PROJECT FIVER - Contact with New Zealand!
I'm sure most of you are familiar with
PROJECT FIVER, a petition I created to get Melissa cast as an extra in THE HOBBIT. Well, Melissa and I have been going back and forth on how to break the news, but we're just going to cut to the chase.
A Production Liaison has contacted us, and they want to make Project Fiver happen in the next year or so.
To quote someone famous: "There is no emoticon for what I am feeling." Apparently your letters of support and our story have really affected them.
We did it, folks. We really did it. There is no variation on "Thank You" that would begin to express the gratitude that I owe all of you. No words can do it justice. This is something incredible that you all have helped me accomplish, that I could never hope to accomplish on my own. Melissa is just over the moon about the whole thing, it still seems like a dream.
Want to know the funny part? The first thing the guy does is apologize that they weren't in contact sooner.
SOONER? This thing has only been live for three months! This was still Phase 2 of the Project (getting a metric buttload of signatures). I figured that once we had a huge number (5000 was my ballpark figure), we would launch Phase 3 - Direct contact. By then our geek social network would likely have made contact with someone inside, who could put the petition in the right hands. And with 5000 signatures it would be taken seriously. And I had planned a timeframe of collecting this many signatures through this fall. I was considering reserving a Fan Table at DragonCon as one last push.
I expected this to take six months to lay the GROUNDWORK, and he is apologizing for waiting three months to contact us!
Apparently, I had wildly under-estimated the power of Geek Social Networking. 4200 signatures in Three Months and enough letters and emails written to convince Wingnut Films to make this a reality. The outpouring of concern is just amazing.
But this is not the end of the story. It is a beginning. PROJECT FIVER will continue. We now are on the road to the goal, and the journey has yet to be written. Filming will not begin until sometime next year. Our mission is the same: To have Melissa be a Hobbit extra in the film. We now have the company's support, but it will still be a hard road to get her there in a year. We don't know what kind of shape Melissa will be in by the time Filming starts. It will be a fight, but we will be fighting together.
Project Fiver will continue. This site will change over the next month. The Petition will be closed, and a Guestbook will be created for people to check in and send well-wishes and greetings to her. Our son, Matthew, will have this, to know how his mother lived. The Blog will continue, and we will try to use the attention we have garnered here to promote ALS Awareness and support for the ALS Association of Georgia, who has been so very good to us in our time of need.
So thank you from me, from Melissa and from our family. You have accomplished something truly incredible. Now it is our turn to rise to the challenge of it.
Stay tuned.
Labels: HOBBIT, Petition, Project Fiver, THE HOBBIT
*Project Fiver* goes Public
Many of you may know my wife, Melissa Kern. She has helped out with the Tolkien and Young Adult Literature tracks at DragonCon. She even appeared in
a well-known DragonCon TV commercial.
Mel has been a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien since she read The Hobbit as a child, and has always loved books. Her heart leaped when she saw the preview for Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of Lord of the Rings, and she has been involved in organizing like-minded "Ringers" in the Southeast for many years now.
The hard truth is that Melissa has just been diagnosed with ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Essentially, it causes all the motor neurons in the brain to shut down, gradually making the muscles unable to function. It’s very rare (1 in 1 Million) for someone who’s only 34 years old to come down with this, as it mainly affects people between 50 and 70. Life expectancy is 3-5 years from diagnosis. (She’s had the disease for about a year already.) The disease progressively takes away movement and coordination. In September, she marched with fellow LotR fans in the annual DragonCon parade. Six months later, she is barely walking, and needs my help to climb stairs or get dressed.
She is excited about the filming of "The Hobbit" sequels, but was apprehensive about the release dates of 2010 and 2011: She doesn’t even know if she’ll still be alive when these movies are released. I told her to make that her goal : to be around to see these films in the theater. But we don’t know how this disease will go.
The goal of PROJECT FIVER is to deliver a petition to Peter Jackson, New Line, and whoever takes the Directorship, asking that Melissa be cast as a costumed hobbit extra in the film. Even if she’s not there when the movies are released, just being part of the production of The Hobbit, even if it’s just sitting at a table in the background, will absolutely mean the world to her. It would be her reason to hang on.
Melissa has done an incredible amount to promote Tolkien Fellowship. She has been a key member of the Tolkien Track at DragonCon for several years, and has also volunteered with the Young Adult Literature track there. She has been an active member on TheOneRing.net, co-leader of ArmsOfMiddleEarth.com and member of numerous LotR-Related Moots, and Meet-Up groups in the Atlanta area. Additionally, she has helped organize local Release Parties for the Harry Potter books and coordinated with movie theaters to have a crew of costumed Pirates raise money for the AMC Stars of Hope Charity at the Pirates of the Caribbean movie premieres. Many in these groups have been asking what they can do to help her out and lift her spirits, and PROJECT FIVER is my best answer.
If you wouldn't mind, please
Go to ProjectFiver.com and sign the petition.This petition has been going on in secret for a couple of weeks, and I just revealed it to her this weekend at her birthday party. Over 1000 people have already signed it, and she was moved to tears. We have "Gone Public" with this now, so feel free to share the link with others openly.
I have just added a blog on the site, and I will keep posting developments. Thanks for helping us out.
Labels: Melissa, Petition, Project Fiver
