Background
Bret McKenzie, half of the musical comedy duo Flight of the Conchords and a Wellington native, first landed a small role as an extra in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. He appears sitting two seats away from Aragorn during the council in Rivendell scene. When it is decided that the Ring must be destroyed, Frodo offers to take the Ring to Mordor, and Elrond proclaims the formation of the Fellowship of the Ring. The elf was dubbed "Figwit" by Tolkien fan Iris Hadad; after seeing Frodo agree to take the ring, saying "I will take it", the film switches to a shot where Figwit can be seen standing on the far right, and Hadad's initial reaction was "Frodo is grea...who is THAT?!?" Later, Hadad corresponded with her university friend Sherry de Andres, and the two created the first Figwit fan website, www.figwitlives.net, calling him "Legolas for the thinking woman".
McKenzie appeared as Figwit again in the third film, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, where he was credited as "Elf Escort". He appears in the scene where Arwen is leaving for the Grey Havens and has a vision of her future son, Eldarion, this time with two lines warning her to not delay and then exclaiming as she turns around. Director Peter Jackson stated in the DVD commentary for The Return of the King that Figwit was called back and given dialogue in the third film "just for fun for the fans" because "so much fuss has been made about him over the last couple of years".
In the forthcoming film version of The Hobbit, McKenzie has been cast as Lindir, an elf of Rivendell who appeared briefly in J.R.R. Tolkien's novel, The Fellowship of the Ring, a separate character from Figwit. McKenzie joked, "You'll probably see, I've got slightly different ears."
Read more about this topic: Figwit
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)