Today a long time fantasist was put to rest. Perhaps fanatic is the acceptable noun. Both words come from the root - fantasy.

What is as wonderful as a fantasy? Our thoughts produce them. Something in our brains sustain them.

There is a fantasy among many that Elvis still lives. Doubtless there are others who live in human fantasies as well. Poets in the distant past wrote eloquent descriptions of places and times. No one up to now has so completely created another place with living beings and written languages as J.R.R. Tolkien in LORD OF THE RINGS.

J. R. R. Tolkien spent his lifetime putting an extreme fantasy into a whole believable world. The world of Middle Earth was his creation of a past that England could call her own. Fairies, elves, dwarfs, and hobbits on the good side. Goblins, orcs, eliphants, shelogs, and spiders on the bad side with wizards thrown in to influence all.

If you have the good fortune to watch the extended versions of Lord of the Rings as I have, revel in the genius that went into the story. That begins of course with the creator and the story itself. Then came the decades of obsession with the fantasy by readers, artists and authors. Middle Earth is a place readers reveled in and never left. Artists developed characters from vivid prose and poetry. Authors delved into relationships and published reams trying to account for the dedicated work of Tolkien, almost a life long desire to make a story worth reading. And it has been read - over and over again. Some said it would make a great movie. It would be a blockbuster epic. And finally for what we can now visually enjoy, came Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh.

We will never know the depth of obsession those directors possessed to envision and carry out the finished product. The more I watch the hours of Appendixes for the Trilogy, the more I wonder at the scope of imagination and dedication that took place before the concept was solid enough to convince backers to advance the money for the years that went into the production.

How did Jackson manage to find the perfect actors for each of the main players? There is no hint of that. Yet each selected one must have put forth a resume or portfolio or asked for the opportunity to participate. And each must have been measured against others. Most had professed to have read everything about the Rings series as well as the epic many times over. Although Viggo Mortensen said he never read any of it, his son was enthused and convinced him to take the part of Aragorn.

In the extended DVD version appendixes are included to show how much work went into the making. The fact comes through that scenes were concocted around the actors and the concept of friendship to tell a cohesive tale without making a two day movie. New information was added to round out a well told tale. Well done. Very creative. Maybe those five years or whatever to finish did take a psychological toll on those who worked together. Somehow the comraderie of the directors and department heads brought out more heroes among the hundreds that made the breathtaking props and other support for the film than Tolkien showed in the story itself.

The whys and hows of genius will forever elude me but I appreciate a fantasy that has captured the human imagination without bringing on the tragedy that follows in real life. Fantasy is easily grasped by the human brain. From results in human aftereffects some fantasies look healthier than others.

Naomi Sherer