Monday, 10:30 a.m.: A dozen people are standing in line in Casa Loma, Toronto's mini-castle, waiting to peer into a glass display case labelled "Bilbo's knickknacks." It's the first of many cases in an exhibit titled "A Journey to Middle Earth," an exhaustive collection of props, costumes, photos and drawings from the film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
That the movie won't even come out until Dec. 19 does not matter to Linda from Aurora, Ont., who pulled her kids, Jesse, 10, and Michelle, 12, out of school today so they could gaze upon said knickknacks (hand-lettered invitations to Bilbo's 111th birthday party, wooden toys, cunning metal boxes). They, and the middle-aged couple speaking German, and the threesome speaking French -- not to mention the 8,000-odd people who came last Saturday and Sunday, smashing all of Casa Loma's previous attendance records -- move among the artifacts as reverently as if they were made by actual hobbits, orcs and ringwraiths.
Granted, the specificity and sheer volume of the stuff is impressive. Chockablock with pewter utensils, leather cushions, tiny crockery, Nordic-style rugs and a velvet smoking jacket, the recreation of Bilbo's kitchen hearth looks like a page out of the Hobbit Pottery Barn catalogue.
Ren, 20, and his friend Melissa, 23, who recently finished reading J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and became "immediate serious fans," take photos of each other on the second floor, amid black and white portraits of stern-eyed, shaggy-maned cast members: Ian McKellen as Gandalf, Cate Blanchett as elf-queen Galadriel, Ian Holm as Bilbo, Elijah Wood as Bilbo's cousin, Frodo.
In the attic tower room, Jeremy Hill, who helped organize the exhibit with Alliance Atlantis, the film's Canadian distributor, leads a tour for three lady friends. "I called in sick to be here," one says giddily.
"Toronto is the show's only stop," Hill says. "After it closes on Nov. 11, everything will be crated and sent back" to the movie's locations in New Zealand, in case they're needed for pickup shots. (The film, like the novels, was conceived as a trilogy. All three parts were shot at the same time, to the tune of $300-million (U.S.). Part Two and Three are due in 2002 and 2003.)
Why did Toronto get the show and no one else? "No one else asked," Hill says, shrugging. He turns back to his friends and gestures toward the floor, where a circle of runes is projected in red light. "These are the engravings inside the One Ring," he says earnestly. "Remember, the marks are visible only when the ring is in fire."
Why do people care so passionately about gewgaws from a movie they haven't even seen? "Something like 50 million people have read the books," says Lou Seiler, Casa Loma's director of marketing. "These things have existed in people's imaginations so long, it's fun to see them made real. When they go through the rooms, they point things out to one another, they talk about them knowledgeably."
I think it's more than that. I think these particular saddles and sketches, chalices and candelabra have a special sheen, an extra resonance, because they've been in a movie. Because a movie prop exists on two planes simultaneously: It is a real thing, but one made specifically to serve an imaginary purpose.
Let me elaborate. At first, these objects existed only in Tolkien's mind. Then, hordes of human artisans -- glassblowers, coopers, thatched roofers, architects, draftsmen, stone-wall builders, basket weavers, potters, boat builders, milliners -- devoted tremendous time and skill to making them real. But only to put them on film, which rendered them unreal again, nothing but images burned onto inert ribbons of plastic.
Yet, if a movie does its job properly, the unreal becomes more potent than the real. Here on the floor, the objects are interesting. Up on the screen, they're magic.
The next day, I stopped by Toronto's branch of Planet Hollywood, the theme-restaurant chain. The franchise has fallen on hard times. Most of its celebrity backers (Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger) have jumped ship, several locations have closed. The place is in dire need of an update: Photos in the foyer depict Willis and Moore canoodling like newlyweds, though they're long divorced. . . .
But the lunchtime trade was surprisingly brisk, a mix of families, couples and co-workers, all of whom seemed happy to overpay for uninspired food, simply to bask in the glow of a munchkin costume from The Wizard of Oz, the red operating gown Jeremy Irons wore in Dead Ringers and a rubber statue of Schwarzenegger-as-cyborg in Terminator 2.
Back at Casa Loma, a Grade 3 class barrels through the stables, oohing at the scary orc in the torture chamber, ahhing at the shiny crowns of the tall, elegant elves. "I'm going to find Gandalf," one boy announces. In the corner on a dressmaker's dummy is Gandalf's cloak, but the boy stands transfixed in front of the glass case opposite. In it are Gandalf's pointy hat and wooden staff.
"I'm looking at these things to see if they hold true," Melissa told me. "The way Tolkien writes, it could all be real, and the movie makes it more so."
It doesn't, of course. And of course it does.
Johanna Schneller