More on Martin Freeman

Hobbit feet all up in Martin Freeman's neck. No Joke.

In all the excitement of the premier, I missed this fantastic interview with Martin Freeman, Biblo Baggins' portrayer in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. Freeman continues to interview exceedingly well. My favorite part:

There is a lot of fun Hobbit memorabilia and things in the fandom, did you perchance listen to Leonard Nimoy's "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins?" 

Yeah a long time ago, I'm still baffled by it. 

Did it help you prepare for the character at all? 

No it didn't. [Laughs] It helped me enjoy that three minutes of listening to it.

And thank you to io9 for posting the Nimoy vid.

The Only Perfect Allegory is a Real Life: Tolkien On His Writing

When discussing books and stories, many people like to say, "The author meant to say this," or "The author was referring to this historical event."

If you said this kind of thing to J.R.R Tolkien about his Middle-Earth tales, he might have bopped you on the head with his long-stemmed pipe, or simply slapped you across the face and cursed you in ancient Finnish.

I know that Tolkien did not appreciate those who tried to extrapolate lessons from his stories. He wrote so many times in his Letters:

The following is a quote from a letter to Tolkien's publisher Stanley Unwin regarding a sequel to The Hobbit, which I assume is the Fellowship of the Ring. This letter was written in 1937, as Germany was disenfranchising Jews and gearing up for war. Tolkien was explaining to the less whimsical nature of the sequel: 

The darkness of the present days has had some effect on it (The Hobbit). Though it is not an 'allegory'. (I have already had one letter from America asking for an authoritative exposition of the allegory of The Hobbit).

What does it mean to contain universals, yet not represent them as such? Regarding an early version of FOTR in which his publisher Rayner Unwin expressed that the darker nature of this Hobbit sequel was an allegory of the eternal battle between light and dark:

But in spite of this, do not let Rayner suspect 'Allegory'. There is a 'moral', I suppose, in any tale worth telling. But that is not the same thing. Even the struggle between darkness and light (as he calls it, not me) is for me just a particular phase of history, one example of its pattern, perhaps, but not The Pattern; and the actors are individuals – they each, of course, contain universals, or they would not live at all, but they never represent them as such...the only perfect allegory is a real life.

After the Unwin brothers refused to publish The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings as a single volume, which would have run over 2000 pages by my guess, Tolkien approached some dude named Milt Waldman about doing so.

I dislike Allegory – the conscious and intentional allegory – yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language. (And, of course, the more 'life' a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.) 

re: Tom Bombadil (my favorite Tolkien character)

I do not mean him to be an allegory – or I should not have given him so particular, individual, and ridiculous a name – 

re: LOTR

The Lord of the Rings as a story was finished so long  ago now that I can take a largelyimpersonal view of it, and find 'interpretations' quite amusing; even those that I might make myself,which are mostly post scriptum: I had very little particular, conscious, intellectual, intention in mind at any point. 

To the editor of the New Republic re: LOTR:

Thank you for your letter. I hope that you have enjoyed The Lord of the Rings? Enjoyed is thekey-word. For it was written to amuse (in the highest sense): to be readable. There is no 'allegory',moral, political, or contemporary in the work at all. 

And this:

There is no 'symbolism' or conscious allegory in my story. Allegory of the sort 'five wizards =
five senses' is wholly foreign to my way of thinking. There were five wizards and that is just a
unique part of history. To ask if the Orcs 'are'  Communists is to me as sensible as asking if
Communists are Orcs. That there is no allegory does not, of course, say there is no applicability. There always is....But I should say, if asked, the tale is not really about Power and Dominion: that only sets the wheels going; it is about Death and the desire for deathlessness. Which is hardly more than to say it is a tale written by a Man!

On Sauron as an allegory for Stalin:

There is no 'perhaps' about it.  I utterly repudiate any such 'reading', which angers me. The situation was conceived long before the Russian revolution. Such allegory is entirely foreign to my thought. 

 To Tolkien, The Hobbit was a whimsical tale about an individual placed in certain situations. That is all.

The Greatest Adventure

My mind often conflates Biblical imagery with Tolkien imagery. And its not wonder. The Bible is the best selling book of all time (despite it actually being a couple dozen separate books smushed into a single volume) and The Lord of the Rings is one of the top three selling books of all times (despite it actually being six books conflated into a single narrative)

It's no wonder then that Glen Yarborough, in the introduction to the 1977 animated version of The Hobbit, wrote and sings a song called, "The Greatest Adventure." Here it is:

Tolkien Hated Disney

This man felt a "heartfelt loathing" for all Disney productions

Ever wonder why Disney never made a Hobbit movie? It seems right up their alley, with all the orphans and magic and fantastic narratives.

Turns out Tolkien hated Disney. Not just hated, but felt a loathing for everything they produced. And that was during the Golden Age of Disney in the late thirties, early forties.

Here's the quote from Tolkien's letters. The letter was referring to the American publication of The Hobbit and discussed Tolkien's thoughts on what kind of illustration's belonged in the book.

It might be advisable, rather than lose the American interest, to let the Americans do what seems good to them – as long as it was possible (I should like to add) to veto anything from or influenced by the Disney studios (for all whose works I have a heartfelt loathing).

The Hobbit as Bildungsroman

As a child, the books I most frequently read were the books of the Bible and their associated commentaries and the books by J.R.R. Tolkien and their associated commentaries.

Bilbo Smoking Weed

The former readings focused primarily on the Pentateuch and the Hebrew legends surrounding the narratives in the Pentateuch, called Midrashim, and the latter included everything from "The Hobbit" to "The Silmarillion" to "The Shaping of Middle-Earth," a tome edited by Christopher Tolkien that centered on the maps found in the elder Tolkien's notebooks. I have always been fascinated at how closely Tolkien's stories mirror those of the Bible, particularly in the case of Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Saul and David.

As Joseph Campbell has so effectively shown, all stories, from the Bible to The Office, draw from the same format, known as the monomyth, also known as The Hero's Journey.

Bilbo fending off Golum in a gloomy cave

Bilbo's journey, of course, follows this format as well. A wealthy, comfortable, middle-aged man who is content to spend his days eating cakes and smoking weed (Longbottom Leaf being particularly potent), is unwittingly thrust on an adventure in which he must become valiant and brave, and just a little bit treacherous, as all successful heroes must be in order to vanquish their foes.


I am very much excited therefore, to see Peter Jackson's interpretation of this wonderful tale as soon as it is fully released in theaters this week.

Thranduil, the Elf King of Mirkwood.

With the new Hobbit movie from Peter Jackson debuting in full release this week, I was reminded of the old Hobbit movie I grew up watching. It was produced in 1977 and was animated. John Huston was the voice of Gandalf and Otto Preminger was the voice the elvenking.

Otto Preminger as the Elvenking

 

For those who are unfamiliar with Middle-Earth lore, the Elvenking in The Hobbit story is Legolas's father, Thranduil. In the Hobbit books he is portrayed as wicked and cruel, an obstacle that Bilbo must overcome using the magic of the One Ring. He looks ugly and misshapen.

But the truth is that the Elvenking is a hero, a hardened warrior who spent hundreds of years withstanding and isolating the Witch King, acting as a bulwark against Sauron's evil in Mirkwood, especially during the War of the Ring. In appearance, as I'm sure Peter Jackson's film will depict, the Elvenking will look as all elves should. Beautiful and tall, bright and terrible as the dawn.

Now they'll all be shouting Bilbo at you...

Martin Freeman
(c) New Line Cinema and MGM, h/t about.com

I thoroughly enjoyed Stephen T. Colber's interview with the one and only Martin Freeman during Hobbit Week. Here are my initial observations:

Freeman's real accent sounds identical to Christopher Guest's fake accent as Nigel in Spinal Tap. That's a pretty good fake accent Mr. Guest, or else your character was so influential on anglophone society as to influence Freeman's modes of speech. Either way, kudos to you. 

Colbert has an easy beginning. He asks Freeman, who has played many luminaries, form Tim on the original Office, to Arthur Dent in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, to Dr. Watson on the BBC's most recent iteration of the Sherlock Holmes franchise, does he ever worry that these characters will consume him?

Of course Freeman is simply happy people don't yell, "Hey TIM!" at him on the street.

But that's about where Colbert's control of the interview evaporates. Freeman truly spars with Stephen. He keeps Colbert on his toes with reminiscence and almost details some questions. This is not your run-of-the-mill interview where the subject rides the rapids of Stephen's interview. Freeman could guide groups of elder adventurecationists through those rapids, such was his adroit handling of it.

Not only does he take the agenda and run riot with it, but he even calls out Colbert for not listening while he prepped his next gag.

The end of the interview is as solid as they come. Enjoy...

Colbert Goes Shire

Bilbo on Bicep

That's right everyone, Stephen T. Colbert has gone Shire on us all. 

The penultimate week before the film release we all await with bated breath has been 

filled with stellar gags and interviews and all things Hobbit in the Colbert Nation.

Look out for reviews of the interviews and general Colbert-Hobbititude.