The next day, Ford flew to Tangiers, Morocco, for a short holiday after receiving permission from Kurtz. While a rehearsal was held at 2 PM for the bounty hunters on Vader’s Star Destroyer, another ship arrived on the nearly completed Star Wars Stage: the full-scale 23-ton Millennium Falcon, which was floated into position, as planned, by means of hoverpads filled with compressed air.
After the weekend, Fisher followed Ford’s example by leaving for some respite in Dublin, Ireland, and then back to the States. The main unit filmed the ice gorge with Webb and Hamill. “I supposedly had my feet embedded in ice, hanging upside down,” says Hamill. “That was really hard on my back. I used a lot of muscles struggling upward to my feet to try and get myself out. I think we shot one day on first unit, but then we went four days more with second unit.”
“You see, when a unit goes over schedule, we can’t cycle off people because we’ve still got sets to do,” Bill Welch laments. “They haven’t finished with the stage, so we can’t strike it, and so on. It really throws us very badly.”
“Yeah, we have more than one unit going,” says Hamill. “So when I’m not working with the first unit, I’m with the second unit finishing up something the first unit started. With the bluescreen and the VistaVision camera, it takes so long to get all the elements correct that it can be really tedious. Pete Suschitzky is riding back and forth on his bicycle looking at shots, but I don’t mind in a way because, really, you want to do the sequences as best you can.”
“I coped with the two units on different stages for the first 12 weeks of the picture with the aid of a bicycle which I used to commute,” Suschitzky says, “And I carried a radio so they could call me back to the main stage if needed.”
“The idea was to leave the second unit to finish,” Kurtz says. “They would come in and do the time-consuming pieces, the robots or special effects. It was never my idea at all to have the second unit do major dramatic material. But we started having to do that because of the time problem—and it was especially difficult when I had to go in and do the rest of the ice cave sequence with Luke hanging upside down. Kersh had only done one day in there, so I had to do the rest of the scene, keeping in mind the way he wanted to do it and bound by the restrictions of the way he started.”
On Tuesday, April 24, with second unit in the ice gorge, the main unit moved to the deck of the Star Destroyer with Sayer on hand to supervise use of the bluescreen. That Wednesday and Thursday, Kershner filmed the bounty hunter recruitment scene on the ship’s deck. In the creature workshop, Freeborn was still working on Yoda, which no one was allowed to see, but that scene displayed several of his department’s other works (one mercenary called Tuckuss as late as the shooting script would have his name changed to Zuckuss, perhaps because tuckus in Yiddish means “ass”).
“The admiral says to one of his officers, ‘We don’t need those bounty hunters. They’re the scum of the galaxy,’ ” Kershner notes. “Then the admiral, who is standing below them in the control pit, is startled because, hanging over the edge of the bridge area, are 10 toes, huge claws with lizard-like skin—and you wonder, My God, what’s attached to that? He looks up and you see a lizard character glaring down on him—but his disgust with that thing is not that it’s some alien creature, but that it’s an immoral creature. [laughs] That was not in the script, of course, his reaction to the toes, but that’s what I mean by interpretation with humor. The Imperials are all very pure looking and very clean; they’re all humans. And yet he’s reacting to the bounty hunters’ immoral motive. They work for money. Even the Imperials think they’re doing good for the galaxy. There’s no such thing as people desiring to be evil. They’re evil for a purpose. They want to do good.”
Williams films scene 385B in which Lando is strangled by Chewbacca, Take 7, April 19, 1979. Mayhew as Chewbacca, is carrying the pieces of the protocol droid—an act that began to tire the actor after several days. For years afterward, Kershner would be fond of telling the story of how the intricate motors designed to move the droid’s head and arms were abandoned in favor of the simpler and more effective use of a fishing rod and line manipulated by crew just off camera and by Mayhew himself.
“Like crews anywhere, there are the strong members of the crew and there are the weaker members and it all gets done,” Kershner says. “But you know who you can count on for certain things and who you better help out on other things. But there was absolutely no ego problem and no psychological problems with the crew. I find that there never is with a good British crew.”
Kershner directs Hamill during the shootout on Cloud City (the camera and crew are protected from the pyrotechnics by a wooden shield; on the left is Maurice Arnold; on the right is assistant cameraman Chris Tanner).
Kurtz, Kershner, and Hamill.
Hamill, Fisher, and Kurtz clown around.
Arnold, Fisher, Ford, and Kershner.
Kershner’s revised script page for the living quarters scene, which he filmed in late April.
Fisher and Ford.
First unit filmed Hamill for one day in the wampa cave, after the scene had been reboarded by Kershner.
After using the Force to regain his lasersword, Luke defends himself from the snow creature.
Storyboard thumbnail sketches by Kershner.
Storyboard page by McQuarrie.
Kurtz directing second unit in the wampa cave with Hamill.
The first page from the complex “Breakdown Sheet,” which charted actor and stage workflow, and which changed often during principal photography (this detail takes production up to March 15, 1979).
“Actors like Michael Culver (Needa), Julian Glover (Veers), Kenneth Colley (Admiral Piett), and Michael Sheard (Ozzel), who are on Stage 5 today playing Darth Vader’s fleet commanders, are representative of a special breed,” Arnold writes. “They spend much more time in the theater than in film studios … They are the grist of English theater companies like the National Theatre, the Prospect Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Royal Court Theatre, but when called on for film cameos they do marvelous work.”
“I had a very simple scene, reporting to Lord Vader,” Colley says. “It took two days to shoot because of the sheer complexity and size of the set, but Kershner was brilliant—he was very sophisticated and knew exactly what he wanted from it.”
“I shot this scene very carefully,” Kershner says. “All you see are scars on the back of Vader’s neck for half a second. I imagined that beneath the mask, Vader was hideous: His mouth was cut away and he had one eye hanging low.”
Commenting on Needa’s death at the hands of Vader, after the former has tried to apologize for a tactical blunder, Lucas says, “We had to keep reminding the audience that Vader was evil and the easiest way to do that was to have him kill anyone in sight.” Darth’s line, “Apology accepted,” was improvised on set (or later in post).
“When I was wearing the mask, people had difficulty hearing me, so I used to change my dialogue,” Prowse says. “I’d take a line like, ‘The asteroids do not concern me, I want that ship,’ and change it to, ‘Hemorrhoids do not concern me, I need a shit.’ ”
Patternmaker Brian Archer works on Fett’s helmet.
The work of dozens of artists combined for the scene in which Vader gives a group of motley bounty hunters their mission.
Kershner created the moment in which the toes of a bounty hunter disgust an Imperial officer.
Patti Rodgers sculpts the head of Zuckuss.
Detail of Fett’s Gang by McQuarrie, circa 1980.
Kershner poses with the foreboding creations.
A half-dressed Prowse/Vader in discussion with Kershner.
In late April 1979, Kershner filmed Prowse on the bridge of Vader’s ship; only half of the set floor and dugout was actually built (the second half would be a flopped version of the constructed side).
Another scene to be completed in post was the hologram room, where the Emperor would be added later.
Vader in his m
editation chamber, which Kershner shot in spring 1979. For the shot of Vader’s damaged skull, Prowse wore a specially fitted bald-cap made by Freeborn’s team.
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Printed dailies from May 3, 1979, of a scene in Vader’s meditation chamber. Note that you can glimpse David Prowse without a helmet between takes. (Vader’s revolving chair makes quite a racket.) Prowse will later say that he would change his line on some takes, for a laugh, to, “Hemorrhoids do not concern me.”
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* * *
APRIL ILM: STOP-AND-GO
In addition to Brian Johnson, Jim Bloom returned to the effects facility. “When I came back from Norway with the second unit, which had gone way over, Gary came to me and said, ‘I don’t want you in England. I want you back in San Rafael because I don’t think that ILM is gonna finish in time,’ ” says Bloom, who arrived back in the States on Friday, April 13. “So I went back to help run all the special effects. I was there for a while when Dick Gallegly came to me and said, ‘Look, I’m a live-action guy; I’m not a postproduction guy. I have to leave.’ So I took over his job and was the general manager of ILM from May or so of ’79.”
“Jim Bloom was basically responsible for coordinating all of the activities at ILM,” says Edlund. “He came back here and helped us by developing a production board and scheduling out all of the shots.”
Production meeting notes recorded the facility’s steady march: “April 6. Currently have 57 Kerner Co. employees … New flex camera VistaCruiser should be complete in July … First test asteroid shot composited. Needs to be simplified—too many things happening—distracts from dramatic impact … [April 13] Empire camera returned from Norway and London … Due to electronic problems did not function properly. Needs to be tricked out and modified for stop-motion photography. Mockup of new printer constructed for manually working out proper motor sizes and alignment … Designed front of walker head details … Stop-motion animators have problem concentrating with extraneous noises on stage—need their own space to work. May have to consider night shift or trailer in parking lot.”
“Stop-motion animation is an intensely concentrated situation, so I was very conscious of needing to set up a very good climate for the artists to work in, and that’s really never been done before in stop-motion,” says Edlund. “These guys have always been shoved in the back room with a lot of noise and they haven’t had a real comfortable area to work in.”
On April 27, the latest Norway footage was “ready for George to screen,” but everyone who saw it was disappointed. Photography shot for backgrounds was unstable and uneven. “When we got the film back from Norway, we had all these plates that weren’t in any kind of order,” says Muren. “We had a plate sequence of about 20 shots, and we had to generate about 80—40 speeder shots and 40 walker shots. There was no organization at all.”
“Any of the special photographic work that was done in either Norway or London, as soon as the negative was developed, that negative and prints of that negative were sent directly back to the States,” says Edlund, “so that effects work could be started immediately.”
“They had tried to put together a motion-control unit to send to Norway,” Muren explains, “so they could do a camera pan and, later on, it would repeat the camera pan back in the studio. But it never quite worked.”
“The facility was still being put together,” says Warren Franklin, who was on optical lineup as of March 5. “They were shooting over in Norway and sending in footage and we’d look at these things trying to figure out what the hell to do with it and asking each other, ‘What were they thinking?!’ ”
ILM worked on several fronts, modifying boards to keep up with script changes (by Johnston, April 19, 1979).
Making asteroid tests (with Ken Ralston).
Finalizing the walker head (by Johnston).
Using a Movieola, Tippett traced footage of the running horse filmed on Stinson beach, which contributed to a pencil test of an animated running tauntaun by Johnston.
Pencil test of an animated running tauntaun by Johnston, circa April 20, 1979 (note the rider waving at us).
* * *
CREATING MAN
NOS. 41–45, TUESDAY, MAY 1–TUESDAY, MAY 8: IMPERIAL STAR DESTROYER NO. 2, SC. 219 [COLLISION]; INT. VADER’S STAR DESTROYER, SCS. T429 [VADER PREPARES TO BOARD FALCON], 244 [ENTER THE ASTEROID FIELD]; VADER’S CHAMBER, SC. 294 [EMPEROR]
Production was 15 days over and only about one-third through principal photography on May 1. The need for more time of course meant a need for more money—a lot of it. To make matters worse, on May 4, when Ford returned from Morocco, he was unwell and diagnosed with a gastric infection; Hamill was also sent home due to illness. Now they were 17 days over. (Also on the fourth, Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister and her party took out a half page ad in London’s The Evening News: “May the Fourth Be With You, Maggie.”)
“The next problems arose in the actual shooting where I found that the special equipment, like robots and other moving devices, never really worked,” says Kershner. “Of course, you build a machine that has to do complicated things and no matter how much electronics you put into it and no matter how much thought goes into the design, it’s still a prototype. And that creates tremendous problems, because time is always a problem in film.”
“There were times when Kersh would talk to me about things which were purely from his own heart in terms of the creative whole,” says Watts. “I have rarely come across a director with such dedication to the whole. I mean, a very, very creative man. But somewhere along the line in this game, we have to find the balance between that creativity and pure logistics and finance.”
“Kersh is a very creative man,” Reynolds echoes. “And until the time comes to actually turn over—that is, to get in the first shot—he’s always looking for better ways of doing things. So there were occasions when he would say, ‘Let’s approach it in a completely different way.’ But with that coming at such a late stage, it certainly did create problems. Though I think the picture’s benefited from that, too. With someone as fluid and flexible as Kersh, I think some of his ideas enhanced the whole proceedings.”
“The wild thing about ‘K’ is he’s sort of untamable,” Daniels says, “which makes him very exciting to be with, because he’s a delightfully loose cannon. The difficulty is that you need somebody very strong on top of that kind of personality to say, ‘Yeah, really nice idea, but we can’t afford it or we don’t have time’ or whatever.”
“Sometimes Kersh and I disagreed about how something should be done,” Kurtz says. “He has a built-in mania for wanting to tie everything together in a shot, so that you show the foreground and background all the time. But this kind of picture, in some ways, doesn’t lend itself to that. I convinced him on certain scenes that he couldn’t shoot that way or we’d be here for years. On other scenes, he insisted that it was the only way to get the dramatic impact that he wanted.”
“I thought it would be a more mechanical job and it’s far from mechanical,” says Kershner. “There are tremendous changes taking place moment to moment. What I do at the last minute is I make an adjustment. They’re adjustments, not changes of mind. The conceptual base is what I rarely change. We’re making a big enough film so that we have to believe in the integrity of the entire project, which means occasionally making adjustments—and that throws very rigid people. It also throws people that think of film as shots and not as building blocks of a film. A film is not made up of shots; it’s made up of a much more complex system of units which interconnect in an incredibly precise way.”
“Almost all of his ideas were really great and enhanced the scenes that we were doing,” Watts says. “Sometimes his requirements for those sorts of changes came very much at the last minute, but I think in most cases we managed to cope.”
“You can
say we are behind,” Kershner says. “Actually, a schedule is a very peculiar thing, very arbitrary. A schedule was drawn up. I never approved it and I said it probably couldn’t be done. But we tried to shoot for it and now have fallen behind, though not disastrously. I’d like to speed things up, but there is no realistic schedule with a film like this, because nobody can foresee the day-to-day problems.”
“It was a difficult picture for Kersh, because of the number of sets we were working on and because sets obviously were not ready that far ahead of the time we went to shoot on them,” says Watts. “It was always the case of us, on Saturdays, walking the sets and discussing forthcoming sets, which was, therefore, the only chance Kersh really had to sit down and work out what he wanted to do.”
The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Enhanced Edition) Page 28