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Fantasy » alt.fan.tolkien » Boorman's LOTR - Script details
Boorman's LOTR - Script details [message #71322] Do, 30 Juni 2005 21:00
wrob  
Reposted from soc.history.what-if; This is not a "what-if"
scenario however, but Boorman's actual plans in the 1970s
for a one-film treatment of LOTR.

Fascinating stuff.

The original article also goes on about other script treatments
for the trilogy which may be more familiar to Tolkienites, such
as the Zimmerman script ("Gandalf turns each of the Ringwriths to
stone")


http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/C/Janet.B.Croft-1/three_rings_fo r_hollywood.htm

BOORMAN

In spite of his grave doubts about the suitability of The Lord of the
Rings for the movies, Tolkien sold the film and merchandise rights to
United Artists in 1969 for just over =A3104,000 (Harlow and Dobson 16).
In 1970, the studio asked John Boorman, later known as the director
of Excalibur and The Emerald Forest, to make The Lord of the Rings.
With his collaborator Rospo Pallenberg, he condensed the work into
a single two and a half hour script which he felt was "fresh
and cinematic, yet carried the spirit of Tolkien" (Boorman 20).

Boorman s ays he received a letter from Tolkien during the writing
process, asking how he planned to make the film, and wrote back
reassuring him that he planned a live action version. However, by
the time Boorman had finished the script, the executive who had
asked him to take on the project was gone, and the new management
was unfamiliar with the book. Boorman said, "They were baffled by
a script that, for most of them, was their first contact with
Middle Earth [sic]," and rejected it (Boorman 21).

He tried taking the script to other studios, including Disney, but
with no luck. Boorman eventually used some of the special-effects
techniques and locations developed for The Lord of the Rings in
other films, most notably Excalibur in 1981.

But there is another side to the story. Ralph Bakshi, in a recent
interview, talks about taking on the project several years later,
and clearly exaggerates a bit for effect:

And here comes the horror story, right? ... Boorman handed
in this 700-page script ... [The studio executives said]
'[H]e's changed a lot of the characters, and he's added
characters. He's got some sneakers he's merchandising in
the middle. ... [W]e don't understand a word Boorman wrote.
We never read the books.' (Robinson 4)

It was only 176 pages, and there weren't any sneakers, but it
wouldn't have helped to have read the books, because Boorman
took off in his own direction quite early in his treatment.

To put it bluntly, Boorman's script has only the vaguest
connection to Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Considering
Tolkien's appalled reaction to the much lesser liberties taken
by Zimmerman, it is unlikely he would have appreciated Boorman's
script at all.

Characters, events, locations, themes, all are changed freely
with no regard for the author's original intent. Situations
are sexualized or plumbed for psychological kinks that simply
do not exist in the book.

(Tolkien would not have approved of Frodo's seduction by
Galadriel, for example, and Aragon's battlefield healing
of =C9owyn is so blatantly sexual it's not surprising Boorman
marries them immediately.)

Ideas that later worked brilliantly in Excalibur, Boorman's
retelling of the King Arthur legend, are here as out of place
as a dwarf in Lothl=F3rien.

Boorman was simply too full of his own creative spark to limit
himself to what was in Tolkien's book. For example, consider
this strange sequence of events.

After the destruction of the Ringwraiths at the Fords of Bruinen,
Frodo is carried into the sparkling palace of Rivendell, where
in a vast amphitheatre full of chanting elves he is laid naked
on a crystal table and covered with green leaves.
A thirteen-year-old Arwen surgically removes the Morgul-blade
fragment from his s houlder with a red-hot knife under the
threatening axe of Gimli, while Gandalf dares Boromir to try
to take the Ring (Boorman and Pallenberg 28-32).

Sound familiar? How about this sequence outside the Gates
of Moria? Gandalf leads Gimli through a primitive rebirthing
ritual, making him dig a hole and crawl into it, covering him
with a cloak and violently beating and verbally abusing him,
until he springs forth with recovered memories of his
forgotten ancestral language and speaks the Dwarvish words
needed to open the doors (Boorman and Pallenberg 59-60).

To give Boorman his due, parts of the script have a compelling
brilliance, though they are still unlike anything Tolkien wrote.
The sober exposition of the Council of Elrond is recast as a
fantastic medieval masque representing the history of the Rings.

This highly stylized sequence combines elements of Kabuki theater,
rock opera, and circus performance, and could almost be
imagined as a later retelling of the legend by a tribe of decadent
Dark Elves. It is strangely effective, and gets the necessary
back-story across, but it is definitely not a straightforward
adaptation of Tolkien's work.

And that is where the key problem lies. At this point Tolkien was
still alive, and as he insists in his introduction to the first
authorized American paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings, a
certain courtesy (at least) is due to living authors (Hammond 105).
[=2E..]

Boorman's abundant creativity, inspired by Tolkien's work, needed
another outlet than the straitjacket of adapting a living author's
writings.

Eventually he found it in Excalibur, returning to the Merlin-centered
project he had been working on before he was offered The Lord of the
Rings (Boorman 20).

Boorman's imaginative remaking of the story of King Arthur worked
because the Matter of Britain is undeniably part of the "public
property of the imagination." He could get away with combining the
characters of Morgause, Nimue, and Morgan le Fay, for example, because
other artists had taken similar liberties over the centuries. Some
might consider Tolkien's stories "public property of the
imagination"
now, close to fifty years after their initial publication, but at
that time they were relatively fresh from his pen, and he could
legitimately claim they were his alone to play with. ---------

-- BER=B0
Re: Boorman's LOTR - Script details [message #71325 ] Fr, 01 Juli 2005 00:30
Derek Janssen  
Brian wrote:

> http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/C/Janet.B.Croft-1/three_rings_fo r_hollywood.htm
>
> To put it bluntly, Boorman's script has only the vaguest
> connection to Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Considering
> Tolkien's appalled reaction to the much lesser liberties taken
> by Zimmerman, it is unlikely he would have appreciated Boorman's
> script at all.
>
> (Tolkien would not have approved of Frodo's seduction by
> Galadriel, for example

(Must...not...quote..."Bored of..."--oh, why, fight it:
"Doest thou like what thou sees?..."

> Boorman was simply too full of his own creative spark to limit
> himself to what was in Tolkien's book. For example, consider
> this strange sequence of events.
>
> Sound familiar? How about this sequence outside the Gates
> of Moria? Gandalf leads Gimli through a primitive rebirthing
> ritual, making him dig a hole and crawl into it, covering him
> with a cloak and violently beating and verbally abusing him,
> until he springs forth with recovered memories of his
> forgotten ancestral language and speaks the Dwarvish words
> needed to open the doors (Boorman and Pallenberg 59-60).

(--Nooo, WE know a director who's not a Freemason...) >_<

> To give Boorman his due, parts of the script have a compelling
> brilliance, though they are still unlike anything Tolkien wrote.
> The sober exposition of the Council of Elrond is recast as a
> fantastic medieval masque representing the history of the Rings.

And, to keep next December's WETA connection, and for the benefit of
those who haven't heard it yet, the proposed 1994 John Boorman
adaptation of C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe":

- The wartime London opening would be updated, with four modern-day US
children evacuated from a Los Angeles earthquake,
- The White Witch's sled not only jingles through the snow, but, in
fact, flies, at one point scripting a reference to "aerial acrobatics".
- Since the now American Edmund has never heard of Turkish Delight, he
now asks the Witch for what he didn't have time to get during the
evacuation scene: A cheeseburger.
- The mytical and animal creatures would, of course, be CGI, including
the addition of a "water nymph", who would be "similar to the
award-winning effect of the alien from 'The Abyss'."

....Fortunately, as with Tolkien, the movie had Lewis-estate chief Doug
Gresham to turn pale at Boor-ish behavior and shut it down, but in this
case, survive long enough to supervise a later "correct" version years
later that much more closely.

Derek Janssen ("Exorcist II", people...For every ref to "Boorman =
Excalibur", there's still the madwoman in the attic)
djanss [at] charter.net
Re: Boorman's LOTR - Script details [message #71334 ] Do, 30 Juni 2005 21:53
estasiak  
> Brian wrote
>
> Reposted from soc.history.what-if; This is not a "what-if"
> scenario however, but Boorman's actual plans in the 1970s
> for a one-film treatment of LOTR.

What was the title of the thread in s.h.w-i?

> A thirteen-year-old Arwen surgically removes the Morgul-blade
> fragment from his s houlder with a red-hot knife under the
> threatening axe of Gimli, while Gandalf dares Boromir to try
> to take the Ring (Boorman and Pallenberg 28-32).

Holy crap, now I'm going to have nightmares!

But since we're mining s.h.w-i, here's a What If that I
posted back in February. It isn't horrific like Boorman's
"LotR" and IMO it might have even been a cool flick;


1970's "Dune"

From;
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt02=AD17408/
http://www.hotweird.com/jodoro=ADwsky/dunestory.html
http://kaedrin.com/weblog/arch=ADive/2001_07.html

"If everyone is indeed talking about the proposed Alejandro
Jodorowsky version of Dune then no it does not exist. There
may be some footage in existence, there may be not be, however
the story is that it faltered in pre-production when financial
backing was withdrawn, so the existence of usable footage is
very unlikely."

I [Alejandro Jodorowsky] liked fighting for Dune. We won almost
all the battles, but we lost the war. The project was sabotaged
in Hollywood. It was French and not American. Their message was
not "Hollywood enough". There was intrigue, plunder. The story-
board was circulated amongst all the big studios. Later, the
visual aspect of Star Wars strangely resembled our style. To
make Alien, they called Moebius, Foss, Giger, O'Bannon, etc.
The project signalled to Americans the possibility of making
a big show of science-fiction films, outside of the scientific
rigour of 2001: A Space Odyssey."

"As someone else noted, H.R. Giger was also part of the
project, and his designs for the Harkonnen were straight
out of his "bio-mechanical" themes seen in his works."

"Salvador Dali, of all people, was providing art support,"
Dali in fact was supposed to act as Padishah emperor
Shaddam IV,"

"You forgot to mention that Orson Welles was to be the
Baron as well. It definitely would have been an interesting
movie... "

"Gloria Swanson, ...were cast"

"Pink Floyd offered to write the score at the peak of their
creativity."

"His [Baron Harkonnen] delusions of grandeur have no limit:
he lives in a palace constructed as a portrait of himself...
This immense sculpture stands on a sordid swampy planet...
In order to enter the palace, one has to wait for the colussus
to open its mouth and stick out a tongue of steel (landing
strip...)"

"English SF illustrator Chris Foss... Foss was responsible for
the crystal city on the planet Krypton at the beginning of the
first Superman film"
http://www.altanen.dk/CFDuneGa=ADllery.htm

"=2E..artist Jean 'Moebius' Giraud drew thousands of sketches"
http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/=ADgiraud.htm

Unfortunately;

"In reading his account of the failed production, it becomes
readily apparent that Jodorowsky's Dune would only bear
a slight resemblance to Herbert's novel. "I feel fervent
admiration towards Herbert and at the same time conflict
[=2E..] I did everything to keep him away from the project..."

"You have no idea how badly he butchered Dune. It was
meant to be his adaption of Frank Herbert's opus, but he
must have been on LSD or something when he wrote his
version...it was...wanting. Let's just say that. Wanting."

"The project eventually collapsed in 1977, subsequently
being passed onto Ridley Scott, and then to David Lynch,
whose 1984 film was panned by audience and critics alike."


So what if this movie version of Frank Herbert's novel
had actually made it to the big screen, either done by
a Jodorowsky who sticks to the book or (better idea IMO)
by Ridley Scott?

What if it comes out in 1977 along side "Star Wars"?
Who else is cast in the film?
Re: Boorman's LOTR - Script details [message #71367 ] Fr, 01 Juli 2005 03:23
Sean  
Brian wrote:
>
> Reposted from soc.history.what-if; This is not a "what-if"
> scenario however, but Boorman's actual plans in the 1970s
> for a one-film treatment of LOTR.

I shudder to think what's going to happen when the LOTR's copyright
expires and it becomes public domain, wide open to anyone with
a camcorder or an animation package to spin off their own
take on it. OTOH maybe someone will finally produce a film
version that's accurate.

Sean
Re: Boorman's LOTR - Script details [message #71372 ] Fr, 01 Juli 2005 04:38
the softrat  
On Thu, 30 Jun 2005 15:30:06 -0700, Derek Janssen
<djanss [at] nospam.charter.net> wrote:
>
>...Fortunately, as with Tolkien, the movie had Lewis-estate chief Doug
>Gresham to turn pale at Boor-ish behavior and shut it down, but in this
>case, survive long enough to supervise a later "correct" version years
>later that much more closely.
>
Ya, know, since I (alone, it seems) thought that John Boorman's
_Excalibur_ was a piece of Hollywood crap, I am not surprised that he
tried to re-write the LotR or the LW&W. However I will be eternally
grateful that no one funded him to actually put his shit on the
screen. John Boorman fans must be "people who hate people" and all of
their works.

the softrat
"Honi soit qui mal y pense."
mailto:softrat [at] pobox.com
--
Arguing on the Internet is like running in the Special Olympics. No
matter if you win or lose you're still retarded.
Re: Boorman's LOTR - Script details [message #71384 ] Fr, 01 Juli 2005 08:00
danhenry  
On Thu, 30 Jun 2005 19:38:40 -0700, the softrat <softrat [at] pobox.com>
wrote:

>Ya, know, since I (alone, it seems) thought that John Boorman's
>_Excalibur_ was a piece of Hollywood crap

You aren't alone.

--
R. Dan Henry
danhenry [at] inreach.com
Re: Boorman's LOTR - Script details [message #71385 ] Fr, 01 Juli 2005 08:04
Yuk Tang  
the softrat <softrat [at] pobox.com> wrote in
news:2ua9c11scnnp9i7seikaofq1lgntin2l5p [at] 4ax.com:
>>
> Ya, know, since I (alone, it seems) thought that John Boorman's
> _Excalibur_ was a piece of Hollywood crap, I am not surprised that
> he tried to re-write the LotR or the LW&W. However I will be
> eternally grateful that no one funded him to actually put his shit
> on the screen. John Boorman fans must be "people who hate people"
> and all of their works.

Have you seen 'The General'?

The General
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120706/


--
Cheers, ymt.
Re: Boorman's LOTR - Script details [message #72685 ] Fr, 01 Juli 2005 16:35
Brian  
Sean wrote:

> I shudder to think what's going to happen when the LOTR's copyright
> expires and it becomes public domain, wide open to anyone with
> a camcorder or an animation package to spin off their own
> take on it. OTOH maybe someone will finally produce a film
> version that's accurate.

Methinks you missed the point.

Purists have been lamenting the demise of Boorman's version
for many years.

And yet I've not heard word one from them defending what they
knew Boorman would have done to the story.

It seems the "accuracy to the original book" crowd view a film's
prospect in the same way as the most cautious and literalistic
Hollywood types, i.e. based strictly on prior filmography
("just look at Excalibur") and typecasting, and literalism in general.

So they kept citing Excalibur instead of simply looking up
Boorman's LOTR script on the web, to see how he would have handled it.

"Accurate"? Sounds more like Asperger's syndrome to me...

And keep in mind I was progressively disappointed with the
LOTR films. though they are still good films for the most part.

So what's it gonna be, Trixie? Anyone care to defend Boorman's
version after all? Surely someone will, after all there are the
"Bakshi was better" people all over the Tolkien boards... :-)

Brian
Re: Boorman's LOTR - Script details [message #72688 ] Fr, 01 Juli 2005 16:58
Brian  
Ed Stasiak wrote:

> > Brian wrote
> >
> > Reposted from soc.history.what-if; This is not a "what-if"
> > scenario however, but Boorman's actual plans in the 1970s
> > for a one-film treatment of LOTR.
>
> What was the title of the thread in s.h.w-i?

It was the original website which has all the dirt on these scripts,

http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/C/Janet.B.Croft-1/three_rings_fo r_hollywood.htm

which was merely cited at the end of a WI thread where the original
poster more or less said "if only Boorman had done LOTR, how much better
it would have been"...

The actual web page is a paper of some sort -- has all kinds of
interesting info on the history of the LOTR property (like, for
instance, Jackson's LOTR definitively copies Zimmerman's approach
to a certain scene -- Zimmerman is the guy whose script Tolkien panned.
It would have been a mixed live action/animated film in the '50s.)

> > A thirteen-year-old Arwen surgically removes the Morgul-blade
> > fragment from his s houlder with a red-hot knife under the
> > threatening axe of Gimli, while Gandalf dares Boromir to try
> > to take the Ring (Boorman and Pallenberg 28-32).
>
> Holy crap, now I'm going to have nightmares!

I think it would have worked if the amphitheatre of chanting Elves
had employed wailing choral music on the soundtrack like /Troy/ ...

and numerous New Wave sphaghetti sword-and-sandal art flicks from
the 1970's. What say you. What say you!? :-)

But the naked Frodo on a crystal table covered with leaves sounds
a bit too much like American Beauty.

ELROND (played as a Centaur by a heavily bearded Italian guy):

"Bring Forth The Halfling... Arwen."

13 YEAR OLD ARWEN (plunks Naked Frodo down on the stone plinth)

GASPS from the assembled council.

Really should be directed by Polanski to make sense, though.
Or was that Antonioni?

Brian
Re: Boorman's LOTR - Script details [message #72689 ] Fr, 01 Juli 2005 16:58
Brian  
Ed Stasiak wrote:

> "Salvador Dali, of all people, was providing art support,"
> Dali in fact was supposed to act as Padishah emperor
> Shaddam IV,"

Did he swim across the Dune Sea once a year to prove his
fitness?

Yet more proof that there was no Spice in Iraq - er - Arrakis.

I wonder how _Dune_ would have been written today... ;-)
Re: Boorman's LOTR - Script details [message #72700 ] Fr, 01 Juli 2005 18:22
Jette Goldie  
"R. Dan Henry" <danhenry [at] inreach.com> wrote in message
news:qdi9c1pluo0hm9ngsd2odgqrva1bmpc0kf [at] 4ax.com...
> On Thu, 30 Jun 2005 19:38:40 -0700, the softrat <softrat [at] pobox.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Ya, know, since I (alone, it seems) thought that John Boorman's
> >_Excalibur_ was a piece of Hollywood crap
>
> You aren't alone.

Not by a long shot :-)


--
Jette Goldie
jette [at] blueyonder.co.uk
Some people are like Slinkies . . . not really good for anything, but
you
still can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs.
Re: Boorman's LOTR - Script details [message #74431 ] Mo, 04 Juli 2005 16:07
Derek Broughton  
Jette Goldie wrote:

>
> "R. Dan Henry" <danhenry [at] inreach.com> wrote in message
> news:qdi9c1pluo0hm9ngsd2odgqrva1bmpc0kf [at] 4ax.com...
>> On Thu, 30 Jun 2005 19:38:40 -0700, the softrat <softrat [at] pobox.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Ya, know, since I (alone, it seems) thought that John Boorman's
>> >_Excalibur_ was a piece of Hollywood crap
>>
>> You aren't alone.
>
> Not by a long shot :-)
>
I thought it was a _wonderful_ piece of hollywood crap :-)
--
derek
Re: Boorman's LOTR - Script details [message #76635 ] So, 10 Juli 2005 07:48
Venger  
Excalibur was EXECRABLE.

Venger

"Brian" <wrob [at] earthops.org> wrote in message
news:1120158031.454487.81930 [at] g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

Ideas that later worked brilliantly in Excalibur, Boorman's
retelling of the King Arthur legend, are here as out of place
as a dwarf in Lothlórien.
Re: Boorman's LOTR - Script details [message #76638 ] So, 10 Juli 2005 09:45
the softrat  
On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 05:48:16 GMT, "Venger" <venger [at] augustmail.com>
wrote:
>
>Excalibur was EXECRABLE.
>

And dumb and childish to boot: screwing in half-armour and the bubble
pack cave, not to mention the extremely self-indulgence set-chewing
nonsense that Nicol Wiliiamson called 'acting' (and Boorman let him
get away with it). I've seen more sensitive performances from a
cockroach dying of RAID.

the softrat
"Honi soit qui mal y pense."
mailto:softrat [at] pobox.com
--
I don't get even, I get odder.
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