The best way to watch Beowulf

NOTE: This entry is very long. But it’s also 100% true, so believe me, it’s worth it.

Stephen Colbert was a bust. Not the man himself, of course, just my attempt to get into his audience. I went at 10 to sign up for standby, and arrived at 6 only to find that they wouldn’t be able to let all the people who had REAL tickets inside. Thus, my place as number 15 on the waiting list was as futile and frivolous as The 1/2 Hour News Hour. Oh well.

But thinking about my near-contact with a celebrity reminded me of the last time I was in Philadelphia, and the celebrity encounter of legend that ensued.

Now, I’m sure something like this is downright boring in LA, where running into Bruce Campbell at Trader Joes or Martin Scorcese at the In-N-Out Burger is about as novel or exciting as seeing an old man take his dachshund for a walk. But for someone from Virginia Beach, where the closest thing we have to a celebrity is Rudy from the first season of Survivor, this was a big deal.

The year was 2007, around the time the end-of-the-year movies started to come out. My film major friends and I decided to take a weekend away from the po-dunk town of Grantham, and drive to the City of Brotherly Love to see movies that you can’t see at Messiah College. Specifically: No Country for Old Men, and Beowulf…in IMAX 3D.

And man, let me tell you, Beowulf was awesome. But it had nothing to with the IMAX, the 3D, or even the Beowulf.

The place was the huge AMC IMAX theater in King of Prussia (right outside of Philadelphia). I only say that because after going into the city to buy our tickets for No Country (the theater didn’t have online ticketing), we were running late for Beowulf (which we bought online). We made it just in time, and the three of us jumped out as my friend Mr. Wells parked the car. At the Fandango machine, I glanced over to my right and saw a slightly over-weight, disheveled looking man with glasses. My first thought was “heh, it’s Peter Jackson”, because as we all know, there are a million slightly over-weight, disheveled looking men with glasses that kinda-sorta look like Peter Jackson.

Then I saw Fran Walsh. The color drained from my face as I slowly realized that it wasn’t just any slightly over-weight, disheveled looking man with glasses…it was the director of King Kong and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

Suddenly stories I’d read online about how he was shooting the Lovely Bones outside of Philadelphia with Mark Wahlberg came rushing into my head. We watched in a trance as he and Fran walked inside with the kids. Wells came, and we frantically tried to tell him what happened. He too thought we were talking about just another slightly over-weight, disheveled looking man with glasses until he saw the teller tearing Mr. Jackson's ticket. Then he froze and could not breathe. This experience really could not have happened to a better set of nerds.

We still hadn’t really recovered from the shock when we got in the theater and realized that the only seats available were in the front. If you’ve ever tried to watch an IMAX film from the front of the theater, you know how much front seats suck. But it didn’t matter—because PJ and company were sitting in the second row. Yes that’s right, I saw Beowulf in IMAX 3D…in front of Peter Jackson.

Don’t worry. The best part is coming up.

It really was a surreal experience. A trailer for I Am Legend came on, and we could hear Fran Walsh whisper “Oh yeah…Andrew shot that”. I’d see the amazing motion-capture imagery on screen, and realize I was sitting in front of the man who essentially pioneered performance capture to begin with. I mean, the movie I was watching probably wouldn’t even have been greenlit if it weren’t for the success of Lord of the Rings telling studios that Epic Fantasies could make money now. Forget Will Smith (and Andrew Lesnie). This guy was Legend.

Anyway, about 20 minutes into the PG-13 movie’s R-territory violence, one of the kids said he was getting scared. So the kid and Fran left, leaving poor PJ to see the film by himself.

Then a funny thing happened. I started to hear a snoring sound from behind me. I looked at my friends, to make certain they were all hearing what I was. Sure enough, they were all also restraining laughter. I turned around, and yes: Peter Jackson, director of some of the longest movies of all time, FELL ASLEEP during Beowulf in IMAX 3D.

Later, after thinking about it, I came up with a scenario I like to think is what happened. He was up all night with Mark Wahlberg, working on some very complex and emotionally draining scene. Finally, around 6 in the morning, he gets a cut he’s satisfied with, and he turns in for his 90 minutes of sleep. Fran and the kids are coming in for the weekend, and he’s gonna show them around, and take them to a movie that he’s already seen a few times (while visiting Robert Zemeckis—the man who brought his films to America).

But none of that matters, because Peter Jackson still fell asleep during Beowulf in IMAX 3D. It almost makes me wish Beowulf was a really bad movie, because that would be the perfect capsule review. “You wanna know how much Beowulf sucks? Peter Jackson makes 4 hour movies, and even HE couldn’t stay awake for it!”

It kind of helped to balance the "legendary" view I had of the man, and really of celebrity in general. This wasn't PETER JACKSON: THE MAN WHO MAGICALLY SPINS EPIC FANTASY FILMS FROM HIS FINGERTIPS, this was Peter Jackson, the slightly over-weight, disheveled looking man with glasses who falls asleep in the movie theater. He's human. There's nothing magical about what he does. He just has many, many more opportunities than I do, and—more importantly—he’s taken full advantage of all them.

I think that’s really what I took away from the whole experience: success is attainable for real people, because everyone who has success is themselves a real person. Pretty basic, I know. Even with how much I make this seem like a big huge important event, it really wasn’t. All that happened was that I sat in front of a guy who fell asleep in the theater. A guy who just happened to make awesome movies.

And, before you ask: Yes. I decided I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t take the opportunity, so yes, I did shake his hand. We kinda had to wake him up to do it, and he probably wasn’t really conscious at all, but still. I shook his hand.