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Lord of the Rings, I think, is far and away the most brilliantly done stuff.

How stupid do you have to be to imagine that you can turn 'The Lord Of The Rings' into a film script?

Lord of the Rings was just so much enjoyment. It was over about the space of a year that I was filming. It's one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done, so emotional.

I thought that there might be something unsatisfying about directing two Tolkien movies after 'Lord of the Rings.' I'd be trying to compete with myself and deliberately doing things differently.

After 'The Fellowship of the Ring,' the films that followed it, instead of having their own unique aesthetic, they all wanted to be 'Lord of the Rings' as opposed to learning from 'Lord of the Rings.'

When you see 'Lord of the Rings,' you want to feel like you've been dropped into it and that you're part of it. You don't want to be aware of how it's being done; you just want it to feel really seamless.

When Peter Jackson made the 'Lord of the Rings' movies, I remember there was a concern that people who didn't read Tolkien wouldn't go see the first one. But the films were so good in their own right that the audience grew beyond the readership of the book.

Making movies is really hard. It's a very complex process, with many, many variables.

Ever since 'Star Wars,' there was a rash of how a movie was made. I remember that as a kid. I never really understood how movies were made until that movie, because it was such a technical accomplishment. Since then, you've seen more and more and more, for all different kinds of films, about what goes into the process.

Lord of the Rings was something I always wanted to do. I read the book when I was about 25, and I was always hoping if it was ever made into a feature film that I would be involved in some way. And then I finally got it, and I was over the moon. It was fantastic news.