The Magic of Middle Earth

Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and author and director of the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. And today I'm joined by Matt Fox, creator of Magic of Middle-earth Exhibition, currently showing at the Willis Museum Basing Stoke Campshire in the UK and this exhibition is open until the 16th of October. Hi Matt, so would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to get this dream job for any Tolkien fan? Hello Julia, thanks very much for having me on the MythMakers podcast. Yes, I've been a collector all my life and a recent study in the garden actually showed that one in three British people would have missed collecting something, however more just however humble. But I've really got that gene within me and I've done several big collectives in my life. I've collected vintage Star Wars toys and movie posters. I also collect 1980s memorabilia toys and games and BMX bikes and all those type of things and I'm a massive fan and collector of everything Middle-earth related, including Tolkien which would be the books and the first editions that everybody wants to try and get their hands on. But also what to come beyond that and the adaptations from the movies to video games and toys, music, artworks and of course to films as well. So they say that collecting is a sickness and sharing it is the only cure for that sickness. So this has been a fantastic exhibit. I chose to exhibit all my collection in one place which I've done within the Magic of Middle-earth and get it up there on the walls and get it in display cabinets and it's a free exhibition and people can come along and see it and I don't feel like such a loony anymore by having this big collection just sort of tucked away in my own house. Yeah, I really like that idea. I think one of the great developments of the whole kind of fan culture is that now we're all able to share it. We no longer feel quite so crazy on our own trying to explain why we really like Tolkien or 1980s so much. So you've got your own collection in the exhibition. So if someone was going to go along within the next month or so if they're lucky enough to be in the area of basing stoke, what kind of thing will they see when they walk in? We've got two or three favourite exhibits that you'd like to tempt us with. I have to say I love the artworks in particular and one of my favourite artists, well actually it's not one person, it's two people. It's the Brothers Hilderbrands and they painted a lot of middle-earth calendars and artwork and we've got a lovely big print of Smalg and it's this is if you have a chance to Google Smalg by the Brothers Hilderbrands, you won't have seen Smalg drawn quite like this before. He looks huge, he's a big sort of corporate or on a bed of golden treasures if he's just you know fat and lazy from eating all of the dwarves. It's a really beautiful rendition of Smalg and we've got that sort of paired up with an actual treasure hoard in the cabinet and the sculpture from a wetter workshop and that shows the the Smalg that was the adaptation from the movies and the movies did a sort of a different approach to the dragon they did the the sort of the wiven two-legged version of a dragon although as a small bit of trivia in the very first scene in the in the Hobbit you get the flashback of Smalg devouring Aireboard. Just very briefly you get a Catholic glimpse him with four legs so the dragon the dragon became two legged sort of part way through the the production but I think that's one of the great things you can see. Another thing that we created specifically for this exhibition was a Dairama and it's a Dairama of the Battle of Helm's Deep and to construct this I used they're called Toy Biz Action Figures there and there's sort of about eight inches tall and you know all the oracles wearing the arm and carrying the spears and what not and what we didn't really realize is because the you know because the figures are so big the actual Helm's Deep was going to have to be pretty huge as well but luckily I've got a very talented friend called Amina Kaufman who created the the Hornberg wall and the gate house and sort of siege ladders of weapons in the battering round so there's this big elaborate Dairama that I sort of spent a whole day putting figures into one by one by one and where you can see a great big display of the Battle of Helm's Deep and that's it's quite spectacular you can look at it for ages and there's lots of different details to see in there and I'd say another thing that I particularly like which is fun for families is we have a little kind of a big well I say a little but it's actually a very big bar store as if you can sort of sit there as if you're a hobbit sitting in the green dragon with a great big oversight tanker as well and it sort of miniaturises you so it's a great spot to have a selfie and make yourself look like a little hobbit sitting on the bar store oh that's brilliant I remember going to see at the science museum in London the exhibition that was accompanying the films way back in the beginning of the 2000s I took my kids and to this day I've got this picture of us sitting on the cart you know the Gandalf and Frodo cart from the beginning with the force perspective with me as tiny and them as huge and they were like little little creatures at the time they were hobbit sized children so that was huge fun so I'm looking forward to sitting on that bar store yes it's fun I mean I wanted to make sure that this is an exhibition that you know the die hard sort of people have had generation that you know could enjoy as well but you have to make it equally fun for for the kids as well absolutely and what's so interesting about having the Battle of Helm's Deep done as miniatures is of course the films back at the first set of films did much more miniature work than the later ones didn't it so you're going back to the you know the early wetter workshop approach as opposed to the all within a digital sort of environment one yes they were they were incredible and obviously they they weren't named miniatures they were they were called bigotures for the sake of their production weren't they I know yeah they lived up to their name so you've had your own bigoture yeah that's great yeah I can see there must be a problem about storing this but anyway we will worry about storage we will see it is beautifully on display at the moment so storage isn't an issue so what do you think it's taught you about Tolkien as you've assembled the collection oh well that's a good question um I would say that fancy and science fiction often sort of lump together in the in the bookshops you know in on that same sort of shelf but um the evocation of nature infancy has no parallel across the sci-fi and few writers really devote the natural world as well as Tolkien does oh so please do say that because that's completely my take as well brilliant carry on carry on yes well I I'd actually you know go so far some some critics use that as about to hit him and say um you know that he cares more about describing landscapes and about describing the characters and sublaces but he he was far-sighted in in terms of his environmentalism and um he was particularly passionate about trees and um you know from his imagination sprung tree-beard protector of the forest and I think slave people was fairly coming around to his way of thinking that actually trees may be a really decisive um element in averting an environmental catastrophe and and that's something that that I sort of wanted to bring across an exhibition and um and the exhibition supports the woodland trust as well I should say um that's something that I think I've kind of got from from Tolkien and perhaps I wouldn't care quite so much about that if I hadn't read Tolkien and I think that's something that a gift that he he he's giving us across the years from a time when it wasn't seen as particularly important perhaps um but now it's becoming very pressingly important so I'm really interested that you're also a collector of other memorabilia you mentioned 1980s stuff to start with that's what stranger things must be up your alley in that case so it's invocation of the 1980s what do you notice in the difference between the sort of quality of the things that were produced in the 80s and the the Tolkien artifacts that you can buy like the miniatures and other things do you feel there's a difference in approach? I love the 80s for it's kind of you know the colors and you know there was this big explosion or being electronics within toys and of course video games you know they kind of made sort of fledgling steps in the 60s and 70s but they really came into their their own in the 80s as a um as sort of a Tolkien collector or within the 80s there's not a huge amount actually it was a fairly quiet period at the tail end of the 70s we had the Ralph Bakshi movie and there was a small toy line that came out to accompany that they they were sort of scaled the same way Star Wars figures are scaled but they really didn't do very well they didn't have they didn't have great play value there weren't many accessories and it was a very small toy line so they didn't sell well and that conversely not not selling well means actually they're really quite valuable today and um you know they're they're not quite as high as Star Wars figures on the car prices but um those figures are still pretty desirable in particular there's a a ringwath on honesty and if you want to find one of those sort of mint then you're you're going to have to spend into the thousands to acquire that one yeah that's amazing I do remember this is showing my age now that in the very early day of home home computers there was a hobbit game that took absolutely forever to load and it was very much a very simple click to go left go right going through the you know the following billbo's footsteps but that was the very first computer game I ever played you know the adventure style computer game it's not it didn't put us all off because it really was a lesson in patience that game yes that the previously to that there had been a few sort generic role-playing games like um colossal cave and adventure that was sort of you know within the middle earth sphere but the hobbit by Melbourne House Zed Expectrum that was the first yeah middle earth themed game it was actually made by a couple of australians with the very kind of mech sorry Veronica Megler put the game together and it was the first game really to be a text adventure but also have graphical tabloes so you'd actually you'd have to you'd have the text at the bottom that you're in you're in the hobbit hobbit hobbit house but then above it you'd have this great picture and the picture would sort of draw before your eyes because the the spectrum wasn't powerful enough to render it in my image so you'd get the you know the little green door would be drawn in there and you'd see a bit of the landscape and as a child seeing this for the first time and actually seeing um you know my TV now is interactive I can actually do things on the TV you know rather than just passively watch BBC one and two um it was amazing so I have very fond memories of the hobbit yeah I'm sure there should be a secret club of all of us who spent that summer holiday in our in the eighties doing that game that I would certainly be a card carrying member of that club so do you have any plans to take your exhibition elsewhere as you've now got this collection if people are interested in seeing it yes indeed it is um it's say it's a touring exhibition and it's going to be um visiting museums all around the country so um I I can't really sort of make the announcements of where and when it's going to be at this time but um you know watch this base and it'll be um on our on our Facebook page the magic of middle earth um but it will indeed be hopefully coming to a part of the country near you um if if um basing stoke is it is just too far away for you and what about if we've got people over in America would you be temptable to because a lot of our listeners are over there would you be temptable to take it abroad well absolutely it's not uh you know middle earth isn't something that is specifically British and um middle earth collecting is it's got a fantastic global audience so it could indeed go uh go to America or or to um or to any other country across Europe so it would be fantastic to do so okay so we'll put a link in the the show notes so if anyone's listening who wants to tempt uh Matt to bring his exhibition their way uh you'll be able to contact them through their Facebook page so I have a few kind of um more general questions now for you and the first one I wanted to ask you is do you have any favorite talking trivia that you would like to share I mean you've actually already shared a few bits but perhaps from the filmmaking process for example I'm not sure I'm not sure you can beat the smug with four legs and two legs that's pretty you knocked it out apart with that one. I'll um I'll keep my trivia in the 80s um as you know that I particularly enjoyed that decade um and it's the rock group uh merillium they had hits in the aces with a couple of big hits called Kaylee and uh lavender and um that group they were named after Tolkien's book The Silmarillion in fact they originally began life as Silmarillion um but they decided shortening it to merillian to avoid legal issues so uh yes that's my um that's my nugget of trivia for you. Yeah that's right I'm sure there's actually quite a surprising number of firms named after Tolkien's um themed things like Palantir and others I wonder how they negotiated that anyway uh good luck to them if they are dealing with the Tolkien estate they're very fierce about guarding the you know the the copyright which is as it should be so I've also now got a quick fire round for you just to test out your instincts okay it's not just about Tolkien Matt hasn't been given this in advance so he's got the answer right sort of genuinely in a few seconds a couple of them about other Oxford fantasy writers which is also our remit so are you ready Matt? I'm ready the Hobbit or the Silmarillion the Hobbits? Lembass or farm and maggots mushrooms? Lembass yes elf or dwarf elf has to be want to live forever okay and now moving away from Tolkien down a rabbit hole or through a looking glass I think I'll go through the looking glass yes okay and now this is a choice Peter's sword or Lucy's cordial oh I think I'll go with Peter's sword I've always kind of like swords yes I'm wondering if you're going to answer that as a collector or as you know which does the most good because you know the the cordial that heals people is pretty pretty cool I think the the collector came out the hero's sword yeah the hero's sword that their prop's sword rather rather like to have that in one of their auction lots I'm sure actually that's one of my favorite moments is when that sword reappears later anyway so I also have a standard section in the podcast talk about where in the world is the best place for something so any fantasy world anywhere it can be sci-fi it can be you know epic fantasy anything and in your honour we're going to go for where in the world is the best collection so this could be something like the white witches spooky statue gallery in the line which in the wardrobe or indeed the Hogwarts pictures the interactive talking pictures in Harry Potter so do you have a favorite where in the world collection I think I'm going to have to go with a fear nor was workshop where he he crafted the very finest that the elves have ever seen so it's got to be really good and I created the the three similar hills because when they got stolen he went on a mad mission to get them back and I think any collector would tell you that having something stolen from your collection is is not nice and you'll be looking all over the place for them so I think I think fear nor was was quite right to do what he did it may be a bit of a murderous rampage too far but he he did want those silver rows back so I'm I'm going for fear nor's collection with his jewellery okay that's a very first age answer there that's absolutely fascinating that you really relate to fear nor as a collector I think that's the first time I've heard that it's going to make me think of because I've always thought it's wrongly placed greed but now I can see there was another side to this story but anyway oh maybe maybe it's a coded thing about copyright talking about copyright earlier because you know having your stuff stolen is pretty grim yes I think treasure within all of Tolkien's literature is usually seen as something fairly fairly evil something stuff usually a corrupting influence whether it's the arkenstone or the silver rules or the ring or the treasure hoarders. So there's those people mad yes you know the good things in life are simple and song and poetry and fear and good company and I think everybody relates to that really in Tolkien's writings it's the way to be yeah but we still also can root for you know the occasional artifacts just a little bit yes just just the chest of treasure as Bilbo you know comes away with it yeah that's that's fine yeah go with that. I was thinking about my favourite collection and so one has come out whilst I've been talking which is actually a C.S. Lewis one when they go back in Prince Caspian and they go into Care Paravelle which they don't recognize to start with and then they find the armory which has Peter's sword hence the the connection and all the other things except Susan's horn and the idea of going back to a place that you didn't that you know but you don't recognise to see your own stuff as a collection I think it's fascinating but the one I was also thinking of is from a different fantasy world series it's the Philip Reeves immortal engines if London has a version of the museum of London which has artifacts from ancient history including our history as part of what they're sort of scavenging so I like that idea of a scavenger's museum all very powerful stuff yes so Matt that's great thank you so much for talking to us and I hope that people listening to this who are within striking distance of basing stoke in Hampshire until the 16th of October will take time out to go and sit on the bar store and take their selfie and envy your collection and we look forward to hearing it traveling around the country in the months to come so thank you very much thank you Julie it was a real pleasure thank you you