File this under “News They Oughtta Know Isn’t Really News”; the LA Times is confirming that The Hobbit will film in New Zealand after all, in spite of weeks of recent grumbling amongst SAG, a small sister union Down Under, and the Peter Jackson filmmaking empire.
The thing is, they were never going to pack up and move Middle Earth to Canada or Romania. Sure, they could have – a Hollywood studio with a willingness to settle on quality can do just about anything. But the point of this whole public kabuki is hidden in the details – as New Line Cinema used this spat as an excuse to chisel the country of New Zealand for a few million more in “incentives” that will move some of the cost of the movie off their balance sheets.
Moving the production – two feature films with a combined half-billion in budget and years’ worth of pre-production work already complete, would have cost tens of millions of dollars, and set production back by months, if not years; not to mention the drastic change in what you would see on-screen. Not to mention, more coldly, the increase in odds of certain leading performers who are already in their 70’s, well, dying. When Peter Jackson made the Lord of the Rings trilogy, he didn’t just make movies, he made an entire world-class filmmaking infrastructure that is still thriving, and has been preparing for this project. Whereas Romania, I hear, has some guys with shovels who work cheap.
It’s a universal truth that there is nothing the powerful enjoy more than the illusion of being victims. My friend the former Hollywood dominatrix could tell you a few things about this. It is why, during the writers’ strike, I heard producers, executives, even lit agents (who you’d think would at least PRETEND to see their writer clients’ point-of-view) sincerely gripped by the fear that a writer asking for 1.5 cents of Internet revenue on projects that have already aired and earned their money elsewhere was going to bring about the End of Hollywood. They were the ones under assault.
But it is just Downtrodden Fantasy Camp; it isn’t real. What it does do, is allow them to bully, and increase their advantage, but to act very sorrowful and reluctant about it. Gee – we don’t WANT to lay some of our expenses off on New Zealand taxpayers. Shucks, no! And our stockholders would never even contemplate it – perish the thought! But if these actors’ unions keep making trouble, it would just be too STRESSFUL to stay in this country! Maybe you could, uh, think of something your country could do to make us more comfortable…
Please note – I am not taking sides on the actors union’s central argument over the union status of Peter Jackson’s film shoots, or whether the performers are fairly compensated. I know nothing relevant to take a side – I know that doesn’t stop most people, but it stops me. What I am interested in is the fact that a newspaper like the Times would so willingly play Chorus to a drama it ought to recognize by now, yet still act as if the ending is a surprise.