Mark Hamill
{Starburst #24, 1980}
Mark Hamill is perhaps best known the world over as Luke Skywalker, the young farmboy who
becomes enmeshed in a galactic struggle between the mighty Empire and the hopelessly outclassed Rebel
Alliance. Before beginning work on the third film (actually STAR WARS Part Six: The Revenge of the Jedi),
Mark Hamill found time for a series of interviews in London earlier this year. Starburst's John
Brosnan spoke to the young STAR WARS star at his hotel in London earlier this
year.
I was caught by surprise when Mark Hamill, star of
STAR WARS and
The Empire Strikes Back, announced that not only WAS he familiar with
Starburst
but actually had every issue of the magazine.
"I buy them regularly in Hollywood," he told me as he eagerly examined the
latest issue.
The interview was taking place in his London hotel suite shortly after the opening of
The Empire Strikes Back and the whole publicity machine was in top
gear. But though this must have been Hamill's hundredth interview within the last few days, his energy and
enthusiasm seemed undiminished. In this respect, he does have something in common with the character of
the young Luke Skywalker, but in reality he is a 27-year-old actor with 10 years professional experience behind him.
I shouldn't have been too surprised to learn that he collected
Starburst, as I had heard he was a genuine fan of science fiction and
fantasy movies and in fact I'd once read a piece by him in a special effects magazine. When I mentioned this to
him, it was his turn to be surprised.
"I'm amazed," he said,
"I meet about one person in a
thousand who knows that. It was an interview I did with Kerwin Matthews (star of
The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and other fantasy movies). I read in FXRH (Film Effects by Ray
Harryhausen) that they wanted to know if anyone knew the location of Kerwin Matthews because they'd like
to interview him. At the time, I was on a soap opera in the States called General Hospital, which isn't the
same one that's on over here, and I'd met him only recently. So I wrote to FXRH and I said, 'I know where
Kerwin Matthews is, I know where he lives, I know where he eats, I know where he does his laundry, but I
won't tell you unless you let me do the interview.'
So they said okay. I didn't get a fee for it, I just got a free trip to San Francisco to cover the science fiction
convention they were having up there to interview Kerwin and talk to him about his work in Harryhausen's movie. When
people see that issue now they think, 'That's weird. I wonder if it's the same guy from
STAR WARS… no, it can't be.' But it is!"
I asked him if being a fan of the genre meant that working on the
STAR WARS films was a real pleasure for him.
"Yeah, it really is. I've done a lot of work on different television shows that I wouldn't
allow to be beamed into my house, but they were just jobs I did as an actor. But, luckily for me, I LOVE to work in
this - I hate the word GENRE - but genre."
But wasn't he getting tired of devoting so much of his career to the
STAR WARS movies? After all, it had started for
him back in 1976. Wasn't he just a little weary of the whole thing now?
"No, not at all! Really! First of all, I think in Empire, the story is just
beginning to emerge. They laid the groundwork in the first one, but now we can develop the story and the characters. STAR WARS
was very emotional, but it was a much more VISUALLY orientated experience. I mean, for instance, the
exalted feeling you get when we blow up the Death Star is a very mechanical manipulation of the emotions, but in
Empire, we have to rely on the CHARACTER revelations as the emotional climax. There was a kid at the
media screening here of Empire who was just in tears at the end of it and he was saying to
me, 'It's not true, it's not true… you lost!' And I was saying to him that I didn't lose. It was a MORAL victory! It was
a moral victory that Luke didn't join with Darth Vader!"
What about other science fiction and fantasy films? Was he still able to maintain his fannish enthusiasm for the
genre after all the years of working on the
STAR WARS series?
"Oh, sure! I see them all! I haven't seen Saturn 3 yet, but that's the only
one. My favourites, since STAR WARS, are Close Encounters and Alien. Oh boy, I LOVED
Alien! I wish I could have been in Alien. It could have been like Janet Leigh in Psycho. If they'd
billed me in a starring role in Alien and then have me get killed first it would have really surprised
audiences. That would have been great! I would love to do something like that. In fact, now I would love to be in
the remake of The Thing and get killed right away…"
"But I never thought of STAR WARS as science fiction. I thought of it as a fairy tale. One of my favourite earlier
versions of the STAR WARS screenplay had a clever device to off-set the technology of the whole thing so that
audiences wouldn't think that it was going to be another 2001 when they see the cruiser going overhead. It started
with a helicopter shot of an enchanted forest and they push the camera through the window of a tree and you see a
mother Wookiee trying to breast feed this squealing baby Wookiee. He keeps gesturing towards the bookshelf and
there's all this Wookiee dialogue going on. She goes and points to one particular book and the baby gets all
excited [Mark did a creditable imitation of what an excited baby Wookiee might sound like at this point]. She takes
the book off the shelf and we see it's titled STAR WARS. She opens the book and THAT'S when the
ship comes overhead and the film we know starts… Then, at the end, after we get our medals, we bow
and it cuts back to the baby Wookiee asleep - hopefully not like the audience. And the mother closes the
book and puts the baby to bed. And that would have got across that it was INTENDED to be a fairy story."
Tactfully not admitting that I thought it sounded rather appalling, I asked why the idea had been abandoned.
"Well, you have to go back to 1976, when we were going into production, and the
Fox executives were sending us memos like, 'Why doesn't the Wookiee have any pants on?'
"It's true," he continued after the
Starburst laughter had
subsided,
"and we were saying, 'Hey, come on, guys, if you're going to ask this sort of
question, why are you making the movie?' What's another of my favourites? Oh yes, the scene in the movie
where a Jawa comes up to me outside the cantina and starts mucking around with my landspeeder and I
sort of brush him away in disgust. And that should telegraph to everyone the humans' relationship with
Jawas. The audience has already seen them scavenging for metal and selling robots, so everyone knows
what they are, but the executives wanted me to add a line like, 'Oh, look, it's a Jawa, a member of a
small band of scavenging desert rodents who search the land for metal…!' They wanted EVERYTHING explained."
"But there was so much in the screenplays that didn't make it into the movie. Like the monster that pulls
me under the water in the garbage tank, that was a dianoga. And I said to George, 'This is weird. If the walls go
in and crush us, how come the monster doesn't get squashed, too?' And he had it all worked out. It wasn't as
if he was making it up on the spot. He told me that in man-made battle stations, they import these creatures
that will eat all the organic material in the garbage and leave the metal, and when the button is pushed and
the walls start moving in to compress the metal, they recognise the sound and swim down into their little
cubby holes. He had it all so planned out, not that the audience will ever know…"
"George gets very depressed when he makes movies. He's always convinced that once and for all he'll be
exposed as having no talent. And he gets SO disappointed with the finished product. Because when
you make a movie, in your mind everything is perfect, but when you finally have to realise it on film, it's
never the same. So he gets bugged out when he's making a film."
"I remember when we were shooting that scene in the trash compactor. I was standing in my stormtrooper
costume next to the big drop in the water and there was a scuba diver under the surface with his hands around
my legs, ready to pull me under. When it came to the point for me to go under, I'd just tap him with my foot and
he'd pull me down while I held my breath. So I was standing there waiting and waiting for everything to be right
and I noticed George standing nearby, looking really depressed and shaking his head. So I just happened
to catch his eye, I hadn't planned this - it was just out of desperation that this idea came into my head, what
with the monster being called a dianoga and everything. I picked up one of the little bits of schluck, green pieces
of styrofoam floating on the water and, to the tune of Chattanooga Choo-choo, I started to sing, 'Pardon
me, George, could this be Dianoga poo-poo?'
And to show you how depressed he was, he didn't even SMILE. I got a smile out of you - I didn't get a
laugh, but I got a smile - but George just sighed, put his foot up on my stormtrooper chest and
suddenly, I was under the water."
With jokes like that, it's not surprising that Lucas walks around the set looking depressed, but is it true
he doesn't LIKE making movies?
"He just feels disappointed with the results. He told me he was 40 to 50 percent satisfied
with American Graffiti and only 20% satisfied with STAR WARS. That's why he wants to make it a
series, because he thinks eventually he may get it right. He liked Empire better. I don't know if the
audience will, because after a successful film, the tendency is to deliver a sequel - that's a tricky
word, sequel - but Empire is not really a sequel. I did sign originally for three films and George had
even then written the entire storyline. Some of it has been dressed up in Empire to
satisfy audience expectations, but for the most part, Empire is the same story he wrote all those years ago."
Was he, I wondered, looking forward to working on the next one?
"First of all, I want to know what happens next and secondly, I think it's all
getting more interesting. Now the STORY is emerging and people's perceptions about the characters
will have to change. Like Ben Kenobi being the symbol of purity and righteousness. Well, in Empire, if
he wasn't lying, he at least wasn't being 100% truthful, and I think all that is interesting. Whether
audiences will agree I don't know yet. I think it's a gamble, because people may be expecting the same
kind of phenomenon that he had with the first one. The kids went back to STAR WARS again and again, because
it always delivered that same feeling of exultation - it was very triumphant and very optimistic - but Empire is
really downbeat and it raises so many questions and worries. But I think it's great we're taking this gamble…"
I suggested that
STAR WARS fans would be certain to find
Empire much more satisfying than
the Star Trek fans did with their movie.
"I have to be very careful about that," he said,
"because
I missed Star Trek when it was first shown on American TV. We were living in Japan then, because my
father, a Naval officer, had been transferred there. But I later saw the reruns, of course. When I went to see
the movie, I thought, well, gee, if that had been done in an hour on TV, it would have been great, but not for a
45 million dollar movie."
Knowing that he was an old special effects enthusiast, I asked him how he rated the effects in
Empire.
"As far as I'm concerned, you see a lot of movies where you look at the special effects
and say, 'Gee, isn't that nice', but you're saying that removed from the experience and it doesn't really mean
anything. But when I first saw the snow walker sequence in Empire put together, I was just thrilled with the
EMOTIONAL connection - the way it's set up to create a David and Goliath kind of feeling with those
little, mosquito-like snow speeders versus the giant walkers."
"I was worried about the effects, because now the effects you see in TV commercials seem like those in
STAR WARS - come to carpet Nirvana where a galaxy of bargains await you!
And then they cut to the big spaceships going overhead…. And you just wonder if people are going to get fed up with
this kind of stuff. But watching Empire, I got a great surge of enthusiasm and that's the key - you care enough
about the situation and so the effects are complementing the action rather than dominating it. The best
effects are the ones you don't notice anyway. People see the Taun Tauns and they know they
can't be real, so they look closely at them, but the effects you just accept matter-of-factly, those are
the really exciting ones."
As the whole
STAR WARS saga is the brainchild of George Lucas alone, I wondered if it was easy for him to
relinquish control on the making of
Empire? Was he, I asked, a constant presence on the set?
"No. He would come and watch, but he wouldn't stand next to the camera. Kersh
would say, 'You want to come over here..?' And George would say, 'No, no, it's your movie.' And then you
might see him way in the background, peering around a set, sort of watching. But he only came over to
England about three times during the making of Empire, and only for a week each time. It really
IS Kershner's movie."
"But actually, George did direct ONE scene in Empire. Here's an exclusive for Starburst. No one else
knows this and in fact, it's not very important, but he did. It came about this way - first, John Barry died
and that was a horrible experience for all of us because he was such a nice guy. He'd had such an awful
experience on Saturn 3 - he'd started working on Empire on the proviso that, if he got the
chance to direct Saturn 3, he would leave and do it. And he did get the chance, so he left Empire, but
then all that junk happened to him and he came back to us. He was all excited at getting into
directing the 2nd Unit of Empire and then suddenly, we lost him. So then Gary Kurtz did some of
the 2nd Unit; Robert Watts, who was originally our Location Manager, but this time was Production
Manager and Associate Producer, shot some and so did Harley Cokliss. And one day, they needed
someone to shoot a connecting scene between the one where I'm recovering from my snow creature
experience - he was a Wampa, by the way - and the scene where I go out in the snow speeder. And there
was no one else available, so George did it himself."
"It's the scene where I'm putting on the orange suit over the khaki one and there's a guy saying
something like, 'Oh, there's plenty of time to get the smaller modules on the transport.' These lines are
so much nonsense. Anyway, it was just like old home week because George was there and he's fun to tease. He was
doing the off-camera lines for the robot that was helping me - 'I don't think we'll have time to do this, sir.' And all
that sort of thing. And he said to me, 'When you walk out, just acknowledge the robot.' So every time
I did it, I would say something different to the robot. Like, 'I appreciate it' or 'How very compassionate of
you', and leave. We did it sixteen times and I said sixteen different things. And it was mostly just
to get George's goat because he never knew what would be coming next. You know what, he ended up using the
tape where I just said, 'Thanks'."
My final question was whether he was planning to get into the writing and directing side of the industry himself.
"I wouldn't rule it out. I've written stuff before. It's one of those situations where, if you're not
going to get good offers from other people, then you're going to have to do it yourself. I would like to produce a script
written by a friend of mine from college. We'd do it on a low budget and everyone would be on a low salary with
percentage points of the profits the way that George did it. And it would have to be a labour of love. It's an
ensemble thing - there's not just one lead character, there's about twenty of them."
And is it science fiction?
"No, as a matter of fact, it's not."
And finally, a message from Mark Hamill:
Best wishes to all Starburst readers (from a galaxy far, far away!) My humble advice: Follow the Force! UNLEARN!
-Mark Hamill