Secrets of the Force
Page 29
When George came to me at first, I said, “Wow, what the hell can you do with the second one that you didn’t do with the first one?” And I worried that maybe the audience had already had enough and they’d view a sequel as something just to make a few bucks. I’m not especially interested in sequels. I had made one before, Return of a Man Called Horse, but I did that because I really loved the subject and felt they failed in the first film. Fortunately, George didn’t want a typical sequel—which made it a bit frightening, because it was a much bigger picture than Star Wars. We had sixty-four sets, which was unheard of, and they were big. I would work on a giant set for two days and they would rip it down overnight and start building another one, because we had to put those sixty-four sets on seven stages. The film was all shot inside with the exception of the first ten days in Norway. We started shooting there and then went into the studio and never left. Everything was done inside. The woods, the water … everything. It was incredible.
DALE POLLOCK
(author, Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas)
I think on Empire Lucas wanted to see what would happen if he didn’t direct. He hated directing Star Wars. It physically, mentally, and emotionally took an enormous toll on him and he was tremendously frustrated. You know the old Woody Allen line, you’re lucky if you get 40 percent of what you want on-screen. Well, Lucas thought he had gotten 20 percent, so I think he really said, “That was not an enjoyable experience for me. Let’s see what it’s like to have somebody else on one of these films.”
IRVIN KERSHNER
I’ve heard from all over the world that many people consider The Empire Strikes Back to be the best film of the trilogy and I am gratified, because I worked so damn hard on the film for two and a half years. What made it easier was being backed up by someone like George Lucas, who stayed in California while I worked in England. We communicated on the telephone constantly. Whenever I had a problem that I couldn’t get solved there—which wasn’t often—I knew I could call him. I knew I always had the ear of someone who understood the production, which is not true in the studio, because those people are raised as accountants and agents and attorneys.
DALE POLLOCK
Lucas did not like how independent Irvin Kershner was. Once he started directing, he wouldn’t really listen to George and wouldn’t kowtow to him when it came to every creative decision. As a result, when it came time to do Return of the Jedi, he picked a very pliable director in the form of Richard Marquand. I was on the set of that film and he feared Lucas. After every take, he would look over at Lucas, so I think George said, “Oh, I’m not hiring somebody that independent [like Kershner on Empire] again.” Then when Return of the Jedi was released and got weak reviews, he said, “Well, fuck that. I’ll do the next ones myself.”
IRVIN KERSHNER
When George decided he wanted me to do the picture, he was very, very kind. He said, “Look, I want you to make a better picture than I did,” which is a nice way of saying, “Hey, this is important to me.” You see, if Empire didn’t work, then there is no third one and it’s all over. We didn’t know if the audience was still there for a second one. We had no idea. We assumed it was, but we didn’t know for sure. And George was putting up his own money. Fox didn’t put up the money. When I went up to seek approval for something, George said to me, “Do you know why you’re making this picture?” And he showed me all these detailed plans for Skywalker Ranch, and he said if the picture is successful, this is what he is going to build. George is fantastic. He invests all the money he makes into moviemaking and no one else does that. No one else who makes a lot of money in movies puts it back into the medium. Look at ILM and the other stuff he had developed. It is incredible. I really have tremendous respect for him.
BRIAN JAY JONES
(author, George Lucas: A Life)
I don’t know enough about the discussion that went into hiring Kershner, but you’ve got Gary Kurtz who knows directors as well as Lucas does and is willing to sit down with them and then go to Lucas and say, “You need somebody who completes you. You need somebody who’s good with actors. You need somebody who’s going to get out of themselves on the set.” Things that Kershner is really good at, and Lucas had had Kershner on the list of possibilities anyway. And the only person making the decision at that point is George Lucas.
GARY KURTZ
(producer, The Empire Strikes Back)
A lot of the pictures Kersh has made have been strong character pictures, and we were interested in someone who had the feel for creating strong character parts. He also did some good pictures, like The Return of a Man Called Horse, The Flim-Flam Man, and the TV movie Raid on Entebbe—they all have relatively strong action sequences. Probably the most important thing is that he believed in the fantasy. A lot of contemporary filmmakers are very cynical about life in general. Because of that it comes through in their work.
IRVIN KERSHNER
I analyzed Empire before production and came to the obvious conclusion that it was not just a sequel, but the second act of a three-act space opera. Now, the second act does not have the same climax as the third act or even the first act. The second act is usually more ambiguous. It is quieter, but the problems are accentuated; you get into depth. It is not fast, like the end of a three-part drama. So therefore I knew that I would never have the climax, because if it comes to a complete climax, where do you go with the third one? It is about revealing character.
RAY MORTON
(senior editor, Script magazine)
As all of them further developed the story, it had to be constructed around two unusual accommodations. On his way to shoot pickups for the original movie, Mark Hamill was severely injured in a terrible car accident and had to undergo facial reconstruction. As a result, he no longer looked the way he did in Star Wars. To explain this discrepancy in appearance to the audience, Lucas devised a scene in which Luke was attacked and smashed in the face by a local monster at the very beginning of the movie.
Harrison Ford did not have a sequel clause in his contract for the original film. He had agreed to return for Empire, but had not agreed to do the third film and had indicated to Lucas that he was not likely to. To explain Solo’s impending absence, Lucas decided to write Han out of the story at the end of Empire. The original notion was to have Solo leave to search for his stepfather—a wealthy oligarch with the power to help the Alliance. Han would be away for the bulk of the third film and return only in the final scenes of the saga (Lucas was confident he could get Ford to agree to come back for a day or two to shoot a cameo). Later, it was decided to have Han captured by a bounty hunter pursuing him for the debt incurred to Jabba the Hutt (the Tatooine gangster who was after Solo in the first movie). The dashing smuggler would be frozen in carbonite at the end of Empire and shipped off to Jabba and then rescued and thawed out in the final scenes of Episode VI.
Writing out Solo meant Lucas had to come up with another character who could take Han’s place in Episode VI. This led to the creation of Lando Calrissian, a gambler, con man, and old running buddy of Solo’s who initially betrays Han and Leia to Vader, but later has a change of heart and becomes one of the good guys. Any confusion as to why Calrissian was brought into the story was cleared up at the end of Empire, when Lando—wearing Han’s costume from the first movie—literally takes Han’s seat in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon next to Han’s copilot and then flies off in Han’s ship.
IRVIN KERSHNER
George and I worked closely with Lawrence Kasdan for three months getting the script right. Then, when the script was right, I went off to London alone, where the production was set up. I spent about a year locked away doing storyboards for the script so that every single effect, every scene that had anything unusual in it, was storyboarded. By the time I went to shoot, I wanted to know every single scene. In fact, I knew every word in the script by that time, so I didn’t have to even think, “Now what am I going to do next?” Not that I followed the storyboard
s that religiously. I did follow them, but where things didn’t work I could change it, because I knew where to go. So I could concentrate on the characters. You see, the biggest problem with epic productions like this is the special effects take so much attention that you tend to let the acting slip by. I didn’t want that to happen. And Harrison Ford was constantly calling me on it. If we did just two takes and I’d say, “That’s great,” he would say, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. What’s great? Was it great for the special effects or for me?” And I’d say, “Harrison, I wouldn’t say, ‘great’ unless it was for you. It really was great.” And he would give me that wonderful look of his, that wry look, and we would move on. We had a great relationship.
LAWRENCE KASDAN
(screenwriter, The Empire Strikes Back)
It always starts with George: George talking to an artist about his conceptions, and encouraging the artist to come up with his own ideas. A great many of the things in that initial draft were things that were already in the painting stage with Ralph McQuarrie. I would sometimes see a painting of something in that draft before I had written about it at all. There were certain large events in the movie that were always part of the general structure, and how exactly they would look had much more to do with Ralph and the effects people than they did with me or Kershner.
DALE POLLOCK
Kershner was an independent filmmaker and that appealed to Lucas. He had what he considered to be a studio hack; he wasn’t really looking for an independent director. But what Kershner brought was a fresh pair of eyes and he saw this incredible potential in the ultimate father/son story. He realized he had gotten the good chapter and understood the mythic implications, which is what really made Empire so strong. But the “problem” was that he approached it like a director and he hated somebody telling him what to do. If my memory’s correct, Lucas spent the first two weeks on the set and Kershner really bristled at his presence. I seem to remember a conversation where he said, “Either you trust me to make this film or you don’t. And if you trust me to make this film, I really can’t have you on the set every day, because everybody looks at you after every take.” I think Lucas respected that as a filmmaker and he left. But in the end, he did not want to make another movie with Irvin Kershner. He felt that Kershner made it too much his movie and not enough of what Lucas would have done with it.
JOHN MOLLO
(costume designer, The Empire Strikes Back)
Star Wars had been a pleasure to work on, but George Lucas passed the job of directing its sequel over to an old friend who had taught him filmmaking at university. He needed a lot of help from George, who was now in the States all the time and was not able to supervise things as he had on the first film. I was very glad when it [Empire] was over, and even happier when I was already employed on another film when number three commenced.
* * *
All of the familiar cast returned to their now iconic roles including Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, as well as the men in the masks: David Prowse, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, and Peter Mayhew. Even Alec Guinness returned after being killed in the first film for a cameo, which helped introduce the film’s most popular character that continues to enchant audiences to this day, Yoda, performed and voiced by Frank Oz.
IRVIN KERSHNER
All of the actors surprised me; they were far more interesting than I expected them to be. I got Mark, Carrie, and Harrison together, and we talked and talked. I explained things, told them what the characters were doing, what they could try, and how they could try to feel out their scenes and physicalize whenever possible. This was their language, they responded to that approach. If I hadn’t done that, I think I would have been in trouble. The way we worked made it fun; we really had fun doing the takes.
* * *
A newcomer to the cast was the man who brought the smooth to the swagger with the character of Lando Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams. Williams was born in New York City on April 6, 1937. Acting was in his blood from an early age, and he appeared in the Broadway show of The Firebrand of Florence in 1945. Much of his childhood was spent studying to become an actor, with a film debut in 1959 with the film The Last Angry Man. He won acclaim for his role in the 1971 made-for-TV movie Brian’s Song, which earned Williams an Emmy Award nomination. In 1972, Williams shot to worldwide acclaim with the Billie Holiday biopic Lady Sings the Blues, starring Diana Ross. By 1980, Williams was labeled by media as the “black Clark Gable” for his suave demeanor and smooth voice.
BILLY DEE WILLIAMS
(actor, “Lando Calrissian”)
Before Star Wars I did a whole bunch of movies. I gained the reputation of being a charming, roguish individual. I imagine he took that into consideration. I was pretty popular back then. Nobody had ever seen someone like me before.
* * *
Another fan-favorite character, Boba Fett, came to life on the big screen thanks in part to the late British character actor Jeremy Bulloch. Bulloch was born February 16, 1945, in Leicestershire, England. At the age of twelve, Bulloch entered the screen acting world with an appearance in a breakfast cereal commercial. After several uncredited screen appearances, Bulloch’s first regular role was in the 1960 TV series Counter-Attack! and (the same year) The Chequered Flag. He went on to have a recurring role in Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School in 1961, and a regular role in The Newcomers from 1965–67. He earned the role of Boba Fett because his half-brother, Robert Watts, was working as an associate producer on The Empire Strikes Back and was looking for someone who would fit in the suit. The voice for Boba Fett was originally provided by character actor Jason Wingreen, and in the updated versions by Attack of the Clones’ Temuera Morrison—to strengthen the connection with the prequel trilogy, and who reprised the role in The Mandalorian and its spin-off series, The Book of Boba Fett.
JEREMY BULLOCH
(on-set actor, “Boba Fett,” The Empire Strikes Back)
I think the popularity is due in a large part to the costume, which is just wonderful. I also think people are attracted to what they see as Boba’s code of honor. He’s ruthless. He’s money-oriented. He probably was a very good soldier, but something makes him turn into a bounty hunter. His code of honor is that he’d never tread on anyone else’s feet to capture a bounty. He does it his ruthless way, but he wouldn’t cross anyone.
They asked me to put the Boba Fett costume on, which I donned and thought: “This is strange.” There was an odd sort of Wookiee scalp hanging from my shoulder, which I originally put under my helmet, because I thought it was some kind of hairpiece. My first meeting with George Lucas was actually in the costume. “You look fantastic.” Everything seemed to stop and there was this marvelous feeling of a presence of somebody else. All the crew looked around at this new character. I thought, “Hey, this character obviously looks good. He’s the one who got away. There are bullet holes all over his armor. And he has a shredded cape. He’s got these Wookiee scalps. So, he has obviously done pretty well over the years in the galaxy.”
STEVEN MELCHING
(screenwriter, Star Wars: The Clone Wars)
Boba Fett was built on mystique. He was the first major new character introduced to the Star Wars universe in the 1978 Holiday Special. Then Kenner released the mail-away action figure, so he was someone we “first generation” fans speculated about and endlessly obsessed over in the years leading up to the release of Empire. When we finally saw him in action, he was this laconic, badass bounty hunter who was smart enough to track down Han Solo where the entire Imperial fleet failed and tough enough to stand up to Darth Vader. Plus, he had an awesome costume, was outfitted head-to-toe with all kinds of weapons, and wore Wookiee scalps as trophies. The guy killed Wookiees!
CHRISTIAN GOSSETT
(comic book artist, Tales of the Jedi)
What’s not to love about Boba Fett? He’s the guy, the only guy, who thinks like Han Solo. He’s Solo without a soul. He’s the Lee Van Cleef of the Star Wars galaxy.
KEVIN J. ANDERSON
(author, The Jedi Academy trilogy)
Boba Fett just looks cool. Darth Vader defined evil for everybody, but for me, Boba Fett defined a bounty hunter. He looked like a bounty hunter, he acted like one, he was smart, he was cold and ruthless, but he’s only got three lines, which makes him even more impressive.
STEVEN MELCHING
I think a big reason why Fett became so popular was because we really didn’t know a whole lot about him. He was described as a “Mandalorian Shock Trooper.” Who the hell were they? Did they fight in the Clone Wars? Could he be this “other” that Yoda spoke of? All this anticipation made his ignominious demise in Return of the Jedi all the more crushing.
CHRISTIAN GOSSETT
The prequels screwed that all up, because they basically made him some kind of clone spawn which is one of my main problems with the prequels. Star Wars is such a great ensemble piece, and just as Luke’s dark side is personified in Vader, so is Boba Fett the path that Han could have chosen at any point in his youthful days as a smuggler. Showing that contrast was one of the functions Boba Fett served, and he served it damned well. The fact that Lucas dropped him in the Sarlacc pit was a sign of poor choices to come.