The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Enhanced Edition)

by Rinzler, J. W.

  On Thursday, according to the Progress Report, second-unit director John Barry “arrived at the studio and complained of feeling unwell. Production arranged for medical assistance and a full report is on file.” Barry was in Robert Watts’s office when he said that he felt ill. Barry suddenly collapsed and was taken to a hospital. Later in the day, his temperature rose to 105 degrees, and by 2 AM, June 1, he was dead. Barry died of infectious meningitis, but, as one paper noted, “It was a mystery how he contracted what was normally curable, and why no one else on the crew caught it.” Variety reported that he passed away “with a suddenness that, had it been written into a film plot, would have been called implausible dramatic license.” The reporter also wrote that, though they were shattered, the British crew “kept their traditional cool.”

  “John Barry has died,” Arnold writes. “It was so terribly sudden that the entire company is in shock.” Reportedly, Barry had a disease that he’d picked up in North Africa and didn’t like going to the doctor or hospitals.

  “I remember I used to nag him all the time on the first film, to look at his drawings to see how it all came together,” says Hamill. “He was always more than willing to do that. It’s hard for me to talk about it, really, because I still can’t adjust to the fact that it’s happened. I was really looking forward to working with him. I was just about to get into weeks of work with him. He was one of the kindest, friendliest people in the world. It’s one of those things when someone you know and have contact with daily is gone; it’s just so unfair and you analyze it to death, really. That’s about it.”

  “He was well into the work before he died,” Kurtz says. “Some of the ice hangar scenes are his. It was a great shock to everybody because it happened so suddenly. And then we had to go through the rigmarole of trying to track down anybody who had come in contact with him over those two days because it was an infectious disease; fortunately, nobody else got ill.”

  “John was doing a fantastic job,” says Lucas. “The film would have been much better if he’d lived.”

  BLUESCREEN FEVER

  NOS. 62–68, FRIDAY, JUNE 1–MONDAY, JUNE 11: STAGE 8, FALCON COCKPIT, 296 [MYNOCK], 300, 302 [ESCAPE FROM SLUG], 337 [LANDO SYSTEM], 214 [FALCON PURSUED BY STAR DESTROYERS], 406FF, 413 [LEIA TURNS FALCON AROUND], ETC. [SECOND UNIT ON STAR WARS STAGE]; STAGE 4—INT. CARBON FREEZING CHAMBER, 376 PT. [VADER INSPECTS THE CHAMBER]

  The same day of Barry’s death, production moved back to the Falcon cockpit on Stage 8, its ad hoc plans in even greater disarray. A few days later, Harley Cokliss commenced work as second-unit director. “Harley came about after John Barry died so suddenly,” says Kurtz. “I had to go back to direct the second unit for another week until we got him, because it threw us for a bit after we’d spent a lot of time figuring out that John was the best one.”

  “It’s very sad for me because I knew John and liked him immensely,” Cokliss says. “He was a very talented man. It was really a total fluke because I had just finished directing a picture called That Summer [1979] and I was visiting them on the set on the Friday after John died; and they, you know, were obviously very upset and said they needed a director for the second unit and asked me.”

  While Cokliss did what he could in the hangar, the actors’ back-to-back scenes in the cockpit, over several days, slowly but surely wore them down. “It is detailed, effects-related, and time-consuming work in cramped conditions and, to the observer, is unspectacular,” Arnold writes. This was true despite the fact that Kurtz had asked the art and construction departments to build the cockpit larger than the one used in Star Wars (when Lucas found out, he was less than thrilled—the cramped set of the first film had been designed to simulate the reality of jet fighter and rocketship cockpits, which are just barely big enough for their pilots).

  “That cockpit was probably the single worst set we had as far as the actors were concerned,” Kurtz says. “It was very close quarters to start with and a lot had to go on in there. And some of the action as written was very difficult to actually perform in the confines of the cockpit. It’s also very difficult for the actors to work in a situation where they can’t see what’s going on. You have 25 people out there looking at them, but they’re supposed to be looking at asteroids or ships. On the bluescreen stage, I think all the actors felt more like robots.”

  “I have this theory that the bluescreen gives off rays that penetrate the brain and make you go crazy,” says Hamill. “Harrison really flipped out once, picked up a saw and started sawing through the console of his spaceship, which looks like metal but is made of wood. Everyone was saying, ‘You stop him,’ ‘No, you stop him.’ I sure wasn’t going to volunteer—I had no desire to wind up on the floor.”

  “The worst is when we’re in the cockpit and you’re supposed to see stars or asteroids or whatever special effect, but we don’t see anything,” Fisher says. “We’re looking at a corner of a camera and screaming, ‘WHAT ARE YOU GOING INTO AN ASTEROID FIELD FOR?! Or, ‘THERE’S SOMETHING OUT THERE!’ ”

  “We did two or three days in the cockpit shooting toward the back of the cockpit, which was done on Stage 5,” Kurtz says, “and then a month later came back and looked toward the bluescreen on Stage 8, when the cockpit was turned around, and went through the same scenes again to do the covering material. They were really just trying to match what they had done before for the bluescreen material—but because there was such a high volume and we had to work so long in there, they got very frustrated.”

  “Bluescreen is always difficult because we have to imagine, somehow, how it’s going to look when it’s finished,” Suschitzky says. “One finds oneself shooting in a half-completed set and I have found that difficult from time to time.”

  “Peter Suschitzky, the cameraman, had not worked with those areas before, so he needed a certain amount of guidance as to how he could light certain things,” says Kurtz. “And Kersh found it difficult in certain cases to deal with the special effects aspects, the bluescreen scenes, the matte painting scenes.”

  “Actually, Harrison and I never fought in either picture,” says Hamill. “It was Carrie and I who had the screaming matches from time to time, though afterward neither of us could remember what they were about. She’s a devil.”

  “Tension between the actors comes and goes,” Kurtz says. “Some days they get on well, others they don’t. But these are just the normal misunderstandings that take place under high tension. One actor says something to another and it’s taken the wrong way; if they don’t talk it out, they get angry. The misunderstanding can last a day or two, or merely hours. Actors, more than anyone else, suffer from continuous anxieties as to whether they’re doing a good job, whether they’re approved of by other actors or members of the crew. They inflict upon themselves a sort of endless psychiatric self-analysis.”

  On Monday, June 11, shooting ceased at lunchtime so crew members could “attend the funeral of the late John Barry.” Services were held at St. Paul’s Church, Grove Park Road, at 3 PM; Barry was cremated at 4 PM. “To the little Victorian church in the London suburb of Chiswick came many of his colleagues, joining members of his family in a service of remembrance,” Arnold writes. “Gary Kurtz, Norman Reynolds, Robert Watts, Bruce Sharman, among them—were there. Kersh attended and I saw Stanley Kubrick and Stanley Donen. Donen knew Barry long before the debacle over Saturn 3 …”

  By the time production left the hangar set for the Carbon Freezing Chamber that same day, for the 68th day of shooting, it was 22 days over (and Ralph McQuarrie flew back to LA). The crew began immediately more large-scale work on the Star Wars Stage, systematically destroying the hangar to make way for additional sets to be built around the Falcon, which would culminate in the bog planet—perhaps the most difficult construction of the film.

  “We shot on those parts of the Star Wars Stage which had been finished, using more and more space as it became available,” Kershner says. “When the whole stage was finally completed, the process reversed somewhat. Bec
ause once we had shot all the footage that involved specific parts of the set, the technicians began to destroy them in the battle scenes. Then they began building the bog sets in the same place. Some days I would come onto the set and find that an ice corridor had become a swamp overnight.”

  “I was a little disappointed in the production value that we got out of the hangar set, because of the time it took to do what we did in there,” Kurtz says. “More than half the material was probably focused in so close that you didn’t see the scope of the set. Several of the key big shots that we’d planned on getting, we didn’t get at all because we ran out of time.”

  A page from the revised script with even more recent dialogue changes to scene 337 in which Han Solo decides to pay a call on his old friend, Lando Calrissian.

  Another page from the shooting script, with Kershner’s notes.

  Another page from the shooting script, with Kershner’s notes.

  Looking into the Falcon cockpit.

  Looking out of the Falcon cockpit.

  Fisher and Williams.

  Daniels in-between takes.

  HELTER SKELTER

  NOS. 69–72, TUESDAY, JUNE 12–FRIDAY, JUNE 15: STAGE 4—INT. CARBON FREEZING CHAMBER, 379 PT. [HAN PUT IN CARBONITE]; STAR WARS STAGE—INT./EXT. LANDING PLATFORM CLOUD CITY, 353 [LANDO GREETS HAN, LEIA, ET AL.]

  In mid-June, Elstree looked like a pinball machine with two balls going, as first unit bounced around between the Carbon Freezing Chamber and the Falcon, and second unit ran from stage to stage, picking up snowspeeder cockpit shots and whatever else they could manage. The ongoing trick was to finish shooting on all the sets that revolved around the Falcon, so production could deconstruct Han’s ship for the next film and use its valuable real estate on the Star Wars Stage for the bog planet.

  “It’s hard to remember what makeup I’m in, what stage I’m on,” says Hamill. “And then every other moment that I’m not shooting, I’m rehearsing with these stunt people because you can’t get enough rehearsal, really. Now I’ve gotten to the point where it looks spontaneous, but it’s real hard work. It’s very difficult physically, but it’s also exhilarating when you get it right.”

  “The first turnaround from the ice hangar was into the East Landing Platform,” Kurtz says. “The matte shots for the arrival and departure from Bespin took about three days to revamp for. Then it was revamped into the asteroid cave and we had to go right back and shoot that—whatever else we were doing had to be interrupted.”

  “Every couple of weeks, George calls me,” says Kershner. “He just called me two days ago and we spoke for about a half hour. We talk about the work that he’s doing with the special effects in San Francisco, the models, what’s being done with the matte paintings, things like that. I tell him what’s happening here. I send him all the rushes on videotape. All I’ve ever heard from him is, ‘I love them.’ I’ve heard nothing else.”

  On Thursday, June 14, Carrie Fisher felt unwell again and production had to wrap early. Of Friday, Arnold wrote, “In Carrie’s case what might seem to be temperament can be explained because she is allergic to a number of things. She can’t wear a lot of makeup without getting a rash. She’s naturally light in build, very sensitive, and doesn’t always look after herself as she should … It’s particularly important during a picture to live a disciplined personal life. All the actors are under strain. I think you will see as we approach the end of the schedule that we’ll increasingly have to contend with this factor.”

  “Carrie’s fine to work with,” says Billy Dee Williams. “She’s adorable, you know; she’s not quite a disciplined performer yet, but she could be, I think, in the future.”

  “What we had to contend with on Friday were delays due to Carrie’s late arrival,” Arnold adds. “She had complained of stomach pains and spasms, and was sent for a checkup; two injections had relaxed her and she came in for her scenes. But the crew was unaware of the background and drew its own conclusions: Carrie had been up all night. A movie studio is very parochial, and rumor and gossip spread quickly—filling the time technicians spend waiting for other technicians to perfect something in their particular specialization.”

  The scene everyone was waiting to film consisted of the heroes’ arrival on Cloud City. “Eric Idle had returned from Tunisia, where Monty Python were shooting Life of Brian [1979],” Fisher says. “And he brought over what I believe he called ‘Tunisian Table-Cleaner,’ which was a beverage. Well, Harrison came over and the Rolling Stones came over, and I think we stayed up most of the night. So when we arrived at Cloud City, we were very happy.”

  Perhaps as a result of the delays, Williams kidded the actress during their takes. “He would say dirty things,” Fisher says. “I would say them right back. He said something unmentionable as he kissed my hand.”

  “I’ve become more and more excited about the character,” says Williams. “It’s very difficult to fall into something like this, because it was totally different for me. It moves with a certain kind of rhythm. But the more I got involved, the more I found there were many, many places to go with this character due to, I suppose, the subject matter.”

  Ford and Kershner improvised that day, as well. When Lando eyes Leia lasciviously, Han’s written line was, “She’s traveling with me, Lando. And I don’t intend to gamble her away, so you might as well forget she exists.” On the set, however, Ford substituted the simpler, “You old smoothie.”

  Reynolds and Kershner inspect the landing platform being built around the Falcon on the Star Wars Stage.

  Williams and Kershner.

  Daniels as C-3PO and John Hollis as Lando’s Aide.

  “The hardest part to achieve on sets is the aging down and used look; it’s something that not very many people are capable of producing,” Reynolds says. “It’s a combination of things really, from dirty water to waxed French polish and all sorts of tricks that have been acquired over the years” (Norank Engineering built the landing ramp of the Falcon, which was operated by means of hydraulics).

  Kershner films the arrival on Cloud City, mid-June 1979. (Dolly grip Dennis Lewis; sound boom operator Don Wortham; still photographer George Whitear; camera operator Kelvin Pike; assistant cameraman/focus puller Maurice Arnold; and, sitting, Kay Rawlings, continuity).

  Lando, Chewie, the droids, and Leia make their escape from Cloud City.

  Mayhew, Fisher, and Williams run along a makeshift Cloud City landing dock, filmed outside on the back lot of Elstree in order to raise the camera as necessary to obtain the desired angle.

  The look of “Lando’s aide” was fixed in a McQuarrie sketch approved by Lucas.

  Concept sketches of mynocks by McQuarrie.

  Ford sitting behind an X-wing.

  Williams, Ford, and company continue filming several scenes in the hangar, on Cloud City, and in the asteroid cave.

  Ford and Kershner consult on the Star Wars Stage, which has been transformed into an eerie set built around the Falcon (amid decidedly low-tech set dressing), circa June 18, 1979.

  “There is video content at this location that is not currently supported for your eReading device. The caption for this content is displayed below.”

  A printed daily (black-and-white dupe footage) from June 19, 1979, second unit, of Luke in his X-wing heading for a crash landing on Dagobah, with lines that won’t make the final cut, such as, “Oh, Ben, what did you get me into?”

  (0:47)

  BUGGED

  NOS. 73–76, MONDAY, JUNE 18–THURSDAY, JUNE 21: STAR WARS STAGE—EXT. FALCON/ASTEROID CAVE, 298 [MYNOCKS]; INT./EXT. LANDING PLATFORM CLOUD CITY, 353, 406 PT. [FIREFIGHT]; STAGE 4—INT. CARBON FREEZING CHAMBER, 379 PT. [HAN PUT INTO CARBONITE]

  On June 18, Kershner shot the Falcon in the asteroid cave set, while Hamill continued doing X-wing cockpit bluescreen work. “As the set went up, we’d walk through the duel,” Hamill says of the Carbon Freezing Chamber. “I’d also asked them to type up the swordfight in a few pages, so I could write down every m
ove with every line and start associating the fighting part with the acting part. I drew a figure of Darth Vader and put the different hit marks, right hip, left head; it was like, Camera Left, Camera Right.”

  On June 21, now 24.5 days over, first unit shot scene 379, in which Han Solo is put into hibernation on the Carbon Freezing Chamber set.

  “The Carbon Chamber struck me as being rather like a model for a stage set,” says Suschitzky. “It looked unfinished. It certainly had no walls at all; it was a series of ramps and disks and blackness. I was extremely concerned about that set, about how I was going to make it look believable and dramatic. I decided to light the whole thing from underneath, as the floors had been made translucent. In the black areas, I had shafts of light penetrating the darkness. Then the whole set was filled with steam, which made it photographically very impressive, but physically very uncomfortable, since it was like working in a Turkish bath. We were quite high up in the stage and we all suffered for quite a number of weeks.”