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(Click on the sign to go to the Official Party site) Okay, let me tell you everything....no there is too much, I will sum up. So much happened this weekend it is difficult to recall everything. I will try to go chronologically as best as I remember it, and I have pictures for most of the stuff and I'll insert them where appropriate. Having said that, I have higher resolution pix than the ones I've posted here, so if you're in one of the pictures and want a higher rez version, just let me know and I'll fire one off to you. My fiancée, Penny (author of net parodies such as "Iron Chef: Lembas Battle"), and I departed from the Universal Hilton at around 4 pm (which, as it turns out was too late, but we didn't know that yet). We shared a cab with two really nice women, Tammy and Jill, who we wound up talking to for a lot of the evening. As the cab pulled onto Sunset Blvd. I started getting really excited...and then we could see the line. Almost before the Hollywood Athletic Club came into view, there was this monstrous line stretching out from it. We got out and took our places. Everyone was looking great! The women were very easy on the eyes, adorned in their finest gowns, and the guys all looked sharp in their suits and tuxes. We made some good friends in line as everyone just talked and got to know one another in person. (Some folks knew each other online long before then). My girlfriend and I got some pictures of the line and folks in the line, but we unfortunately didn't get everyone's name, so I apologize in advance. Here are some pix of the line and some of us standing in front of the party sign at the V.I.P. entrance, Gandalf, and of a guy whose Boromir costume was right on the money! (I love the work he put into that shirt!)
We finally got inside around 5:30, so I missed Vic Sit Tecum perform, which is a shame because I really wanted to see them. Anyway, we made it past security (which I must say did a great job of being unobtrusive and very professional the entire night, kudos to whoever was working security) and got inside. The party organizers had arranged the party into sections with various different themes. The telecast was being piped into TVs in almost every room so you could move about without fear of missing anything. There were also open bars strategically placed in several of the rooms with wine and beer flowing like dwarves were serving it! Just as much as you could drink (and yet no one that I know of got out of hand...again...fantastic). There was more than enough food for everyone, heck I think they were still serving food past 11pm! In the room called "The Black Gate" they had items for the silent auction and I got to actually see some of the work provided by Sideshow WETA. I have this to say, all the pictures I have seen of their work don't come even close to doing them justice. When I actually saw the Watcher in the Water and the Balrog, I just couldn't believe it. I suspect I've just seen the harbinger of a large drain on my wallet in the near future. We hung out in the main room ("Meduseld") where Quickbeam was MC'ing the ceremony. He did a good job overall keeping us entertained during the commercial breaks of the telecast. I went over to another room ("Helm's Deep") and ogled the Games Workshop miniatures for a bit and watched part of the telecast there. Ran around and grabbed some food and then stalked some of the costume wearing folk. But ultimately, we wound down to the "Dead Marshes", which was a large room which had at one time apparently been a swimming pool. There was cool black lighting around and a bar within stumbling distance, plus it was a lot easier to hear the telecast. So I plopped down with a couple of Merlots and watched the remainder of the show. We quickly also re-encountered Tammy, Jill, and Charleton (a really cool guy who we kept bumping into the rest of the night...he wound up buying the Balrog AND the Watcher in the silent auction...lucky devil!) One great thing about the telecast was the way the entire building would roar whenever LOTR:TTT was mentioned. That was really cool. LOTR wound up winning for Best Visual FX (Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri, Randall William Cook, and Alex Funke) and for Sound Editing (Ethan Vand der Ryn and Michael Hopkins), if you ask me it was sheer highway robbery that they didn't come away with more, but next year will be payback. Here are the sets of pix for that part of the evening.
After the telecast, we milled around for a bit while the party folks had a DJ (didn't catch his name) spin some tracks, the staff quickly cleared the chairs out of Meduseld so folks could dance. Then Quickbeam had the raffle drawing for the night. I must say I was completely impressed by the raffle prizes. Some of those packages were worth over $500 easily! Ten lucky people got to walk away with a lot of great stuff from TORN's sponsors. After he announced the winners of the raffle and the silent auction, Emerald Rose took the stage. They were really good (my only beef is that they didn't seem to be loud enough...but then I've got heavy metal in my blood). Penny and I decided to dilute some of the alcohol in our stomachs with some more food. So we wandered over there only to find the curtain that separated the food room ("Rohan") from the rest of the place was closed. We circled all the way around and got food, but then.....rumour grew...that some special people were arriving. We couldn't see anything past the crowd so we wandered back to Meduseld, where there was quite a commotion underway. There, no more than an arm's length from me was John Rhys-Davies, not up on stage, not behind some impassible barrier, nope...there he was right in the middle of the crowd of fans! What a guy! I couldn't believe it. He must've have posed for 200 pictures right then, I just couldn't believe he would actually do that. Then, before I could reach him to get a pic with him, he had to go. He took the stage and gave some incredibly kind words to us and then departed. It was simply amazing.
Shortly thereafter, there was another break in the entertainment, and Quickbeam materialized on stage to deliver his vaunted imitation of Haldir which he had promised (threatened?) to perform earlier in the night. He did a pretty darn good job of nailing Haldir and then right at the end of his "honor that allegiance" speech, who should step up on stage, but Haldir himself , Craig Parker! I have to admit that Craig doesn't look remotely like Haldir without the blonde wig on. He said some kind words and was off. I tried to get some pictures but unfortunately, the room was very dark, and my camera couldn't really deal with that all that well so none of them turned out well. A little while later Bruce Hopkins (Gamling) took the stage and we all went nuts just shouting our heads off. He shouted back something to the effect of, "Where where you when we needed you at Helm's Deep!" The crowd went nuts! He said some quick words and departed. Then later still, was a massive surprise! (Thank goodness my camera started working again...but the pictures still came out dark). A parade of celebrities and geniuses graced our presence. Everything quickly degenerated to a blur for me, but I will try to describe what happened. Dominic Monaghan and Sean Astin hit the stage. And Dominic did some antics with a guitar. And Sean made a couple of jokes. He kind of took over MC'ing from Quickbeam. Then came a parade of cast and crew members, so many that I'm not entirely sure who was up there, but I'll do my best, The Oscar Winners were there certainly and a ton of WETA guys (man I would've loved to one on one with these guys and get into their heads!), as was producer Barrie Osbourne, Mark Ordesky, Alan Lee, Grant Major, Billy Boyd, and Andy Serkis. They were joined by the returning Craig Parker and Bruce Hopkins. Sean Astin said some winning words to us that played on Sam's "there is good in the world" speech from the film, and people just ate it up. Andy Serkis took the microphone at one point and did a Gollum/Smeagol thing (which I couldn't hear clearly enough to make out, but it was still cool). Producer Barry Osbourne then got on and he had director Peter Jackson on the phone from New Zealand! The HAC staff patched P.J. into the sound system, but he couldn't hear us and we could barely hear him. Here is the gist of what he had to say, best as I can remember it. He asked if there were any Kiwi's in the audience...to which they let themselves be known. Then he told us that he really wanted to be at the party but was hard at work on ROTK and that they were going to be doing pick up shots soon (or something to that effect). A lot of what he was saying was unintelligible through the sound system. But things got a little funny when Sean Astin was trying to communicate back and forth and neither side could understand one another. P.J. said "Thank you" and signed off. Then Dominic and Billy took center stage and said that they had to go because they'd left the oven on and Billy had made something really good that was going to burn. They were pretty funny, and it was actually very hard for me to see Dominic and Billy up there and not Merry and Pippin. They stepped off the stage and Quickbeam then presented Barrie Osbourne with the "Golden Gandalf" TORN award, which Mr. Osbourne then pointed out that it would have the company of another gold statue on his mantle next year! (Hear Hear!). The victorious Oscar winners posed for a few pix and said some words, and then Alan Lee got on the microphone. He started to thank all the fans for our support of his work and of the film, but what was great was that when he said, "Thank you." a lot of the crowd shouted back, "No, Thank You!" It fit my sentiments exactly. These guys had a grueling day I'm sure with the Oscars and everything, and I'm sure they were beat by the time they showed up at the party. But the fact that they showed up at all tells me these folks are different from regular "hollywood". These are first rate classy individuals who not only care deeply for the subject matter but also care deeply for their fans. Here are the pix for that section and also, my camera has the neat trick of being able to take 15 second Quicktime motion shots and I took a couple. They are very very dark, but they give you a good impression of the atmosphere, if you can see them. There is no sound.
After that, which was clearly the highlight of the evening, Penny and I were going to make our way out of the party as it was quickly nearing 1 AM. We decided to make one more pass to look around and I'm very glad we did too! We ran into Alan Lee and Bruce Hopkins! This was really cool. Penny got to talk to Alan Lee and get a picture with him. And I got a great picture with Bruce Hopkins and his companion (I'm sorry I didn't catch her name). We then headed out and grabbed our "Goody Baggins" which I figured would be filled with mostly promotional stuff like we get at conventions. How wrong I was! I could not believe the contents of this bag! Probably worth around $50 at least! It included one of the Sideshow WETA medallions, The Two Towers: One Party luggage tags from American Flyer, a copy of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Creatures by David Brawn, CD-Rom cards from SeriousUSA, Saruman and Grima miniatures from Games Workshop (muhahahaha), a ton of bookmarks with fan art, and a mixer/shaker from Premiere L.A. Wow!
All in all it was a fantastic night. I have a couple of things to say in addition though. MEGA-KUDOS to the TORN staffers who put this thing together. It was unbelievable and went off without a hitch! I know I would have been a nervous wreck if I had tried to put this thing together. But these guys know how to throw a $75,000 Oscar Party! And you can bet we'll be there next year! The one beef I have is....sexual favors not-with-standing, what do I have to do to get up in the V.I.P. area? (okay...sexual favors are negotiable....work with me people.) I really can't wait for this event next year. But the next stop for me and Penny is hopefully the premiere of ROTK in Wellington! Can't wait to see what that will be like. |
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