Of Peter Jackson’s three Lord of the Rings films (non-The Hobbit edition), he was nominated for Best Director at the Oscars twice: The Fellowship of the Ring, which he lost to Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind), and The Return of the King, which he won. Why he was snubbed for The Two Towers? Good question, considering it has arguably the series’ most impressive set-piece, the Battle of Helm’s Deep. But The Two Towers holds a special place in Jackson’s heart — one scene, in particular, is his precious.
When asked by Stephen Colbert to name his favorite scene in the trilogy, Jackson replied, “We were shooting Two Towers and it was introducing Gollum. A key thing with Gollum is that most people know he’s Sméagol and he’s Gollum, it’s like a split. But we hadn’t got a scene where you really got the idea of, ‘This guy is two people.’ So we knew that we needed it but we had no time to shoot it.” Jackson’s co-writer and co-producer Fran Walsh “wrote a scene where Sam and Frodo are asleep, so they can be just lumps in the bed, we don’t even have to have Elijah [Wood] and Sean [Astin]. We didn’t have anyone to direct it, so I said to Fran, ‘You wrote it, you should shoot it.’ So she went in for a day and she wrote and directed a scene which has become pretty famous now.”
It’s a great scene for Gollum saying “sneaky little Hobbitses” alone.
(Via the Independent)