“Ralph McQuarrie’s conceptual paintings in particular give you the total feeling of what George is after,” says Brian Johnson, who began full-time work in November. “The key to all of Empire and how it looked was the fantastic outpouring of McQuarrie and his conceptual sketches, which were like photographs taken on a set. It made certain jobs easier. Joe Johnston and Nilo Rodis did the rest.”
Johnson had just left the production of Alien, where they’d been shooting the miniatures of the spaceship Nostromo. “I left my colleague Nick Allder to take over,” he says. “Now I’m able to really start setting up Empire.” Allder would later join Johnson as mechanical effects supervisor, but now it was up to the latter to continue shuttling between England and the United States. “I suppose I’ve been four or five times this year already. I’m going out again just after Christmas and then I come back for the Norway location.”
“Ext. Ice Gorge” (no. 1), set design concept by Norman Reynolds, September 1978.
A visual experiment had a model snowspeeder placed on a background photo plate; “In England, they also tried to make miniature snowspeeders that would actually fly like model airplanes,” says Muren. “But the speeder had no wings to lift it. These were to be taken to Norway and shot there. This didn’t work and I don’t know if one was even finished.”
In England, production designer Norman Reynolds also continued research on the man-in-taun concept with this drawing.
While Norman Reynolds oversaw his art and Welch’s construction department as they built sets, foundation work on the Star Wars Stage was completed in late 1978. At 250 feet long, 122 feet wide, and 45 feet high, with an overall capacity in excess of one and a quarter million cubic feet, production hoped it would be big enough to house the Rebel hangar and the bog planet.
On November 9, the services of Peter Mayhew and David Prowse were legalized. “They told me that if I dawdled any longer, they would simply get someone else to play the role, so I signed,” says Prowse. “I had to. Having no real identity in the films gives you a terrible feeling of insecurity. You are always aware that you are dispensable.”
Between films, Mayhew had appeared in an episode of a London detective TV show, Hazell and the Big Sleep (1978), and in a film called Terror (1978). “I’ll always remember my one line, ‘You want a mechanic?’ ” he says. “And that was it.”
One of the first letters written on the British production company’s new stationery was dated November 14, from Gary Kurtz to John Breglio, in reference to the services of editor Paul Hirsch, who was to start in England on March 5, 1979. Lucas hadn’t had the funds to hire an American editor in England on Star Wars. For the sequel, however, he hired Hirsch with the idea that the editor would create an assembly of footage as they shot and then, after Empire wrapped, would rapidly work to a rough and a first cut as soon as he was back in the States.
“Int. Prison Area” (no. 6) by Reynolds, September 1978.
“Int. Corridor, Outside Control Center” (no. 12) by Reynolds, September 1978.
“Yoda’s House, Clearing” (no. 15) by Reynolds, August–September 1978.
“Alternative Yoda’s House” (no. 16) by Reynolds, August–September 1978.
Production concepts by Norman Reynolds of the interior of Yoda’s house, August–September 1978.
Production concepts by Norman Reynolds of the exterior of Yoda’s house, August–September 1978.
Production concepts by Norman Reynolds of the exterior of Yoda’s house, August–September 1978.
While Hirsch was working on Brian De Palma’s The Fury (1978) he was nominated for an Oscar for Star Wars. When Hirsch started working on King of the Gypsies (1978), he won the award. Subsequently, he was granted membership in the academy. Hirsch had also been granted membership in the American Cinema Editors.
After looking things over in England, Kershner traveled to Finse as winter began in order to inspect the location. By this time, the lake had partially frozen over, though not enough to ensure safe passage on its surface, so the director was flown to the top of the glacier, 6,000 feet up, by helicopter in 20-degrees-below weather.
“I went to Finse and it was perfect,” he says. “There was even a hotel on the railroad line less then one half hour from the glacier. It would be a difficult logistical job, but much easier than building an entire camp to support the crew in some remote spot in the Arctic.”
“We went back in November,” says Watts. “We had a Huey [a Bell UH-1B] helicopter that came out of a place called Voss, which was up the line from Finse. The Huey arrived in the morning and deposited us on the glacier. We had a walkie-talkie communication back to the hotel to get them to come pick us up when we were ready, but the helicopter had ignition trouble and couldn’t take off. So we were forced to walk from the glacier back to the hotel, which was a somewhat long walk because we had to circle ’round the lake.”
Storyboards circa July–August 1978 by sketch artist Ivor Beddoes (whose start date was July 3), in England, offered variations on some of the same scenes being boarded by Johnston in the United States. Working with Kershner, Beddoes drew boards that broke down shots in terms of methodology and studio shooting vs. location shooting.
“Ext. Battlefield Hoth.”
A pan and zoom in on an Imperial walker.
Storyboards show how a snowspeeder could be elevated by a forklift off-camera.
Boards illustrate the use of troop carriers for Imperial soldiers.
REVENGE OF THE BOOB TUBE
Back in the States, a November 15 letter from ILM production administrator Dick Gallegly to Brian Johnson noted that work was going apace at Kerner: “Richard Edlund is now here full time, having moved up here last weekend, and things are beginning to hum.” The construction phase “is finally coming to a conclusion.”
As ILM ramped up, more crew had signed on. “Gene Whiteman [October 16] became our machine shop supervisor and was a real lucky find,” Edlund says. “I didn’t know him before we started, but he became a very good friend and was extremely adaptable to all of the many and varied projects that we wound up getting into. Visual effects editorial supervisor Conrad Buff [November 6] was our editor on Battlestar Galactica. He was an incredible find.”
In fact, MCA and Universal countersued Fox in November, and Galactica was an ongoing sore spot as Empire evolved. “They had done a show which was based on a snow planet,” says Bruce Nicholson. “So George was upset that they had ripped him off, which they probably did, and there was a lawsuit. I remember him talking about that when we first came up to ILM.”
Another television calamity, broadcast by CBS on November 17, was the Star Wars Holiday Special. The show featured appearances by most of the cast, except Alec Guinness, and took advantage of early McQuarrie artwork for the Wookiee planet (the story has the principals going to Chewbacca’s homeworld to celebrate Life Day). With odd musical numbers; cameos by celebrity TV stars, such as Art Carney, Harvey Korman, and Beatrice Arthur; and a campy, bizarre production décor light-years from the feeling of the first film, the Holiday Special was an example of how Black Falcon and Lucasfilm had yet to hone their approval processes. The one bright spot of the show was an animated segment produced by Nelvana Studios that introduced bounty hunter Boba Fett to the United States. (The Nelvana crew were friends with the show’s first director David Acomba, who had been a fraternity brother of Charles Lippincott’s.)
On that same day, overshadowed by the Holiday Special, the 50th-anniversary Mickey Mouse show was broadcast on Wonderful World of Disney and featured cameos by Chewbacca and R2-D2 (the latter wearing a party hat).
What must have been a somewhat difficult month for Lucas came to a more harmonious close. “The first year in ’77, I wanted to have a Thanksgiving dinner for our staff,” says Jane Bay. “There were about 10 of us, Ben Burtt and a few other people. So I got an organic turkey from a poultry store called Harmony Farms on Polk Street in San Francisco and we cooked this big dinner on the Wednesday before Thanksg
iving. We were all sitting around and George said, ‘You know, next year, why don’t we get a turkey for everybody to take home for their families?’ So from ’78, we have had this tradition of George giving a Thanksgiving turkey to each of his employees.”
“It was truly a family atmosphere,” says Chrissie England. “We would have a dinner the day before Thanksgiving and we all contributed to the meals. And Christmastime, George would give you really wonderful little presents and it was just a great, warm, loving environment.”
Concept sketches by costume designer John Mollo, (LEFT to RIGHT) “Field commader Veers,” “Rebel starfighter pilot,” “Rebel Star Destroyer crew [sic].”
Concept sketches by costume designer John Mollo, “Rebel snowtrooper.”
Concept sketches by costume designer John Mollo, “Princess Leia snow outfit,” October 1978.
Costume concepts by John Mollo, fall 1978.
Costume concepts by John Mollo, fall 1978.
Costume concepts by John Mollo, fall 1978.
Costume concepts by John Mollo, fall 1978.
Costume concepts by John Mollo, fall 1978.
Costume concepts by John Mollo, fall 1978.
Costume concepts by John Mollo, fall 1978.
“One of the wonderful things was that everybody at that time was considered part of the filmmaking community of Lucasfilm,” says Steve Starkey. “No one was left out. If there was a screening of a film, I could go, even if it was a rough cut. Discussions about the movies were had and you could be there listening. I was too intimidated to speak, but you didn’t have to leave the room. They’d have a Thanksgiving dinner each year. All the Bay Area filmmakers were a very tight-knit family.”
ESOTERIC MODELS
Production coordinator Miki Herman began to take notes at ILM’s meeting in November, as the facility began weekly updates. Her records of the next month reveal that on December 8, Dennis Muren decided, with others’ input, to shoot the asteroid explosions live and then rephotograph the film in roto. (This technique, “which allowed the complex actions and camera moves that George wanted,” according to Muren, soon became a staple at ILM.) The roto shop, supervised by Peter Kuran, would open its doors on January 1 (Kuran had been assistant to Adam Beckett on Star Wars, but Beckett had died in a fire in the interim). Another bullet point was figuring out how many cameras ILM possessed and estimating how many shots they would be able to do per day.
Lorne Peterson and his two-person model shop had started on a cloud car—but down the road they were going to have to build a new “Star Destroyer 11,000 feet long; Darth’s [new] ship is 16 miles.” Not surprisingly, Peterson felt he would need more people, because even a miniature of that ship was going to be pretty big.
“We were probably understaffed back then,” Peterson says. “There was a bit of a mandate for keeping the company small. The feeling was that George really didn’t want a company that had hundreds of people in it.”
“There was a shortage of people who were experienced,” says Paul Huston. “It was like a start-up company and Empire was going to be a big jump from Star Wars in terms of the complexity and number of the models. So you gotta get people, you gotta get equipment, you gotta get materials, you gotta make contacts with all your suppliers. There was one period when we were even making furniture for some of the other departments.”
“You have to remember,” Peterson adds, “that one of the ways that Gary Kurtz talked to me about Empire was, ‘From the model point of view, it’ll actually be easier than the first show because we already have all the models; they’ve been packaged, sent up north, and are sitting in a warehouse. So in some ways, it’ll be just operating those models again.’ Well, it didn’t work out that way at all!”
Peterson had hired Tom Rudduck on October 2 and Mike Fulmer on November 27, and would hire Sam Zolltheis on December 18 and Charles Bailey on January 15—but his talent pool was small. “It was hard to find model makers of a certain caliber in the Bay Area,” he says. “They’d either had full-on art experience or full-on industrial experience. But I needed a combination of the two.”
“It’s important that this film have the quality of the first one so it doesn’t look as though we are skimping, which is what a good many sequels have done,” Lucas says. “I want people to realize we put the highest quality in every picture, that the quality’s not going to drop. That’s the challenge.”
“The ‘challenge’ George gave us was to make the work better for the same price or less as the first film,” Muren explains.
“George was here more often, because he lived close by,” says Steve Gawley. “He seemed pretty darn happy and it just seemed like a pretty neat thing to start in a new place.”
As for the tauntaun model, Phil Tippett had completed a sculpture back in September 1978, after discovering that young calves have very fine and small-napped hair, which was perfect for his miniature. Joe Johnston sent those hair samples to Norman Reynolds in December. “Phil and I went to fairly great lengths to try and find the right kind of hair,” says Jon Berg. “[These] were calves that were mistakenly in the womb of the mother cow when she was slaughtered; then that skin was tanned and the nap of it was extremely small and a real fine texture. Phil has a really old way of getting that fur off the leather and onto a rubber backing. It involves gluing the fur nap into a water-soluble glue and then taking away the leather and replacing it with a rubber so that you can get a stretchy skin still with the hair.”
“I sculpted a 12-inch-high mock-up of this tauntaun and sent it to the art department in England,” says Tippett. “There they constructed the full-sized, eight-foot-tall model that was going to be used for the close-ups filmed in Norway and at Elstree Studios.”
By this time the final look of the Imperial walker had also been fixed. “It was more or less left up to me,” Johnston says. “It amounted to a few sketches. Ralph was in England to do some paintings, so he wasn’t too involved in the end of the design phase.”
Boba Fett made an animated cameo in November 1978’s Star Wars Holiday Special.
The cast of Star Wars was also reunited to celebrate the show’s Life Day on the Wookiee planet.
R2-D2 wore a party hat for the 50th anniversary of Mickey Mouse on Disney’s TV special, November 1978.
Wookiee home concept by McQuarrie.
Wookiee home concept by McQuarrie.
“Wookiee house” by McQuarrie, May 8–10, 1978. “George said he’d like me to work on Wookiee material for a TV show,” says McQuarrie. “I think I just got some bare notes, so I started making drawings of what I thought a Wookiee house would be like. I had a lot of fun doing that.”
Wookiee style sheets by Johnston, copyright dated March 1979 (though perhaps drawn earlier for the TV special).
Wookiee style sheets by Johnston, copyright dated March 1979 (though perhaps drawn earlier for the TV special).
ROGUE LEADER
While additional employees joined ILM, a new principal actor was also hired—Billy Dee Williams—whose contract was dated December 15. Although many artists had auditioned, one of Lucas’s early story notes reads, “Actor—Billy Dee Williams—Cloud City leader.”
“I spent most of my early years in Harlem and had an interesting childhood,” Williams says. “My mother aspired to be an opera singer. She was working as an elevator operator at the Lyceum Theatre in New York City and knew that Kurt Weill was looking for a cute little boy for a walk-on part in a musical. That was my first experience in the theater, but the bug bit me.”
His romantic onscreen image is what got Williams the part, according to Kershner, who says he “really looks like a Mississippi riverboat hustler. Billy can do that charm fantastically.”
Williams had recently been in a slew of successful films, including Lady Sings the Blues (1972) and The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976, whose screenplay was written by Lucas’s friends Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins). According to Jet magazine, Williams jumped at the chance.
“I mean, how do you turn down Star Wars?” But The Oakland Post reported that Williams had “qualms” about the film and was not eager to play what might be considered a token role. Fortunately, Lucasfilm had another new employee in Sid Ganis, who headed up its nascent marketing department. “Ganis vehemently denied charges of tokenism claiming that they were merely looking for a romantic hero,” reported the newspaper. “Williams accepted that and said he was attracted to the role primarily because it wasn’t written for a black actor.”
“Kershner and I sat down at my house in California and we talked about Eastern philosophy,” Williams says. “He’s into Zen and I’ve been into Zen since I was about 26; now I’m 40. Kershner said, ‘I wanna introduce some Zen here, because I don’t want the kids to walk away just feeling that everything is shoot-’em-up, but that there’s also a little something to think about in terms of yourself and your surroundings.’ ”
The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Enhanced Edition) Page 18