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

by Rinzler, J. W.

  According to Aubrey Solomon’s history of Fox, Alan Ladd and his two partners—Gareth Wigan and Jay Kanter—left the studio after negotiations with Stanfill fell apart. Ladd had wanted more money to renew his contract. “The criticism over the deal with Lucasfilm is what ended my tenure at Fox, really,” Ladd says, “because people were very angry and irritated, even though they made millions of dollars off it. We had a big fight, so I stomped out of the boardroom and said, ‘I quit.’ ”

  “Fox didn’t have to take the deal, but of course they took the deal,” says Sid Ganis. “They took the deal for two reasons: one because Star Wars was such a gigantic success and there was no reason to believe that Empire wouldn’t be also; and the second reason is, how do you not take the deal? But along the way, there was negotiation after negotiation; there was a home video negotiation between the studio and Tom Pollock, myself, and a couple others that was intense and lasted for days and days.”

  “It’s like having your closest ally suddenly change governments,” says Lucas. “It’s very unstable because Laddie was our mentor there and he was the one watching over us. With him gone, we know that the studio people are not giant fans and that the board is not that happy with us. So we’re watching the situation very carefully, because I have a lot of concerns that the studio might turn into chaos as a result of all this.”

  SETUPS: 922; SCS. COMP: 201/468; SCREEN TIME: 92M 38S/130M.

  Ford, Peter Beale, Jay Kanter, Alan Ladd, Jr. (center), Patricia Ladd, and Kurtz (right), during a visit of Fox executives to the studio. After Ladd left Fox, Ashley Boone became head of foreign and domestic distribution, and Sandy Lieberson the head of production.

  * * *

  JUNE ILM: ON THE TAUN

  By the middle of the month, ILM’s model department had completed the eight-foot Star Destroyer and had started on Vader’s ship, which was to be complete by July 16; by month’s end, they’d completed the three snowspeeders. The first walker was due July 1. Production meeting notes for June 11 indicate that a decision was made not to build Cloud City as a miniature: “Will consist of paintings, cutouts, and foreground 3-D pieces.” One week later, Herman reported that the “Oxberry is here, set up, and almost operational … Toilets for across the street—install ASAP.”

  The Oxberry animation stand was new to ILM, so Peter Kuran had hired Sam Comstock to operate it back in February, because the latter had been working for an educational television team in Kentucky where he’d acquired valuable experience with the machine.

  “The eight-foot Destroyer is a duplicate of the first four-foot Destroyer, but it had to do so much more,” Johnston says. “It was certainly hard to do and it took a lot of people’s efforts over many months. George is satisfied with it much more than he ever expected; its lighting system, its mechanical system all work perfectly. That was real satisfying.”

  On June 25, Herman wrote, “Kerner Co. over budget. Department heads urged to stop spending and hiring. Evaluate your expenditures and buy only the necessities … Jim Bloom would like people to consider trying to start the work day at 8 AM instead of 9 AM to increase productivity.”

  “I had to break away from shooting,” says Muren. Ken Ralston and Don Dow split Camera 1 “and Jim Veilleux continued on camera, so I could supervise for a couple of months. Don Dow started shooting in the daytime. We’ve had all the cameras shooting for months and months, and still the end is going to be a tight squeeze. I was hoping that by jumping the gun a bit we would be able to avoid the rush that always comes at the end of a show like this.”

  Doug Beswick, a Star Wars veteran, was working on another project in his San Fernando Valley machine shop when “Jon Berg called me and asked if I’d be interested in coming up there […], so I went up for a short visit. Jon and Phil showed me the taun […] They had this old armature, which was well deteriorated by that time, and a photograph of the taun that would be used in the film. There were a few sketches describing a basic idea of what was required for the armature. So I came back to the Valley and built a wooden prototype based on those drawings which illustrated the dimensions of the model, where the joints were, and what did what. A month later, I flew back to ILM with it and they made some changes. I worked from that and from a cast of the actual taun. The armature I made was aluminum, because it had to be light.”

  “Phil had his end worked out,” Muren says. “The armatures were functioning properly, and the puppets were cast.”

  “Doug and I went back and made the final taun armature used in the film,” Tom St. Amand says.

  Painted snowscapes were suddenly due August 1, a decision having been made to not shoot the walkers against bluescreen. “To resolve the matter on how to shoot the walkers, Ken Ralston shot a bluescreen test with a walker on each side of the frame, similar to a scene that might appear in the film,” says Muren. “But the matte edge looked funny, so it was discarded.”

  With the coffers emptying, work continued …

  Snowspeeder miniature with measurements.

  The Oxberry animation stand.

  The design for the displacement and plotting joints for the tauntaun stop-motion armature.

  Casting of the tauntaun models.

  In May 1979, ILM conducted a walker test.

  Peterson (in blue shirt) and Johnson conduct a tour for business folks (with what looks like the beginnings of the Star Destroyer on the table; behind them are model kits that would be “bashed” for parts; to Johnson’s left are Dick Gallegly and model makers Mark Thorpe and Wesley Seeds).

  Huston and Ease Owyeung work on the new Star Destroyer.

  Gawley works on the new Star Destroyer.

  Visual effects supervisor Brian Johnson poses with the completed Star Destroyer model.

  Seeds and Thorpe work on the fiber optics of the new Star Destroyer.

  Muren films the new Star Destroyer against bluescreen.

  ILM camera operator Don Dow and visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren prepare the lighting for a shot of the Star Destroyer’s underside, with animator Rick Taylor in the background.

  The Super Star Destroyer set up for a shot (with Don Dow in background) on a kind of oversized bluescreen pylon, with extra mechanics to support it (along with apple boxes to take some weight off the front), in turn, on top of a motion-control model-mover setup.

  The final model.

  A detail of the final model.

  “I remember a fairly small ‘production meeting’ in the screening room early on when everything seemed new and exciting, and many of us were just getting acquainted,” says Jon Berg. “Dick Gallegly had been involved in movies and TV for a long time and had worked for Walt Disney on the original Davy Crockett series [1954–55]. He compared working with Disney to his impression of George—not too shabby. In the same meeting, someone asked what the plan was for everybody after Empire was finished. Without a beat, in that wonderfully deep, rich voice of his, Dick said, ‘Throw us all back in the gutter where he found us.’ It was so fast and said with such humor, it still makes me laugh.”

  * * *

  FALL FROM SPACE

  JUNE TO AUGUST 1979

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  RUNNING ON FUMES

  REPORT NOS. 81–82: THURSDAY, JUNE 28–FRIDAY, JUNE 29: MAIN UNIT—NO SHOOTING; SECOND UNIT, FALCON COCKPIT

  On Friday, June 29, Ford wrapped his role as Han Solo, after shooting ever more Falcon cockpit shots against bluescreen. At this point, with Hamill injured and production 30 days behind schedule, morale hit its lowest point.

  “I’m terribly tired and that’s about all I have the energy to feel at the moment,” says Ford. “Probably later on I’ll have more complex feelings about it, but right now I’m just relieved that it’s over.”

  “Harrison was waiting by his telephone for Gary to see the rushes and make sure there were no hairs in the gate so he could get out,” Hamill says.

  “Harrison hardly said goodbye to you,” Arnold commented to Hamill. “He said goodbye to me because I s
aid goodbye to him. But he couldn’t get away quick enough.”

  “He was exhausted emotionally and physically,” says Kershner. “He just couldn’t wait to leave, even though he loved doing the picture. It’s a long, long schedule and everyone’s away from home. The actors were at the point of collapse and exhaustion by that time.”

  “I think probably the time that felt the worst was toward the end, just before Harrison left,” Kurtz says. “There was one week when I was sort of assaulted by everybody at the same time. Harrison, Carrie, and Mark for various reasons. I think all of the actors had a hard time, all of our young people, because the picture was very hard, very demanding on them.”

  “I remember falling asleep one day on the set and dreaming about half robots, half people,” says Fisher. “You’re hanging around the set for three or four months and you’re going to lunch with midgets and giants every day—eventually it permeates the brain. So I had these violent nightmares, dreams where you keep trying to impose your reality and you can’t. It gets you crazy.”

  “There were lots of times when you say to yourself, I don’t care; I hate this movie and everyone in it; I just want to go home,” Hamill says.

  “The first picture was very easy by comparison and maybe the actors weren’t quite prepared for what was required,” Kurtz adds, “so that as they reached the middle of the picture, everyone was quite tired and a little on edge. We had a lot of arguments. We were shooting in the Carbon Freezing Chamber and I felt that we had serious problems with both Mark and Carrie with Kersh in terms of communication. They were talking to me in the middle of the night and we had long sessions in the studio, and it just felt that there were tremendous barriers that we had to break through. But that’s part of the job, I guess. That just happens.”

  “Gary spent a lot of time taking photographs,” Fisher says. “I would ask, ‘Gary, are you producing now? Is this producing?’ ”

  “I’m totally out of my mind, but I am trained to be reserved,” Ford laughs. “My mind is raging completely out of control at all times. And I suspect everyone else’s is, too, so it no longer scares me the way it used to. I don’t even think about it. I mean, I think I’m sane enough to operate in the real world and I think I am relatively nice. I think the nicer an endeavor I’m engaged in, the nicer a person I am. So I try to lock myself in with good things to do.”

  “As we got toward the end of the day, sometimes the tension on the set was such that everybody’s trying to race to get finished,” Kurtz says. “I know that all the actors at one time or another felt we raced through their material, seemingly without regard for them, just to get finished.”

  “You get into a lot of technology and when the technology breaks down, you gotta fix all that stuff,” Billy Dee Williams says. “So you’re sitting around a good deal of the time until they get ready to use you.”

  “The robot broke down, the steam didn’t work,” Kurtz says. “It was very frustrating for everybody on the set, but most frustrating for the actors because that just reinforces their fear that the acting isn’t as important as the technical parts of the picture.”

  “Mark is very dedicated,” says Kershner. “I think Carrie in her way is just as dedicated. I think she hides it. It’s not stylish to be that dedicated. Harrison works very, very hard when he’s acting. But when he’s finished, it doesn’t really affect or change his life. He keeps his personal life intact. He’s not the measure of his work. In other words, he’s not ambitious in a way that some actors are who will carry their work home with them. He has other things on his mind.”

  “I work a lot with Artoo and, of course, I’m working with Darth Vader, whose voice will be done by another actor,” says Hamill. “It’s like the ultimate test as far as using your imagination. Even bluescreen is about trying to imagine flying through space or imagining your reaction to an explosion of a ship. It’s more fun when Kenny works, because you have somebody to talk to; it’s very lonely working with mechanical creatures. It’s rough.”

  “Rough?” Kershner laughs. “It was beyond rough—it was crazy. Threepio had it rough, too, trying to run up stairs, up ramps, being hurled around the spaceship. He was exhausted.”

  “Here I am, supposedly quite devoted to that little fellow, Artoo, and he’s not a little fellow at all,” says Daniels. “He has all the charm of Star Trek: The Ashtray.”

  “There were difficult times with the artists,” Watts says. “I think that, in a funny way, it was the same team that we had last time, but an older, more exposed to publicity, and slightly changed team from the one we had last time.”

  “It’s no trouble to offer a menacing presence when you’re told to hurry to the set, fully dressed, only to stand around for two hours while technicians adjust the lights,” Prowse says. “I get madder and madder! It’s no fun, I can tell you. The costume is quilted leather, weighs 48 pounds. The mask fogs and I sweat unbelievably.”

  “I’d throw my hands into the air in desperation about three times a day,” Kershner says. “The pressure was great, but the good nature of the cast got us through it.”

  “Kersh did look as though he was sort of at the end of his tether,” Arnold says to Kurtz.

  “Kersh got very tired because he said he’d never done a picture like this before,” Kurtz replies. “Normally on a picture, you can pace yourself: ‘I’ve got this big block and then this big block, and then I’ve got a lot of easy stuff.’ But this was all hard and he’s used to a system where he’s got certain things finished. We came down to a point in the middle of the picture where we hadn’t really finished anything.”

  “I tried not to call George too often,” Kershner says. “When I had big changes to make, toward the end of the film, we had a running dialogue on the phone, long distance. On minor changes, I went ahead and made them myself.”

  “I see the dailies in the United States on videotape, and I’m constantly talking to Kersh and Gary over the phone,” Lucas says. “This is only the second of my pictures that I haven’t directed [after More American Graffiti]. It’s been a unique experience to write down something the way I thought it should be, explain to the director how it was supposed to be done, describe the ambience, and then have it come out completely different from the way I’d thought of it. It’s an interesting experience and I can now see why screenwriters go crazy.”

  “George Lucas came in and we talked,” Arnold says to Kurtz of Lucas’s previous visit. “There were times when he thought, Well, I would have done it another way. He indicated sometimes, although he admitted that he was never there to see the day-to-day problems, that he felt that if he’d been directing, he could have gotten things done more quickly, based on his experience on the last one. Do you feel that you could have exerted—and he didn’t say you could—could have exerted more pressure throughout upon people and upon situations to speed it up?”

  “It’s possible in certain situations,” Kurtz replies, “but it is a delicate thing. Working with a director who hasn’t done this type of picture, it’s difficult to explain in advance that certain scenes are very, very complicated and you have to simplify them as much as possible. I think there are certain scenes that could have been done much faster. But Kersh’s style of working is entirely different from George’s and he has a harder time adjusting to problems.”

  “Gary didn’t form a relationship with Kershner,” Watts says. “He didn’t establish the relationship between producer and director—and that’s the most important one of the production. His heart was in the right place, but he wasn’t good with people. When you’re producing, you need to be able to talk to every type of person; I think the skill of producing is being able to do that. His personality, however, is such that some people, I think, find it a little difficult because he is, I suppose introverted is the right word. I do believe that I’m quite good with people and I think that has to be a plus in these circumstances, because certainly Gary does not have the common touch.”

  “I didn’t really
work with Gary that much,” says Kershner. “I worked with the production people mostly and he was back there working with them, I guess. I didn’t think of Gary as an actual part of the production manager team. He was sort of involved in some kind of a supervisorial way. I had a very friendly relationship with him and that’s about it.”

  “My relationship with Kersh did fray a bit,” says Kurtz. “He was under pressure from the financing side and I was under pressure from the production side to get it done as quickly as possible. And so it did fray our relationship. But I always felt that the sequel to Star Wars was going to be a big hit no matter what, just because of the nature of the expectations, so we therefore had to look at it on the basis of, Yes, alright, it is costing a little bit more and it’s gone over budget, but it has to be better or it’s not going to work. So that was one of the arguments that I had with George. I think that’s where we disagreed the most. Whenever this came up about Kersh working slowly, I would say, ‘Look at the rushes: The performances are really good, it’s working really well and it’s going to surprise everybody.’ But it was difficult, there’s no question about that.”

  “I think Kershner is feeling similar to the way I felt on the first film,” Lucas says. “He feels that it’s not coming up to his expectations. When you’re on the set, trying to get things to happen each day while everything’s falling apart around you—the robot won’t move or some technical thing malfunctions—then you’re compromising day by day and dying a thousand deaths.”