“We had a lot of trouble with the wings of the TIE ships warping in the heat of the stage lights,” Joe Johnston says. “Sometimes they had to hang for quite a while while they were lit and rigged for explosions—and if there was any kind of delay, it would warp all over the place because we used thin beams around the perimeter of the wings to hold the paper in.”
* * *
THE FOX PREVIEW
Toward the end of January, Lucas felt ready to screen a cut for Alan Ladd. “It was the first time I showed it to an outside group,” Lucas says. “We did a mix for Johnny Williams with the temp track, and right after that we showed it to Laddie, his wife, Gareth Wigan, and Jay Kanter. A very small group.”
Wigan and Kanter constituted with Ladd a power triumvirate at Fox that had been shepherding their films through the studio labyrinth. After they and Fox executive Leonard Kroll, who also attended, settled into the seats of the screening room constructed behind Park Way, and as the film neared its finale, Lucas noticed that one of the execs was becoming emotional. “I was sitting right next to Gareth, and he turned to me and he had tears in his eyes,” Lucas says. “I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe Gareth Wigan was crying—I thought he was crying because he was thinking, Oh my God—our whole careers are destroyed. Our lives are destroyed! But he said, ‘This is the greatest film I’ve ever seen.’ And I thought, No way! I’d never had a studio executive say that at the end of a screening. I thought, This is really weird.”
It must have been all the more surreal when Lucas remembered the previous reactions of Warner Bros. and Universal to his first two features. Wigan was so moved that upon returning home, “I sat my family ’round the kitchen table and I said, ‘The most extraordinary day of my life has just taken place. I want you to remember this day because I never thought I would have a day’s experience like the day I’ve had today in seeing this film.’ ”
The others had varying opinions. “Laddie didn’t know what to think,” Lucas says. “His wife loved the movie. She was going on, but Laddie was quiet and said, ‘Gee, George, you did a really good job.’ After they all left, Paul and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and said, ‘What was that all about? It could’ve been worse!’ ”
Around this time, Hal Barwood’s estimation of the film also changed. “I got invited up to a screening that George was having,” he says, “in a little screening room, with William Morris fabrics on the wall and these big easy chairs you could sit in. I brought my two kids, who were about ten, and we sat down and we watched this thing. It was just all sorts of slugs and leader with Magic Marker marks—but I was just knocked silly by the movie. I was just thrilled to the core by this fantastic film. I couldn’t believe it. Of course, I’d been set up to be stunned because of my doubts previously.”
The sandcrawler model’s proportions were worked out retroactively to fit the bottom third that production had built in England. ILM used as a point of reference a shot of the sandcrawler on a hill where its “headlights” could be seen, matching that to the miniature’s. Its mechanics were designed by Jamie Shourt, who installed an electrical system that supplied voltage to the treads based solely on how much was needed, so there would be no spinning wheels.
Paul Huston and Joe Johnston work on the sandcrawler model, as based on Johnston’s sketches done in August 1976.
Johnston’s sketches done in August 1976.
Although the reactions of Barwood and Wigan were similar to Richard Chew’s, the businesspeople who would have a large impact on the success of the film—the theater owners—had no idea what the film was like, and they were proving hard to educate. Their lack of financial enthusiasm was causing anxiety throughout the studio, because Star Wars was backed solely by Fox, whereas its two most recent big-budget films—Lucky Lady and Hello, Dolly—had been co-financed with another studio, and hence less risky.
“Lucky Lady had star names and theater guarantees,” Ladd explains, “so even though it didn’t do what everybody had hoped, the cash loss on the picture wasn’t going to be worrisome. With Star Wars nobody was able to get the guarantees. It was a very negative response. One of the key things with a film is getting the appropriate ‘house’ [movie theater in which to open]. So we had to go out early to get the proper houses, and we got absolutely no response at all. Exhibitors were going heavily into A Bridge Too Far, Exorcist II, Sorcerer, and The Deep. So we had great problems getting guarantees for Star Wars.”
Fox had actually started the process back in October, without a print of the film to show, by sending out bid forms to every theater owner throughout the United States. Almost schizophrenically, the form listed the conditions for the rental—an exclusive 12-week run and a 90/10 profit split—which were strangely exorbitant given the studio’s precarious confidence in Star Wars, and which had the effect of scaring off most exhibitors.
During that first month of the year, with the film close to being locked, Lippincott interviewed the three principals, who were also in the dark as to its future. On January 4 Carrie Fisher said, “The great thing about Star Wars is that when I see it, I’m going to be as surprised as anyone, because I’ve not seen any of the effects. Are they going to have my planet blown up? I’m very curious to see what my planet looks like blowing up, what I look like flying through space.”
On January 5 Mark Hamill said, “I would do anything for George. I’d go paint his house. Seriously. But I may never get to work with him again … He told me once that he didn’t want to make features anymore, that he wanted to go back and make student movies. I’ll do those, too.”
“I don’t know what it is going to look like, not at all. No idea,” Harrison Ford said on January 20. “When I was filming, I had no idea how they were going to do some of the things that were in there. It was a mystery. And still is to this day.”
Color Relations
As the picture took on its final shape, certain aspects of Lucas’s visual plans became clear. “You are sitting in a nice light room for the first half of the film,” he says, “but in a darker room for the second half. So for the first half you feel happy and sunny, and during the second half you might feel more oppressed and moody. It’s subtle, but I think it will have an effect on people.”
The characters’ costumes and design also play a part in the director’s larger look. “Leia is dressed in white and is part of the technological world—black, white, and gray,” Lucas says. “She has a spaceship, but she would’ve been a stranger if she’d gone to Tatooine, the natural world: tan, brown, and green. She would be like Artoo. I really liked the idea that when Luke, Ben, the Wookiee, Threepio, and Artoo are all together, everyone except Artoo blends into the real world, Tatooine; it works very well. But when you go to the Death Star, it works just the opposite. Artoo fits in with everything because everything is black and white, and he is primarily white. We made the stormtroopers white, too (also to mix things up, so not all the bad guys were dressed in dark colors). Even Threepio is out of place in the Death Star, more than Artoo. That was a creative decision to make Threepio part of the people, earth side, which was an esoteric idea, but I liked it.
“The only thing that we varied a little bit was the Han Solo costume: He’s dressed in browns, and has a spaceship, because he is an eclectic. He takes a little from everything.”
* * *
NO END IN SIGHT
From mid-January to early February 1977 second and third units were scheduled to do pickups and reshoots. Nearly all the shots were going to be on location, with the only set a reconstitution of the cantina alcove.
“The other big argument with Fox was over the cantina set and the Death Valley pickups,” Kurtz says. “In a production meeting at the studio someone said the cantina set was going to cost us $100,000, so the studio said no. They wouldn’t authorize the expenditure. We were talking about fifteen or twenty creatures—the elephant suit would cost $25,000—so I really had to go to Laddie, go down to the studio, and tell them that we estima
ted that it was going to cost from $30,000 to $40,000, certainly under $50,000, and that it was extremely important for that sequence to be right.
“This was also at the time where they were arguing over paying the Huycks,” he adds. “They wanted $15,000 for their dialogue polish. Fox wasn’t going to pay it. They insisted that George pay for it out of his writing fees. That’s why we were so pissed at the studio. They made no effort to help in any of these areas at all; it would’ve been a goodwill gesture, more than anything else.”
The funds for the cantina reshoot were necessary in part to pay Rick Baker and his small crew, who had been engaged to make the cantina creatures. “A good animator friend of mine was friends with Dennis Muren,” Baker says. “He heard that they were looking for people to do these aliens, so he gave them my name.” Baker had started doing puppets and makeup for low-budget films like The Thing with Two Heads (1972) but had recently graduated to big-budget films with the remake of King Kong (1976).
“George explained that there was a scene in the film where there is a bar and there are a whole bunch of aliens in it,” Baker adds, “and he just wanted some more aliens. George and I talked for a great deal of time and we were both very excited about what we were talking about, I think, and maybe that’s why he went with me.” Baker’s bid was accepted, with the caveat that only Stuart Freeborn would get a credit on the film, as he was the primary artist. Baker agreed and started his team, which consisted of Jon Berg, Phil Tippett, Laine Liska, and Doug Beswick.
While they began sketching out alien concepts, Kurtz’s negotiations with Fox netted them $20,000 for the sequence. Though less than what they’d wanted, getting anything may have been a result of Ladd’s positive reaction to the preview. “We just cut down the number of weeks that we had to work,” Baker says. “I think at that point George wanted like seven monsters. Well, we were all fans of science-fiction films. All of us wanted the opportunity to show what we could really do, so we did a lot more work than we got paid for. We ended up with about six weeks to do as many aliens as we could.”
THE UNITED STATES DESERTS
A few ILMers began construction of the alcove set on a small sound stage in Hollywood, while Grant McCune, Lorne Peterson, Joe Johnston, and others began photography of the miniatures on location. “I think there were six trips made to the desert,” Johnston says. “Four were made just to shoot the sandcrawler; on two others they took the landspeeder along for canyon shots. The sandcrawler was constantly breaking down: the tracks would jam, the tread would come off. The sandcrawler probably ended up costing more per second than anything else in the film, because it involved taking that model, a camera, and a crew of six guys out to the desert, where they usually had to spend the night. We left the model once in a van, and it got cold that night. We were in a motor home twenty yards away, but we could hear the pieces of styrene popping and cracking on the model.”
On the first trip one of the sandcrawler’s inner lightbulbs broke and they didn’t have a replacement; the second time it was too windy and cloudy; on the third trip the lighting exposure was done incorrectly; only the fourth shoot was perfect.
Lucas was leading the second unit, and had called in Mark Hamill for their pickups. Hamill was driving himself out to the location in mid-January, the Friday night before the rest of the crew left, when he had a bad car accident. According to Kurtz, Hamill was taken to County General and then, because of the severity of his wounds, to Mount Sinai Hospital. “They operated from about nine o’clock in the morning until about four in the afternoon,” Kurtz says. “I saw him at four thirty, and Mark said, ‘Oh. I’m sorry I got delayed. As soon as I get out of here this morning, we can go.’ He evidently had no idea what he looked like.”
With Hamill out, Lucas and his crew set up their gear to capture footage of banthas, Tusken Raiders, and whatever they could. “There were a lot of things I wanted to shoot with Mark that we had to do without—bits and pieces, at least ten close-ups—but that was just fate,” Lucas says. “We ended up using a double for the landspeeder shot.”
“I was real concerned about the elephant wearing the bantha headgear,” Rick Baker says. “It weighed something like three hundred pounds.”
“We all fell in love with Mardji,” Lucas adds. “It was the first time she’d ever been out in the real world. They led her down to a creek in Death Valley and she just loved to play around in that creek.”
Fortunately, the elephant was good-natured and her shots were recorded without incident. Next up was the full-scale landspeeder, whose hovering effect had so far eluded production.
“We tried several ideas during filming, and none of them seemed to work,” Lucas says. “We finally tried using a mirror, and that came close, but it didn’t work, either. So when we went out to Death Valley, we redid the mirror and made it sturdier and made it longer, raised the car a little bit higher, and found a lake bed that had topography that was easier to work with. Then we shot it again, but that didn’t work because not enough care was taken to make the mirror and to get the speeder going fast enough. Finally, Bob Dalva came back with a crew and made it work. But he only got one shot, and we needed three. So then we sent another cameraman to get the final two shots using the same method.”
A student at USC with Lucas, Dalva had gone on to be one of the founding members of American Zoetrope. Another old friend of Lucas’s was Carroll Ballard, whom he’d gotten to know while making The Rain People (and who would direct The Black Stallion in 1979, with Coppola producing), and he became Lucas’s second-unit DP. “George did get some money to do some retakes,” Ballard recalls. “So I went out and shot out in the desert for about two weeks. Then we went back to Hollywood on a tiny stage right across from Kodak and shot the bar scene.”
John Dykstra, Richard Edlund, and Grant McCune in the desert of Randsburg shooting the sandcrawler miniature.
Doubles of C-3PO, Obi-Wan, and Luke in the landspeeder with its mirrored skirt for more pickups.
Transportation of R2-D2 and other material in a truck.
Kurtz, DP Carroll Ballard, and Lucas.
In Death Valley, Kurtz, DP Carroll Ballard, and Lucas shot pickups of the bantha (completely dressed).
DP Carroll Ballard and Lucas on location.
The “bantha” was named Mardji, a 22-year-old, 8,5 0 0-pound female Asian elephant, who was normally a resident of Marine World Africa U.S.A. (partially dressed, with the elephant trainer in the Tusken Raider outfit). “It took six men to build up [her costume] and they worked for a month,” says Ron Whitfield, director of general theater at the amusement park. The base was a “howdah,” or elephant saddle. The curving horns were made from flexible home ventilation tubing. Mardji’s shaggy coat was created from palm fronds, while the head mask was molded from chicken wire and then sprayed with foam to give it shape; the beard was made from horse hair. Although she was able to water-ski for spectators at the park, the bantha tail, made of wood and covered with thick bristles, gave Mardji problems—but her handler gave her apples, which compensated for the costume.
“There is video content at this location that is not currently supported for your eReading device. The caption for this content is displayed below.”
Printed dailies from the pickup shoot in Death Valley, mid-January 1977, of Mardji the elephant dressed up as a bantha. Although Mardji has been trained to keep her trunk hidden, it sneaks out here and there. (No audio)
(1:05)
A TALE OF GOO
The inserts needed for the cantina scene took two days to shoot, at Dovington’s small studio on La Brea Avenue, on January 24 and 25, 1977. The new dialogue was typed up for reference on February 5, 1977:
Han and Chewbacca slide out of the booth, a slimy green-faced alien with a trunk snout pokes a gun in Han’s face. He speaks with an electronic intonation.
GREEDO
OOOH TAHTOO TAHT SOLO?
HAN
Yes, Greedo. As a matter of fact I was just going to see your boss. Tell
Jabba I’ve got his money.
GREEDO
SOM BEJA LAY. SARA TRAMPEECA MOCK KEY CHEEZKA. JABBA WANINCHEKC BA WOO SHANEE TY WANYA ROOZKA …HEH, HEH, HEH, HEH. CHASK IN YAWEE, CHOOZO.
HAN
Yeah, but this time I’ve got the money!
GREEDO
EL JAYA KOOLKA IN DE KOOLY KUU SOO AHH.
HAN
I don’t have it with me …Tell Jabba—
GREEDO
JABBA HI TISH KEE!!! SO GUU RUUYA PUU YA YA OOR WAH SEE PATKEEKA KUU SHOO KUU PON WAH SCHREEPIO!
HAN
Even I get boarded sometimes. You think I had a choice?
GREEDO
DLAP JABBA, POOM PAH KOOM POTNEY AH TAH POM PAH!
HAN
Over my dead body …
GREEDO
OOHKLAY YUMA, CHEEZT OE KUU TOO TAH PREEZTAH KRENKO …YAH POZKA!
HAN
Yes, I’ll bet you have …
Back on September 30, 1976, McQuarrie had already started making sketches of aliens for the planned reshoot of the cantina scene. Ron Cobb also contributed a number of illustrations.
The Making of Star Wars (Enhanced Edition) Page 42