…which became a McQuarrie painting of a Y-wing as it flew toward a planet (possibly Yavin) …
…which became the Colin Cantwell Death Star …
…which finally became another revised McQuarrie painting of the same pilot following the redesigned pirate ship approaching a redesigned Death Star.
Chas: Are you open to suggestion?
Lucas: Yeah, more or less; less than more, I’m afraid. Up till now the movies I’ve made have been my own movies; they’ve been very small and I’ve been able to handle everything. This is the first time I’m going to have to deal with a real crew in a real movie in a real professional situation. I want to be able to call all the shots, but I’m going to have to be slightly removed from a lot of what’s happening. That’ll be interesting. But I think I’m ready for it. I’ve loosened up a little bit. As you get older, you get tired more quickly. It’s more fun to have other people make suggestions, so you don’t have to do all the work.
Chas: Considering that this is a film that takes place in another galaxy, possibly in another time, where there’s been no contact with Earth, how are you going about designing things as simple as eating utensils?
Lucas: I’m trying to make props that don’t stand out. I’m trying to make everything look very natural, a casual almost I’ve-seen-this-before look. You see it in the paintings we’ve had done, especially the one that Ralph McQuarrie did of the banthas. You look at that painting of the Tusken Raiders and the banthas, and you say, ‘Oh yeah, Bedouins …’ Then you look at it some more and say, ‘Wait a minute, that’s not right. Those aren’t Bedouins, and what are those creatures back there?’ Like the X-wing and TIE fighter battle, you say, ‘I’ve seen that, it’s World War II—but wait a minute—that isn’t any kind of jet I’ve ever seen before.’ I want the whole film to have that quality! It’s a very hard thing to come by, because it should look very familiar but at the same time not be familiar at all.
Chas: How are you going about that with the various people you work with?
Lucas: I keep saying, ‘Keep it nondescript.’ I say that every time, every place I can. It can be a computer, but it’s got to be a nondescript computer. I don’t want anything to stand out. I don’t want any of the costumes, any of the spaceships, any sets, any animals—I don’t want anything in the movie to stand out. I want you to walk out of the movie and if somebody asks you what were they wearing, I want you to say, ‘I can’t remember what they were wearing. I can’t remember what the sets were like.’ If they ask, ‘What did the ray guns look like?’ You’d say, ‘I don’t know—they just looked like ray guns.’ If the whole movie looks like that, it’ll be terrific. It’ll be absolutely the opposite of what all the science-fiction movies are. With every other science-fiction movie, you remember what every set looks like, you know exactly the costumes they were wearing—because it all stands out and it all looks like it’s been designed. I’m working very hard to keep everything nonsymmetrical. Nothing looks like it belongs with anything else. You walk into a set and there’s lots of different influences, not just one influence. It’s a very common thing in science fiction to see a set that has one influence. Everything matches. The chairs match the table, match the rug, match the design of the doors, match the door handle, match the lamps. I want it to look like one thing came from one part of the galaxy and another thing came from another part of the galaxy.
After Alderaan’s scenes had been moved to the Death Star, and following the pirate ship redo, McQuarrie updated his paintings to include the new vessel and starfields instead of clouds outside the docking bay.
Chas: How’d you go about choosing your composer, John Williams?
Lucas: I’d heard that he was a very good classical composer, very easy to work with. I liked what he had done with Steve [Spielberg], who recommended him very highly and he thought I should talk to him. So I did and we got along very well, so I decided to hire him. I really knew the kind of sound I wanted. I knew I wanted an old-fashioned, romantic movie score, and I knew he was very good with large orchestras.
Early storyboards by Joe Johnston show Imperial officers in helmets firing at the second pirate ship as it tries to leave Alderaan/the Death Star (the model has changed, but the sky, instead of stars, can still be seen outside).
Rebel pilot Biggs wears a helmet with an Egyptian-style all-seeing-eye emblem in a storyboard intended as a guide for front projection “Process Plate #14A.”
Chas: Any particular scores you’ve liked by him?
Lucas: I liked Jaws [which had been released on June 20, 1975, and become a mega-hit].
Chas: How are you treating the musicians in the cantina? You’ve talked about a different type of music for that…
Lucas: It will be a very bizarre, kind of primitive rock. I’m toying with the idea of adding a country-and-western influence to the film, combining country and western with classical. If I can get away with it, I might do it.
Revised Paintings
“When new spaceships were designed, I would put them in and paint out the one I had,” says Ralph McQuarrie. Once the second pirate ship had been approved, the artist launched into a series of paintings so all concerned could see what the new vessel looked like in the context of the film’s burgeoning sets and special effects.
An early sketch.
The early sketch led to a painting of Ben and the others arriving in the Mos Eisley docking bay with the first pirate ship. The crane at the top of the picture was considered too old-fashioned and not included in the film, according to McQuarrie.
A later painting features the revised pirate ship design. Han Solo’s clothes also reflect a redesign: Instead of being in blue and with a cape, he wears a vest and sweater, light trousers, and dark boots. The beard has been shaved, too, so that he looks more like Buck Rogers.
* * *
THE BIG BATTLE BEGINS
Just before and after Fox’s decision, Lucas attended casting sessions while in Los Angeles. Between sessions, ILM needed more attention—but before showing up at Goldwyn Studios or at Van Nuys, rising before dawn as he had while writing THX 1138, Lucas was busy hammering out the fourth draft. In particular, he was honing the end battle, which ILM needed to get a jump on.
“It wasn’t until the fourth draft that I described the dogfight in detail,” Lucas says. “What I did each time before that, as I finished the draft, was think to myself, This is not the final script, and then write, ‘There is this big battle and Luke wins.’ But now I had to really work it all out. Some of the details had been sketched in, so I took those and expanded them. I would also consult the World War II footage I’d cut together, and the storyboards that had been made in conjunction with the edited film, and just write the story and then restructure it like an editor would. It was almost like making a documentary film, in that I cut it and wrote it at exactly the same time. That seven minutes of film time, when it was translated shot by shot, became about fifty pages of the script, because each shot was described in detail.”
On December 17 Lucas explained to Lippincott: “I have to do twenty-five boards [shot descriptions] a day, so I’m getting up at three o’clock in the morning to start the twenty-five—but I have to get them done by nine o’clock in the morning. The casting and testing I can’t show up late for, but every time I go out to ILM, I end up going out there at nine o’clock instead of eight o’clock because of the fact that I can’t leave until I finish my twenty-five boards.”
Lucas inspects the second pirate ship construction at ILM with Bill Shourt (next to the core of the vessel).
Lucas with Bill Shourt and Jamie Shourt
Later Joe Johnston works on the ship’s paint job, inside the spray booth.
Paul Huston and model maker David Grell work on the Falcon model.
Handwritten notes reveal that one of the rebel pilots, “Chewie”—a leftover from previous drafts—was going to be one of the few to survive: “Chewie: ‘Here we go again … I’ve got a malfunction, Luke … I can’t stay with you … Y
ou did it! You did it! They went right in!’ ” But with Chewie becoming the nickname of Chewbacca, Solo’s copilot in the fourth draft, rebel pilot Chewie became rebel pilot Wedge. Solo’s end heroics were also solidified in Lucas’s notes: “Full shot of wingman POV. Out of the sun charges Han Solo, in his pirate manta-ship heading right for the TIE ships.”
Rushing to ILM with his pages in hand, Lucas would then consult with Dykstra and Johnston on the impending front projection plates, after which he’d review the model makers’ progress on the essential miniatures. Immediately upon Lucas’s approval of Johnston’s new pirate ship sketch, Steve Gawley had done the orthographic drawings, and the model-building crew had started work that continued through Christmas and New Year’s, coming in Sunday nights at four in the morning to take pieces out of molds so that they would be ready for Monday-morning revisions.
“Joe Johnston and I actually carpooled from Long Beach to Van Nuys every day,” Gawley says. “It was like 124 miles round-trip every day, but we were thrilled as can be to be working on something this cool. Though the distance sometimes did get in the way—you know, you’d be working late so that it wouldn’t pay to drive home, so we’d sleep over in the screening room.”
That excitement must have carried over into the creation of the new pirate ship, building a palpable sense of pride in the work, because all eleven artists who had a part in it signed their names on the finished model.
AMAZING STORIES
Lucas arrived, on time, for at least three casting sessions—December 12, 15, and 30—as videotape still exists for those meetings. Among the tested were, on the first day, Kurt Russell, Patti d’Arbanville, Richard Doran, and Terri Nunn; on the second day, Kurt Russell (again), Chris Moe, Forest Williams, Amy Irving, Christopher Allport, Terri Nunn (again), and Will Seltzer; and on the third day, Terri Nunn (for the third time), Lisa Eilbacher, Robby Benson, Eddie Benton, Linda Purl, Andy Stevens, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher.
Newcomer Harrison Ford was present all three days. While most tests were for the Luke and Leia parts, with Nunn clearly the front-runner for the latter, Ford was called upon to read Han Solo’s lines for each tryout. According to Ford, he was asked to read with the others thanks to Fred Roos, who had helped persuade Lucas to amend his policy of not considering any actors who’d appeared in American Graffiti. The long and inconclusive first casting session had also changed matters, as both Cindy Williams and Charles Martin Smith—like Ford, Graffiti veterans—were also allowed to test.
Roos also went so far as to “cast” Ford in a staged performance for Lucas’s benefit, which happened to include another Graffiti stalwart, Richard Dreyfuss. Roos had long ago cast Ford in one of his first parts—a political activist in Zabriskie Point (1970), a role that was eventually cut from the film—and he seems to have had an ongoing concern for the struggling actor’s welfare.
“I left acting to become a carpenter because our second baby was coming and we like to eat,” Ford says. “I wasn’t making it as an actor.”
Because the sessions were being held at the American Zoetrope offices, Roos “hired” Ford, who was also a skilled carpenter, to install a door there—precisely when he knew Lucas would be coming by. “Getting George to consider Harrison took some working around,” Roos says.
“I was out there kneeling down in the hall, putting up this elaborate doorway,” Ford says. “Dreyfuss, the big movie star, came in to see George for the picture, and there I was cast as the blue-collar worker. That was the only time I saw George, not more than three or four weeks before they were set to make a decision.”
The ploy worked, according to Roos: “It just kind of clicked for George at that point.”
Lucas during the second casting session in December 1975.
“I thought, Here’s a possibility,” Lucas says. “Harrison was right for the part, so Fred suggested he read with everybody, which I thought was a great idea—but I wasn’t going to commit. I wanted someone just like Harrison, but not Harrison, because he was in Graffiti and I didn’t want people thinking of another film while watching Star Wars—I wanted it to be new. But Fred liked to help actors survive and was giving him work, and was pushing for him for that part. But I had to go through the whole process. I wasn’t going to take anyone just because I knew them, or I knew they could act well—I really wanted to see all the diverse possibilities and come at it fresh. Plus, I wasn’t going to choose anyone until I’d tested the whole cast together.”
“I think I did fifty or sixty tests for them—testing other people,” says Ford, continuing the story. “I was asked to help them test other people. The test was offered, pretty much, without explanation. Many times, I was asked to explain to the testees what the story was about, or George would offer a very simple explanation—that there was this farm boy sent off to the big city, who got involved in this adventure. Then we’d read the scene. But there were not very many people who were not hung up on that level of it. It was a very difficult situation for most of them.”
The cursory summaries were the result of Lucas’s desire simply to see these candidates on-screen; their understanding of the situation mattered little compared with their performance’s unpredictable chemical reaction to the video and film stocks on which they were being recorded.
“I have them do readings, then videotape tests, then film tests,” Lucas says. “Each time, I weed people out. By the time I get down to an actual film test, I’ve really gotten to know that person. I’ve gotten to know their acting ability and all the ramifications of their personality. Because you have one impression when you meet somebody for five minutes and another impression when you call them back and talk to them for half an hour—and then you have another impression when they’ve played the scene on tape and you can sit back in a room and study it on television.”
In addition to the actors, calls had gone out for “little people and giants,” according to Dianne Crittenden, whose assistants used “breakdown services” to send letters to every agent in town; she also put ads in the trade papers. As he had during the first casting sessions, Lucas was contemplating a different tack, this time playing with the idea of doing the film almost entirely with little people—according to Lippincott, “rewriting the whole film for midgets.”
“When I was in New York, I had also done some screen tests for little people,” Lucas says. “I explored all kinds of ideas of making it exotic. I think that idea was a little influenced by Lord of the Rings.”
While that concept was ultimately short-lived, Lucas had not forgotten his idea of casting a black Han Solo, Ford notwithstanding. As all these ideas fought for dominance in his mind, two dark-horse actors arrived for their videotape tests on December 30: Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher.
LUKE STARKILLER
The dialogue chosen for those trying out for the Luke Starkiller role was originally written for Ben Kenobi. In the third draft he explains to Han Solo the financial situation after they’ve discovered that Organa Major has been destroyed, coercing him into helping rescue Princess Leia:
HAN
Why?
LUKE
Well, for one reason, we don’t have your other five thousand.
HAN
Who’s going to pay me then?
LUKE
I think there are some things we should talk about.
HAN
I’m beginning not to like you.
Video excerpts from the taped auditions: Lisa Eilbacher, Linda Purl, Eddie Benton, Cindy Williams, Carrie Fisher, Amy Irving, Perry King and Charles Martin Smith, Robby Benson, Mark Hamill, Kurt Russell, Frederic Forrest, Harrison Ford, Andrew Stevens, William Katt, and Will Seltzer.
Mark Hamill, though he’d made it this far, was anything but a shoo-in for the part. “George was open to reseeing some of the people, like Mark, who he’d dismissed early on,” Crittenden says. “This is one place where Fred Roos came in, because Fred had worked with George before, so George respected him.”
“There was
that one meeting,” Hamill recalls, “and then Christmas rolled around and I had forgotten about it completely. The next thing I heard, Nancy had gotten me a test with George, way out of nowhere. Four pages of dialogue. There was one great line, though, and it was the hardest piece of dialogue I’d ever memorized. I came about a half hour early to the test, memorizing this line the way you memorize ‘she sells sea shells by the seashore.’ And it was, ‘We can’t turn back. Fear is their greatest defense. I doubt if the actual security there is any greater than it was on Aquilae or Sullust. What there is, is most likely directed toward a large-scale assault.’ Who talks like that? But you’re selling it.”
Although perplexed by his lines, Hamill had actually followed the progress of the production since its beginning, reading about it in the “Films in Preparation” section of Variety. The young actor had even contacted his agent way back when to see if she could perhaps get him a walk-on role, because he was curious to learn how science-fiction films were made, such was their rarity.
The Making of Star Wars (Enhanced Edition) Page 20