Thanks so much for your excellent review...it was both encouraging and insightful! Again, thanks for attending, and for your kind words.

I attach some info for you regarding our insertion (or "turning up the volume") of some of the philosophical/religious elements of the The Hobbit. As an adaptation, we felt justified in making these inclusions, as they helped bridge us into the finale especially, where due to time limitations we had to end with The Battle of the Five Armies, as opposed to getting Bilbo "There and back again!"

I'm not sure how deeply you've researched Prof. Tolkein spiritual background...it's fascinating reading to be sure. His influence on C.S. Lewis and a group of Oxford dons and their friends known as the Inklings was profound. Also profound were the spiritual underpinnings of his work, as he confesses in the following excerpt from a letter in which he tries to explain why specific references to his theology are seemingly lacking:

"As Tolkien, who died in 1973 in England at the age of 81, wrote in 1953 to Father Robert Murray, a Jesuit priest:

' 'The Lord of the Rings' is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion,' to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.' "

Some of the info I've attached expresses some of Tolkein's deep personal Catholic/Christian faith, some attempts to explain why he perhaps, as mentioned above, said very little "specifically" in The Hobbit, although his underlying philoshopies became more clear in later works.

At any rate, we felt the good prof wouldn't mind too much if we "highlighted" those philosophies a bit to help us "wrap things up" - a directorial leap, to be sure, but hey, leaping is what director's are best at.

I'd love to get together for tea some time to discuss some of this further...who knows, we could start the Yuba-Sutter branch of the Inklings!

By the way, I have a little "day timer" which you left in the theatre...I'll give it to Linda tomorrow, to return to you!

Thanks again, and many blessings upon you!

Yours, Paul