Having, at last - long after all the smoke and fury has blown over and away and in every direction - gotten around to getting ahold of, viewing, sizing up and digesting Sir Peter Jackson's and Fran Walsh's public statement, post-release of the much-disputed The Hobbit film papers and official documents - or rather, those subject to release - the truth in the tale is not so very conspiratorial after all; or, let's say, such that Sir Peter et al are themselves dishonourably implicated in the fallout, which in my view they are patently not. But then, you say, he would make it seem like that, wouldn't he... .
Yes, there does indeed come a point where one must choose who to believe, who makes the more, the most credible-seeming/sounding argument, and though I respect Phil Darkins' perspective - unlike the much more toxic one so often propounded by Helen Kelly - for my (inconsiderable, it must be admitted at the outset, and decidedly limited, nay rather impoverished store of) money it's Jackson and co all the way, and back again... . Yes, I have to admit, indeed I have no qualms in affirming that he/they acquit/s him/them- selves very well, creditably and moreover eminently credibly on the whole sorry saga. Sure, humanly to the nth degree and beyond, but doesn't that bear so much more true to real life than the cardboard cut-out caricaturing and ideological, politically partisan approach of some others, in particular both the Labour Party and Green Party spokespeople in this matter. Whereas I personally have absolutely no problem with the likes of 'the Right Honourable' Winston Peters, while readily acknowledging the genius, or rather genii of not only Sir Peter but all the others intimately involved in the making of the films, nevertheless making the case, and rather convincingly in my view, that it would nonetheless be 'the honourable thing' for Wingnut, Weta, Warner et al to repay the generous ($67 million) subsidy given the filmmakers by the New Zealand Government on behalf of the NZ populace. Seeing as the first film's profits (alone) have now skyrocketed beyond $1.2 billion.
But despite that fair enough concern/desire as expressed by Peters, I would still say, after all the smoke has settled down upon this rather sorry saga in New Zealand history: Sir Peter - Fran - Phillippa - Sir Richard (Tayler) et al - you have really shown your quality, make that 'qualities', sirs - and madams; as Samwise Gamgee or Faramir might have themselves put matters. Yes, by exerting and bending every effort within your power to keep the making of The Hobbit films here in God's Own, you have truly shown your calibre; of the highest sort. For whether their actual filming here was really threatened or not, I have no doubt that Sir Peter et al perceived that to be the case, and that if that had indeed transpired, New Zealand's ever-burgeoning film industry would have been given a rather big body blow, from which it might well have taken a considerable number of years, perhaps even decades to recover. And as a sometime, if highly 'minimal', worker in the industry, let me only say that I've learnt the hard way in life that it really doesn't pay to cut off one's nose to spite one's face; however many plaudits the ideological purists and their fellow-travellers might readily dispense in your direction for so doing. Sadly 'the real world' simply doesn't work that way, and never has. No, not even in the likes of Middle Earth - though perhaps, I'll concede, in cloud cuckoo land. Yet even there, so I understand, the various avian species still have to fight for their food and livelihood.
