“I said that happened to coincide exactly with my feelings,” Marquand continues. “In the last movie, the princess became such a bitch, she really was a drag. It became very boring. I was sure there was a lot more depth there we could use and more comedy, too. Turn her into more of a woman. Carrie said, ‘Oh yes, if only I could just break down …’ There were tears for a moment!”
“I asked George for some sort of a drinking problem,” Fisher would say. “I said, ‘Leia lost her parents and planet in the first film and in the second a very close friend lost his hand and her first boyfriend was frozen. By the third movie, I must be totally exhausted. I’ve been chased for who knows how many years.’ I figure I’m ready to go, ‘Hey, guys, I can’t do this anymore. I’m going to get my hair done. You handle it.’ And I book myself into a convent.”
Hamill had given Lucas a coffee-table science-fiction book and in the inscription had asked him to choose Luke’s girlfriend from the tome. He’d figured if Luke wasn’t going to get Leia, his character should have a romance with somebody else. But after talking things over with Lucas, the actor understood that a girlfriend was not in the cards.
“I liked Richard from the start,” Hamill would say. “We discussed everything, from what we thought was going to happen to what we wanted to see happen. He was very enthusiastic and delighted at the prospect of making the movie. His energy matched my own enthusiasm for finishing the trilogy. As an actor I wanted the storyline to be that Luke goes to the dark side and at the very end turns and comes back. Maybe he’s confronted with having to wreak harm on someone like Leia or Han. By the time we got to Jedi we all started to feel a little proprietary about our parts.”
Audio element not supported.
Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) discusses his character’s emotional and physical arc, and his interplay with the dark side. (Interview by Garrett at Elstree Studios, 1982) (1:58)
“I think my first contact with Richard Marquand was probably pleasant,” Fisher would say.
Given his chance, Ford returned to his mantra, with an eagerness for the film perhaps lesser than Hamill’s. “I desperately wanted to die,” Ford says. “I thought it would give the myth some body, and that Han Solo, in fact, really had no place to go. He would have best served the situation by giving it the weight of sacrifice, but that was the one thing I was unable to convince George of. George has a predisposition to happy endings. There’s no less enthusiasm on my part because my idea didn’t pan out. I just say that to illustrate the fact that I feel I am finished with the story.”
“He said, ‘I want to die,’ ” Marquand confirms. “And he sort of persuaded me that there was a lot in what he was saying. If he could have some super heroic death, he would be out of the way so that Mark and Carrie can work out whatever it is they are going to do. Well, you see, Harrison didn’t know the truth of the story. He didn’t know and I couldn’t tell him [that Leia is Luke’s sister], because I was not allowed. Looking at it from Harrison’s point of view, yeah, that would be great: He goes back into the bunker, blows the whole thing up; he’s trapped, but everybody’s saved and they have this big party and say, ‘Hey, wasn’t Han Solo great!’ ”
“There was no future in dead-Han toys,” Ford would later say.
Costume concept for Leia’s bikini slave outfit by Rodis-Jamero, circa summer 1981 (her top was to be made, perhaps, out of leather).
Leia costume concepts by Rodis-Jamero.
A quick sketch of the Emperor’s chair on the same page elicited a signed response from Lucas: “I like this.” Johnston followed up with a more detailed study (ABOVE, no. 0220), without a footrest.
Concept art by Johnston of the Emperor’s throne room aboard the Death Star (no. 0207), circa summer 1981. “I wanted to simulate an image on one of the view screens,” Johnston would say. “Ralph McQuarrie had a pretty classic face, and actually looks quite a bit like one of the actors who played a high ranking officer, so I took a picture of him and kept re-xeroxing it until it got grainy enough to simulate the video raster.”
NORTH, TO SAN RAFAEL
Lucasfilm South moved into its Marin County offices, with Greber as CEO, as of early August. “It was kind of hard for him because his friend [Weber] was let go and he got the job,” would say his assistant Maureen Forster. “So there was some guilt about that. He was a very sensitive man and in that role you can’t show a ton of sensitivity because some people will perceive that as weakness.”
“That was not easy ’cause I had to fire people,” Greber would say. “I had to decide which people we were going to bring up north.”
“It was an opportunity to shed some dead weight, to get rid of people who were underperforming,” Roffman would say. “But we also had some stars. One of the biggest was Sid Ganis. Because Sid was so tied to LA, we questioned whether he would relocate up north. But his loyalty was to George at that point and he decided to join the adventure and make the move.”
Another employee asked to pull up stakes was Ian Bryce, who had started as a valet in the parking lot and impressed executives with his intelligence, and who wanted to transition to the production side of things. “I got to meet Bob Greber and a whole bunch of the folks, who were very kind and generous to me,” Bryce would say. “Eventually they gave me a job in the mailroom. One day Bob said, ‘Listen, we’re going to move the company up to Northern California. I want you to help Char O’Donnell move the company up there. If you do a good job at that, we’ll let you be a production assistant on Jedi.’ ”
With everyone now up north, Greber initiated weekly meetings of his executive staff. “There was a fair amount of infighting,” says Roffman. “Roger Faxon and Bob Greber did not get along very well. I also think there was a lot of questioning or not understanding what George was really doing with the company. The whole idea of building a ranch was just mystifying to a lot of the senior executives.”
“Roger Faxon was a consultant and a very capable guy,” Greber would say. “Later on, we had problems, major problems, but at the time we got along very well. He was a real numbers guy, so he was acting as our business affairs guy.”
“There was conflict with the business side, people like Faxon and Greber,” Jim Bloom would say. “They were saying, ‘I don’t understand why George would spend all this money on this ranch when he could go to downtown San Francisco and build a 50-story high-rise; and then, if it didn’t work out, he could sell the building or we could rent it out.’ The ranch wasn’t a business model that these guys could get a handle on. But coming out of film school and having some inkling of what a filmmaker’s world is like or wants to be like, it made perfect sense to me: George would have all the tools, he’d have a postproduction facility, he’d have a place for people to stay if they wanted to stay over. It would be self-sufficient.”
“George’s initial plan for the ranch sounded reasonable,” Greber adds. “But of course it continued to grow. I had interesting conversations with George about it and he said, ‘Listen, this is my dream, not your dream. This is my dream. I own the company.’ He didn’t say it in any rude or tough way, but this is what he was saying. I said to him, ‘Every dollar we put into this ranch turns into 15 cents. It’s not worth anything in terms of market value.’ But it probably meant five dollars to George in terms of the feeling he got from it. That was the difference.”
LOOSE LIPS SINK SCRIPTS
Due to industrial espionage worries, which would remain a concern throughout the making of Jedi, a security system was installed in Kazanjian’s office. Because their trash cans were being periodically pilfered, Kazanjian sent a company-wide memo asking everyone to shred all documents, contracts, pictures, and materials “that might cause interest.” The day afterward, he sent a telex to Kasdan, who was on vacation in Spring Lake, New Jersey: “Went to screening of Body Heat last night. Thought it was terrific. Congratulations!”
Additional protective measures were taken when Revenge of the Jedi was given a fake name to disguise its US locat
ions from fans and journalists, and to avoid price gouging. Miki Herman used the designated alias Blue Harvest in a letter to Miller-Rellim Redwood Company that confirmed Lucasfilm’s usage of the Morrison Creek portion of the property for location filming. The fee of $5,000, as agreed, would be donated to the Rowdy Creek Fish Hatcheries on behalf of Miller-Rellim; if the lumber company had known it was a Star Wars production, chances are the fee would have been significantly higher.
Publicity for Blue Harvest, whose tagline was “Horror beyond imagination,” would later give its fake release date as Halloween 1983, and its fake credits touted Jim Bloom as producer, David Tomblin as director, and its spring 1982 shooting locations as Utah and Arizona. In reality Tomblin, a veteran of Empire and Raiders, would be first assistant director (AD) on Jedi, as well as second-unit director.
Another memo, from Bloom to ILM HODs, noted that several special optically enhanced creatures for the interior of Jabba’s palace were in the works: Lava Man, costumed in lightbulbs; Amoeba Man, a transparent diaphanous creature; Stop-Motion Man; and Fog Man, a creature who would drift through the palace chamber. “All subject to change.” The ILM Monster Shop had to contend with more work when Admiral Ackbar and the pig guards were transferred to the United States for building, which meant overtime. In the UK, Deep Roy, who had played “walking” Yoda for a couple of shots in Empire, arrived at Elstree Studios for Ewok costume fittings. While Freeborn was responsible for the heads, wardrobe mistress Janet Tebrooke and her team would oversee the Ewok costumed bodies.
In late August/early September, all monster designs were locked.
A marketing concept by an unknown artist to celebrate the one-year anniversay of the release of The Empire Strikes Back. The approved design for the newspaper or magazine ad would have fewer visual references to the sequel, but would print text noting that a theater in Seattle had run the film for an entire year.
Two early marketing design logo treatments for “Blue Harvest,” the code name for Revenge of the Jedi meant to disguise the production from prying eyes on location.
Concept art by Rodis-Jamero of one of Jabba’s cronies, perhaps a bounty hunter who has just dispatched a boring conversationalist, circa spring 1981 (later named the Mole).
WHITE FACES FROM ALBION
Composer John Williams and Fox musical supervisor Lionel Newman arrived to meet with Kazanjian and Lucas one afternoon; together they listened to Japanese Taiko folk drummers in the ILM parking lot. Their drumming was a possible sound for the film’s end celebration, for which a musical style had to be decided upon and a score written, so that the Ewoks and actors had something to rhythmically drive their performance on stage.
That same day, Ben Burtt’s recommendations for sound recording were forwarded by Marquand to Kazanjian, Watts, and Bloom. Burtt would soon start creating temp voices for the Ewoks and other creatures. Even while working on Raiders, he’d been thinking about Jedi, preparing mentally for what would be a massive audio job.
Marquand’s choice for DP, Alan Hume, and his wife arrived in San Francisco on August 20, for meetings with Lucas and ILM. “Alan is adaptable,” says Marquand. “He doesn’t have to put his stamp on everything. The same with Sean. What is so lovely is that the three of us can have rows and walk away, then come back and carry on; it’s like a family in that way. Alan’s camera team is made up of people I like and we are all able to walk a very narrow line between friendship and a certain amount of respect.”
Hume had worked in the film industry since 1942, learning his craft in the great British studios of Ealing, Denham, and Beaconsfield. He had lit 15 of the 30 successful Carry On film series (which were wildly popular in the UK), learning how to make do within tight budgets. “I was fortunate enough that Richard asked for me,” he says. “Then they saw the James Bond picture I’d done [For Your Eyes Only, 1981] and agreed to have me on Jedi. I was absolutely tickled pink.”
“My right hand is the cameraman and his team,” says Marquand. “George saw the other films that Alan had lit for me and other stuff. Then he met him and liked him, and said, ‘Yeah, sure, of course you should have the man that you know.’ ”
“Two things that George allowed Richard to bring in were his cameraman and his editor, and I was against that,” Kazanjian would say. “But George said you always have to give the director those two things.”
“The drink flowed freely,” James Marquand would say of their temporary home in Belvedere. “Alan Hume and Sean Barton were there, and Norman Reynolds was around a lot. It was fairly liquid and kind of Monty Python–ish: These pale Brits trying to windsurf on the lagoon and not doing a very good job of it, a glass of champagne in their hand, making fools of themselves. It was a lot of fun.”
“I have a peculiar thing, which is, normally, when I’m not working on a movie, I like to have a little drink, maybe a little wine with my lunch, and then a bottle of wine in the evenings,” says Marquand. “I’m not a heavy drinker, but I do like to do that.”
Inside their shop at Elstree Studios in England, senior special effects technician Rodney Fuller lights the cigarette of special mechanical effects supervisor Kit West. Behind them is the Emperor’s lava lair in prototype form. When Marquand returned from the US with the updated script “One Line,” he put a stop to that work, as that set had been eliminated from the story. “We were experimenting in creating a bubbling vat for the Emperor’s throne set,” West would say. “We were going to do it on a large scale, on either side of a platform which led up to the Emperor’s throne, but in the end it was designed a different way, so we didn’t use it at all.”
NAKED WOOKIEES
While inside Lucasfilm’s modest offices a relatively small group worked long hours on the film, the world at large wondered what they were doing—in particular, what Jedi would reveal after the three-year wait. The Star Wars Fan Club staff dutifully read a nonstop deluge of letters and ranked the rumors therein, the most popular being: Darth Vader kills Luke; Luke turns to the dark side; Luke kills Vader; and Han is rescued, then killed. Fans also thought that the Emperor might kill Luke and that Boba Fett was either a beautiful woman, Luke’s father, or, perhaps, Luke’s mother.
Many surmised that the Emperor was a clone of Ben Kenobi (the author included). Of course, the big questions were: Is Vader really Luke’s father? Who is the “other”? (Candidates were Leia; Han; Fett; Luke’s father, mother, or sibling; or even Wedge.) Is Vader a clone of Luke’s father? Who is Luke’s mother? What happened to Luke’s lightsaber and how will he get another? Why did Ben lie to Luke about his father? Will Luke see Vader’s face?
“I love the list of rumors,” says Hamill. “One of my favorites is that Solo and Vader are somehow fused, so I can’t kill one without killing the other.”
One laser surgeon wrote to the fan club wanting, seriously, to know how lightsabers work. Many children were convinced that the movies were actually filmed in outer space. “After Empire, I got a big shoebox of letters,” says actor Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca). “Most of them were from six or seven-year-olds. There was one I thought was really funny, from the MidWest. She was complaining that Wookiees don’t wear clothes. This was serious—‘Don’t you think it’s disgusting that Wookiees don’t wear clothes? What’s going to happen about that?!’ ”
A KALEIDOSCOPE OF ACTION
After about two weeks of conferences and conferring, the UK contingent—Marquand, Watts, Reynolds, and Hume—returned home, where Mary Selway Buckley was holding a monthlong casting session at EMI and Twickenham Studios. The director’s return to Elstree had a few surprises: “I went back with the final agreed story outline, to discover that the special effects department was deeply involved in building a huge lava field,” he says. “The last thing that they knew was that Luke meets the Emperor down in the depths of this great, hot steaming lava field and has a big battle. The script was late, so they’d had to get started doing something. But I said, ‘Forget it! We’re not doing that.’ ”
“The scr
eenplay is the blueprint for everything, so, without it, you do tend to flounder a bit,” Watts says. “We’d had a sense of what was coming. We’d had indications, we’d had discussions, we’d had drafts. But the thing with these films is they have a release date, right? So the minute you have a release date, it dictates when you’ve got to shoot it. But you cannot wait on certain decisions, which means that sometimes you build things that are later changed.”
What Marquand refers to as an “outline” was the “Jedi ‘One Line,’ ” dated August 5, 1981, which summarized the film, scene by scene, as based on their marathon story conference. Armed with this information, the director also had them scale back the size of Vader’s Star Destroyer set to save costs. “Norman will be building the real live-action sets—and that job is a lot more difficult and a lot more physical than concept art,” says Johnston.
“This was really when I lived and breathed three things,” Marquand adds. “One was casting; two was just living with Norman Reynolds the whole time, going over sets and designs that contained action; and the third was Jabba, just constantly seeing Jabba. I knew that I wanted him to eat a frog. And they said, ‘Oh, Jesus, in that case we need a huge sort of pipe thing to evacuate any liquid so that it doesn’t affect the electronics inside.’ ” To help them work on Jabba, one of the first puppeteers, Toby Philpott, came in to the studio’s makeup department for discussions and a fitting.
Back in the United States, after a talk with Kasdan on Tuesday, September 8, Kazanjian marked in his phone log that the “script [was] coming along very nicely now. Will have a bunch of handwritten [pages] at end of week.” Three days later he issued a Confidential Memorandum to Lucas, Greber, Faxon, and other execs, nailing down the principal photography start date as January 11—which meant that all of production moved into high gear—and adding, “Twelve seconds after you have finished reading this sentence, this paper will self-destruct!”
The Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Enhanced Edition) Page 19