As the New York Times reports in a fascinating long article today, “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson has created a private empire for himself in his native New Zealand. The government treats him like royalty and is marketing the country to the world tourism industry as Middle Earth. Air New Zealand has airbuses flying with Lord of the Rings livery. When Jackson decided to turn a few remote and hilly acres into a set, New Zealand military engineers turned up the next morning to build access roads, leading incredulous locals to say that Jackson now commands the NZ Army.

Buried in the depths of the article is the account of one of those secret handshakes from the universe that can be so guiding and confirming in life, if we recognize them and navigate by them. Still far from mega-success and short of seed money, Jackson was touring a moldy, dilapidated former paint factory, wondering whether this could really be the base for his soaring ambitions: to turn the Lord of the Rings trilogy into a brilliantly original and hugely successful series of movie epics.

Jackson had already poured a lot of his own money into the project, and the long-mothballed paint factory had the look and smell of a money pit. As he toured the premises with his partner Fran Walsh, an Oscar-winning screenwriter and producer, they found something they took to be a strong go-ahead signal. Someone had left behind an old paperback book. It just happened to be Lord of the Rings. Jackson recalls, “We looked at each other and said, we’ll take it.”