Tolkien Guests panel was the second Tolkien panel at Dragon Con 2014 on Saturday. Moderator Larry Curtis introduced Billy Boyd, the cutie pie Craig Parker, Jed Brophy, and the adorable Adam Brown. Brophy showed up sporting a Bee Cake t-shirt, Billy Boyd’s band, and Parker came out on stage with a traffic cone on his head.

Jed Brophy has done a lot of work with Peter Jackson in the LOTR and The Hobbit trilogy. During the panel, Brophy demonstrated how an orc walks. The elves worked out their way of walking by constipation.” said Parker. Brophy asked Boyd, “How about the Hobbits. How did you decide how to walk?” Boyd responded by saying “that he watched Sean Astin and we copied.”  

One audience member asked what did they take home after filming the movies. Brown took home the back of his chair, his LEGO character, the slingshot his character used in the films, a knife that he says is more like a butter knife, and the memories. Brophy took home the knives his character Nori used in the films. From the LOTR film, Brophy bought one of the horses he rode on. Parker was not so lucky. The armor and weapons he used in LOTR was used for an exhibition based on the films. He did say that he has a box that has the elf ears he used. And the memories. Boyd joked that he took 300 horses of Rohan and the he would be attacking soon. He said that he took home his weapon, and that he stole some ears and some Hobbit feet. He went on to say that he gave away all of the props to charity, fans and to friends. And the memories.

Curtis asked the panel what they wished they could have kept. The first thing out of Parker’s mouth was Cate Blanchett. Brophy shared the time when he was Blanchett’s driver, and she told Brophy to watch the road. 

During the entire panel, Parker and Brophy had the panel and the audience laughing. Parker kept using the cone to see and hear audience members as they asked questions. 

Boyd was asked how he went from portraying a fool of a Took in the FOTR to saving Faramir in ROTK. In his house in New Zealand he mapped out the whole the story with a wooden graph of where he thought Pippin was and the moments. And he would go back into the books, and find those things in the book and find things that Tolkien wrote that wasn’t in the script, and would ask Peter if they could put that line in. For example, when Pippin swears to the Steward of Gondor. Hears the line “Boromir died to save us, my kinsmen and me. He fell defending us from many foes.”

Boyd said it was annoying wearing the Hobbit feet. It took an hour and fifteen minutes every morning. Every time the feet would come off that would be another hour and fifteen minutes in the chair. 

Boyd told a story about when he and Dominic Monaghan wanted to have Viggo standing on the mountain and looking out to see the next path, and have both him and Dom stand next to him and have one of them fart, and have Viggo just shake his head and walk away. Boyd also told a story that Dominic wanted their to be a pregnant Elf as their characters were leaving Rivendell, and Merry would point and say, sorry. He had the audience laughing hysterically.

They shared games they would play on set. Told tons of great stories. And had everyone laughing the entire hour. The camaraderie between these guys is great. You can tell they had a blast working together on and off the set.