Elijah Wood says a Lord Of The Rings orc design was based on real-life orc Harvey Weinstein
For Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy, art imitates life
Aux News Orc
On a recent episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert (now that’s how you start a sentence), Lord Of The Rings star Elijah Wood revealed that one of the film’s orcs was based on a real-life one: Harvey Weinstein. Wood told Shepard that the move was a “sort of fuck you” to the convicted sex criminal.
Director Peter Jackson, who helmed the Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit trilogy, was no fan of Weinstein. As Wood explained, Jackson initially set up Lord Of The Rings at Miramax, with Weinstein wanting one film comprised of the entirety of Tolkien’s epic. All the while, he threatened to replace Jackson with Quentin Tarantino before agreeing to make a two-part, $75-million movie that definitely would’ve sucked. Eventually, Jackson made his way over to Bob Shaye at New Line Cinema, and the rest is history.
“I think the lore is that they were coming with two, and it was Bob Shaye who said, ‘We have to do three,’ which is insane,” Wood said. “An incredible risk. Miramax thought there was no chance in hell.”
Given what we know about Weinstein, he does sound like a good candidate for orc model. Wood explained that on a recent episode of another podcast—Frodo’s making the rounds—Sean Astin said he had seen the Weinstein orc.
“It’s funny, this was recently spoken about because [Dominic Monaghan] and [Billy Boyd] have a podcast, The Friendship Onion,” Wood said. “They were talking to Sean Astin about his first memory of getting to New Zealand. He had seen these Orc masks. And one of the Orc masks — and I remember this vividly — was designed to look like Harvey Weinstein as a sort of a fuck you.”
“I think that is okay to talk about now, the guy is fucking incarcerated. Fuck him.”
The ring bearer speaks the truth.
[via IndieWire]
84 Comments
Wow, for him it’s all bad lip reading!
It warms my cold heart that these guys are still friends.
Not quite true. What happened was Weinstein visited the set and tried to influence the career of Miranda Otto. They caught the whole thing on camera and just left it in.
I don’t know why I find Viggo Mortensen so annoying.
Oh, wait, yes I do.
I dont, why do you
Checks out. *shudder*
when the inside matches the outside
Is that why Bill Cosby wore those vomit-inducing sweaters for all those years?
More like flashback inducing
amazing resemblance:https://www.indiewire.com/2021/10/elijah-wood-lord-of-the-ring-orc-harvey-weinstein-1234669196/
Okay, we’ve seen plenty of pictures of Orcs. Post a real photo of this Weinstein guy.
I don’t think it’s fair to say he looks like an orc. He looks much more like a cave troll.
All the while, he threatened to replace Jackson with Quentin Tarantino
Harvey was a monster, but this idea would have been interesting.
One shudders to imagine his take on the Hobbits’ feet.
“Your large and hairy feet will not save you.” -”Aragon (Michael Madison)
“Your Mother FLlcking love of the halfling’s nasty hairy big A$$ feet, has spoiled your g()dddamn mind!”- Saruman (Samuel L. Jackson)
A weird geeky looking man with a poorly done British accent shows up and tries to lick all the hobbits feet
You know Tarantino SO well, Fighter of the Nightman….
Samuel L jackson as Saruman actually sounds like the version i would like. The list of cheesy quotes you can use is endless.
“Say ‘precious’ again. Say ‘precious’ again, I dare you, I double-dare you motherfucker, say ‘precious’ one more Goddamn time!”
“Does Sauron look like a bitch?!”
Ok, Ms. Pompeo, please settle down!
“Does Sauron suck dick? (The Mouth Of Sauron)
Also, the movie would be like 80 minutes of walking feet shots.
Then some random scene of him as a troll fondling and caressing female elven feet.
Well, Fellowship does start with a monologue. I’m imagining the Hobbits arguing about tipping at the Prancing Pony, Frodo’s reaction to how Bilbo carried the One Ring for so long, the Fellowship leaving Rivendell to the tune of “Little Green Bag” (sung by Enya), Samuel L. Jackson as Galadriel (“Instead of a Dark Lord, you will have a motherfucking KING!”) and Tim Roth as Merry becoming quite irate at being called Meriadoc, the Hobbit name equivalent of Theodore.
Steve Buscemi as Wormtongue would have been aces.
Steve Buscemi as *Golem* would have been phenomenal.
No, it would not be.Even if you’re a Tarantino fan, he works best in this own pocket universe.
Well he did say interesting, not good. TBH Tarantino’s take on any existing franchise would be hella interesting. Imagine his My Little Pony!!
It’s easy to forget now, but at the time Jackson was a way stranger pick than Tarantino would have been. Tarantino was out there hopping genres as an actor, writer and director, being involved in stuff on TV and film and certainly an easy go-to for Weinstein. When people said Peter Jackson was doing LOTR the conversation usually went “Wait, the Feebles guy? Like, the zero budget gore schlock bottom shelf of the Blockbuster guy?” and then you remembered that he did do a Hollywood audition movie and it was The Frighteners which, despite being better than it has any right to be, still didn’t help the idea make any sense at all.
What a massive asshole. He knows Tarantino would never do Lord of the Rings, not in any universe. Weinstein was using Tarantino’s success to try and bludgeon others to do whatever he wanted.
DOES GANDALF LOOK LIKE A BITCH??!??!
I love tarantino as a filmmaker. But as always when he tries to do something he doesn’t control a 100%, It would have been in development for 3 to 5 years and then Tarantino would have left and someone else would have made the movies.
He’d have passed because he wouldn’t have been able to find a way to work the N-Word into Middle Earth language.
Only a Nazgul can call another Nazgul, Nazgul.
No.
About as interesting as LOTR by Guilermo del Toro.
Aragorn: I don’t wanna hear about no mother****ing Orks! All I wanna hear from your ass is, “You ain’t got no problem, Aragorn. I’m on the mother****er. Go back in there, chill them n***s out and wait for the cavalry, which should be coming directly.”
Gandalf: You ain’t got no problem, Aragorn. I’m on the mother****er. Go back in there, chill them n*****s out and wait for the Eagles, who should be coming directly.
Aragorn: You sending the Eagles?
Gandalf: Feel better, mother****er?
Aragorn: Shit yeah N***o! That’s all you had to say!
Tarantino would have played a coked-up Tom Bombadil
I’m inagining Arwen riding with a gut-stabbed Frodo:“I’m gonna fucking die!”“You’re not gonna fucking die!”
You mean Tim Benzedrine?
Interesting… if you wanted 90 minutes of orcs raping and beating the shit out of female elves while using racial slurs.
This is just false.
Gothmog was CLEARLY based on Dana Rohrabacher
still odd to me to know it’s Crixus under there
Lawrence Makoare played Gothmog. Manu Bennett was in the Hobbitses.
Manu, Manu!
Spartacus is still my favorite series ever, +1
The Weinstein doppelganger is actually NOT the handsome specimen pictured above. That’s Gothmog, commander of the Pellenor Fields siege battle force. Weinstein is this guy here…a quite good resemblance:https://www.indiewire.com/2021/10/elijah-wood-lord-of-the-ring-orc-harvey-weinstein-1234669196/
It doesn’t seem like any of the orcs shown are actually the one revealed to be the Weinstein orc. Does Elijah specify in the podcast? My money’s on this guy:
That absolutely seems like the most likely candidate.
He’s a real disgusting noseless orc with a cloudy eye who I believe only appears in the extended edition of Return of the King, during the scene where Frodo and Sam are disguised as orcs.
Oh, yes, I knew exactly which one he was when I saw the pic. Though, thinking about the situation, it seems fitting that the orc they based off of Weinstein was the one who was foiled in his attempt to uncover victims that are supple, vulnerable and pretty.
“Weinstein is this guy here…a quite good resemblance:”
Except it’s not a good resemblance at all.
What an absolute liar. Was probably good friends with Weinstein right up to the point where he couldn’t help his career any more, just like so many of those Hollywood hypocrites.
Was probably good friends with Weinstein right up to the point where he couldn’t help his career any moreYou mean back when he was eighteen years old?
I mean, has Elijah Wood ever even worked with Weinstein?
Based on what?
I doubt that obscure-until-lord-of-the-rings director Peter Jackson was sufficiently important to be “good friends” with someone as powerful as Weinstein was.
It wasn’t even the only FU to the Weinsteins. Check out 30 seconds in.
Who cares? Did Denzel ever make him uncomfortable?
That motherfucker?
And yet he still completely took Weinstein at his word that Mira Sorvino was a horrible person who’d destroy the movie.
I thought it was Ashley Judd. Was she supposed to play Arwen?
Except that’s Gothmog, who was obviously based on Sloth from the Goonies. Then they gave him the voice of Dr. Klaw from Inspector Gadget.
One of the reasons Return of the King is by far the worst of the three films.
Those two things make it by far the best!
Am I the only person who saw this 1st:
nope. thought that the first time I saw the flic
I doubt this is true. I guess it works to say it now for how things unfolded with Weinstein, though.
“I doubt this is true.”
Well, THAT matters.
Show us the specific Orc, please.
I’d never thought about it before but the resemblance is uncanny.
I take it by the fact that you used an actual photograph of Harvey Weinstein as the article’s featured image that we have no idea which mask it was.
Chances are it never even made it on screen, or it’s somewhere in the midst of a massive battle scene.
I’m sure the actor who wore the particular mask didn’t even know it was based on Weinstein.
I don’t know Elijah Wood, personally, by many signs point to him being a good dude.
“[Dominic Monaghan] and [Billy Boyd] have a podcast, The Friendship Onion,” Wood said.”Is he speaking Hobbit right now? I can’t tell. Why is everything so puerile and saccharine these days? Did everyone go to a Montessori school and decide they want to ramble on about mundane topics when they “grew up”?
Spoken like someone who hates their job.
Why is everything so puerile and saccharine these days?I think you’re living in a very different timeline from the rest of us.
It’s like I woke up in an alternate dimension sometimes.
Yowch! Pelosi put on a few pounds.
Yep. That’s what an edomite looks like.
Gothmog is more attractive and also a better person than Harvey Weinstein
Weinstein, Gothmog, whatever. They’re all pale imitations…
I’m pretty certain that’s a homage to Tor Johnson.