The White Council

Peter Jackson's people made a legitimate effort to seek out real Tolkien experts, not just the artists John Howe and Alan Lee (whom I don't regard to be Tolkien experts, really, but I only have their artwork to judge by -- Howe certainly misses the boat in several respects).

Who are these "experts"? Well, I've mentioned that I was asked some questions on an informal basis. I was not required to sign a non-disclosure agreement because I was not being given any information about the movies' plots, characters, etc. All I got were some rather obscure questions.

But Tom Shippey has been asked for advice on the movies, and so has David Harvey. Both men have published books on Tolkien. Of course, publishing a book doesn't make you an expert. David Day has published several books on Tolkien and he's lucky to get the man's name spelled correctly.

But who else has been approached? In his latest batch of email, Sir Ian McKellen reveals that "assistance is also coming from two experts in America who can actually converse in Tolkien's invented languages."

Who are these experts? I don't know, and I suspect they would have been signed under contract (meaning they get paid) and asked to sign non-disclosure agreements. So even if we were to ask them, they might be required to say they can't say anything at all.

Two possibilities which come to my mind are Carl Hostetter and Patrick Wynne. Why? Well, for one thing, I recommended them in response to a question I couldn't answer. It was a linguistic question, naturally. But Hostetter is also well-known, and he, Wynne, and a couple of other Tolkien linguists have been actively researching Tolkien's unpublished linguistic material. Hostetter and Verlyn Fleiger (another candidate for advisor on the movies) have recently published a new volume of Tolkien research.

Now, do my recommendations carry that much weight? I suppose not. If any of my comments have a positive impact on the movies, I'll be lucky to recognize my own influence. My contributions, if they made it through the filtering process of opinion and evaluation, are small and barely to decipherable, I'm sure. I think the serious contributions will come from the people who were offered contracts and asked to sign NDAs.

Still, it's very possible to throw around the names of a lot of knowledgeable Tolkien people who are or (so far as I know) could be involved in this project in some way.

I think the "Tolkien industry" has very much offered its support for these films. People want as faithful an adaptation as they can possibly get. Of course, if that many experts ARE involved, what we'll see eventually is Peter Jackson's distillation of a consensus of interpretations. It will be less satisfying to nit-pickers than anything Tolkien himself might have overseen, but it will carry the weight of authority unlike any previous project.