Posted on 07/31/2003 11:43:54 PM PDT by GOP Jedi
This is an excerpt from a Q&A given at the Gen Con Game Fair that just wrapped up. John Rhys-Davies, who played Gimli in Lord of the Rings, and also Sallah in the Indiana Jones films, is taking questions from the audience. Here's one of them, taken from a longer intereview:
Question: But my question. those of us who spend way too much time on the internet noticed that you get asked, or all the actors, get asked a lot of the same questions over and over again and so I just wondered what you wished fans or journalists would ask you about.
JRD: Well, I mean there's a difference between fans and journalists; there's a difference between talking about the film, which I think is one of the great pictures of all-time (applause and cheers). But the question I'd like to get asked is 'Does it mean anything?' and uh, I suspect it does. I think that Tolkien is a man living in a particular age of crisis and his life is quite uneventful, really, except for the fact that he's a captain in the First World War. He was at the first battle of the Somme. The British army in the first DAY of the first battle of the Somme I think probably had 20,000 dead and maybe 60 or 80,000 wounded. And that was the first day. You don't go through that sort of furnace without having to ask yourself questions: Why are we fighting? Is the cause we're fighting for a just one? How can I justify the deaths of those men that I'm leading? And I think that
Tolkien found a justification for it. His justification is that there are certain times when your civilization is challenged and if you do not meet that challenge and overcome it, you will lose your civilization.
And I think that there's a terrible resonance between that period of time and our period now. I do think that our civilization is being challenged. We've been challenged internally because I think we've lost so much character, moral fiber, decency, integrity, and I think it's being challenged partly, because we have lost those, externally by fundamental Islam. And I think that if we do not pull ourselves together and recognize that that challenge is there, we're going to end up with people taking a hammer to the Pieta and to the.you know, defacing pictures and portraits in the National Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
But you Americans I think are further along the way of realizing that. I actually think that you're morally a stronger country than Britain is. I'm appalled by what I see in England these days. There was a time when an Englishman's word was his bond and an Englishman didn't steal. Even Welshmen. (laughter) The little town where I live in Wales, well not far from where I used to live in Wales, has one of the highest rates of carjacking in the world. More cars are stolen from Exely and Swansea and places like that than almost any other part of the world, including Bogotá and places like that. I'm ashamed and embarrassed by that but you, know unless we start to affirm that we are not going to steal, that we will not put up with theft, that we will not put up with drug-taking, we will lose our society, and then perhaps it will be for the best that fundamental Islam, which forbids these things, sweeps across the world. I personally dread that thought. I hope one day that I will have great-granddaughters and I am very adamant and determined that one should not lose one's daughter's fingernails to the local Taliban if she dares to paint them.
The resonance between Lord of the Rings and present time is that we need people of courage to take the real challenge to our civilization and meet it head-on and win.
And that is a very unpopular cause, often, and it is very easy to say 'Oh, let somebody else do it'. And that is one of the questions that I wish somebody would ask. At least, one of the answers that I would give to one of the questions that I wish someone would ask (applause).
(Excerpt) Read more at theonering.net ...
(This is my first post, so be kind if it's a wreck... ;)
So far, so good! I'm happy to say I can add John Rhys-Davies to my "good-guy" list.
NEVER FORGET ping. Tolkien was thinking about defending western civilization when he wrote the Ring Trilogy. And it reminds me that Islam and the Turks were on the wrong side of WW1, as well. You know the stories about ANZAC regiment that tell about how their comrades just vanished into the mists. I've always wondered if it were because they were too shocked to tell their loved ones what really happened.
 Ring Ping!! |
Anyone wishing to be added to or removed from the Ring-Ping list, please don't hesitate to let me know.
There was a 'right' side in WWI?
The outside, perhaps. Certainly it had a bad beginning, a horrific middle, and an ending that demanded a sequel.
Can you imagine having to put up with the silliness that McKellen and Mortensson must have spouted while they worked together?
The resonance between Lord of the Rings and present time is that we need people of courage to take the real challenge to our civilization and meet it head-on and win.John gets it. And that's good.
Ya. The funny thing, is that thanks to Peter Jackson's wizardry, the 6'1" Davies appeared to be a true midget next to the other actors in the saga.
If you can't picture him, you might also know Davies better as Professor Arturo in the Fox/SciFi series "Sliders".
I just assumed the actor was really a midget.
Those sorts of special effects are going to spell the end of many a midget-actor's career.
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