Hobbits Found In Mid-America

So, what can The Hobbit teach us about unintended consequences?  A surprising amount it turns out.  Where’s Gandalf when you need him?

On the 22nd of September, as I always do, I did a little shout out to celebrate the birthdays of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins.  This being the age of social media I posted my comment on Facebook, and within hours a ‘friend’ had chimed in with something along the lines of:

“Did you know that The Hobbit started off as a story that Tolkien read to his children before bed?”

Frankly, I didn’t know how to respond.  I know the comment was very well meant and that she was expressing her own joy with this magical book, but obviously this wasn’t one of the people who I’ve known for 30 years that I have reconnected with on Facebook.  No one who I’ve known for that long would have posted that comment, for a very good reason: they would already know that I am a Tolkien Nerd.

To be fully confessional I should admit that I’m probably not the biggest Tolkien Nerd on Earth.  I am, however, in the top 10, and quite probably in the top 5.  Have you read The Hobbit more than once? I lost count after I broke 100. The LotR? Over 30 times, and it would be a lot more if I hadn’t taken a 20 year break until this last January.  First edition Silmarillion? Right here.  Complete histories of Middle Earth?  Volumes 1 through whatever, over there.  Research at the Tolkien archives?  Been there, done that (very nice people @ Marquette, BTW;  very helpful).  Obsessive naming of everything in your life after something from Middle Earth?  Let’s just say my poor wife has to put up with some world class pocket-protector level dweebness (the particular computer I’m writing this blog on is called Vingilótè – anyone catch the reference?).  Christopher Tolkien’s home address?  Neatly tagged in my iPhone, thank you very much.  Hell, the first nickname I ever got was “Frodo.”  Telling me that The Hobbit started off as a bedtime story is like telling Stephen Hawking that the Sun is actually a big ball of gas.  The comment was really well meant, my ‘friend’ is a real sweetheart, but in the end it’s not going to help me a great deal.  I had intended my post to be a quiet tribute to my Hobbit forefathers but the Law of Unintended Consequences (LUC) had other ideas.  (Ironically, the entire premise of The Hobbit is built on unintended consequences.  Bilbo, after all, was just sitting on his doorstep having a smoke and the next thing he knows he was half way across middle earth with 13 surly dwarves trying to figure out how to burgle a dragon!)

Being the Tolkien Nerd that I am I’ve been following the saga which has surrounded the production of The Hobbit movies with special interest, and I’ve noticed another prime example of the LUC in action.  The forthcoming movies have been plagued by difficulties mostly having to do with money, scheduling, and a rather huge misstep by New Zealand’s Actors Equity (NZAE).  The Equity union got in a dispute with Peter Jackson (Producer/Director) over wages and working conditions, much of which is hair splitting about the difference between a “contract worker” and a “movie production employee.”  The exact nature of the dispute isn’t really relevant here, but the consequences are.  NZAE called for actors to boycott working on the movie, and that got picked up by some of the international Actors Equity divisions.  Nothing like picking up support from your brethren and increasing your negotiating leverage eh?  Eh?

But that’s not what happened.  Warner Bros., the backers of the two The Hobbit films,  immediately threatened to yank the production of the movies out of New Zealand and produce them somewhere else.  They went to the trouble of scouting out film locations in the UK for particular scenes and scope out potential sound stages around London.  That got everyone’s attention, as the LotR films and the upcoming The Hobbit films will have collectively poured enough money into New Zealand to keep the entire population rolling in imported Vegemite well into the next century.  Suddenly the Government panicked,  the actors panicked, there were demonstrators of thousands of people in Auckland screaming “Save Our Hobbit,” and everybody was trying to placate a rather nonplussed collection of WB execs who had essentially said: “Our marbles, our sandbox.  You don’t like it and we’ll leave.”  The New Zealand government has gone so far as to pledge further tax breaks for the production as well as to clarify the labor laws, a move that is going to codify the current situation, thereby making what the NZAE wanted to accomplish effectively impossible.

This should be a cautionary tale to anyone who is associated with the Detroit Symphony, whether it is the board, the management, or the musicians.  This is 2010, not the 1950s.  Whatever is put forth in this mess will be magnified by the megaphone of the internet and the outcome of the strike will have ramifications throughout the classical music world.  In New Zealand the winners look like Warner Brothers.  They’re getting their movie made, and a lot of people will be considering picking up some TimeWarner stock (TWX in case anyone is interested).

The losers? – NZAE got the exact opposite of what it wanted, and through their actions they cost the people of New Zealand another $25 million in tax breaks and a whole lot of bad press.  The LUC was in full force.  What is obvious is that the NZAE thought they had leverage, they found out that they had dreck, and any chance that the NZAE will be taken seriously has been shot for at least as long as it will take The Hobbit to go from first-run release to the 3 am Turner Classic Movies slot.

2 thoughts on “Hobbits Found In Mid-America”

  1. My wife got really excited when she saw that you are a Tolkien nerd. She is currently reading the Hobbit for the nth time…we spent 4 months in New Zealand after we got married checking out LOTR sites.

  2. I am 44 now and–yes,I gotta admit–I am a Tolkien nerd.And I’m damn proud if it.Being the world’s biggest book junkie,I’m not surprised.

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