Weta man a wizard on the quiet
The New Zealand Herald

Peter Jackson is a household name for his work as the visionary director of The Lord of the Rings, and now a new local hero has emerged in the wake of the first film's four Oscars.

Richard Taylor, the head of Weta Workshop in Wellington, took the Academy Awards stage twice on Monday.

He picked up statuettes for best make-up (with English wig-maker Peter Owen) and best visual effects (with Americans Jim Rygiel, Randall William Cook and Mark Stetson), making Oscar history as the first double-winner in technical categories.

Taylor was also nominated in the best costume category with Ngila Dickson, but that gong went to Moulin Rouge.

Jackson has frequently been likened to a hobbit for his appearance and his single-minded dedication to the LOTR project.

If Jackson is Frodo, then the tall, garrulous Taylor might well be Gandalf - the wizard in the shadows.

And he prefers it that way.

"I've enjoyed being able to stay firmly in the background," says Taylor in Los Angeles, 24 hours after booming out his first acceptance speech.

"There is no gain in having notoriety at any level in this Oscar treat.

"We will very happily disappear back into the shadows once this is all over."

And as his multiple nominations attest, he is a wizard who wears several different hats - the LOTR details man, jet-setting businessman touting Weta's wares and the sculptor and model-maker whose success means he almost never gets time to indulge his artistic side any more.

As well as the Oscars, Taylor's Los Angeles trip has also included pitching for the workshop.

While Jackson and Weta Digital (in which Taylor is a founding partner and director) continue to work on the next two LOTR films, the workshop that constructed the thousands of props, models, costumes and weapons is on a constant search for work.

And the Oscars won't necessarily make it any easier, says Taylor, who at the time of the nominations announcement was in New York promoting Weta's line in Muppet figurine collectibles, a contract it gained from the Jim Henson company.

Weta also won the contract to produce LOTR collectibles, the first time a movie FX operation has extended into spin-off merchandise.

"Honestly, I don't know what the Oscars mean as far as this sort of thing," Taylor says.

"I am not going to rest at all on my Oscar laurels, I am going to try and pursue work at the same level of tenacity and determination I have for the last 15 years.

"We have gone almost 13 months with almost no work and New Zealand is a very, very difficult place to make a very unique business in. To that end I've got to do everything possible to try and get awareness with our clients and what we do."

Taylor can't say who the potential Los Angeles clients are.

As well as merchandise, plans to sustain the workshop and its 50 permanent staff include setting up a children's television production company.

Jackson, Taylor and his partner, Tania Rodger - who couldn't make the awards because she is pregnant - set up Weta in 1994 after the film Heavenly Creatures. The trio had worked together on Jackson's early splatter movies.

British-born Taylor grew up on a South Auckland dairy farm, so his reference to Kiwi ingenuity and No-8 fencing wire - which confused many in the Oscars backstage press room - was well founded.

Winning and media duties meant he missed the A-list after-parties. But he, Jackson and many of the LOTR nominees attended a Hollywood bash hosted by OneRing.Net, an American Tolkien fans website which has long supported the films.

Then it was back to the hotel with mother Jean - his Oscar guest - for hot chocolate.

Taylor says he's still buzzing, but quietly.

"Being a good Kiwi you can rationalise it out.

"You have the ability to contemplate it and have a look at it from a distance because we are not of this culture, so dramatically not part of this culture.

"You don't really appreciate or understand what this means in the world, the Oscars."