LOTR : The mystery surrounding this photo . . .

[karin-woywod.livejournal.com]

Hi there,

This first pic was obviously taken on    Elijah's birthday   . It looks like principal filming, so I would even dare to say it was taken    January 28th 2000   .

.

So, I've always wondered - how come that a pic that was obviously given to Elijah during filming in 2000, ended up in the hands of the fans ? Was it made part of the publicity campaign afterwards ?

Here is the evidence :

.

The story of the occasion during which this picture was taken, as retold by  not_alone, in her excellent "A Journey With Frodo" documentary :

http://not-alone.livejournal.com/59571.html

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________


"In    November [1999]     filming was disrupted by freak weather conditions involving flooding and snow.

During the filming of the    Midgewater Marshes    scene at    Te Anau   , the weather became so bad that cast and crew had to beat a hasty retreat back to the hotel. At the 2002 Comicon, Dom Monaghan related this story about that day: “The snow was as big as my palm. We were in water up to our knees, getting pushed in by Viggo every two minutes. The AD wanted to wrap but Peter didn’t want to and we didn’t want to but it was getting so bad. We headed back to the hotel and ended up sitting in the laundry room with a big bottle of whiskey. Viggo took some pictures you might have seen. We are sat on the washing machines and there was a space between the washing machines and the wall. Elijah tells a story with a terrible punch line, I give him a push and he falls between the gap and all you can see are his feet sticking up. We were all drunk as monkeys.”

And Elijah's version during an AOL Chat: “There was a time during the month of November which for NZ is heading towards summer, the weather isn’t supposed to be too cold, it got horrible and started to rain which was ok for the sequence we were filming. It started to rain early in the morning then as the day progressed it turned to sleet, then snow. The snow became so heavy they had to stop filming. The snow looked incredible but it became a hazard so we had to rush out of there. The hobbits hopped into a car but we got stuck in a ditch. An SUV came by and towed us out. After that we sat in the laundry room of the hotel and dried off our feet and drank wine. But the snow was amazing – the flakes were huge and you could see the massive details of the flakes.” 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

[Karin says :]    So, in fact, the weather conditions that shaped the hobbit pic above are the same weather conditions that can be seen in Viggo's famous Elijah and Dom shots of "Te Anau 1999", they may have been taken the exact same day !

But I digress - doesn't it seem strange to you that a picture given privately to Elijah (I almost wrote "Frodo" here - LOL !) later apparently became part of the publicity campaign ? So the only advantage Elijah had from this gift is that he owned it 1 or 2 years earlier than anybody else ?

EDIT :    Though, looking closely at both pics, it seems that Elijah had received a slightly   different   version of the shot - Pippin ( and Bill the Pony, LOL ) do seem to look in different directions . . .

Love,

- Karin.