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| If there had been any indication of what that evening would turn into, she probably would not have come over. But my friend did...and here I am, years later, trying to synthesize it into something legible for the growing thirst of all things Tolkien, serious or not. I'll name her Little Cat A. Little Cat A and I ( ...who shall henceforth be Little Cat F...) became friends almost instantly because of a particular book both of us were lugging around the school, despite the jeers, sneers, and rolling of the eyes of our contemporaries. It took a geek to know one. Both of us had fallen in love with the densely mythic world of Middle Earth without a smidgen of remorse or trace of desire for more 'normal things,' and as such, we became members of the worst sort of geek club imaginable. So, naturally, when the preliminaries were made ("Hey! You like Tolkien!"..."Yeah! Who's your favorite character?"), Little Cat A and I became fast friends. Hobbits, it turns out, have a way of creating friendships. We had long debates over the merits of our favorite character, usually deep into the night...along with gallons of Earl Grey tea and the American quivalent of scones and whatever else we suspected would be tucked away in a hobbit's larder. Our parents learned quickly to get out of the way and not wonder at the strange references to Magic Disappearing Rings, Furry Feet, and Walking Trees. I think at one point they were hoping that we were talking about some exotic animal for a school project, but those hopes were quickly dashed when we began obsessing over the news of a MOVIE. An ANIMATED move. Well, OK, so it was George Lucas who cornered the market that decade on Special Effects. So rotoscoping was the only feasible way of translating Tolkien's rich 'Secondary World' to popular media. Big deal! Ralph Bakshi became the new hero of our geekdom, long live Bakshi! You have to understand, this was back in '78. The year before, George Lucas inducted the age of blockbusters with 'Star Wars' (soon to become yet another obsession); then, Spielberg wowed us with 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind,' and Pillip Kaufman spooked us with 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers.' With the plethora of science fiction bursting all geek domains, it seemed at long last that fantasy would get its due! |