You would think it’s a great time to be a small actor – someone who used to be disparagingly called midget, then more acceptably dwarf, but nowadays is referred to as a little person, or L.P. We’ve just had the simultaneous shooting of three Lord of the Rings films, and almost all the main characters are short folks called Hobbits.
You’d be wrong. With the new computer technologies available, and good old-fashioned camera tricks like forced perspective, there’s no need for box-office-minded producers to include… er… less idealized specimens of humanity in their films.
“I’d like to put them in the same neighborhood as Osama is in,” exclaims Brian Kline, from self-imposed Hollywood exile in Honolulu, referring to the producers of Lord of the Rings. He’s an LP actor – you may remember him as the mallet-swinging trapeze artist in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In early 1999, he auditioned for the role of Gimli in Lord of the Rings. He met with director Peter Jackson (“Heavenly Creatures,” “Bad Taste”), and finally got the industry-standard no-callback brushoff in July.
Get the rest of the feature in part two of NO PARTS FOR LITTLE PEOPLE>>>
