Ian Nathan - Anything You Can Imagine

The video ended with a deafening click , and silence congealed around them. Ordesky was visibly squirming; if Shaye said no he’d already planned to chase after him to try and talk him round, risking his own standing at New Line. ‘I probably contributed to the sense of drama,’ he confesses. But Shaye didn’t get up. Instead he turned to Jackson and looked him in the eye. There is a sense of events switching into slow motion as a series of checks and balances are determined invisibly in the air — a recalibration of destiny.

‘Why would anyone want movie-goers to pay eighteen dollars when they might pay twenty-seven dollars?’ he finally asked, his face still betraying nothing.

Everyone tried to process what he was saying. Why were they talking about ticket prices? Had they started their own game of riddles?

‘So I don’t get this at all,’ Shaye continued, ‘why would you make two films when there are three books?’

Jackson was only becoming more perplexed. Did he mean they should only be doing one film? Were they back at the gates of Harvey’s ultimatum? ‘I’m like, what does this mean?’

Shaye still wasn’t finished. ‘Tolkien has done your job for you, Tolkien wrote three books,’ he pressed. ‘If you’re going to do it justice, it should be three movies.’

You could have heard a Mithril pin drop.

Ordesky can still picture Jackson’s face, seeing the wheels begin to turn. An incredible, unforeseen recalculation was underway. The director’s voice came out hesitantly, still not quite daring to believe, ‘Yes … It could be three films.’

*

While it’s a pleasure to remain here, basking in the glow of a dream-come-true now enshrined in Hollywood folklore, there was of course much more to it than that. Most immediately, the films certainly hadn’t been greenlit yet. According to Jackson, such are the thorny tracts of Hollywood business that it was hardly unusual that the fully ratified, ink-on-paper go-ahead wasn’t actually signed until about two weeks out from shooting. Elijah Wood was already trying his feet on.

Back then Shaye did at least switch onto a business footing. His voice a perfected blend of beneficence and caution, he began inching a trilogy forward. ‘This is very impressive, something that I wasn’t expecting it to be. I can see this. I want to show it to Michael [Lynne]. Can we keep the tape?’

They hadn’t wanted to leave the tape anywhere, but how could they say no?

‘I don’t know where you are in the process; I don’t care,’ Shaye went on, ‘but I can’t do anything until my partner sees it.’

It is strange to report that there was not a trace of euphoria as they filed out of the room. Jackson was too gun-shy for any kind of celebration. ‘You don’t emotionally invest in anything until you know it was a hundred per cent certain,’ he admits. ‘So it wasn’t euphoric, it was more like really ?’

As excited as Shaye was by the pitch, there was more to his interest in The Lord of the Rings than the thoroughness of Jackson’s proposition. The meeting couldn’t have been more perfectly timed. New Line was deep into a dry spell. Vacillating talent and spiralling costs had combined to scuttle sequels to their big franchises: A Nightmare on Elm Street , Dumb and Dumber and The Mask . They were hungry for a branded property with built-in sequels.

Indeed, Shaye’s energies had been focussed on an adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation books. But in a not unfamiliar turn of events he had come to loggerheads with the rights holders. After a year and a half of development a lot of money had, as Kamins says, ‘walked out of the door’. Frustrated, Shaye had let the option lapse. This was no more than a month before Jackson walked in the door.

New Line’s chief had a more measured take on the meeting. He knew the proposed budget. He knew the financial structure of the company could handle it. Yes, they needed sequels. And here was an opportunity to have three years of ‘potential security and good business’.

Twenty-four hours later, Kamins’ phone rang. It was Shaye — Lynne had seen the tape. ‘We’re ready to start negotiating,’ he said and that was that.

The prosaic reality of Hollywood spoils the poetry of the occasion. Deal-making at its most mechanical would continue for months. Yet there is no doubt that it still took a mad flutter from a maverick studio like a PolyGram or a Miramax or a New Line to back the films. Shaye wasn’t a corporate soul. He viewed himself in a romantic, old Hollywood mould: David O Selznick stoking the flames of Gone with the Wind . Says Kamins, ‘Bob Shaye would look for ways to buck the system.’

Shaye felt his calling in Hollywood was to find a balance between art and commerce, cash and kudos. He was a frustrated film director trapped running the company. Whereas Lynne, with his well-tended beard, shining pate and tailored suits, began as New Line’s general counsel before becoming COO in 1990 and CEO in 2001. He was the sense to Shaye’s sensibility. He shored up the bottom line, steadying the boat if Shaye’s more mercurial style ever set it rocking.

If Bob was ‘dad’, the gag went; then Michael was ‘mom’.

‘Bob is an artist and intensely creative,’ says Ordesky. ‘The reason why he and Michael made such great partners is that Michael is incredibly sharp and business-like. They had known each other from college days. They could see through situations to the heart of an opportunity and find a way to structure that opportunity in a really compelling way. But Bob, even though he had a thoughtful process, was also a gut player.’

Like Miramax, New Line was an indie minnow swallowed by a bigger fish. Shaye and Lynne had offloaded ownership of the company to media mogul (and then husband of Jane Fonda) Ted Turner, who was subsequently swallowed by a whale. Time Warner, the media conglomerate that also operated Warner Bros., merged with Turner, sending a shiver down the New Line spine. Yet within the corporate hierarchy that emerged, Shaye and Lynne were granted far more autonomy than the Weinsteins. They could, within reason, steer New Line’s destiny.

Whatever the ultimate driving force behind Shaye’s great gamble on Jackson and Frodo, you suspect that an element of it was an opportunity to show up Miramax. Proof that he was operating on a studio scale.

In response, Hollywood thought that Bob Shaye was going to sink the company. New Line was risking north of $200 million on three films made back-to-back by the guy who had directed The Frighteners . If the first film flopped, you were left with, as Jackson put it, ‘the two most expensive straight-to-DVD films in history’.

Behind his natural Hollywood sangfroid, Kamins’ voice becomes intense: ‘If you watched Peter and Fran go through the entire process; if you looked at those maquettes; if you looked at the designs and the artwork; if you looked at this documentary. There was a level of seriousness and purpose of responsible filmmakers honouring the investment being made. But also that risk married perfectly with the cultural DNA of New Zealand, which is: we’re going to show the world that we can do what they can do.’

It was a sensibility that tallied with New Line’s underdog persona. The enterprise was so big and so daring that the risk involved almost felt hopeful. It said something about what was possible in this business. ‘I think we all sort of lived in that for the first couple of years,’ says Kamins.

Ordesky was more than aware that this was his company, his family, his job security, betting the farm on a mad venture. Yet not for a single second did he harbour a doubt that they had made the right choice.