Though steadfastly loyal to Sir Peter Jackson (in particular) 'and co' over the whole Hobbit film saga - over preceding days, weeks, months and even - now - (two) years - what a pity he and fellow film collaborators - I don't mean conspirators! - didn't simply bypass the media, refusing to speak 'on the record' with one and all, and privately, confidentially, expeditiously liaise, negotiate, conclude discussions with the likes of Jennifer Ward-Lealand, Robyn Malcolm et al - completely out of the public glare - and thus sort to the Hobbit film dispute before it almost rather inevitably escalated into the squalid mess and public spat and namecalling and petty partisanship and political conundrum it eventually did. If only Sir Peter had himself taken the moral high road and eschewed all public bickering and contention, then the whole drama might have been settled in no time flat. But it was not to be, the film and all associated with it once again succumbing to the curse that has seemed to afflict the making of the films from word go, even as far back as the mid-to-late-nineties when Jackson and wife Fran Walsh first contemplated adapting J R R Tolkien's kids fantasy masterpiece.
But unlike ye average conspiracy theorist, Yours Truly has ever maintained that Peter has been unfairly vilified over the whole affair, and when more revelations vis-a-vis the unreleased materials surrounding the emails between Jackson and Warner Studios leaked out later last year I came to the conclusion that there was no conspiracy as such, but rather that Sir Peter simply decided to 'spit the dummy', and essentially say "Blow You" to those he perceived as his antagonists in the saga, and decide, 'no, you (lot) simply can't be trusted, in good faith, to keep your side, your end of the bargain, following the negotiation and securing of an agreement for the boycotters to lift their boycott of the film in NZ. Though I also always felt that NZ's Government then attempted to milk the dispute to its maximum political advantage, changing employment laws as they indeed did, and under parliamentary urgency, to gain public support for their seeming saviour role in securing the films to New Zealand, rather than seeing them go offshore. I have little doubt that Peter Jackson himself felt that was a serious possibility, as he had been told from various sources, and that he at least was not engaging in mere bluster and furtively and stealthily playing for time with a secret agenda to simply secure more governmental funding of the project itself.
But ultimately one's conclusions on the matter may be tainted by a number of factors, including one's partiality to conspiracy theories, one's dislike of multi-millionaires and big business generally, one's tendency to automatically side with trade unions and unionists, one's - perhaps well-founded - suspicions towards a pro-business political party, and its ex-merchant banker leader in particular who has 'shown his quality' (if such it can be termed) in adroitly pulling off deals of all sorts in the political realm even when those deals - however welcome their 'hands-on' approach at times - show a certain degree of inconsistency when laid alongside said leader's and Government's selfsame neglect, nay utterly hands-off attitude vis-a-vis many other important, longstanding 'specmens' of this country's once thriving, burgeoning and successful manufacturing base. Outfits such as Dunedin's Hillside Workshops and Oamaru's woollen mills spring readily to mind, Allan Hubbard's South Canterbury Finance etcetera etcetera etcetera, but I do go one, don't I...
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