Split Personality?

[Sauron the White]

And just what is it that I am suppose to research? Am I mistaken that JRRT sold the film rights to his movies of his free will and with a sound mind? Will research tell me differently? Am I mistaken that JRRT expressed the feeling that the book was unfilmable? Will research tell me otherwise?

Authors had been selling film rights to their books for several decades before JRRT did so. It is not like he was the first to do so and the entire book-to-film territory was virginal and untouched.

What exactly did I have wrong in my facts?

Seems to me one of two things went on here.

Either 1) JRRT sold the film rights to LOTR as a responsible adult with his eyes wide open, of sound mind, and with knowledge of how the entire process worked. He knew that by selling the rights, the purchaser had the right to use the story, make changes to it, leave out portions, add new portions, and basically do anything they wanted to do. JRRT knew that and sold the rights, signed the contracts and cashed the check.

0r 2) JRRT sold the film rights thinking that no producer could make the film, he himself speculated that possibly the LOTR was essentialy unfilmable. Thinking that he would have the best of both worlds - the Hollywood money without the Hollywood movie.

This from Humphrey Carpenter

"Last Friday morning (11 August) Kim Hill of Radio New Zealand interviewed Humphrey Carpenter, the biographer of J.R.R. Tolkien. The interview was on the subject of Humphrey Carpenter's latest work, a biography of playwright Dennis Potter, but towards the end of the interview Ms Hill asked Carpenter what he thought Tolkien's reaction would have been to "The Lord of the Rings" being filmed.
Carpenter's response was interesting. He said that he had known JRRT fairly briefly (unlike Potter, whom he never met), and that he (Carpenter) had staged a production of "The Hobbit". JRRT's reaction to this production was that he considered his works to be unstageable; he simply didn't feel that they could be successfully translated to a dramatic form. Although he had sold the film rights long before this took place, he had no real expectation that "The Lord of the Rings" could be successfully filmed.

In front of me is a volume of THE LETTERS --- #202, the famous line "I have agreed on our policy: Art or Cash. Letter #207 - "But I need, and shall very soon need very much indeed, ,money ..."

And to reenforce the assumption voiced by JRRT's biographer Carpenter, we have Letter #194.... "Here is a book very unsuitable for dramatic or semi-dramatic representation."

Which one was it? What did JRRT opt for? What was his goal in selling the film rights when he did?