frodoholic and I have been discussing the possibility of asking TORN to approach whoever necessary to enable all LOTR fans to be able to see the Costa Botes documentary shown at the NZ Film Festival, preferably on dvd. I believe they would only take any notice of this if it carried lots of signatures, but as neither of us have done anything like this before we're not too sure of the best way to go about this so that they will know that the signatures are genuine and not just made up. The only way we could think of was (1) in the case of LJ Users put your live journal name and (2)in the case of other groups or message boards, just follow the signature with the name of the group. Not perfect, I know, and if anyone else has any other ideas, please let us know. Anyway, this is what I've drafted out. I've addressed it to Tehanu as she was the one who posted the two recent items on torn referring to this, though it may be a good idea to send copies to the other main people at torn. Again, if anyone can suggest any improvements, it would be appreciated.

"Dear Tehanu

We are all LOTR fans who are desperate to see the Costa Botes behind-the-scenes documentary which was shown at the NZ Film Festival. The details reported in your recent article are just too tantalizing to bear.

“There is talk that the documentaries will be included in a special edition of LOTR in 2006, but given the vagaries of Hollywood it's not certain that they'd appear as we saw them here in NZ these past few weeks.”

But Hollywood must not do that – they must bring it to us unspoiled!!

“We can only hope that the diehard LOTR fan community will have many more opportunities to see these documentaries on the big screen, exactly as they are."

It would be wonderful to see it on the big screen, but as that would only happen in selected cinemas it means many fans would miss out. It needs to be put on dvd – and preferably all 21 hours that Costa Botes referred to (in fact, we wouldn’t say no to all 800 hours!). Personally, and I know there are others who agree, I don’t really mind waiting, to have something that wonderful on the horizon would help fill the ghastly void now that all the films have been released. But all true LOTR fans deserve to see this at some time.

We are hoping that there may be a way that you and the other wonderful people at TORN could help to bring this about. Perhaps some sort of petition – if the thousands of people who visit the site all signed this surely it would carry some weight. Or perhaps you may have some better ideas.

We would be eternally grateful for your help with this.

Yours sincerely"