I’m currently reading ‘there and back again’ by Sean astin. It’s allegedly a behind the scenes look at how The Lord of the Rings was made. It allows me a lot of insight into Peter Jackson’s working style, so despite its frankly dire prose (it’s written like a blog entry of a paranoid actor) it is worth a read. Jackson is one of my cinematic heroes, and he appears to be one of astin’s too.

However, this morning, I found a gem of a piece of trivia which appeals to my perverse sense of humour:

‘What I had seen, in fact, was a clip from Forgotten Silver; ostensibly a short-film documentary made for New Zealand public television, the film’s subject was a man named Colin McKenzie, a Kiwi filmmaker who…supposedly pioneered synchronised sound in 1908 and colour film in 1911. according to the documentary, McKenzie was denied fame on any grand scale not only because he was working in new Zealand, an artistic outpost, but also because he committed a few, shall we say, tactical errors: his sound film featured Chinese dialogue (understood by no one who saw it); the groundbreaking colour film included scenes of topless natives on the island of Tahiti, and thus was deemed ‘obscene’ and quickly pulled from circulation.’

(there and back again, Astin, 2004)

I love it! Man discovers colour film. Man makes porn! How typical. …if only it were true. This hoax was so believable that, when he was found out, jackson had to apologise, publicly, even to the prime minister.

Hardly blogworthy, but funny as!