I had arrived at Elstree studios in steaming hot June weather with stars in my
eyes. Alec Guinness, the enigmatic veteran of classics such as The Lavender
Hill Mob, was about to give me an interview. My excitement increased on
arrival in the lobby, which bristled with Elstree’s famous past. A
photograph of Richard Todd, jaw jutting forward, as Wing Commander Guy
Gibson in The Dam Busters dominated one wall. Even the studio staff wore
uniforms, heavy with badges and braid, like fighter pilots. Then came the
first missile on what was to have been my first interview on a film set.
Guinness had changed his mind: the interview was off.
Through the dry-mouthed disappointment, I was offered thin consolation. Carrie
Fisher, the film’s leading lady, playing someone called Princess Leia, had
agreed to see me for lunch. But, and this was the start of a series of buts,
could I meet with a pleasant but rather dull guy, Harrison Ford, who was one
of the leads, Han Solo? And would I also interview Darth Vader, played by
the 6ft 7in Mr Universe contestant and British weightlifting champion Dave
Prowse? Who were these people? What were they playing at? And what was I
doing, the newest show-business reporter on the Daily Express, stumbling
across characters with indecipherable names? Even Guinness was called Ben
Obi-Wan Kenobi.
An uneasy feeling soon turned to despair at the sight of what passed for
“action”: small men, ugly men, a hairy character called Chewbacca and
incomprehensible references to C-3PO and R2-D2. The costumes and scenery
were like castoffs from an early episode of Doctor Who, and chaos seemed to
reign at every turn. On one side loomed Darth Vader, dressed in what looked
like an expensive black bin liner, talking in a thick Bristol accent, my
dear.
The little dialogue I heard made no sense at all.
I lurched to lunch in the studio restaurant with the realisation that no
senior journalist had come near the set of Star Wars for one simple reason:
their experience and advance information told them that this sci-fi movie
was going to disappear into a big black hole.
Yet there was no chance of an early escape. Fisher, aged 19, was already at
the table. She ate melon, followed by a small portion of trout. A glass of
wine was rejected. “Maybe I will get onto alcohol when I grow up,” she said,
followed by a manic and inexplicable laugh. She has since admitted that she
was on something far stronger than Liebfraumilch: cocaine. She thrice
bounded up from the table in our 45 minutes together to go to “the
bathroom”. Obviously nervous, I thought.
Ford, by comparison, looked like the sort of man who would regard a trip to
the men’s room as a sign of weakness. He talked low and slow. He wore long,
bushy sideburns, and his sloping poker face gave nothing away. He was 34,
and had made just six film appearances in eight years. “I guess you won’t
know about those,” he said, perfectly accurately. “I have high hopes of
something special from this.” He didn’t look or sound convincing. The poor
guy had about as much star appeal as Elstree’s car-park attendant.
Prowse was next. Villain? He was less threatening than Yogi Bear, despite his
enormous bulk. He reeled off an impressive set of statistics, in a voice
several octaves too high (it was later to be dubbed by the baritone James
Earl Jones). He weighed in at 273lb, with a 50in chest, a 38in waist, 45in
hips, an 18in neck and 18in biceps. He was 41, and had lived with his mum in
Bristol until he was 28. Until recently, he had trained Edward Heath, the
former prime minister, at a gym in London’s Grosvenor House hotel. “I took
this part because people always remember the baddie in movies,” he said. “I
just hope nobody forgets Darth Vader in this one.” Dream on, big boy, I
thought.
Among props that could have been passed on from a panto, I was introduced to
someone referred to as Luke Skywalker. He was an American actor, Mark
Hamill, aged 24, whose cherubic face and blond hair made him look about 12.
“I have been playing virgins for years,” he announced cheerfully. Hamill,
Ford and Fisher were even squashed into the same car on the way to and from
the studios each morning. Their status was not helped by the fact that the
great Guinness could not even recall Ford’s first name: at times, he had
called him both Tennyson and Ellison. “I doubt if he is ever going to light
up the Thames or the East River,” he predicted to a friend. He had also
written a letter, revealed many years later, explaining why he had rejected
all on-set interviews. “New rubbish dialogue reaches me every other day on
wodges of pink paper,” he declared. “And none of it makes my character clear
or even bearable. The film plods on.”
Nobody was saying this at the time, of course. Elstree studios, in
Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, had opened in 1926 and had seen great days. But
in the year before my visit, its owners, EMI, had closed six of its nine
stages and announced 213 redundancies, leaving a skeleton staff of just 48.
Earlier in 1976, the films being made included Confessions of a Driving
Instructor and Stand Up Virgin Soldiers. Everyone was putting on a brave
face. A new system had been introduced. The studio was offering freedom to a
producer to hire whom and what he or she wanted. So when Twentieth Century
Fox booked the whole studio for 18 weeks for Star Wars, described as a
“space adventure fantasy”, there was a mood of hope.
That hope had been dented by the parade of unknowns playing the main
characters, the nonstop script changes and the browbeaten figure of the
director, George Lucas. He was a small, bearded man, who apparently talked
to his cynical British crew about special effects that would transform
film-making: a geek ahead of his time. He also believed he was going to make
stars out of his unknown cast.
I might have been young and inexperienced, but who was he kidding? I wasn’t
that daft...
May the facts be with you
- Doing a Hitchcock, George Lucas will make an appearance in Sith. He’s the
blue-faced chap called Baron Papanoida in the opera-house scene, with
his daughter Katie beside him; his son Jett also gets a cameo as a Jedi,
Zett Jukassa.
- Lucas’s budgets have swelled from $11m for the first Star Wars film in 1977
to $115m for Revenge of the Sith. Ticket sales earned the first film $1.2
billion, outdone by 1999’s The Phantom Menace, which brought in $1.35
billion. Even Attack of the Clones, the least-liked episode, took $959m. Then
there’s the merchandise, estimated at $9 billion to date.
- Lucas sent his special-effects team to film Mount Etna so they would have a
real-life reference when shooting the climactic final duel on Mustafar —
which was actually shot in miniature, using a food product called
methylphenol for the lava.
- As well as Jar Jar Binks, Chewbacca is back: the Wookiee will be played, as
before, by Peter Mayhew. This time, he gets his very own planet,
Kashyyyk.
- Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker return as C-3PO and R2-D2 — the only actors
to be in all six films.
