Boor-ing Tolkien

Additional items on Tolkien and (potential) Cinema I did not know:

In 1970 United Artists asked the director John Boorman to make a film of The Lord of the Rings. With Rospo Pallenberg, Boorman developed a two and one-half-hour script for a live action motion picture; but new management at United Artists chose not to pursue it, and it was eventually abandoned. Janet Brennan Croft has commented on the many liberties Boorman and Pallenberg took with Tolkien’s book when writing the script: ‘Characters, events, locations, themes, all are changed freely with no regard for the author’s original intent. Situations are sexualized or plumbed for psychological kinks that simply do not exist in the book.’ These include the seduction of Frodo by Galadriel, and the marriage of Aragorn and Eowyn. ‘Pipeweed seems equivalent to marijuana in its effects, and the hobbits’ beloved mushrooms are hallucinogenic’ (‘Three Rings for Hollywood: Scripts for The Lord of the Rings by Zimmerman, Boorman, and Beagle,’ unpublished paper (2004)).

- page 21, The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, Reader’s Guide, by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, © 2006


Ugh.

Thanks be to Ilúvatar such garbage was never brought to the masses.

On a more interesting note, this book, The JRRTCaG RG, is increasingly growing on me. It’s a thick, hefty 1,256 pages and reads like one of those ten-pound journals I used to file when I worked in the Library of Science and Medicine when I was a freshman in college. I mean, you could seriously brain someone with a well-placed blow using this book. And – most baffling of all bafflements – it has no Table of Contents! It’s a encyclopedia of scholarly articles on all things Tolkien, and it has no Table of Contents!

Actually, the entries are about fifty percent Tolkien himself – biography, career, influences, friends and acquaintances – and fifty percent on his literary output. Of which The Lord of the Rings is but a part. A major part, yes, but the Reader also delves into The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, his other fictions (Farmer Giles and Smith of ...), his nonfiction essays on literature and history and historical literature and literary history. All in all, a very intriguing read, to be read like an encyclopedia and not cover-to-cover.

More tidbits if and when I come across them.