Lack of respect displayed by Gimli

[Quempel]

Originally Posted by davem

Just posted this as Lal - so have deleted it & am re-posting under my own name.

Humphrey Carpenter gave a talk a long time ago at the Church House bookshop (around the time The Sil was published) & he mentioned writing to Tolkien about a musical play of The Hobbit he planned to put on at a school he was working at. Tolkien replied that 'he thought the whole idea was complete nonsense & a very silly thing to do, but who was he (Tolkien that is) to stop Carpenter doing it? Carpenter later went to meet him & says Tolkien made clear that he 'strongly disapproved' of translating his work into any other medium. Tolkien also expressed disapproval of the changes Carpenter proposed making to TH, but, & this is interesting, he made no attempt to dissuade Carpenter - & even suggested tunes for the songs. According to Carpenter, most of them were in the form of Gregorian Chant. Anyway, Tolkien was persuaded to go along to see the production & afterwards Carpenter asked him what he thought of the adaptation. Tolkien told him, & apparently it took some time - at the end of which Carpenter looked down & noticed that Tolkien had drunk all Carpenter's wine....

So, it would seem that while Tolkien strongly disapproved of adaptations of his work he felt that it was not his place to stop anyone doing it, & was even (if they were sufficiently respectful) happy to help (if you can call the suggestion of Gregorian Chant for the tunes of a school musical 'help').

Btw, a recording of this talk is available, along with one from Priscilla Tolkien & another from Raynor Unwin - they are all absolutely fascinating http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000XTB8Y0. I've just listened to it & it is wonderful. Carpenter & Priscilla were talking just after the Sil was published, & Raynor the day after UT appeared. There's a question & answer session where he's bombarded with questions about future publications & what might appear. He mentions plans for Barbara Strachey's Journeys of Frodo, & that Shippey's Road to Middle-earth would hopefully be appearing soon! Priscilla's reminiscences are wonderful - & if anyone's interested Tolkien's favourite composers were Sibelius & Wagner.
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I have to agree with STW on one issue...even if Tolkien, his children or his estate disapproved of adaptations of LoTR, it's too bad. He had no rights, his children have no rights and his estate has no rights to those changes. none. He sold those rights and thus sold all creative input on how the story was to be interpreted and changed. So if Tolkien was alive and did not like that Gimli sat in the stewards chair, he had no right to force PJ to make it his way. He freely sold those rights. Once he sold those rights, the story was no longer his, it belonged to the persons he sold the rights too. We may complain about how Tolkien would have hated Gimli sitting on the stewards chair, but that's all he could do was complain.

And I don't have a problem with Gimli sitting on the chair. I would guess in real life that yes many others have sat in the Speakers Chair in the House of Commons...it just doesn't get written about. I would guess that many have sat in the Presidents chair in the oval office, and it just doesn't get written about. I would dare say if QEII walked into the House of Commons and wanted to sit in the speakers chair the speaker would say no. To harp on if it's proper or not is pretending that the real behind the scenes of government is what the public sees, when it is not. The pomp and circumstance is what the public expects, it is what is shown. The real nitty gritty of real government is done in just the way it was shown in the movie, very much everyone grab a chair lets discuss this, and often times it is only the end results with the whole properness is what the public sees. This is the way I see the Gimli scene, very much an inpromtu scene to discuss the survival of all the free peoples of ME, and if I was a member of that society I would be really mad if the war conference on how to save me was held up because the Steward was mad some Dwarf sat in his chair.