by John Booth
That night at dinner, we sat under a TV showing a news report from Celebration III, with footage of a kid invited on stage to ask George a question, and we were like, “Wow. We were there.” It would happen again over the next few weeks: I’d read an article about Star Wars and the saga’s end, and there’d be a quote from George Lucas that they’d pulled from his Indianapolis visit, and I’d think, “I was right there when he said that.”
We also picked up lunch for Matthew (voice of General Grievous) Wood as a favor to one of the Industrial Light & Magic press contacts who’d been helping us out. Later that night, passing through a large crowd, Matt recognized Jim and me and asked us directions somewhere.
And Saturday afternoon, we were sitting in the mostly-empty press room hanging out with the woman running the place when Episodes I-III producer Rick McCallum walked in. (The guy’s taken a lot of flack for his role in the prequels and for not being more questioning of George’s ideas, but I’ll say this: Given Lucas’ general avoidance of fan gatherings and public appearances, McCallum made a hell of an impression during the second Star Wars era in terms of fan availability and accessibility.)
So McCallum walks in, sees us talking, tosses over a casual, “Hi, guys, how you doing?” and starts talking with one of the Lucasfilm reps. Jim and I play it cool, steering our conversation back on track and somehow managing not to scream like my wife might once have done at a Menudo show.
Now this other press guy starts talking to Rick, and Jim and I had heard that with George Lucas leaving town soon, the Lucasfilm folks would probably be packing up, too, so we went over to the woman McCallum had been talking to so we could thank her for helping us out the past couple days. As we’re thanking her, she gets McCallum’s attention and introduces us to him.
For the next couple minutes, we were standing there – no pens, no notebooks, no cameras, no recorders, no interview-style questions. It was just three guys talking Star Wars, and it was freaking cool as hell.
Revenge of the Sith opened about a month after C3, on May 19th, and I took Kelsey to a 7 p.m. showing.
She was only eight, but she was (and is) a smart, level-headed kid about stuff she reads and watches and listens to. She’d already seen and loved the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy, for instance, and given the way Episodes I and II had played out, I seriously couldn’t imagine Lucas putting anything onscreen scarier than Peter Jackson’s vision of Tolkien’s orcs and ringwraiths, even with Episode III getting the PG-13 treatment.
This was also our first and last real chance to share a Star Wars opening night together. I’d actually passed up a chance to go see a media screening of Episode III because I wanted to be in a crowd of fans with my daughter, both of us experiencing the whole thing for the first time.
I bought tickets online, and on the afternoon of the 19th, I left work a little early so we could have dinner before the movie. It was just Kelsey and me going, since Jenn had to be at work before sunup the next morning.
It was a school night, and I kept thinking about that opening night of Jedi back in ’83, and I wondered if Kelsey would be as excited the next day at school as I had been, even if she kept it hidden.
I pulled out that old brown bathrobe, put it on over my clothes and threatened to wear it as a Jedi costume, to Kelsey’s eye-rolling horror. (I didn’t, of course. But even if I had, I wouldn’t have been any worse than the guy who showed up at the theater in a green bathrobe over a gray hooded sweatshirt. At least, I hope his was a goofy costume attempt. Otherwise, that’s just weird.) She let me get away with wearing a tiny gold “Star Wars is Forever” pin that I got as a C3 giveaway.
We got to the theater about an hour early, I think. Far enough in advance that they weren’t seating yet, so we got to stand in line with other fans for a while. The hardcores, naturally, had seen the movie at the midnight showing, but there was still a smiling kind of thrill running through the crowd. Lots of people my age and a good amount of kids.
A fair amount of teenagers, which kind of surprised me, but at the same time was kind of neat. My youngest brother was a high school teacher then, and he said the kids in his classes were all really pumped about seeing the movie, which he hadn’t expected. I mean, I’ve always thought of the Star Wars saga as belonging to “my generation,” but now that I think about it, these were the kids who were seven, eight, maybe nine years old when Phantom Menace had come out, so they’d grown up on the prequels the way we had on the originals.
So we get our seats and Kelsey and I are looking around and saying we can’t believe it’s finally here and how great is this and the lights dim and we look at each other and we’re both big-eyed and giggly and the previews roll and then BAM that music starts and we are on the ride.
The movie’s got its weaknesses, of course, but I remember a couple real heart-in-the-throat and goosebump moments: The wordless scene with the ethereal, tense music that accompanies Anakin and Padmé as they stare separately at the same sunset over the capital city is one of my favorites. And when Anakin and Obi-Wan finally started their lightsaber duel, I felt my muscles and my stomach clench like the moment you go over that first great drop on a rollercoaster, because this was it, man, this was the fight all us first-generation fans had wondered about for so long. (Funny thing: I only recently stopped to consider that this battle isn’t even really mentioned onscreen in the original trilogy – it’s only in the Jedi novelization that Obi-Wan actually describes his first duel with Vader.)
In between, there’s the scene where Anakin returns to the Jedi temple to start his rampage. This was the part I was a little worried about, because a month earlier, at C3, in the hours spent waiting to see George Lucas, I overheard this snippet of conversation: “…even kills the kids…” I tried my best to block it out, but you can’t unhear something, and even though I told myself that just because I’d heard it didn’t make it true – 12 Star Wars movies all shown in Kansas, remember? Darth Vader funhouse, anyone? – I still couldn’t help but wonder if I’d made a mistake bringing my 8-year-old daughter.
At this point in the movie, right after Anakin goes bad, Kelsey is literally on the edge of her seat. I cast a glance her way when Anakin goes into the room with the younglings. She’s got her hands folded tightly in her lap, and she isn’t blinking and she is actually whispering barely above a breath, “Don’t do it, don’t do it, no, no, no…”
My throat catches and I’m barely breathing, because, like me on Jedi’s opening night, she is there, she is in that room and living the story. For just a moment, I’m excited for her and maybe even a little envious.
After the movie ended – and that double-sunset scene and its musical score was the perfect conclusion and throwback – Kelsey and I let out deep breaths and smiled. We talked a lot in the car on the way home, me turning my head slightly to carry on a conversation with her in the backseat because she couldn’t ride up front yet. It was late and we had work and school early in the morning, and we were both tired but still a little keyed up.
The short drive captured everything I love about Star Wars: After 30 years, it’s more about the shared experience and energy and excitement of that universe than anything that can be confined to a movie frame.
Times like that are why you’ll never hear me wish George Lucas hadn’t made the prequels.
So I got stuck with midichlorians.
Small price to pay.
A Few Special Modifications:
An Addendum of Interviews, Updates and Extras
I finished the first version of this book in 2008, then updated it with a new cover and foreword, after which I immediately stopped paying attention to Star Wars.
One of those three things, of course, is a lie, and when I began working on this electronic edition, I saw an opportunity to offer a few more related flashbacks and to include some of my additional Star Wars-centered writing projects. The magazine feature on original Industrial Light and Magic model builder Lorne Peterson is here, for instance, along with a p
iece on the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back and several interviews with current Star Wars cast and crew who grew up as fans of the original trilogy and went on to work and play in George Lucas' universe.
I.
My conversations with ILM's Lorne Peterson grew into the following piece. I've altered it slightly from its original edit, and while some of Peterson's comments on the capabilities of computer-generated effects will seem out of date, I think his enthusiasm and insight still come through.
In an age of pixelated aliens and point-and-click backdrops, Lorne Peterson remains a man of brushes and knives, paint and plaster.
Despite his traditional approach, though, the Academy Award-winning Industrial Light and Magic modelmaker is no dinosaur lumbering through the cyberspace age. He's spent three years as a charter member of arguably the most influential visual effects club in cinematic history, yet his handiwork is as laser-edge now – witness the spectacle of 2005's Revenge of the Sith and War of the Worlds – as it was in May of 1977 when Star Wars thundered onto the big screen.
In a 2005 interview at Star Wars Celebration III and subsequent telephone conversations, Peterson reflected on his life and work. Constantly bridging the past and future, he defended the oft-attacked prequel trilogy, called for the originals to be re-released without their digital enhancements, and said he's about ready to ride off into a traditional Hollywood sunset.
Although he's had a hand in creating many films that essentially defined the massive modern visual effects epic, Peterson himself is an individual with an eye for details. Answering an offhand question about the weather, he paints a vivid picture of a sunlit morning in the northern California hills, describing everything from the smell of the trees to the banks of fog nestling against distant mountainsides. Conversations meander, digress, and double back as he explores the past and recalls events ranging from lunch breaks and impromptu water slides in the ILM parking lot to a road to a road trip over midwestern U.S. highways.
Peterson's creative roots run deep, as do his ambition and sense for an audience. "I've been drawing and doing art and things like that from the beginning," he said. "I even remember that I could draw horses really well in about fourth grade or something like that. I remember these little girls squealing [because] I'd drawn a horse for one of them, and three or four of them came running."
By the time he was in junior high, Peterson was designing and building furniture in his father's garage workshop, constructing bookcases and shelves for his bedroom. Eventually, he even persuaded his parents to turn over a third of the backyard, which he converted into a Japanese-garden-inspired landscape with redwood planking, rocks, and walkways. He also converted part of that garage in to a small art studio which eventually housed creations from across the artistic spectrum: paintings, sculptures, interior sketches and building renderings. Peterson – as he explained to his flabbergasted father – was entering his high school's art fair intent on winning. "I figured if I submitted something in every single category," he recalled with a chuckle, "my chances were really good."
After graduating from California State University at Long Beach in 1967, Peterson followed what was practically a mandate of the era for a self-described "longhair," taking a three-month wandering tour of the country. When he returned to southern California, a former instructor called with a job offer in his newly-formed industrial design firm. "I said, 'Well, I wasn't a design major,'" Peterson recalled, "and he said, 'Oh, I don't care.' I was going to be a teacher originally, but the teaching jobs were kind of disappearing. They were all being filled up."
So Peterson delved into the design world, working on projects as diverse as Hot Wheels prototypes for Mattel and more efficient toilet-flushing mechanisms for an overseas corporation. The common thread was one he'd never lose track of: turning challenges presented into problems solved. "Somebody else comes and says to you, 'Here's a concept,' and you work out a lot of the various technical problems and molding problems and stuff like that."
Working from a rented warehouse on a Hollywood backlot, Peterson occasionally ran into former college pals. One such meeting with an acquaintance working on the interiors of a decommissioned aircraft carrier for 1972's Silent Running changed everything: "He said, 'We're going to be doing this science fiction film in about three months, and we're really having a hard time finding model makers.'"
Peterson accepted the Star Wars job when the official offer came, despite having little interest in the realm of rocket ships and ray guns. "I've probably read only three science fiction books in my life," he said. "I'm more interested in non-fiction: history, science – those are the kind of books I read. I didn't get involved with this thing because I was interested in science fiction or spaceships. It was [because of] the people I went to college with. At the time, I don't even think [industrial design] people knew the film industry was a possibility for employment. Only when Star Wars came along did they make those incredibly long lists of people who worked on a film."
The tower-and-turret-dotted landscape of the first Death Star's surface became Peterson's first project. It didn't take long for him to discover that for most of the fledgling ILM crew, the necessary science behind the art remained a mystery while he was already well-versed in the finer points of things like molding and catalytic urethane foam. Peterson helped close this gap in practical knowledge, sometimes dramatically, like the day he introduced some of the model builders – who had been using five-minute epoxy in assembling their creations – to the simple wonders of super glue.
"I took a pencil, and I tilted it a little bit, at about a five-degree angle, and just touched down the lead, and I took my finger away, like that, and [they] just went - " (Here, Peterson performs a wonderful pop-eyed double-take and an enormous gasp) "'Oh, my God!' And everybody else gathered around. It was like an atomic explosion. All of a sudden, the speed with which we could do things and how elaborately we could construct things really took off."
There were, of course, pressures and expectations that even super glue couldn't fix. "I don't think science fiction was held in very high regard prior to [Star Wars], Peterson said. While few could argue the impact of 2001: A Space Odyssey, he observed, most people equated the genre with movies like Logan's Run and Zardoz. Films, Peterson said, that "didn't stay with you." Still, he added, jobs weren't easy to come by, so when the work came your way, science fiction or not, you jumped for the paycheck. And 20th Century Fox executives had made little secret of the fact that they were barely humoring this oddball project only because it came from the man who'd captured movie-goers' hearts with American Graffiti a few years before.
"It was a difficult birthing of a child, Star Wars was, in a lot of ways, especially for George Lucas," Peterson said. "They really threw a lot of roadblocks in the way, and every time there was a little bit of stumbling, they leaped on it. Twentieth Century Fox has made it sound like 'Boy, we were right with him,' but it didn't happen that way at all. The studio threatened to close us down several times. Basically, probably they wanted George to throw up his hands and say, 'Hey, let's go do American Graffiti 2.'"
It was seemingly lost on many observers that in order to achieve their visual effects goals, the young ILM staff – Peterson guesses the average staffer at the time was 25 years old – had to re-invent the wheel before even beginning to aim at the stars. "When George came back from England – he'd been doing the live-action – he wasn't on the premises, so he didn't understand the difficulty of making all the cameras and computers from scratch. They were making digital control cameras, and that was all done in-house. While we were building the models, the footage didn't come about because the cameras weren't ready. You have to get the snowball big enough before it begins to roll."
Of course, it didn't take long for the collective creative minds to discover their own ways of dealing with the pressure. Outside the sweltering effects shop in Van Nuys, California, Peterson said, an old redwood tub became an ersatz swimming pool while plastic sheeti
ng, cushions and hoses were used to piece together a do-it-yourself water slide. "One time, at lunchtime, we were doing this slip-and-slide thing, and into the parking lot comes this black limousine, and it makes its way about a quarter of the way into the parking lot, and it sits there for a little bit, and then it backs up and goes away. We heard later on it was [Star Wars producer] Gary Kurtz and some of the top executives from 20th Century Fox. We lost a number of brownie points for that." And it did nothing to dispel some studio higher-ups' perceptions of a ragtag irreverent crew working in shorts, blasting their music, and dancing well into the night.
Knowing that such episodes were likely causing Lucas' confidence in the team to waver as well, the group scrambled to make up for the debacle by completing the first special effects shot of the Star Wars saga: the jettisoning of the pod in which R2-D2 and C-3PO make their escape to the desert planet of Tatooine. "It didn't necessarily make them love us, though," Peterson said. "As shots were more and more and more completed, it felt better and better and better."
But frame by frame, optimism spread, and a buzz began to build.
After initially fretting upon viewing some seemingly-aimless footage of Luke Skywalker staring into that now-iconic double sunset – without the scene's subtle but moving soundtrack and without the benefit of context – Peterson found his own faith in the film growing as its disparate pieces came into being. "The Millennium Falcon was fantastic; the characters, the robots, the evil guy, Darth Vader – all of it was fantastic. The real turning point, I think, for me, was as it started to grow."
Then came the trailer. The first Star Wars preview was a cobbled together two-minute collage of imagery set to a sparse and odd string-dominated score, and featuring some of the cheesiest voice-over narration ever associated with the saga. "The story of a boy, a girl, and a universe," intones the legendary Paul Frees. "It's a big, sprawling space saga of rebellion and romance." Though laughable several decades after the fact, the trailer hit ILM with an undeniable … well, force. "It had a flash of this and a flash of that and a flash of Luke getting the message out of R2-D2 from the princess," Peterson said, a thrill still echoing in his voice so many years after the fact. "When they played the music, people would rush to the screening room and just howl and scream and it was just like, 'Oh, my God, this could really turn into something.'"