Bry's question is certainly interesting. JRRT is on the record as having found fanatical fans rather wearisome, especially those who stole "souvenirs" from his house by leaning in through open windows (!!) or phoned him from the US without taking time differences into account (thus awakening a less than impressed Emeritous Professor in the wee hours of the morning). This element of what he called "my deplorable cultus" earned his great disdain. After his wife's death he lamented moving into a new flat where he felt he may no longer be protected from "Hoopers, Snoopers, Goopers, press-gangs, phone-bugs, and transatlantic lion hunters and gargoyle-fanciers".

Other fans he appreciated, often writing long and scholarly letters to them in reply to intelligent questions. He did, however, worry about those who seemed to take his work rather too seriously. "I hope you enjoyed the Lord of the Rings." he said to one rather-too-intense fan in one letter. Fans who shared his own interests seem to have appealed to him most. One interviewer describes JRRT stopping on a street in Oxford and chatting to a long-haired young man fixing a bicycle. He explained to the interviewer as they walked on that the young man was a skilled linguist and fluent in Elvish.

The purists who claim JRRT would have hated the very idea of the movies should read his letters. In 1957 he wrote "As far as I am concerned personally, I should welcome the idea of an animated motion picture, with all the risk of vulgarization; and that quite apart from the glint of money, though on the bring of retirement that is not an unpleasant possibility. I think I should find vulgarization less painful than the sillification achieved by the B.B.C." (He was refering to the 1950s BBC radio adaptation rather than the one from the late 70s).

JRRT wrote extensive notes on a (rather bad) screenplay for a film adaptation in the late 50s. They make amusing reading, since JRRT could get nicely sarcastic when roused, but the things he objects to are largely absent in the 1950s screenplay:

(The screenwriter) has intruded a 'fairy castle' and a great many Eagles, not to mention incantations, blue lights, and some irrelevant magic (such as the flaoting body of Faramir). He has cut the parts of the story upon which its characteristic and peculiar tone principally depends, showing a preference for fights; and he has made no serious attempt to represent the heart of the tale adequately: the journey of the Ringbearers. The last and most important part of this has, and it is not too strong a word, simply been murdered.

Peter Jackson may well be said to have put a lot of emphasis on fights, but he doesn't have everyone riding eagles, nor does he call lembas a 'high protein food substitute'. And his emphasis is definitely on the journey of the Ringbearers.

JRRT was highly pragmatic and accepted that he couldn't expect artistic integrity in a movie adaptation and was happy to accept money instead - "art or cash" to use his words. He was less of a purist than today's purists who invoke his holy name. He also knew that a movie would simply have to change the story. As he asked in a letter from 1956:

Can a tale not conceived dramatically but (for lack of a more precise term) epically, be dramatized -- unless the dramatizer is given or takes liberties?

The implied answer to his question is 'no', which means he accepted that movies have to be different to books, especially epic-style books like LOTR. JRRT was no purist.