The Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Enhanced Edition)

by Rinzler, J. W.

  “Richard in his previous films would have worked it all out and would shoot a scene the way he’d worked it out,” Carol Marquand would say. “But George has a slightly different approach, and so he would encourage Richard to use multiple cameras sometimes. It was much more of a documentary method: Take it back to the cutting room and see what you’ve got. So there was a little exasperation when George would insist that a scene be shot with three cameras and Richard had already worked it out. He found a lot of it pettifogging, shooting so much coverage. He felt he’d been hired to make those choices beforehand, to visualize it, to choose his setups and to cut them together. So he was frustrated at times and found what was going on incomprehensible.”

  “I imposed my will a little bit, as I have a tendency to do, whether I’m in a writer’s conference or whether I’m directing,” Lucas would say. “It’s just that I knew in the end how we were going to deal with all this. I knew we couldn’t go plodding through with a single camera shoot. I knew there were some areas where we’d have to use multiple cameras because the scenes were too complex. And I love shooting with multiple cameras. I like to be able to cover myself. Richard was making the movie. I was speeding him along and at the same time doing it in ways that allowed us to get more footage and more options. Multi-camera is very, very hard with the cameramen. They hate it. They always scream bloody murder, but in the end it turns out fine.”

  “The trouble with multi-camera is they all have to be set up,” Barton adds. “It slows down everything. It was this obsession of George’s, having several cameras on every scene, which affects where you’re going to put the main camera, because, if you’re not careful, you’re shooting the other cameras. And if you’re having three or four cameras on a scene, they have a descending order of importance: the first one is the main one; often a second one is doing some useful stuff; but the third and fourth ones are very rarely doing anything interesting—but what they do do is they get in the way of the other two. You find later that when you’re trying to cut them that they’ve crossed the line [as if in a mirror], so you can’t use that footage without flopping it, which becomes very complex, indeed.”

  To at least one visiting executive, it was “absolutely clear” that Lucas was calling the shots, but allowing Marquand to have the appearance of being the director. Given these enormous pressures, Marquand engaged in at least one reported “screaming match” with a key production crew. “There weren’t very many alternatives left to Richard,” Reynolds adds. “He either went along with that and did it, or walked away. And I don’t think anybody in their right mind would have walked away. He tried to make the best of it, really, and I think he did. It was a difficult situation and, at the same time, a golden opportunity.”

  Whether these pressures and small conflicts were anything beyond the routine craziness associated with big-budget, pressure-cooker productions is unlikely. “I wasn’t on set every day,” James Marquand adds. “But, knowing my dad, if there had been a major issue, we would have known about it.”

  “There are other movies that Richard did which were a nightmare, and this was not like that,” Carol Marquand would say. “I think it was pretty good.”

  “I think directing Revenge of the Jedi is rather like being a famous conductor,” says Marquand. “You are given this fabulous orchestra, full of the most brilliant musicians that you could want in the world. The guy who wrote the music is listening, he is available for any problems you have, to say, ‘Well if you play the third bar a little faster …’ You didn’t compose the music. Some other guy did and he’s in the next room.”

  Marquand and Lucas on the set of Jabba’s throne room.

  On the Ewok village set, Marquand, Lucas, and Hamill discuss the scene. “George is very open to ideas—I can’t tell you how many ideas I’ve had vetoed,” says Hamill. “His face stays the same, but his eyes turn into kaleidoscopes of fear. But he has a good way of bringing you around to his way of thinking. And Richard is wonderful. He used to be an actor himself, which really helps. Because people don’t know what we’re up against.”

  Standing in the corridor leading to the rebel briefing room set the three directors of the trilogy pose for an historical photograph: George Lucas (center, Star Wars); Irvin Kershner (left, The Empire Strikes Back); and Richard Marquand (right, Revenge of the Jedi).

  In her slave outfit Fisher poses for a PR photo circa February 17, 1982.

  More PR photos of Fisher.

  AN ENDING OF ELSTREE

  FEBRUARY TO APRIL 1982

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  REPORT NOS. 29–30: THURSDAY–FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18–19; STAGE 7—INT. DUNGEON CELLS, SCS. 9, 10 [BOILER ROOM], 14 [CHEWIE AND HAN]; STAGE 6—INT. DEATH STAR, SCS. 47 [VADER STRIDES DOWN CORRIDOR], 70 [VADER STRANGLES OFFICER GUARDING ELEVATOR]; SECOND UNIT: STAGE 5—INT. REBEL BRIDGE & STAGE 7—INT. BOILER ROOM, SCS. 10, 85, 101, 113, 117, 121

  On Wednesday at 2 PM, main unit moved to the interior of the dungeon corridor cells, picking up half a day in the schedule. Fisher had a stills session and crew began pre-lighting Stage 6; because it was so huge, the Star Wars Stage needed to be prepped days in advance. Kazanjian had lunch with Lucas, while Hamill rehearsed his fight from 11 to 1. In the afternoon, McDiarmid returned for another makeup and lens test. Working with second unit, Dermot Crowley completed his role as General Madine after five days worked.

  “After I had finished the briefing room scenes, I was asked if I was free for the following week,” Crowley says. “So I came back and I did a whole sequence with George directing, which was against bluescreen and it was incredibly exciting, me flying into battle and getting to say, ‘May the Force be with you.’ There were pages of extra dialogue, but it didn’t end up in the movie.”

  “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 February 16, 1982, of General Nadine (Dermot Crowley) and crew as they react to the battle and the destruction of the Imperial fleet (again, Marquand is directing from off camera). (0:39)

  “George would pop over to my unit and look at what we were doing,” Christian would say. “I mean, it’s George. So he would say, ‘Oh, I think I’ll do it like this,’ and we’d do a shot differently. That went on all the time; I was always there to do what he wanted. You’re not directing. You’re doing what the director wants, the creator.”

  “I suppose it was very awe inspiring,” McDiarmid says of his consecutive visits to the studio, “but everyone was so wonderful. I had seen the movies and, along with everyone else, thought they were great. But to actually know I would be in one, playing the part that had been discussed throughout the series! I went to see The Empire Strikes Back with the kids one afternoon before I started shooting. When they referred to the Emperor, I thought, That’s me!

  “Richard Marquand gave me a tape of the Emperor from Empire and said, ‘If you can get your voice fairly close to what Clive Revill was doing, George might let you keep it,’ ” McDiarmid would add. “I was astonished to hear that, because I didn’t realize that I wouldn’t be creating the voice myself. I said, ‘Clive Revill is great, but he didn’t really know the character he was playing. He was in the studio probably for a morning and an afternoon, if that, and now that I see the Emperor’s face, I think he’s got to sound quite different.’ Richard said, ‘Just do what you think should be right, and let’s hear it.’ ”

  His creation of the Emperor’s voice came naturally: “When I saw the face in the mirror, I thought, My God, it looks like Somerset Maugham, who’s turned into a toad. So the voice became a combination of English upper class and trying to sound like a toad. I thought it had to come from somewhere deep down. I’ve always been fascinated by Japanese actors, a number of whom can speak from their stomach. I don’t actually do that, but I thought if I could get down there …”

  From the beginning McDiarmid had known that he would have to loop his lines—if all
owed to keep his voice—and was happy about that. “It would’ve been fatiguing to lower my voice on stage for a long time,” he says.

  Because of all the extra droids and special effects, production didn’t really get going on the boiler room scenes until Thursday. “Richard Marquand was playing EV-9D9 in that scene and he was terrific,” says Daniels. “It’s very easy acting with a piece of tin when it’s got a voice like that coming out of it. He used to be an actor, so he knows what it feels like, all the tensions you feel being on a set with a camera pointed at you, how you need to be encouraged and praised. He’s very gentle, which is nice.”

  EV-9D9, unlike C-3PO, was not a man in a suit, however, but a marionette that reigned over Jabba’s torture chamber. “At one time 9D9 was to walk and special effects said it could be done; George said it couldn’t be done,” says Kazanjian. “But they said, ‘Yeah, we’ll show you.’ He said, ‘I want you to show me three days before the shoot.’ He walked in and there was this elaborate rig overhead. They tried and it didn’t work, so they said, ‘Oh, we’ll make it work.’ George said, ‘He’ll sit.’ And George was right—those guys would still be working on it if he hadn’t stopped them.”

  The scene was filmed quickly because of the limited space, which allowed for only one camera with Marquand, according to Barton, able to do his shot list as planned. By end of day Friday, main unit had wrapped the scene. That same afternoon, Hamill had more duel rehearsals, while Harrison Ford and Melissa Mathison flew back to LA. Indeed, production would need neither Ford nor Fisher for several weeks because upcoming scenes didn’t include their characters.

  On Saturday, Lucas, Kazanjian, and editor Sean Barton met in a Soho Square screening room for half an hour to review dailies. After Lucas accepted them, Kazanjian called the studio so crew could strike the dungeon corridor set from Stage 7. Although they had completed six weeks of filming, many departments, including construction, were still working seven days a week, with two 12-hour shifts, in order to have sets made and dressed on time.

  Master plasterer Ken Clarke and his team worked hand in hand with the construction and art departments. “If they can draw it, we can make it,” he says, referring to the latter group’s technical drawings or blueprints. The plasterer’s shop had up to 64 technicians and operated like a factory. “Every department knows a little about the other department,” Clarke adds. “You’ve got to understand the system, even the shooting system. You’ve got to know the right doors to open and shut. If you sidestep someone, you upset people—and then you get personalities.”

  As actor Ian McDiarmid (the Emperor) studied his character’s face in the mirror during early makeup tests, he began to formulate his ideas for the Emperor’s voice and manner of speaking (with makeup assistant trainee Daniel Parker and makeup artist Nick Dudman creating his face). “Pat McQueeney, my hairstylist, and the makeup people were awesome,” Carrie Fisher would say. “They’ve done like Laurence Olivier’s makeup.”

  A continuity Polaroid of EV-9D9, scene 10.

  Due to R2’s limited movement, the dungeon floor outside the boiler room couldn’t be too rough. Because there was a kind of sewer running down the middle, pre-built plugs were dropped in wherever the droid needed to cross over.

  “Torture of robot (branding)” set and prop concept art by Reynolds, December 1981.

  A pig guard stares at R2-D2 in the boiler room, with droid EV-9D9 in the background.

  The droid manipulating the controls, torturing the dustbin robot, had its “hands” attached to the levers.

  REPORT NOS. 31–33: MONDAY–WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22–24; STAGE 6—INT. DEATH STAR, SCS. 4 [VADER ARRIVES], 69 [VADER ARRIVES AGAIN], 48 [THE EMPEROR ARRIVES], 95 [VADER AND LUKE ARRIVE], 127 [DEATH OF VADER]; SECOND UNIT: STAGE 7—INT. BOILER ROOM, SC. 14 PICKUPS

  Wardrobe assistant John Birkinshaw places Vader’s mask on David Prowse (Darth Vader), as Kazanjian watches and Tomblin organizes the extras, speaking into a microphone on the Death Star hangar set, circa February 23, 1982.

  McDiarmid in his complete Emperor’s makeup, which covered only the front two-thirds of his head. The cowl always covered the back of his head.

  A continuity reference Polaroid for scene 4 (Vader’s arrival in the Death Star hangar) of Michael Pennington (Moff Jerjerrod) and David Prowse (Darth Vader).

  Hamill engaged in more fight rehearsals and Billy Dee Williams, in turn, left for a break in LA on Monday. Creature work largely finished, both Johnston and Tippett also returned home. Stuart Ziff remained in London to finish the scenes with Nien Nunb, operated by Mike Quinn. Tippett arrived at ILM, however, only to receive a frantic call from London. Ziff and Nunb would have to return to ILM, as well, because the puppet’s part had been increased and it needed to look more realistic.

  Back in San Rafael, Dennis Muren was also busy, planning videomatics of the rancor pit sequence. Everyone on set would need those to have some idea of what the final sequence would look like in order to film Hamill’s scenes, scheduled to be shot in a few weeks’ time.

  “The rocket cycle videomatics had worked out so well that we actually set up a video department,” says Muren. “The same cameramen were shooting the telematics who would actually be making the shot, so we were learning what the problems were and finding the angles as we were doing it.”

  Moving to the Star Wars Stage, production embarked on simple scenes that were complicated by … scuffing. A Unit Note indicated that, “Overshoes should be worn by the floor crew. Would you kindly ensure that you obtain these before walking on the Stage 6 set, as the floor on this set tends to mark and scratch easily.”

  “That was a nightmare,” says Marquand. “The floor was the killer. Because it was painted black, it was shiny, and every footprint showed. We arrived in the morning and there was this glorious set—covered in paper. So we tore the paper off, marched these people in, and stood them in their positions, which took ages, and the floor was destroyed. So the floor had to be repainted. Then it was time for their lunch break; it’s union requirement that they get fed. Strange, isn’t it? So they march off and destroy the floor again. Minor things like that. That set drove Howard Kazanjian crazy because it cost so much money.”

  “It was a very, very expensive set,” Kazanjian says. “That was one of the sets that I knew would never be seen even though we were building it. We certainly didn’t need 240 feet of it. Maybe 100 feet would have been enough and ILM could have made it look like it’s 900 feet.”

  The estimated cost was $750,000 for the Death Star hangar, complete with a partially built, full-sized Imperial shuttle, for which Welch and his crew used structural engineers to advise on stress points and weights. Ken Clarke and his plasterers crew had vacu-formed 50 new stormtrooper suits for the crowd scenes as Vader and the Emperor made their spectacular entrances.

  Unfortunately, and comically, once the floors were repainted by five crew armed with giant brooms dipped in an oily substance, those newly dressed stormtroopers had a habit of slipping and falling over. “Everybody the whole time was in risk of breaking their necks,” says Marquand. “It was awful!”

  That day fan club emissary Maureen Garrett spoke to David Prowse about his character’s arrival. “I have no specific way of preparing at all,” he says. “Vader comes quite naturally. The whole thing is so divorced from me personally that you can go in and act your heart out and go over the top—well, the more believable Darth Vader becomes. I don’t have to get into the part at all. As soon as they start enclosing me in the mask, I begin to feel more evil with every plate they put on.”

  “I was getting ready to interview David Prowse and he knew I was coming, because we’d called ahead,” Garrett would say. “So he showed up at the door in his underwear. Very handsome man, body builder, and just a nice person.”

  In his talk with Garrett, Prowse still keenly regretted not being able to use his own voice as Vader’s. “All the way through Richard Marquand has been saying, ‘Slow up, slow up the dialogue! James Earl Jone
s can’t speak as fast as you. You have to storm through these scenes, but talk slow.’ ”

  “Have you heard David Prowse?” says Hamill. “It’s somehow come to pass in England that his particular accent from his region is held up to ridicule. There’s so much class-consciousness. So it’s very hard when you have these classically trained Imperial officers in the same scene with David.”

  Failing to realize that he had been identified as the source of damaging plot leaks, for several years, and that the other actors also received only partial scripts, Prowse also regretted not getting a complete one. “I was virtually ostracized from the picture,” he would tell one reporter. “I had no idea where my scenes fit in with the rest of the storyline, or even if my lines were the right dialogue.”

  “I only received my section of the film, which is unusual,” says McDiarmid. “Normally, you get a full script, but it was George’s intention that no one should know what was going to happen. For example, he very much wanted to protect Vader’s story. If those secrets had gotten out, the surprise would have faded.”

  Prowse’s contentious relationship with Lucasfilm and the ongoing story of the saga were at particular loggerheads that day, as Sebastian Shaw came in for a fitting. Production wanted to keep his presence and role a secret, but Shaw’s name was clearly listed on the Call Sheet next to words such as mask and helmet—so tongues wagged.