These events I got to go to were always fun but this one was full of the most surprises. Alex came and picked me up right at noon then we started our long trek down to Santa Barbara. Considering how bad the traffic was, it didn’t take us too long to get there (or so it seemed to) and we were parked and had found the Arlington Theatre at about 2pm. Now the awards show didn’t start until 7:30, and there were already about 30 people in line in front of us. So we scratched all plans of looking around, got some food, and staked out our place in line. Considering it was a five-hour wait, it didn’t seem to be too long. We got to talk, watch the people put the red carpets down (in the most unceremonious way possible!) and move around with the line. The people in charge must have moved the line at least three times! Alex described the people in front of us the best:

  “…having a herd of fangirls at the front of the line screaming and running around for no apparent reason the time seemed to fly by.  I must say in regard to the herd of fangirls I was starting to feel like old Treebeard...these girls were a bit too hasty sometimes...ah well...to be very young is to be very enthusiastic.”

 After we were moved for the last time we were standing (more like leaning) by the railing by the red carpet. At this point, both Alex's and my feet were hurting so badly! I don’t know about her, but after standing for most of the five hour wait, all I could think about was sitting down. The last hour before we were let in a number of interesting things happened. One of the things was the door to the building would crack open a bit at times and everyone in line would reach to look in, and what we saw was TTT playing on a tv. Now whenever someone saw that we were all leaning in to see, they would immediately shut the door. It was kinda odd, it’s not like we’ve never seen the movie before and don’t own it or anything. Then the lady standing next to Alex was interviewed for Channel Three, and according to my mother, Alex and I could be seen in the background. Woohoo! We made it on tv! I dub us super geeks. The last two things that happened before we rushed into the theatre were we saw two people:  1) Christopher Lloyd, and 2) my old apologetics teacher. Now I don’t have proof that that was my teacher, but I’m in the process of finding out.

 The Arlington Theatre is the most beautiful theatre I have ever seen. It’s set up to look like your outdoors, the walls look like  small adobe-like houses and the ceiling is dark blue with little lights to look like the stars. The stage has this awning over it to give the appearance to protect the stage from the elements. Much lovelier than my attempt at a description. The event was started by the guy in charge of the festival and he said a few nice words about Peter Jackson, including how he was the only one he could even consider to receive the Modern Master Award. Then Sean Astin came up. He said how it was great that the sbiff would recognize such little, unknown films (lots of laughter right there) and how his career had grown so much because of Peter Jackson.

For the majority of the next two hours Peter Jackson and the NPR guy who was interviewing him went through each of his films and they talked about each of them. One of the funniest things he said  at the beginning of this was when the NPR guy asked him why there weren’t any girls in his first few movies, then Jackson says, “I was a geek! I didn’t know any girls!” Very funny. Interesting facts that we found out that evening: (I’m copying these from Alex’s report.)

--Heavenly Creatures is the film that caused Peter and Co. to get a computer to do some CG with the film.

--Bad Taste was filmed over a 4 year period. p
-                -Harvey Winstien is the reason we have the LOTR films today...in a way without his help we wouldn’t have these films

--One of PJ’s inspirations has been Monty Python

            Then they played a long 15-minute montage of clips from all three LOTR movies. It was really great, the ultimate trailer for the movies.

          After all the clips and little insights it was time for the actual presentation of the award. The guy in charge of the festival came back up on stage and said, “Because Monty Python has been such an inspiration to Peter Jackson, who better to present the Modern Master Award to him than John Cleese!” Then John Cleese came on stage! I (and everyone around me) was shocked! It was so cool! He made a few jokes about New Zealand, like how last time he had been there was twelve years after it had been discovered and so on. He presented Jackson with the Modern Master Award and a second award, a stuffed kiwi, saying, “The Kiwi is a flightless bird but PJ has flown so high because of his imagination”. It was wonderful! Then Jackson gave his acceptance speech and made the  comment, “On Sunday I accepted my Golden Globe, and it being a globe I turned it over and saw that there was Australia, but New Zealand wasn’t on it. If I had noticed at the time, I would have said something during my acceptance speech.” Then he said that he’ll have to take a sharpie and draw New Zealand on it. It was really funny. While he was giving his speech, he was still holding the kiwi and talking  with his hands and kept hitting himself in the face with it! It looked like it was attacking him! It was so hilarious.

            At this point the award ceremony was over and Alex and I practically ran about five blocks to get to the next theatre where there was going to be a showing of Braindead/ Dead Alive (one of Peter Jackson’s earlier films). Jackson was going to be introducing it, and because we practically ran there, we ended up getting there before him and got good seats. A few interesting facts we learned about the movie:

                     -- The fake blood was colored maple syrup.

    -- He’s never really liked the title “Dead Alive”.

    -- They never were able to get the last bit of syrup blood off the ceiling of the studio where the big finale was filmed, and to this day there is still a red blotch on the ceiling.

            Then it was on to the movie! Alex had seen it before, I had not. Alex pointed out two cool little facts:  1) the opening scene takes place in the same location as where the Paths of the Dead are filmed, and  2) One of the zombies is the same actor who plays the “tumble off the cliff” (Sharku) orc from TTT. That was without a doubt the goriest movie I have ever seen, and I doubt that a gorier movie exists out there. But there were some really funny parts, that I’m not going to explain here. =)

            So that was it! We had a big grin on our faces after all that, and I was dropped off at home at 1:30 in the morning. Definitely a full and memorable day.

Copyright © Joelle Wright 2003-Present