[HairOfTheDog]

Yes... I heard him talking about the Evenstar as a symbol... and I liked his reasoning.

Its role in TTT is probably already known from the trailer, because we have already seen the conversation where Eowyn asks Aragorn about it.

I liked his explanation of the scene at the ford, where Arwen says "What grace is given me, let it pass to him". (Pinging ecurbh because we talked about this scene once).

He said that that part of the scene was filmed in a pickup later. When they started to put the film together, they realized that with the "car chase" nature of the way the flight to the ford looked on screen, the film had lost touch with the critical nature of Frodo's condition when they departed the trollshaws. That Frodo had been lost in the excitement of the chase.

Her words "What Grace is given me, let it pass to him" are pulled from the end of the story, where Arwen grants Frodo her place at the Grey Havens.

From the appendix: "At the end of the First Age the Valar gave to the Half-elven an irrevocable choice to which kindred they would belong. Elrond chose to be of Elven-kind, and became a master of wisdom. To him therefore was granted the same grace as to those of the High Elves that still lingered in Middle-earth: that when weary at last of the mortal lands they could take ship from the Grey Havens and pass into the Uttermost West; and this grace continued after the change of the world. But to the children of Elrond a choice was also appointed: to pass with him from the circles of the world; or if they remained, to become mortal and die in Middle-earth. For Elrond, therefore, all chances of the War of the Ring were fraught with sorrow".

So that, at any rate, was PJ's reasoning.

[ksen]

I got the sense that Fran Walsh was the real Tolkien-phile of the two. It sounded like PJ had read the books a couple times, but it was Fran that really understood the nature of the books.

[carton253]

It's great reasoning... The hardest thing I have to do in the play is to keep all the characters balanced and moving forward... that their motivation and "trueness" are not lost in the action...

To keep the character consistent.

It's hard because events could swallow up a character.

For example (weak one) In the play the little ones are doing... takes place during the roaring twenties. There are bootleggers and crooked cops, etc. Well, one bootlegger has two "hit men" that work for him. Virgil and Lester. The joke is that Virgil and Lester are the two smallest characters on the stage. That joke works and then the joke is over. Except everyone has to keep being afraid of Virgil and Lester. No matter how incompetent and little and cute they are. I find my "actors" forgetting this, but they can't. Until the end, the dread of the stage is that Virgil and Lester will rub you out.