From Rebecca Murray,
Your Guide to Hollywood Movies.
FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!

David Wenham ('Faramir') and Billy Boyd ('Pippin') made an appearance at the 2004 San Diego Comic Con to promote the upcoming release of the Special Extended Version of the "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" DVD. Before the screaming mass of fans got a chance to talk to the two "Lord of the Rings" cast members, Wenham and Boyd sat down for a more intimate chat to discuss the longer version of the final chapter of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

BILLY BOYD AND DAVID WENHAM INTERVIEW:

Last year must have seemed like the end of an era, and now with the Extended DVD coming out soon, it must feel like it's prolonging the experience.
BILLY BOYD: Yeah, I think we felt a little bit like that. You feel like, “Wow, you know, I’ve got to do this because this will be the last thing.” And then something else happens (laughing). I think people have enjoyed the film and not wanted it to end. You want to go on and do other things, but it was such a fun time.

Do you think once this DVD’s out that it will be the definitive end?
DAVID WENHAM: Yes.

BILLY BOYD: Yeah. I mean, what else can there be?

DAVID WENHAM: But we still see each other a lot.

What can fans look forward to with the extended version? What did you want to see in this?
DAVID WENHAM: I think...how many minutes of extra footage are in this? 50? I might be wrong. It’s a huge amount of extra footage, which really does assist in, obviously, fleshing out storylines but also assists in character development as well. From my point of view, playing Faramir, it gives a great deal of context to some of the dramatic scenes that occur in the film. It helps the relationship – the very strained relationship between Faramir and his father. In this extended version, it shows the romance, if you like, with Faramir and Eowyn. It goes into The Houses of Healing. It gives the audience an opportunity to see how they actually got together.

It must be tough to make a film and see so much of it cut out when it hits theaters. Is it refreshing to know that with a project like this, the extended version will have so much put back in?
BILLY BOYD: Yeah, I think it helps, you know, because that’s what everybody wants to see. Even though you know that in six months time or whatever, there’s a good chance that most of those people will buy the extended version and see that stuff. But you know when you make a film, you make it to be seen in a cinema. And then it’s not so much that you miss your stuff in the film, it’s more like you feel like it could have added to the film. You think, “Oh, God,” knowing that that scene is missing and that that scene doesn’t make that much sense. You’re like, “Oh no,” because you thought that scene was going to be in there. I think that the extended version makes a lot of sense of a lot of stuff.

When you watch it in a theater, you might not really notice that some things don’t make sense.
BILLY BOYD: Yeah, yeah. You don’t really notice it until you see the [cut scenes] back in.

Did we lose much of Pippin the first time around? Do we see more of him in the extended version?
BILLY BOYD: There’s a couple of things, like there’s some stuff with Faramir, which I think really helps because at the end when he’s saving Faramir, you just have more of a sort of emotional connection with him. And also [there's] the scene, I found it really interesting, with Faramir talking about when he was a boy and you’re talking about your dad, and you’re talking to Pippin. I think that should be interesting to see. Yeah, even things like when Pippin finds Merry. In the extended, it’s amazing how they did this because it’s daytime when he finds him in the theatrical version, but in the extended, Pippin’s been looking for Merry all day, and everybody has left. And it’s nighttime when he finds him. Just that – it makes it more like everybody else has given up on Merry.

As far as you can remember, you shot just one version of the scene?
BILLY BOYD: Yes.

PAGE 2: Commentary Tracks and the Oscars