Peter Jackson: A Film-maker’s Journey

Category: Books,Humor & Entertainment,Movies

Peter Jackson: A Film-maker’s Journey Details

Review 'A brilliant collation of facts, figures, anecdotes and production detail, this will be manna from heaven for Jackson fans, who will devour every last page of this illuminating study with unconfined joy.'Film Review.'A well rounded examination of the once-rotund director, with Brian Sibley delivering an enthralling dot-to-dot account of Jackson’s life and career so far, navigating well clear of celebrity fawning.”Total Film Read more About the Author Brian Sibley adapted The Lord of the Rings for BBC Radio in 1980, which won several awards, and has gone on to be one of its biggest champions. He is also an acknowledged expert on cinema and television, regularly broadcasting and writing on the subject. His many film-related books include the award-winning The Making of The Lord of the Rings, which impressed Peter Jackson sufficiently to ask him to collaborate on his official biography. Read more

Reviews

I am quite a fan of Peter Jackson's work, so when I discovered "Peter Jackson: A Film-maker's Journey" I immediately ordered the book as well as the Kindle edition. I don't have the book yet, so here I'll just share some notes about the Kindle version.In this book, Brian Sibley shares with us a great wealth of tales of Peter Jackson's adventures in learning how to make movies, starting with his relatively early childhood. There are also copious photographs depicting so much of this adventure. One of the fun surprises for me is the great resemblance between young Fran Walsh and her daughter Katie Jackson; both are remarkably pretty and distinctively so.If you enjoy PJ's documentaries about the making of The Lord of the Rings, King Kong, and The Hobbit, you will love this book. (And if you've watched all those special features, you'll likely recognize Brian Sibley as one of the folks who offers a lot of comments about the making of the film. Sibley is more than an accomplished writer of books about films; he's family, a distant cousin to Fran Walsh.) From all those works and lots of interviews and other presentations hither and yon , I was familiar with the general outline of the events of Jackson's career, but I was delighted with the additional stories, new detail, and great insight in this book.The book is authorized by Peter Jackson and in fact about half the narrative and explanation is direct quotes from PJ himself. I'm intentionally avoiding too much detail here because if you enjoy this sort of thing, you will want to read it for yourself. Suffice it to say that the book fills in a lot of blanks in the story, explains a heck of a lot more about how and why things came to be, and what decisions Jackson had to make along the way. Sibley is masterful at including the important parts of the story about the stories while leaving out any unnecessary personal details that might otherwise invade the privacy of the very private Jackson family.There's one interesting oddity, at least in the Kindle edition; Quite often the text switches without warning from Brian Sibley as the speaker to Peter Jackson. I can usually tell immediately form the context whose words I am reading. If it's in the first-person and not other wise attributed, it's almost certainly a quote from Peter Jackson. Third person, it's Sibley.Of all the wonderful stories in this book, the one that touched me the most was the role that Peter Jackson's parents played in his career. You might recall that he thanked them, Bill and Joan Jackson, at the Academy Awards ceremony when he won the Oscar for Best Picture. Now I really understand why. In addition the obvious genetic disposition toward genius, the love, encouragement, and support that PJ received from his parents led to him becoming one of the most uniquely accomplished people in history and certainly the best film-maker in the history of cinema. That's a key lesson learned for all parents: Teach them the value of making your own accomplishments and provide the encouragement and support they need, and they will go on to perform mighty deeds of their own.

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