I’m here at the Savannah Film Festival (preview of the coming reviews and features coming later tonight) and today’s event included a screening of Gods & Monsters with Ian McKellen in attendance. Afterwards he gave his time for a Q&A, and while TheOneRing.net was (surprisingly) present and tried to get a new Hobbit answer out of him, most of the questions lent themselves to very interesting answer. I’ve actually seen McKellen cumulatively speak for nearly two hours this week- I’ll be publishing a full report of his interesting insights into theater, film, and acting in general next week. Before I let that loose though, I thought I’d share with you a wonderful video I was able to take. McKellen has a habit of gifting his audiences with a monologue or line reenactment when he speaks publicly or for groups of students. I had the pleasure of watching him perform an extremely heartfelt monologue with clear connections to our current civil rights environment, but for the big crowd today he busted out a popular line that’s become one of the most famous in film history. Check it out below.

To go back to his Hobbit statement he said the usual when asked his thoughts about reprising the role… “I have many thoughts about it, but not many I can share.” He trotted out the word-for-word expected, “I’m not under contract,” but he followed it up with “They’ve started. We are negotiating,” basically saying “we’ll see.” I know some people were stressed because of his last statement that said nothing beyond his lack of contract, but it’s clear their working on it, and from what I saw on the stage, it’s clear he’ll be back. I heard no reason to worry in his voice.

But the video!