The Fellowship of the Ring 20th Anniversary

On December 19th, 2001, I attended a screening of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring with my mother and her friend, Pasquale. My mom occasionally read me Tolkien at bedtime, and she’d showed me the Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit, which I loved, a few years before. My favorite character was already Strider because I loved him in the books (I now have a cat named after him). I remember being excited for the release of the film, and my father had already bought me the first action figure I found from the movie, a Legolas that sits on a shelf behind me as I write this. Despite my anticipation, there’s no way I could’ve known how profoundly The Fellowship of the Ring would shape my life.

To understand Fellowship’s influence on me, you’d have to start by recalling the days following 9-11. While I didn’t lose anyone, I was at an age where the events of 9-11 profoundly impacted me. The year before, I’d started to mature rapidly due to the passing of my grandmother, and 9-11 only increased my explosion toward adulthood. Over the course of two years, I discovered anyone in my family could be gone at any given second, and my country could be attacked at random by terrorists. Nightly news coverage and chatter kept 9-11 at the forefront of my mind. Making things worse, New York was only about a two-hour drive from my hometown, and I’d been there several times with my dad. This wasn’t a tragedy in a far-off land. This was next door. Suffice it to say, I was living in a world of fear. Thankfully, the Fellowship of the Ring allowed me to escape all that for three hours.

As a quick aside related to 9-11, while sitting in the theater waiting for The Fellowship of the Ring to start, I got my first full glimpse at Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. The previous summer, I’d tried to watch the teaser trailer online, but I couldn’t get it to completely download over dialup. The trailer I’d been unable to view had been one in which Spider-Man captured a criminal’s helicopter in a web between the twin towers. Raimi recut the film to edit out the twin towers. This holiday season sees the return of the first big screen Spider-Man villain, Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Dafoe’s Goblin returns to theaters almost twenty years to the day from his first appearance as the character. It’s fascinating how many things come full circle.

But I digress. This essay is about The Fellowship of the Ring. I remember being enthralled with the film from Galadriel’s opening words, and, because I was a huge fan of the Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit, I geeked out over the brief shot of Bilbo in Gollum’s cave during the film’s introduction. To this day, I’ve never felt as fully transported to another world as I did during that viewing of The Fellowship of the Ring. It was a magical experience where I felt like I entered Middle-earth and journeyed alongside the nine companions. The Fellowship of the Ring fundamentally impacted my trajectory as a person. I went home so excited about the Lord of the Rings that I almost immediately dove into The Two Towers. I had to know what came next. After that, I finished The Return of the King. Ironically, it was a movie that truly started my love of reading.

That wasn’t the only impact The Fellowship of the Ring had on me though. I became obsessed with storytelling. Soon, I was creating my own fictional worlds. At first, my invented realms closely mirrored Middle-earth, but as time went on my work matured. Eventually, my Tolkien obsession led me to writing an unpublished fantasy novel, The Swords of Fellowship, while earning my Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. The Swords of Fellowship was directly inspired by The Lord of the Rings, and it was my attempt to put my own spin on Tolkien’s ideas.

In the years since that first viewing of The Fellowship of the Ring, I’ve returned to the film regularly, albeit in a slightly different form. I received The Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition DVDs for Christmas in 2002, and I’m certain I’ve watched those disks more than any other DVDs I’ve ever owned. At this point, I’m sure I could recite every line by heart while watching along. The film never ceases to evoke tears from me when Boromir redeems himself by fighting to protect Merry and Pippin, and when Sam rushes into the water after Frodo. And my pulse always pounds faster as Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli charge off to hunt orcs at the end. Truthfully, I enjoy every moment of this film, and it always allows me to escape whatever issues or troubles I’m having, just like when I first watched it.

This reflection has already gone on longer than I intended, but if you’ve read this far, I hope you’ll indulge a few more of my thoughts on this movie’s impact. My best friends in life all feel the same way about this movie as I do. In fact, three of us decided to get the elvish word for friend tattooed on our arms. I’d wager that most kids near my age feel the same way about The Fellowship of the Ring. It came along at a perfect time to help us escape the horrors of 9-11 and showed us a world where good hobbits triumphed over dark lords. So, cheers to The Fellowship of the Ring on twenty years of being a perfect fantasy film. As the hobbits say, “may the hair on your feet never fall out.”

Music is My Muse

Father John Misty doing Bored in the USA

One of the earliest projects I remember envisioning was a story written using Rush album tracks as chapter titles. I eventually focused this idea into a short story inspired by the song The Necromancer off Rush’s Caress of Steel album. Music has never stopped influencing and inspiring my writing projects.

After my freshmen year of college, I was hurting from my first major breakup. Like every young artist before me, I channeled my feelings into a project, The Village Green Preservation Society. This evolved into my first novel, and I completed it over the course of my last teenage summer. Music aficionados will recognize the title as belonging to a classic album of the same name by The Kinks. I listened to the album on repeat as I harnessed its themes and characters to contribute to my growing world.

Years later, I’d find myself in graduate school pursuing my writing popular fiction degree, and I’d return to using music to help my writing. This time I didn’t use the music to help me create though. Instead, I created a Spotify playlist of fantasy songs that evoked my love for the genre. I pulled in music from The Lord of the Rings soundtrack, the Game of Thrones soundtrack, Harry Potter’s score, some Led Zeppelin, and of course, a little Rush. This helped me get into the right headspace while finishing my first draft of The Swords of Fellowship and editing its subsequent drafts. I’ve been using that playlist to help me write every fantasy story I’ve penned since.

This past weekend, I started a new novel. This one is horror, and it concerns my hometown. So, my playlist is filled with songs that remind me of that location. You can check out the, tentatively titled, Homeless Problem Mix here. Growing up, I’d hear The Pennsylvania Polka almost every night as I flipped past the local channels, so I had to include that. Then there were bands I was into while I lived in Hazleton, and I had to include them. Finally, I pulled in some songs that speak to my antagonist and to the mood I’m trying to achieve with this project. That’s where Father John Misty (pictured above) comes in. I got to see him live in Philadelphia a few years ago, and the experience helped kickstart my ideas on this project. Overall, my new playlist is an eclectic and strange mix that perfectly orients me to write about the world I’ve already dreamed up.

I know many people have already thought about using, or already used, music to help their writing, but I wanted to share my experiences on the subject. My father is a musician, and my family members are all deeply into music, so using it for my artistic endeavors has always been second nature to me. For those writers or artists out there who are new or just haven’t thought about this idea much, I hope this post gives you some ideas of your own. If you have a different type of muse, don’t be afraid to tell me about it in the comments below.

Stay Froggy,
Jeremiah

The Road Goes Ever On

The Road Goes Ever On

Isn’t it unbelievable how fast time passes? In January of last year, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to finish my second novel. Now I’ve got a three hundred and fifteen-page fantasy epic that consists of 95,831 words.

My thesis novel is tentatively titled, The Swords of Fellowship, and I am immensely proud to have finished the rough draft. My mentors and critique partners have offered encouragement, support, and help the entire way. In nineteen months enrolled in Seton Hill’s Writing in Popular Fiction Program I’ve learned more about writing than I had in my previous twenty-six years of life.

I’ve also been able to network with some incredibly talented, friendly, and interesting writers because of the Writing Residencies. This past January, I met young adult writer Gretchen McNeil. She wowed me with her insanely cool story concepts and life story. I’m looking forward to downloading a copy of Relic, a novel she wrote partially inspired by my favorite horror film, the Thing. It will be a perfect book to read since I just got a copy of the Thing board game for Christmas.

Back in the June Residency, I got to meet Hank Phillippi Ryan. She’s an Emmy Award Winning Investigative Reporter turned mystery novelist. I’m planning to reach out to her regarding a Lovecraftian story I’m writing with a female reporter as the protagonist. Every speaker we’ve gotten to hear at our residencies has been outstanding thus far.

In the coming semester, I’m going to be learning about how to teach creative writing. This is a subject I am almost as excited about as writing itself. I can’t wait to learn how to pass on the lessons I’ve learned. Although, I am a little sad that I won’t be reading genre books for my class this semester, as in past ones. Last semester, I read A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, which quickly became one of my favorite fantasy stories. I also got to read terrific books like A Wrinkle in Time and Nine Princes in Amber.

Before joining this program, I’d never been able to submit my stories to magazines, ezines, or podcasts, aside from some stuff used in my college newspaper. Now I’ve sent my second short horror story out for possible publication. Keep your fingers crossed for me. Hopefully, I’ll be able to update this site with more exciting news over the next year.

Until Next Time,
-J.D. Cook