Happy birthday, Peter Jackson. You’re 65 years young and still busy as ever.
Earlier this year, The Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood handed the New Zealand filmmaker with a prestigious Palme d’Or on behalf of the Cannes Film Festival at this year’s event, celebrating Jackson’s impressive body of work that extends beyond Middle-earth.
Earlier this year, The Fellowship of the Ring was named the “best fantasy movie of all time” by TimeOut, but fans also know Jackson for his acclaimed take on King Kong (2005) as well as The Lovely Bones — whose casting has a point of contention that the director finally addressed earlier this year…
But real die-hards also swear by the New Zealand auteur’s early work, including a zombie comedy released in the U.S. as Dead Alive (1992) and his debut feature — another comedic film, but involving aliens.
As The Hollywood Reporter confirms, Jackson’s first four films were all made on impressively low budgets. The first of the bunch, his sci-fi splatter flick Bad Taste, reportedly caught buyer attention at the Cannes film market back in 1987 and being completed for just $25,000. Most of the key cast and crew was made up of Jackson’s friends graciously working for free.
Jackson shot Bad Taste — which centers on aliens invading a fictional New Zealand village to harvest humans for intergalactic fast food — over a period of four years, working on it only on the weekends because he still had a day job as a photo engraver at a local New Zealand newspaper, per THR.
Years later, his world-famous LOTR trilogy would clean up each year at the Academy Awards, winning 17 trophies in total. Most notable was The Return of the King, a clean sweep since it won all 11 Oscar categories for which it was nominated. All hail Mr. Jackson!