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Honorary Degrees: Dr Peter
Jackson & Dr Frances Walsh

When Lord of the Rings has its New Zealand premiere in Wellington's Embassy Theatre this summer, many of the audience will be there as much to see themselves, their friends, and their country as Tolkien's epic fantasy.

Everyone, it seems, knows someone who has been an extra in Lord of the Rings, and New Zealand's scenery - the backdrop to doughty deeds and mighty battles - is also a star. And somewhere in the audience is sure to be a contingent from WETA studios, watching for the 1,200 special effects shots produced on their computers across the way in the Wellington suburb of Miramar.

This extraordinary enterprise could never have come about without Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, a partnership one industry source has described as 'two crossed fingers'.

It is hard to find one aspect of Lord of the Rings on which the two have not set their stamp. WETA studios, in which Jackson is a partner, was set up partly at his instigation. The couple's film making pedigree was persuasive in New Line Cinema's decision to entrust them with the making of the $692 million trilogy. Even the historic Embassy Theatre is indebted to the two, for Jackson is a member of the Embassy Theatre Trust and it is here that films like The Frighteners have had their gala fundraising
premieres.

Of the two, it is Jackson who is the public face, the 'brand'. Screen writer Walsh keeps a deliberately low profile and rarely gives interviews. But since Meet the Feebles, made over a decade ago, all of Jackson's films have been collaborations with her. Fran Walsh, who was educated at Wellington Girls' College and Victoria University, has been a board member of the New Zealand Film Commission and mentored and inspired many other screen writers.

Peter Jackson, whose film making experience began with back-yard experimentation with the family Super 8 camera, came to public attention with his first feature, Bad Taste (1987).

Jackson, who then worked as a photoengraver, shot Bad Taste on weekends with a cast and crew of work-mates. Only towards the end of nearly four years of shooting did he approach the Film Commission for funding for special effects.

Bad Taste was a different take on the so-called splatter movie. Aliens intent on farming humans for food were taking over the world from their base in a secluded New Zealand farm-house. Bad Taste won prizes at fantasy film festivals in Paris and Rome, and made its money back within days of appearing at the film market associated with the Cannes festival. It is a cult film.

Meanwhile, Walsh, who had studied English literature at Victoria University, was writing for television, gaining credits in Worzel Gummidge, Down Under and Shark in the Park.

Meet the Feebles (1989) was Jackson and Walsh's first credited collaboration. Described as The Muppets on acid, this was an adult puppet show where the puppets were every bit as venal and
grasping as their human counterparts.

Jackson and Walsh co-wrote Braindead (1992), which Jackson directed. A zombie virus invades the stifling tranquility of 1950s middle class suburbia, taking the splatter genre to its fullest expression. Like Bad Taste, Braindead was garlanded with awards at numerous fantasy film festivals. It too would become a cult classic.

The direction and production values of Braindead were a breakthrough, but it was Heavenly Creatures (1994) that made the world take notice of Walsh and Jackson. Heavenly Creatures was based around the notorious Parker/Hulme murder case in 1950s Christchurch. Two intelligent and imaginative young girls are led by their obsessive friendship into murdering one of their mothers.
Co-written by Walsh and Jackson and directed by Jackson, the film won a Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, a Best Screenplay Nomination at the 1994 Academy Awards, and many other awards.

After Braindead and Meet the Feebles, Heavenly Creatures seemed a move towards finding a more conventional critical and artistic regard.

Nonetheless several critics have pointed out a certain continuity. Like Jackson and Walsh's earlier films, Heavenly Creatures deals with the extraordinarily grotesque possibilities underlying the stifling conformity of everyday suburban life.

Next was the 'mockumentary' Forgotten Silver (1995). Forgotten Silver is the reconstructed tale of a forgotten - and entirely fictitious - New Zealand film pioneer who had operated on an epic scale though starting out in Timaru. The film simultaneously pays tribute to the No 8 fencing wire ethic of local culture (from which Jackson's early films themselves could be said to spring) and sends up the popular attraction of the homespun, can-do hero.

Heavenly Creatures employed a high level of computerised special effects to create the phantasmagoric inner life of the two schoolgirls. When the filming was over, WETA Ltd was formed partly to keep that computer special effects facility in New Zealand, matching it with a physical effects facility. WETA has worked for a range of national and international productions, including Contact, Hercules and Xena, The Frighteners, and, of course, Lord of the Rings.

Later, Jackson would again step in to ensure New Zealand's film production infrastructure. In 1998 he purchased the National Film Unit, New Zealand's only one-stop, post-production film processing laboratory. Had Jackson not bought it from TVNZ, the unit would almost certainly have been moved abroad by its new owner.

As for the regard in which Jackson is held by his co-workers, John Rhys-Davies, who plays the part of Gimli in Lord of the Rings, has described Jackson as "one of the world's leading directors, a national treasure and an extraordinary patriot". Do something to recognise him, he pleaded at a public reading from Lord of the Rings.

"Many New Zealanders - and in particular many of Massey's design graduates - have found employment with creative enterprises that would not exist without Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson. This is the knowledge economy at work," Massey's Wellington Principal Bruce Phillipps says. "Wellington - and it's rapidly developing 'wellywood' reputation - also owes them a huge debt. It is a debt that Massey, and its College of Design, Fine Arts and Music, in particular, is pleased to acknowledge."