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

by Rinzler, J. W.

  Males 16 to 20: “These movies had a meaning. Mattes of Bespin weren’t realistic looking. Everything else was flawless. It’s one of the few sequels as good or better than the original.”

  Females 16 to 20: “I hope you find Han Solo!”

  Males 21 to 25: “I was surprised the story was good. I enjoyed the magic of the Force. But the army stuff, not for me.”

  Males 56 and over: “You will have the kids of America standing on their heads practicing psychokinesis. The Biblical parallels of the story are remarkable and fascinating. I am moved by your willingness to ‘go for it.’ Fabulous series of films. I support your intention.”

  “I remember getting the first preview cards from a screening we had here at the Northpoint and some of the criticisms were the tauntaun,” says Muren. “I thought, My God, what did we do wrong? I thought this thing was really working. And it got me to thinking that we had solved 10 percent of the problem, not 100 percent of the problem.”

  “George was worried about Solo’s line, ‘I know,’ ” Kershner says. “So we sneak-previewed the film and when the line came, the audience roared. George turns to me and says, ‘You see, it’s a mistake.’ Now the picture is over and they’re all talking about that line and how great it was. They all noticed it, so we kept it in the film. George knows what he wants, but he is very flexible and that’s why I like him so much.”

  On April 21, the “Action Negative” was delivered to Deluxe, but, in a memo the next day from Kurtz to Robert Greber, the former outlined the last key elements needing completion: The Dolby stereo optical soundtrack negative was on target for delivery on April 29; the mono optical soundtrack negative had three more weeks to go; the 35mm answer print would be completed by Monday or Tuesday of the following week. Deluxe was working around the clock on the color timing of the 70mm prints for the May 21 release date, while the MPAA Certificate of a PG rating had been forwarded to Fox.

  “The problem with 70mm that none of us anticipated was that you had to check-run the 70mm prints in real time because of the magnetic soundtrack,” says Kurtz. “And sometimes the magnetic coating on the 70mm prints doesn’t work; parts of it would flake off. So you had to listen to each reel all the way through to make sure that the soundtrack was okay. Normally the picture could be looked at in high speed and you could tell if there were defects. But for the sound, you couldn’t do that, so I ended up hiring people to sit 24 hours a day, running these 70mm prints. Every single print was run and the reject rate on the reels was something like 22 percent.”

  The first concept in which Rodis-Jamero hit upon the medical frigate design—“Joe, I’ve got it!”

  Rodis-Jamero then refined the idea, which, after being approved, was turned into a three-dimensional ship by the model shop (below).

  Lucas inspected that model, planning out shots (with Edlund, Johnson, and Gawley).

  As ILM surged toward its several goals, desperately trying to finish on time, someone wrote on the shot status board the Han Solo quote: “Never tell me the odds!”

  Color scheme concept for the Rebel Alliance medical frigate by Rodis-Jamero.

  A special comp of the medical frigate model and other miniatures against a star backdrop—the establishing shot of the Rebel fleet at the end of Empire.

  A series of four drawings by Rodis-Jamero on March 25, 1980, plotted out the film’s last shot.

  Johnston works on the nebula.

  Johnston consults with Muren. Muren drew on his experience making the 16mm film The Solar System: Islands in Space (for Charles Cahill and Associates Educational Films, 1972), repeating the use of flour, over-exposures, and a mirror to create space phenomenon. It took one day to set up the ILM shot and half a day to shoot it.

  Two strips of film (VistaVision and 35mm) of the nebula element.

  “Luke and Leia (Star Cruiser)” production painting by McQuarrie, October 3, 1978.

  “Luke and Leia (Star Cruiser)” final frame with the added nebula based on the artist’s work.

  A space element experiment setup at ILM.

  EXCITED PERCEPTIONS

  By the month of May, the financials were clear: To make a profit, Empire would have to earn more than $57,158,514, the sum of its “Before Release Producer fee,” which included the final cost for the film itself—$30,478,433, about $8 million of which was ILM—added to the distributor fee of $20,456,661 and more than $6 million in interest. The guarantees didn’t come close to this figure, so the sequel was going to have to do better than most films in recent memory.

  “The marketing campaign was working beautifully,” says Ganis. “And the guiding light for the campaign was George. He knew what he wanted. He’s the one who said to me, ‘I want to do a poster of Han Solo and Princess Leia like the Gone with the Wind poster.’ And if you take a look at the poster for Empire, you’ll see that’s exactly what we did. George is the conceptualizer. He doesn’t want to be out front of it, but he knows how to do it. Every once in a while, we’d try something completely off-the-wall, and then we’d go back to his idea.”

  To help with the campaign, Lucasfilm hired partners Manning Rubin and Jeff Wolff, who had formed Creative Alliance (a “creative boutique specializing in movie advertising”). “It’s Lucas’s baby all the way,” Rubin says. The first advertising would feature Han and Leia, followed by posters featuring Darth Vader—a “conscious” strategy devised by Lucas.

  “I’ve always had a very strong interest in the way my films are promoted and the way they’re released,” Lucas says.

  Licensing also came on strong, with Kenner leading the way thanks to a $10 million advertising push. To accommodate the growing frenzy for what was being called internally “E-Day” for Empire, Lucasfilm established a special Star Wars Hotline number (800–521–1980, the number being the release date), where callers could hear a recorded message from cast members.

  Though Lucas stayed behind the scenes, the film’s principals were, over a period of weeks, hustled from Los Angeles to New York to Washington to London to Japan and then on to Australia to sit for literally hundreds of endless newspaper, radio, and television interviews.

  “The first day we got here, we had a press conference at nine in the morning,” an “exhausted” Ford, with feet on a coffee table, told a reporter in New York’s Plaza Hotel. “And then from about 9:20 AM to 1:30 PM, we met a gross of journalists around a dozen tables, 12 at a time; moving from one table to another, we did about 150 interviews in four hours. An hour off for lunch, then we came back and did fifteen 5-to 10-minute television interviews in four hours. Then we went back to our rooms and passed out. The next day, we did 27 television interviews, and on into Sunday. This morning, I’ve done the Today show and about four or five interviews with print media.”

  “The last time we were on tour together, Harrison was the publicity sheriff,” says Hamill. “He would give us report cards: ‘Humility—B. I like what you said about not being in the business for money—A for that.’ ”

  From the Los Angeles Times, March 2, 1980, a Kenner sweepstakes ad offered tons of prizes, including toys—and a chance to attend the Washington D.C. premiere!.

  A memo from Lucasfilm marketing executive Sidney Ganis to Carol Titelman accompanied photos of the “UK/NY Junket.”

  At Selfridges, the huge department store on Oxford Street in London, a signing was held to promote Empire with Fisher, Hamill, Ford, Williams, Mayhew, Prowse, and Daniels.

  Fisher and Hamill.

  Mayhew.

  Storyboards of Luke’s rescue, which was finalized late in post, on April 23, 1980, and shot using one of the miniature Lukes.

  Muren holds two pilot Lukes, the smaller of which is a Kenner toy.

  Final frame.

  The 1967 re-release poster for Gone with the Wind (designed by Tom Jung and painted by Howard Terpning) was the inspiration for Empire’s first theatrical one-sheet.

  Six artists were hired to re-imagine Han and Leia as Rhett and Scarlett, according to painter R
oger Kastel—whose painting was chosen.

  The concepts of three of the other artists were also preserved in the Lucasfilm Archives. To keep him a secret, Yoda was not featured on any early posters in the United States.

  VOYAGE TO VICTORY

  MAY TO DECEMBER 1980

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Following a sneak preview at the Dominion Theater on May 6, the world premiere of Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back took place at the Odeon in London on May 20, the US preview having taken place three days earlier.

  “I got a call from George saying, ‘Next week, you’re going to fly over to London for the premiere,’ ” says Kershner. “I said, ‘That’s great. When are we going?’ And he said, ‘No, no, no. You’re going. It’s your film.’ I was very, very impressed with that. Since then, I have gotten to know George a little better and that’s true to his character.”

  “I felt ridiculous,” Prowse says of Vader’s paternity revelation. “I thought I was saying one thing and here they have me saying another.”

  “When the picture was shown at the Odeon, Darth Vader was sitting in back of me,” Kershner says. “And when he saw ‘I am your father,’ he tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve done it differently!’ ”

  “We had been promoting Star Wars in England and France,” says Ganis. “And then we flew back to Washington for a Saturday-afternoon screening of The Empire Strikes Back. When I say ‘we,’ I mean just about everybody in the cast and the director, of course.”

  The DC premiere at the Kennedy Center was a benefit performance for the Special Olympics. “Everybody wanted the movie,” Ganis says. “We knew we should do something, but we knew we couldn’t open it up to everybody even though there were so many people who wanted to use it for the right reason to benefit their worthy organization. The Special Olympics got it and it was a great, great premiere.”

  “I cannot think of any group more appropriate than Special Olympians to symbolize the struggle for justice and truth dramatized in the Star Wars epic,” says Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Special Olympics president. “In overcoming the challenges they confront every day, Special Olympians give others the same precious prize I believe George Lucas is trying to express in the Star Wars films: faith in the unlimited possibilities of the human spirit.”

  As a large crowd waited for the limousines to arrive, kids reportedly asked, “Is Chewbacca coming? Is Artoo-Detoo coming?”

  Before the film, everyone was invited to a luncheon of hot dogs, popcorn, and cotton candy, which was attended by Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Billy Dee Williams, Frank Oz, Kenny Baker, David Prowse, and Peter Mayhew (Anthony Daniels was bedridden at Sibley Hospital with what he called “some kind of blood poisoning”). The pre-event took three hours as the cast signed autographs for some 600 children, including 300 Special Olympians (a total of 1,100 people came to the premiere). Also on hand were Kershner, Kasdan, and Kurtz, along with Ted Kennedy, Amy Carter, Ethel Kennedy, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  “The day of the premiere, we went to the Kennedy Center,” young fans Lisa Timchalk and Teresa Perry told Tiger Beat, a Hollywood monthly. “They were having a luncheon before the showing of the movie, but we couldn’t get in, so we stood outside for about one hour, then decided to send a note to Mark. A girl who worked there took the note in to him.”

  “That afternoon we had all these beautiful little kids, who were handicapped in some way and who were Special Olympics kids,” Ganis says. “Everybody came onstage and took a bow.”

  “The luncheon was over and everyone was leaving,” Lisa and Teresa continue. “We tried not to be sad and give up hope, but the tears welled up in our eyes … We went down to the Eisenhower Theater where the movie was about to be shown. One of the ladies who worked there came up to us and [told us], ‘Mark Hamill requested to see you! He was looking for you but couldn’t find you.’

  “About five minutes later, the girl who had taken the message in to Mark came up to us and took us backstage. We were standing in a daze when—lo and behold!—Mark Hamill was coming. He had our note in his hand and he said, ‘So, you are my two friends who wrote the letter, huh?’ We couldn’t even answer—we just nodded. ‘Well, I guess you’re going to go in and see the movie now … I hope you don’t mind standing room.’

  “ ‘No!’ we said.

  “Mark said, ‘Enjoy the show,’ then he went back through the stage door.”

  As Empire was finally projected—the result of three years work and the committed efforts of hundreds—one reporter noted that “so great was the excitement that nearly half the dialogue was drowned out with squeals of joy and welcoming applause for each character.” Tony Kornheiser of The Washington Post wrote that “all the major stars sat through the film hearing the sound an actor loves most—wild, unbridled cheers.”

  At Loew’s State Theater in New York City, another preview had been held on May 9, as reported by Terry Lawson from Dayton, Ohio’s, Journal Herald on May 19: “The last strains … have faded from the Dolby sound system of Theater One, and press and invited celebs are streaming out into the cool Manhattan streets, babbling and smoking and looking for a drink. At the back of the theater, director Irvin Kershner leans against the wall and waits. He doesn’t wait long.”

  Peter Yates, director of Breaking Away (1979), told Kershner it was a “remarkable film.” Actor James Woods “offers Kershner his hand and tells him he really liked the film a lot, thought it was better than the original movie, ‘And you know what’s really great? It’s going to make … loads of money.’ ”

  Lawson adds that the following morning, when faced with “a gaggle of film writers and television interviewers in the ritzy Essex House hotel,” Kershner was in “a decidedly less ecstatic mood, which soon dissolves into ill-disguised anger. ‘What you’re asking is, Was I a technician on this picture or was I a director, right? Well, dammit, I was the director, ’cause I worked on this picture for two years and two months. I followed through … It’s my damn picture.’ ”

  An invitation to the European Royal Charity Premiere in London, England.

  To publicize the event, stormtroopers fanned out from the offices of Twentieth Century-Fox (with vehicles sporting decals advertising the film) for humorous, spontaneous photo ops.

  A letter from Special Olympics, Inc., to Sid Ganis on the efforts to procure the premiere for that charity group.

  Lucasfilm’s Fan Club magazine reported on Empire’s Washington D.C. charity benefit premiere.

  THE HOUSE OF STAR WARS

  On May 21, The Empire Strikes Back began its 70mm run. Although Variety reported its first day as only 41 theaters in 16 cities, the initial week had the film in 127 theaters, including the Northpoint in San Francisco (its premiere benefited the University of California at Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive); the Astor Plaza, Murray Hill, and the Orpheum 1 in New York City; and the Avco in Westwood, Los Angeles.

  “When it came time to open Empire, there was tremendous excitement and everybody agreed we should try something that had never been done before,” says Ganis. “So we opened it at the Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles at midnight—and then kept running it without stopping for one full day.”

  Except for Kubrick’s The Shining, which would bow in a limited release two days later, and Friday the 13th, which had been playing since May 9, Empire had little competition—The Hollywood Knights, The Gong Show Movie, The Long Riders—as no studio wanted to go up against it. However, Empire was opening relatively small compared to many tent-pole movies, with a wider 35mm release planned for June 18 and an even wider distribution for the later summer. As usual, movie houses would deduct their operating costs and then split the box office in favor of the studio 90–10, with the theater making more as the weeks elapsed (though there were many financial variations that depended on individual theaters and particular state laws).

  The Washington Post reported that 750 people were standing in line to catch the 11 AM s
how, “computer programmers and economists and housewives and students out of school for the summer … Two [parents] wrote notes to get their kids excused from school early so they could go to the movie. Even Amy Carter, in designer jeans, skirt, and shirt, showed up with a group of classmates—it was her second time.”

  Among those in the queue were a soldier, a policeman, and a reverend. “The print’s usually better if you go early,” said early entrant Tom Finn. “If you go later, it’s been run four or five times a day … It’s picking up scratches.”

  At one theater, people waited two hours and didn’t get in; at another, would-be attendees stood in the rain for three hours, also without getting in. Many theaters added showings to their schedules to accommodate the massive turnout.

  “There’s like hundreds upon hundreds and hundreds of people in line, wearing costumes, countdown signs—it’s just amazing,” says Maureen Garrett, head of the Lucasfilm Fan Club. “The devotion factor was really high, to have to be at that first screening. It’s total chaos. I’ve been in the first show with the fans and it’s just electric.”