through these fields of destruction

Orlando's great. He's completely insane. He's quite funny without actually trying to be funny. He'll sort of sit down and he can't sit still for very long and he'll say, 'I think I need to move my car' and he'll be off. You'll be having a conversation with him and be like 'where'd he go?' I don’t think there’s anyone more unpredictable to spend time with.

-Elijah Wood in 2003.

When I first met [Viggo], we sat down in this real crusty place, the Green Parrot, and I remember not being able to hold a conversation, because I was so intimidated. There is something beautiful and quiet about Viggo, but the more I got to know him, the more I realized how insanely brilliant and crazy he is--how he has this insane wild side. Yeah, he's mental. But in a good way.

-Elijah Wood in 2003.

No wonder these two loonies got along so well.

Here's another famed story from the set of The Lord of the Rings: the one about how the mythical Fellowship loved each other so dearly they all got a tattoo. And like with all LotR lore, they can't quite agree how it actually happened. Whose idea was it, really?

Elijah Wood:

That was an idea that we had early on, but a few of the fellowship members were reluctant to do it at first because they felt like, “What if this isn’t a good thing? We don’t know enough about how the production’s gonna go now to determine whether getting a tattoo is a great decision.” So we took a wait-and-see attitude. During the last month of filming, we brought the idea up again and everyone chimed and said, “This is something that we need to do.” We actually had one of the guys from Weta design various scripts in elvish. He gave us pages and pages of ways to write the number ‘9.’ We finally decided on one. And then we all went to this one guy in Wellington, kind of an older guy, who has this parlor. He opened on a Sunday for us. And the fellowship entered and we stood by each other as we all got branded. I have mine just below the waist. We were all holding each other's hands, it hurt so much.

Orlando Bloom:

I think it was my idea, i dont know [laughs]. I already had a tattoo on my belly. I thought of the tattoo to celebrate our friendship, the time we spent together in New Zealand. Viggo called a tattoo parlour and asked if it was possible to do nine tattoos at the same time, on a Sunday. The man refused. The next day, Viggo went to the tattoo parlour wearing Aragorn's clothes, with his sword in one hand. So, he explained that we were making the movie Lord of the Rings. The man opened his tattoo parlour just for us. All the nine got the tattoo done, a nine in elvish. Even Sir Ian McKellen got one… We don't want to show it if we don't have to, we rather like to keep it amongst the nine of us in a way, it's our own personal thing. It was designed by Alan Lee.

Viggo Mortensen:

We all got the same one - the word "nine" in Elvish - because that's what we are, nine. I visited the tattooist a couple times, showed him the drawing and stuff. I didn't say anything about Ian McKellen or whoever may be coming in. He just did it. We did all meet one morning and it was an interesting event, and I enjoyed it. Half a day. Actually everyone showed up. I suppose we didn't need to add another scar to commemorate the real scars we already had. But it was a way of saying thank you to each other, I suppose, and reaffirming the bond that we had developed, and probably always will have to one degree or another, as actors who played these roles.

Dominic Monaghan:

It was a guy called Roger at Roger's Tattoo Parlor in Wellington. He didn't open on Sunday, but we only had a day off on a Sunday. After we all came together and committed to this idea, I think Viggo rang him. He told him, "We know you don't open on a Sunday, we'll make it worth your while." We all turned up there, I think at 11:00, and it was a real party atmosphere. We were all taking photos and writing in diaries. It was one of my favorite days in New Zealand, I think. We first talked about getting rings but then we decided to get tattoos - all together. Then we had a party and took pictures of each other.

Billy Boyd:

It was Dom's idea, but once we got to the tattoo parlor, there was a lot of "Where are we going to have it? Of course, we got the tattoos about a week before we finished shooting, and I wasn't really thinking ahead...so we still had a week to spend with these prosthetic feet! And I had the tattoo and so did Sean. They had to glue the feet on - quite painful.

Sean Astin:

To this day, Elijah insists it was his idea. Given half a chance, though, Orlando will also take credit (or responsibility, or blame). And while Viggo has never sought any recognition for his role in the episode, I'm pretty sure he was a major player. Regardless of it's origin, I do know that the seed was planted shortly after we arrived in New Zealand, and took root in the months that followed. Every so often, someone (usually Elijah) would bring it up, and someone else would second the notion. Then we'd all forget about it. In the final week of principal photography, however, as it finally began to dawn on us that the adventure was really going to come to an end and we'd all be going home, the discussion began anew - this time with an almost religious fervour.

Brett Beattie:

I remember Elijah Wood actually approached me first and invited me. And to tell you the truth, my biggest concern at the time was John Rhys-Davies. I knew that this wasn’t supposed to be for me to be asked to get this tattoo. So I said I had to think about it. But Beattie relented when Viggo Mortensen and Orlando Bloom asked him again the following day. So, on a Sunday afternoon, Beattie, Mortensen, Bloom, Wood, Astin, Ian McKellen, Billy Boyd, and Dominic Monaghan headed to a tattoo parlor in Wellington to get elvish numerals engraved on their bodies. It was an honor for Beattie.

John Rhys-Davies: 

Those drunken little hobbits. ... The little bastards got drunk and came to me and said, "We're all going to have a tattoo of the Elvish word for nine. Nine in the Fellowship, and we're all going to have this tattoo." So I did what any self-respecting actor would do when faced with a stunt that might very well imperil his life. I sent my stunt double to have it. Seems fair to me, doesn't it? I'm not going to be tattooed by some drunken Maori. ... Not me. I'm a coward.

Orlando:

I took Sean Bean down to a tattoo parlor in New York about a month and a half ago, because he was not in New Zealand when we got ours. So we got his done downtown. There were nine of us, nine tattoos.

Sean Bean:

We all got together one night near the end of the shoot. We'd had a few drinks and decided we needed to get something to celebrate this, something so that the experience would live for ever in our memories. I was the last to get it. [Orlando Bloom] dragged me to get it done in New York recently. I think everyone thought I'd chicken out but I've completed the circle now. I'd never have got another one if it hadn't been for a really special reason like this. And let's face it, it's not often you make a film and want to go and get a tattoo to remember it by.

Bonus (from Harry Knowles):

When I saw the design, I will not break the trust and reveal what it is… but folks… After I saw it, I went to an area and just teared up. That is how much these folks believe in what they have done. When I asked if Sean was going to get his, Viggo and Orlando shared a look… a smile…. And yes.

THOSE MOVIES WERE FILMED AND FORGED STRONG BONDS BETWEEN THE ACTORS AND CREW AND HORSES ON SET.

AND WE CAN SEE THE CAST BEING SILLY AND GOOFY IN AND OUT OF COSTUME

and yeah anyways i think about that a lot whenever i feel sad because then i get a lil serotonin boost from the bts-of-lotr photos

(this really was our fellowship of the ring ahh trilogy)

Rangers Gathering day27: Gift

After watching the film, it was an excellent idea to turn to the original source and dive into the text. The book is a portal into the mind of Laurence/Lomeli; it captures everything we see on the screen in the finest movements and expressions on Fiennes’ face. To feel it without words, to process it internally, and then to read it on paper and experience it again is an experience bordering on revelation.

I am not a religious person, but neither the book nor the film, in my opinion, is truly about religion. It is a story about how you don’t get what you want, but what you deserve.

Here, I want to focus on one moment that caught my attention. Laurence admits, both directly and through other characters, that he has trouble praying. In the book, this is expressed particularly vividly—when he prepares to pray, he finds himself unable to concentrate; his thoughts are too cluttered with mundane, administrative concerns. As he confesses, the higher he rises within the church (on the career ladder), the farther he feels from God.

This is a powerful metaphor for anything related to power and high status. God here serves as an apt representation of human moral virtues—altruism, kindness, and clarity of thought.

But then comes the time for the sermon, and the book provides us with a brief backstory to this procedure, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Laurence recalls that this speech typically foreshadows the qualities the future pope will possess. And here is how it unfolds:

When Laurence writes the text, he deliberately makes it neutral. It’s as though he wants to create a blank slate for the new pontiff—"be whoever you will be"—and avoid shaping the speech into the image of any specific person. He wants to hand over the responsibility of defining the qualities of the future Pope to someone else, and in this case, perhaps to God (or, if you prefer, to chance, fate, or coincidence).

And what does he achieve?

Absolutely nothing.

While waiting for his turn, Laurence is lost. His faith in the Church is crumbling rapidly and irreversibly as he observes the crowd and the cardinals. The blank, faceless voids of the TV cameras repel him; he feels neither the sanctity of the moment nor its significance. He knows he must deliver the speech, but it feels like nothing more than a dry obligation, devoid of higher meaning.

But when he begins to speak, everything changes.

And then he starts to speak—not the polished, empty speech he had written, stripped of clarity and neutral to the point of sterility. Instead, he speaks from himself, saying what comes to him in the moment. And never had he been more sure of exactly what he wanted to say.

It is a prayer. What he speaks of is, in essence, a prayer. At first, he speaks about the importance of diversity, then about how different people, united by faith, together shape God's design. And then, at the very end, he prays—for the kind of pontiff the Lord will send.

Laurence had always struggled with prayer, but when the day comes, and the prayer flows from his heart, he speaks the most important truth that weighs on him. He speaks about the value of doubt. He asks God to strip him of certainty—certainty in his beliefs, in his steadfast vision of the world and the Church. He prays that the pontiff, too, would be uncertain, that he would doubt again and again, and through the torment of doubt—like the torment that consumes Laurence—he would find faith.

"[Turtles] can live for so long, just taking things one step at a time, and at the end, when the turtle ends up close to Cardinal Lawrence, it beat all the odds to make it all the way there. So it's a reflection also on himself, not just on Benítez." -Carlos Diehz, who plays Cardinal Benítez, to Letterboxd on the significance of the Conclave turtle

Conclave (2024) dir. Edward Berger

If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts. Let Him grant us a Pope who sins and asks for forgiveness. And carries on.