Before They Were Stars: Peter Jackson in a Documentary About “Meet the Feebles”

Yesterday, I did a “Robin’s Underrated Gems” column about Peter Jackson’s infamous early film, Meet the Feebles, his dark, demented parody of the Muppets. Quite simply, the film was so raunchy and offensive that if anyone told you that this guy would eventually be entrusted to direct the Lord of the Rings trilogy and win an Academy Award, you’d think they were on crack. Anyway, this is an ultra-rare documentary made for New Zealand television called Sex, Drugs & Soft Toys, which chronicles the making of Meet the Feebles and features plentry of interviews with a young, relatively unknown Jackson. When you think of all the extensive behind-the-scenes documentaries out there about the making of Lord of the Rings, it’s fascinating to watch Jackson work with a MUCH smaller budget here. Instead of Hobbits and Orcs, you get to see him film a guy inside a hippo costume with gigantic boobs.