Mark Interviews 2000+

Mark Hamill

Luke Skywalker himself appears in Jay & Silent Bob, but is the Force still with the legendary Jedi?

How willing were you to lampoon STAR WARS with this film?

One thing that's really liberating to me, and where I don't think I'm going to get into trouble with all the Lucasfilm fundamentalists is that he's not that character - he's a pompous actor who's on a Batman-like TV show. And that's where I approached it; someone who takes himself really seriously and then these two morons come in and ruin his world. That's funny. You need the Margaret Dumont for Groucho Marx; you need the guy who gets upset to make it funny.

If you understand the joke, it really feels good - even if you're not getting the punchline - to set it up right. You can feel it like a musician. It's hard to explain. You know what your role is. It was frustrating playing Luke. I thought it was hysterical that the robots were arguing over whose fault it was. You risk your life for the Princess and she says, 'You came in that!?' It's like my sister saying, "Dad, drop us off a block before we get to High School. I don't want to be seen with these people or in this crappy car.' That's what I thought was so funny about those movies. Here they are fantasy, but there are moments in there that are just so grounded in really relatable, bump-your-head-on-the-dashboard kind of humour.

Do you think you'll appear in any of the STAR WARS prequels?

The continuity goes the wrong way. I'm not born yet! I had three franchises go haywire in one year. Batman Beyond went 50 years into the future, Wing Commander, they did the movie version and Freddie Prinze Jr is the young me. My wife keeps asking, "Can't you pick one goddam thing that goes chronologically? It would really help us."

Hot Dog Magazine, December 2001