epic reaching 140 meters into the sky, written in an extravagent vocabulary of verticals and hyperbole not to be found anywhere else. Little wonder I fell under the spell when I was a student there. Little wonder it became the newel around which I built the steps of my slow winding climb into fantasy.
Then we raced off the the gigantic 19th-century steel factory in Völklingen, a few miles north, in Germany. (For no good reason actually, except it’s about as close to what has ever been built on this earth that Saruman, with his mind of cogs and wheels, might find to be akin to Isengard.) More than just a complex of old buildings, the gigantic proportions of the place turn it into a landscape. It is a kingdom of rust. Walking through it is pure science fiction.
In Strasbourg, the crew also interviewed Claude Lapointe, my illustration professor from art school. At LAST I will find out what he thought of my work (when I was a student I was too shy to ask…).
Or maybe I don’t want to know…
Prior to that, we also paid a visit to someone for whom my admiration knows few bounds: H.R. Giger. I remember seeing the first Alien movie SEVEN (I counted) times in three days when it came out. Never before that had an artist’s work been so faithfully transposed to the screen, it was unbelievable. Though I won’t go so far as to establish cause and effect, it did prove to me that an artist’s vision could make it over all the hurdles and obstructions inherent in film-making and the spirit of it all arrive intact on the screen.
Besides, hidden in every illustrator is a fan boy, so paying a visit to H. R. Giger, who is the most charming of gentlemen, was a real pilgrimage.
Production photos next week.
CAUGHT TALKING AGAIN
Cannot remember if I linked up to this when it was still fresh, but (the shelf life of philosophy is another matter) I did a short interview a while ago.
Here. (And check out the rest of thesite while you’re there.)
“FEAR! FIRE! FOES!”
It seems some editors have a fairly liberal notion of foreign rights…
Here is a selection of Turkish paperbacks that look pretty suspicious to me..
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The Hobbit, front and back covers
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On Fairy Stories, front and back covers.
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The Akaballeth and the Silmarillion. Cover art by Ted Nasmith, wee dragons on border taken from the cover of the Map of Middle-Earth.
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Smith of Wootton Major, Farmer Giles of Ham and Leaf by Niggle
Two of the original titles are transcribed as “Smith of Wooden Major” and “The Leaves of Niggle”. Lost in translation…
The ubiquitous border is from the Map of Middle-Earth, framing An Unexpected Party, on a rather Unexpected Cover…
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And, last but not least, a Tolkien Compass…
OTHERWISE…
It looks like the Canadian documentary going to wrap in a month or thereabouts, so after being a closet Canadian for years, I can at last stage my coming out. We will be shooting here in September, and then off to my home and native land for a wander through the geography of my childhood. You know the old saying; you can never go back, but you can go shopping (and shoot documentaries) there.
