…and spill it all over the Sage...”
You are watching the Fellowship of
the Ring movie. The Fellowship has arrived at Rivendell. It is time for the
Council of Elrond. Elrond begins to relate the history of the Ring.
While Elrond speaks, Mick Jagger
climbs onto the council table. Mick is dressed something like an evil elven
kabuki dancer. Mick Jagger is Sauron.
As Elrond speaks, Jagger mimes the
rise of Sauron, the forging of the rings, and the gyrations of Elendil. Those
about the table pay Jagger no mind. He is kabuki, invisible except to us.
This moment of alternate cinematic
history could have come to pass if Tolkien hadn’t been alive to read John
Boorman’s script for the Fellowship of the Ring. Tolkien slashed the script up
with red pen. Slain before reaching maturity, the script fell and came to lodge
in the Tolkien collection at Marquette University.
Which is where Seattle’s Tolkien scholar,
John D. Rateliff, read the script and lived to tell the story. I wouldn’t know
about the Boorman script if John hadn’t told me over a Tolkien-anecdote-stuffed-lunch.
Boorman’s Excalibur was one of my
favorite movies as a teenager. I think some of the images that he wanted to use
in Middle-Earth found a home in the story of Arthur.
But kabuki Sauron? And the entire
Fellowship prancing and strutting their stuff to try and seduce Galadriel only
for her to choose Frodo as bedmate? Too close to Bored of the Rings for
comfort. This is epic 70’s pipeweed material.
John’s blog over at http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/ talks Tolkien in depth and breadth. I poked
around on the web after hearing John’s story and found it interesting that fans
on some Tolkien discussion sites mentioned just how terrible they would have
felt if something like the Boorman movie had been filmed first. But now that Jackson made the films that people pretty much
agree got LotR right, some people said that they would be curious to see a less
faithful adaptation, an artistic treatment that brought something new and
unexpected to the story.
I bought "Bored of the Rings" at whatever mall we shopped at near Leavenworth with Christmas money in 1975 . . . and then when I got it home, my parents read the cover text about some fair elven maid parting her frock and spilling her ample bosom atop fortunute young Frito Bugger (far more lewd than anything actually contained in the actual text) . . . and the book was returned for a refund immediately. It was probably ten years later before I managed to actually read the thing . . .
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